| Swedish town drops 'negro' name |
| Sunday, 27 September 2009 19:35 |
|
The city of Karlstad in western Sweden will no longer have a neighbourhood called Negern (‘the negro’), the town council decided on Wednesday. “They’ve come to their senses,” said Kitimbwa Sabuni of the National Afro-Swedish Association (Afrosvenskarnas riksförbund) to the TT news agency. Karlstad’s Negern neighbourhood has been around for nearly 150 years, but came under fire recently after a private citizen complained that the name was “objectionable, insulting, or just plain rude”. The council in turn sought guidance on the matter from the National Land Survey of Sweden (Lantmäteriet), which ruled in June that the name should be seen as "exotic and evocative" and represented a part of Sweden's cultural heritage. The ruling outraged Sabuni and others, prompting a heated debate on the opinion pages of newspapers across the country throughout the summer and forcing the Karlstad council to take action. After a committee designated to review legislative referrals made its recommendation, the council’s City and Buildings Committee decided to remove the name, following a similar ruling by the city’s Place Name Division. “We can’t have a name which we don’t even dare to say out loud,” said buildings committee head Håkan Holm to TT. The meeting was preceded by a demonstration outside Karlstad’s city hall arranged by the Centre Against Racism (Centrum mot rasism) and other organizations. “Our pressure has brought results,” said Sabuni. However, there remain some who weren’t at all offended by the Negern neighbourhood, such as the head of the Christian Democrats in Karlstad, Peter Kullgren. “The name should have been allowed to remain,” he told TT. “It’s an old name, and if we continue to take away names that some find offensive then we’ll end up with an extremely poor cultural history in the future.” He claimed the neighbourhood received the name shortly after the American civil war and after the majority of the slave trade had ended. “So it’s more like a confession, an approval for what had happened in the world at that time, rather than a sign of the linguistic conventions of the time,” he said. Source: http://www.thelocal.se Notes from the editor:
Urbanlife offers it's congratulations to the National Afro-Swedish Association (Afrosvenskarnas riksförbund) in achieving this name change and to all those who attended the demonstration. It would appear the name had been discussed for over 20 years before this decision was made and comments made by Peter Kullgren from Christian Democrats highlight the ignorance that led to the delay. It is not political correctness gone mad but simply positive change for the good of the country.
|
Comments
http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/rasism-och-sexism-i-mobilens-ordlista-1.506708
Keep up the struggle!!!
I have noticed that the n-word is in my Nokia phone. I guess it is time to turn some attention to Nokia too! And all the other cellphone makers who still thinks the n-word is of such great importance that we need a short cut to it the wordbook. :shock:
RSS feed for comments to this post