Why does Mads Hansen defend racism?

You don’t understand the scope of what you are saying.

After the series The elves over the forest and hello was removed from the TV screen due to accusations of racism, the debate has raged over whether it was a correct decision. Several privileged, middle-aged white men have felt a strong need to affirm that the use of “blackface” in the series is neither racist nor problematic.

Why do white men feel such a strong need to tell minorities how they should feel?

Embarrassing and embarrassing

The day after Dplay made the decision to remove the series, host Mads Hansen was tough on his channels and ridiculed the decision. I believed that the series was not racist.

On the same day, humor critic Anders Holstad Lilleng wrote a column strongly criticizing Dplay. On Sunday, Espen Thoresen followed up with a tough article in which he describes the whole thing as “embarrassing and embarrassing.”

I think Hansen, Lilleng and Thoresen’s statements are shameful and embarrassing. They have not understood the scope of what they themselves say.

Racism is not funny. This is also a big problem here in Norway. My little brother is adopted from Brazil and has a dark complexion. I see with my own eyes how they watch over him every time we go to a store together, especially in expensive clothing stores.

Racism is serious

We know that people with a foreign surname and Norwegian spouses must use the Norwegian surname to be summoned for a job interview. We know that parents with a minority background experience that their children receive a poorer education than ethnic Norwegian children in the class.

Racism is serious for those who are exposed to it. It cannot be tolerated, but must be actively fought.

• Read an interview with Simen Bondevik in A magazine his.

So it doesn’t help that the loud white voices complain that the TV series are being cut because of the “black face”. Because “black face” is racist, also in Norwegian TV series, no matter what Espen Thoresen and Mads Hansen think.

Wikipedia defines the term as follows: “Blackface is an American term for painting the face black or brown to caricature people with dark skin.” This is precisely the case of the character Ernst Øyvind in The elves over the forest and hello.

Historical statements

Anders Holstad Lilleng writes that “We have forgotten that there is something called context.” But as Ingrid Beya Ciakudia puts it so kindly: “How racism and humor have overlapped for more than 400 years is the missing context.”

Given the long and painful history associated with the “black face” and racism, the statements by Hansen, Thoresen and Lilleeng seem to have no history.

Middle-aged white men have no defining power over what racism is.

Racism in Norway will not go away on its own. We need politicians who take responsibility, people who care. And some influential people need to step up.

As white men in a privileged position, we have a very special responsibility to be active anti-racists. When Mads Hansen uses his lectern as influences to defend the use of “black face” in a television series, it is not.

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