Another Swedish culture official symbolically cutting up a black person.....

Wait, what???

On any number of levels, certainly.

The word is gobsmacked in UK, and it fits me to a T.

I have to associate myself with the comments of those objecting to this "art:"

Highly inappropriate. It's a shame that government officials and musuem staff let this go on without questioning it. Myself I find it really gross.

or flabbergasted and so on.

PTxS

Tastes like emancipation.

I almost left out the picture since it is offensive but I figured the picture really communicates the message more than the words. Plus Colorlines is a racial justice type of website so I thought in that context it is probably ok to post it.

Really, same vibe to me. All we get is this carnival of death in our faces everyday. I felt very sick earlier today from the memories one post brought up. I keep positive and enjoy a lot of what's here but it's hard.

I don't mind learning, but this is not anything that is going to help. I don't mean your revealing the truth, that's okay. But these people... I just don't know. There was absolutely no justification for that spectacle.

It's just one hideous thing after another. I'm horrified about the regression in this country, the complete lack of empathy, malevolence and ignorance. I'm worried sick that Obama is going to be assassinated and this country plunged into civil war.

A Swedish official acting like this, too. Damn it, they must know better, or else they've lost their minds.

I can finally cross 'watching somebody connect a creepy blackface cake in Sweden to a second Civil War in the US' off of my bucket list.

Couldn't help it. Not trying to offend you here. I just thought it was an odd connection, that's all. I commented on the OP downthread BTW.

I could totally see Rick Santorum or Mitt Romney standing there smiling with that cake. I took the picture down too. Don't want to get in the habit of just posting shocking racist stuff, because we would never run out of it.

I couldn't even begin to imagine any establishment conservative getting within a mile of such a cake. Publicly at least, your Romney, Bush, and Santorum types are far more PC than DU gives them credit for. My suspicion is that most of them are privately as well.

Bear in mind that I'm talking about the establishment, not necessarily regular people (though many of them aren't all that different). I'd venture to guess even Pat Buchanan would have no interest in such a cake.

The rejection of blackface/sambo type stuff is widely shared across the political spectrum. This is less about left-right differences in America and more about the different cultures of the US and Sweden.

If you took her to a museum and told her she was the honorary cake cutter for genital mutilation awareness month, wouldn't she smile for the camera and dig in?

You have a point, Sweden has a different history, and maybe they are still learning to be offended by this kind of thing.

But for me what this is really about is our unfiltered reaction of disgust as the American left. Would the US right wing react to this the same way as the US left wing? I think there is a real difference in the way our two groups react to this kind of thing and I'm happy to point it out.

Not to blow it out of proportion though, it's just a cake, not a monetary policy or something.

I'm sure she strongly opposes FGM, but then again, so does just everybody else in this country. Actually, Bachmann is probably quite familiar with FGM issues. Her district includes part of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan statistical area, which is the Somali capital of the US (Columbus, OH, where I live, is number two). FGM is widely practiced in Somalia. The issue has likely been on her radar screen for a long time.

But anyway, like I said, establishment conservatives are far more PC than DU gives them credit for. IMO, Rich Lowry didn't fire John Derbyshire and Robert Weissberg because he thought he had to, though that was part of it. I think he did so mostly because he genuinely dislikes what they stand for. The establishment right has this absurdly quixotic idea that one day, the stars will all fall in line and minorities will start voting Republican. Bush and Rove were the champions of this and demonstrated as much with their false trumpeting of the 44 percent Latino vote figure in the 2004 elections (the real number was more like 40). Mittens will be lucky to get 35.

And by the way, effete intellectuals like Derbyshire and Weissberg would never get anywhere near a blackface cake. Why would they? The only people who would do so here are the crudest of racists. The difference between elite conservative pundits and grassroots racists is the same difference between a liberal lover of Broadway and a Democrat who goes to pro-wrestling matches. They really live in different worlds.

I've said many times that DU is a great place for information on the progressive movement. It's terrible on accurate information about what Republicans actually believe. If you get your information on conservatives from media matters and Thom Hartmann, you really don't know anything at all about them.

by the idea that cutting into the genitals of a lifelike female cake = striking a blow for women's rights (in this case, women's right not to have their clitorises cut)?

Nah, I think swedish women in general would give it a pass.

Would have believed it was hyperbole or ridiculed the story terming it a racist event. A lot of white people have been denying these tendencies exist and this stuff must come out and be healed. It's painful to realize how little we've come; although I'd say more like it's how backward we've gone with hate media. I'm very concerned that it's given credence or approval, and I'd never seen such open racist talk since Obama was nominated.

I'm old enough to have seen JFK, MLK and RFK and a lot other great men be assassinated and I've seen my representatives be threatened, Giffords shot, and so much I never thought I'd see again. I can't forget. We don't take the influence of hate speech when it's in major media seriously enough in this country.

With the videos showing Mittens supporter Nugent and his hateful behavior and comments, whipping up the crowd against Obama, being cheered on, I'm shocked. I didn't open those but read the comments and a link that showed what he said.

And you're right -- Mitt or Newt would have laughed at this event as well. I'm disappointed that this low caliber of people have so much power in this nation. Thanks for taking my feelings seriously on this event.

WTF

They seem to be having a really good time. Nobody seems concerned at all about the cake. They're into it.

WTF is right!

Who in this day and age does not know that is not only racist, but also symbolically mutilating the victims all over again?

I am astonished, perplexed, bewildered, and downright disgusted by that.

Elsewhere, especially a country that doesn't have many black people like Sweden......it's possible they are totally unaware to how awful it looks.

