Abstract
In recent years, the Danish public has been embroiled in different debates on racism and whiteness. While these debates instigate a break with historic and color-blind silencing of racism in Denmark, they have also given rise to multiple reproductions of racist logics. Our analysis concentrates on a debate that took off in early 2013 following the publication of the book Are Danes Racist? The Problems of Immigration Research [Er danskerne racister? Indvandrerforskningens problemer] by Henning Bech and Mehmet Ümit Necef. The debate centered around the question of whether or not so-called anti-racist research met scientific standards. We argue that this debate can be seen as a turning point in how both individual researchers in particular and racism research in general have been positioned as unscientific and as productive of social division and racism in Denmark. The chapter suggests that these racial turns can be seen as a recalibration of the tradition of Danish racial exceptionalism, where racism in Denmark is presented as containable and marginal, and where anti-racist research in itself constitutes a new form of racism.
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Notes
- 1.
The titles of and quotes from books and newspaper published in Danish have been translated into English by the authors, with original titles in brackets. See also the article’s reference section for original titles of all the Danish publications.
- 2.
For a discussion on how research on racism has been neglected by governmental think tanks in their work on integration in the 1990s and early 2000s, see Hervik and Jørgensen (2002), p. 90.
- 3.
To our knowledge the terminologies of “anti-racist research” or “anti-racist researchers” do not reflect how most critical race scholars in Denmark have positioned their research or themselves over the past decade; it is, however, consistently used by Bech and Necef, and in the conclusion to the book, it is defined as a “designation for research, where there is a significant probability that unsubstantiated claims of widespread racism and the like are being put forth” (p. 326).
- 4.
In an interview, Bech attempted, for instance, to clarify what he considered to be a misinterpretation of an aspect of the argument in Are Danes Racist? (Information, 2013).
- 5.
- 6.
This is not an exhaustive account of all the articles referencing the case in Infomedia. We have not included peripheral front-page references, brief mentions, online versions of printed articles, and shovelware versions of previously published articles, the latter occurring especially in regional media outlets.
- 7.
Jyllands-Posten published the much-discussed 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in September 2005, leading to five months of globalized conflict (Klausen, 2009).
- 8.
Anti-Islamic is the terminology used in the article (and not, e.g. anti-Muslim).
- 9.
Peter Hervik and Rikke Andreassen were not the only scholars accused of unscientific misconduct in Are Danes Racist? In a front-page interview published in Weekendavisen (Vind, 2013), Henning Bech launched a scathing attack on Professor Jytte Klausen (Brandeis University) for connecting Jyllands-Posten’s Muhammad cartoons (published in 2005) with anti-Semitic iconography promoted by the Nazi regime.
- 10.
Cultural Radicalism is a translation of the Danish word “kulturradikalisme” that denotes a movement among Danish intellectuals that emerged in the 1870s. The heyday of Cultural Radicalism is often ascribed to the interwar period. The movement was revitalized during the 1960s and 1970s, and it is often associated with a politics of tolerance and anti-authoritarian views, for example, in relation to child rearing and sexuality. Historically,conservatives have perceived Cultural Radicalism as a form of cryptocommunism (Duelund, 2001).
- 11.
We have only been able to find a few examples such as Anna Rytter’s (2013) op-ed, “We are all racists”. At the time Rytter was a parliamentary candidate for the Red-Green Alliance. Her op-ed is critical of the broader reluctance to address racism in Danish society. Bech and Necef’s book is briefly mentioned as carrying a message that suits the anti-immigration agenda of the Danish Peoples Party. For another example, see Jonas Christoffersen’s (2013) blog post “Danes are racist…”. Christoffersen, at the time executive director for Danish Institute of Human Rights, aligns himself with Bech and Necef’s argument that racism by and large has been eradicated from Danish society, but he is critical of their argument concerning how society occasionally needs to act based on generalizations (in Danish, gennemsnitsbetragtninger).
- 12.
Information did include one article where researchers questioned Bech and Necef’s definition of racism, but it focused on how their conceptualization related to the definition of racism in Danish jurisdiction (Dandanell, 2013b).
- 13.
- 14.
Immigration research is a direct translation of Jalving’s use of “indvandrerforskningen”, an outdated term which is no longer used within the context of Danish academia.
- 15.
For a summary of the Penkowa case, see University of Copenhagen’s updated summary of the case: http://nyheder.ku.dk/penkowa (Last accessed January 1, 2017).
- 16.
In Are Danes Racist? Bech and Necef position the act of unjustly calling someone a racist as analogous to racism proper. According to Bech and Necef, it is “just as [emphasis added] unwise to in advance demonize the old-danes as racist, xenophobic and islamophobic” as it is to “talk about immigrants and refugees,as if they are retarded and criminal” (p. 12).
- 17.
For an analysis of the debates on immigration in the 1990s and early 2000s, see Hervik (2011).
- 18.
According to Beinov this point is scientifically proven, but there is no reference to the studies/researchers in question.
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Danbolt, M., Myong, L. (2019). Racial Turns and Returns: Recalibrations of Racial Exceptionalism in Danish Public Debates on Racism. In: Hervik, P. (eds) Racialization, Racism, and Anti-Racism in the Nordic Countries. Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74630-2_2
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