I am a dark minority who still talks about racism. Am I easily offended then?

• Sarah Zahid

  Member of the Freedom of Expression Commission and law student

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I grew up at diverse Holmlia with many immigrant children. At the secondary school there were nearly fifty different nationalities. There were all skin tones in the classroom. We were all different, including socio-economic. There was no basis for racism. I had a safe childhood.

For an environmental change, I chose to go to secondary school in downtown Oslo and later at the University of Bergen. I became a visible minority. People who were curious asked about my background, about my religion and whether these influenced my personal choices. I never experienced these issues as discriminatory unless they had a racist undertone.

So where does that really go the boundary between curious and racist questions.
My Commission colleague, Eirin Eikefjord, obviously in BT on June 18, thinks that using words like “black” and “negro bowl” does not necessarily make anyone racist.

Whether words such as “negro” are racist to use should not depend on the sender’s perception and intention, but the recipient’s relationship to the term.

In principle, anti-racism is not about making the non-vulnerable feel as comfortable as possible in discussions about racism. Antiracism is about giving minorities the same opportunities as the majority and not being treated differently.

Let us deal to the facts, the statistics show that 34.1 percent have prejudices against Muslims, and hate crime has more than doubled in Norway since the police began conducting the statistics five years ago.

However, no statistics show that minorities are easily offended.

Eikefjord prints from his own experience. She has every right to that. She states that she has not been exposed to diversity. I, as a Muslim with a Pakistani background from Holmlia, have friends with many different ethnicities. We rarely feel offended by words like “black” or “negro balls”. Nor do I know any minorities who believe that all white people are racists.

I have understanding for Eikefjord’s concern about being afraid of making mistakes because you will not offend anyone or appear disrespectful. The problem is that this is constantly being used as an excuse for not understanding and actively working against one’s own prejudices.

We can not reduce the racial debate to act on the fact that minorities are easily offended. The fear of being perceived as easily offended is the reason why many have not resigned when they have experienced discrimination. It is also one of the reasons why the activist movement Black Lives Matter has come so late and been so extensive. To designate everything as racism is of course also inhibiting debate and anti-racism. Here, both minorities and the majority have potential for improvement.

I experienced almost never racism as a child because of the multicultural environment that surrounded me. Today I am active in the social debate and receive daily comments like “Go back to Pakistan” and “You take up one of the few places on the law study from Norwegian youth who do not come in” and “do not come here and try to belittle our history you who do not belong here ”.

Such comments and the negative mention of minorities in the media and in politics have made me more “hard-headed” than I should be.

When racist comments flow freely online and as statistics draw in the direction of increased polarization and more discrimination, we should focus on solutions to racism, rather than addressing how comfortable the racial debate should be to non-exposed.