First of all, the point of all of this was to draw attention to the practice of genital mutilation, which is in the end a good thing. Now doing so by symbolically performing the act on genitals made of chocolate cake and then eating it isn't how I would go about it, but hey, different strokes.

We should also remember that the cultural proscription against these outmoded depictions of black people is much less pronounced in other parts of the world. Not saying that's a good thing, but it's worth noting. Such depictions do not cause eyebrows to be raised in Sweden the same way they are here.

It's a liberal country, after all. But it's nothing compared to the reaction here had Mitt Romney eaten a chocolate clitoris.

I personally doubt it. There isn't all that much outrage about the incident here in Sweden.

I guess.

It seems like performance art to demonstrate the problem of female genital mutilation in Africa. It seems to demonstrate that cutting up a woman is no more important to those who do it than cutting up a cake.

I'm not an artist, I'm an engineer, but this seems like valid political performance art to me. Read this comment from the artist:

---
Makode: I didn’t clearly see her reaction, but judging from the pictures she was surprised when she realised that the cake was living. And before she put the knife into me, into the cake, she said “Your life will be better like this”. And when she put the knife into me I started screaming and begged her to stop. This was a part of the performance.
---

I imagine the Culture Minister was told to say that line. It sounds so much like, "I'm doing this for your own good."

The culture minister may be an idiot. I won't dispute that, but the art seems valid, even if maybe misdirected. It was offensive, but isn't the actual mutilation of African women's (girls' actually - doesn't it happen at 12 -14?) genitals even more offensive?

There have been extensive discussions on female (and male) genital mutilation on DU. From what I remember, female genital mutilation occurs primarily to black African females. Why would the 'cake' look like anything else?

"Mocked and exploited'. Really? How the hell many Swedes have any idea of female genital mutilation at all - how many Americans or people worldwide? If the artist raises consciousness of a terrible injustice, regardless of how he does it, isn't that valid? If that consciousness leads to a little bit more pressure to stop this barbarism, hasn't he succeeded wildly, regardless of anything else?

I'm not commenting on tastefulness (very bad unintentional pun) or saying that he couldn't have done it better with more thought, nor even on his competence as an artist, but it looks like valid art to me.

The 31-year old artist uses mass cultural icons which he revamps into a new historically manipulated narrative. “Contemporary western ideas of paradise and the romanticizing of exotica and the ‘simple ife’ collide with history’s gruesome facts of slavery, apartheid and racism,” the artist’s website proclaims.

The more I think about this item, the more it pisses me off. These are the kind of upper-class people campaigning against genital mutilation in aid of western campaigns against (certain) muslim countries, mainly in africa, that are actually in aid of resource grabs and the "great game" of empire.

and this is the kind of shit they do at office parties. feminists and anti-racists, my ass. they're ruling class liars and hypocrites who don't give a damn about africans, female or otherwise.

~sigh~

Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth should resign.

Sweden: the country where racism is just a joke

Jallow Momodou

Wednesday 18 April 2012 11.00 BST

Most people would consider female genital mutilation (FGM) to be a deeply harrowing issue, and that its victims should be treated with respect and sensitivity. In Sweden, though, it seems it's a laughing matter, and that racial slurs can be thrown in too.

...

It is difficult to see how women who are victims of FGM, or black people for that matter, can benefit from this contribution to the degradation and humiliation of black women.

...

But more than that, why is it that Stockholm's Museum of Modern Art, a major state institution, organised a spectacle like this? This can only be understood by looking at the country as a whole. Racism and racist depictions against black people are common in Sweden.

...

Last April, at a student dinner gathering at the prestigious Lund University, students arrived with their faces blacked up, with nooses and shackles around their necks and arms, and led by a white "slave trader". During the course of the evening, a slave auction was enacted.
...

At the start of last year, a sex education film caused outrage because it showed a black guy having sex with a white girl. More than half a million comments were posted on the internet, mainly commenting on how disgusted they were at this "betrayal" of the white race and corruption of the purity of the Swedish gene pool. The entire incident, though, was not even commented on by a single politician.

Despite all these incidents, however, Sweden has created an image for itself of paradise and harmony, which has been bought into by the rest of the world. It is a challenge for all of us to revise the Swedish self-image, starting in our schools, to understand how racism has taken hold in this country.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/18/racism-becoming-the-norm-sweden?newsfeed=true

Last edited Wed Apr 18, 2012, 12:33 PM - Edit history (1)

larsons tattoo book illustrated its misogyny, too. that we think doesnt exist.

DKS showed us the patriarchal rule of france that we think is just a progressive sexual freedom in europe.

say it enough, and it makes it true.... for some

or a shocking cake about FGM?

Gee, that's a tough one... Millions of little girls having their outer genitalia cut off, VS. an offensive cake that increases awareness of the practice.

By the way, scandinavians seem to enjoy provocative and offensive art, in the concept of free speech. You could argue that appreciation of offensive art is a cultural thing.

Maybe the fact they are from a culture not used to blacks in general, they are just totally ignorant to this?

since I live in Sweden.

Point 1. Sweden has taken in a large number of immigrants from Africa. Asylum seekers, war refugees.

Point 2. Cutting of genitalia is not accepted in the traditional Swedish culture, and is viewed as barbaric. Boys aren't circumcised, and the concept of girls having their genitalia sliced off is very repulsive.

Point 3. Scandinavians like provocative art, provocative statements.

Put all of this together, and it's pretty obvious to me that this is a response to having people with offensive cultural practices moving in to their country. Sweden is totally disgusted by FGM, and that outweighs their desire to not seem racist.

And sure enough, I couldn't find any articles written in Swedish about this. This is only outrageous to non-swedes, apparently.