November 26, 2024 • 33 mins
In Stockholm, where Swedish-style social democracy has positioned the country as a world leader in development aid and refugee intake, Johny hears the complicated ways African voices are marginalised. With Minna Salami, he compares her term ‘Afropolitan’ with his term ‘Afropean’, and discusses challenging European intellectual hegemony through ‘sensuous knowledge’. And with musicians Stephen Simmonds and Sofia Janberg, he enjoys a more rhythmic examination of the Black Swedish experience.
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Afro pean podcast,
the Afro pean podcast.
Welcome to the Afro pean Podcast, anew series traversing the Afro European
diaspora, sharing the voices of.
People whose identities and experiencesshed light on a Europe often missing
from official national narrativesand pocket sized tourist guides.
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We aim to explore what it means tobe at once African and European at a
time when Europe is redefining itselfboth politically and culturally.
I'm Johny Pitts and in this episode, we'rein Stockholm, made up of an archipelago
stretching across 14 islands whereLake Mälaren flows into the Baltic Sea,
stockholm is a city of magnificent beauty.
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On the surface, Sweden can't be saidto have had the same colonial past as
other European powers to the south likeFrance, the UK or Portugal for example.
But that's not to say it doesn't existand later we'll be finding out all about
Sweden's role in Western imperialism.
But first, my introduction to Stockholmcame through the city's music scene
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when a generation of multi ethnicSwedes came of age in the 1990s.
That Generation X includes Quincy JonesIII, son of the legendary American
producer, Neneh Cherry, a Swedish popstar half sister, Titio, Eagle Eye Cherry.
There were award winning singerssuch as Awa Mane and Jennifer
Brown, and hip hop artists suchas Timbuktu, ADL and Ken Ring.
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Perhaps my favourite of all these artistsis Sweden's acclaimed soul singer Stephen
Simmonds, who later became a good friend.
The son of a Jamaican father and Swedishmother, Stephen released his debut
album Spirit Tales in the late nineties.
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And I was wowed by his fusion ofMarvin Gaye esque vocals and Bob Marley
consciousness with something truly global,sitars as we're hearing now in his track
Universe, rain sticks, Swedish orchestras,and the type of ambience you usually hear
in down tempo European chill out music.
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There was also a very Swedish sortof melancholy in the music that can
be found in tracks like Alone, thatperhaps hinted not only of the long,
cold winters, but of Stephen's place assomebody with brown skin in Stockholm.
My fate has been sealed, myfate has been shown It's left
me no shield, it's left me alone
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I began by asking Stephen what itwas like growing up in the city.
Sweden is a beautiful country.
It's secure.
We have a lot of the social safety netsthat a lot of other countries don't have.
Unfortunately, during the last fewyears as these right wing, more extreme
parties have grown stronger, I do feela change in some of the attitudes.
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Racism exists here.
There are racial difficulties.
I have one vivid memorythat still sticks with me.
It's like, we have this traditionin Sweden where your class can
sell stuff to make money forlike class trips and whatnot.
Comic books and stuff like that, yougo door to door and sell these to
make money so we could, you know,have a, uh, like a school field trip.
I went, uh, selling these, thesemagazines with a Caucasian friend.
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And one of the ladies who opened the,opened the door said, you know, that
she didn't, she didn't want to buyfrom , me She just wanted to buy from,
you know, from my, from my friendand I was like 10 at the time, you
know, so that has stayed with me.
And, uh, it's always a sense, Ithink, of, of, of, of being aware
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of, of the color of your skin andbeing aware that I am different.
It's just so sad that that's stilla factor, you know, it very much is.
When my father came here in the earlyseventies, you know, he was, you could
probably count the, the, the blackpeople on, you know, on one hand.
There were problems then.
My father experienced a lot of racism and,and, but at the same time there was also
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a sense of of curiosity, I think, from alot of Swedes and like, you know, coming
from Jamaica, you know, and you know,like when Bob Marley came here to play in
Sweden, you know, he hung out with my dad.
It was just like a reallysmall Jamaican community.
So it was, I think it was kind ofexciting for Swedish people to see
this different culture and thesedifferent kinds of music coming here.
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The problem has been that the governmenthere has kind of shacked all the non
Swedes in these different communitiesinstead of trying to integrate people.
That has grown into a problem.
Compartmentalization ofpeople is never a good thing.
We need to mix it up.
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Sweden has, since after the Second WorldWar, promoted itself very actively as
a country untainted by histories andlegacies of colonialism on the side
of the colonized and former colonized.
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Sweden's relationship to a world beyondits borders stretches far into the past.
And to find out about Sweden's colonialhistory, I got in touch with Michael
McCachran, a researcher and activistwho focuses on the African diaspora in
the Nordic region and Europe at large.
So if you look at Sweden's historyand its relationship to colonialism,
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yes, Sweden was never a major colonialpower such as Britain or, say, France.
However, Sweden was in many ways alwaysinvolved in the colonial economy.
Most of the iron that was used inthe transatlantic trade for some
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time was Swedish iron, includingthe iron that was used for shackles
and these sorts of things, but alsoa so called voyage iron to trade.
For about a hundred years from theend of the 18th century until 1879,
I believe, it had a colony in theCaribbean, which today is called St.
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Bart.
On the Swedish flag, it was a fairlysignificant so called slave port in the
Caribbean because it was a free port,so they didn't have to pay any taxes.
Sweden also benefited fromconsuming cheap colonial goods,
cotton, coffee, sugar, of course.
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Sweden has also adopted theworldviews of, of, of racism and
white supremacy and so forth, thatwas also established with colonialism.
So Sweden is very much a part ofthe history of colonialism and
its legacies, which are stillreverberating in Swedish society.
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Today, um, about 2 percent of the Swedishpopulation are people of African descent.
The majority of them are so called firstor second generation with a immigrant
background in the Horn of Africa.
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Stockholm is all islands.
I mean, the city itself isbuilt on 14 different islands.
It's got over 30, 000islands in its archipelago.
Leading on the island I live on isjust one of, you know, Stockholm's
kind of greater island around the city.
Lola Akinmade Akerström is a writer andphotographer living in Stockholm whose
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recent novel, In Every Mirror She'sBlack, looks at the experience of three
black women in contemporary society.
I live, uh, kind of northeast on an islandcalled Lidinger, like 15 20 minutes from
the center of town, kind of on the train.
And there's so many things tolove about Stockholm, you know.
I am one of its biggest advocates.
I write a lot about thecity, about visiting.
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I did move to Sweden,but it was via the U.
S., you know, so I had, I grewup in Nigeria up until I was
15 and then moved to the U.
S.
when I was, uh, you know,15 to start college.
So I had lived in the U.
S.
for 16 years before moving to Sweden.
Lola also wrote a book called Logomin 2017 about the cultural phenomenon
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of this very Swedish concept.
So the culture shockwas more between the U.
S.
versus Sweden.
You know the one ,Logom whereeverything kind of has to be balanced
and you have to be a lot morecognizant of the space you take.
Coming from the U.
S., which is more of a more kindof confident culture where you
do take up space, you know, andyou do show that, yes, of course,
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I am worthy of taking up space.
That was the big culture shock comingto Sweden where everybody had to kind of
step back a bit and almost try to blendin, not stick out too much for no reason.
I was really fascinated by thiscultural way of navigating the world
and I wanted to get deeper beneath it.
And so that's why I wrote the bookto kind of explore the mindset.
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Could you tell me more aboutthis word Logom and how it kind
of connects to Swedish society?
Yes.
So, you know, on the surface it's,it's, it's, It means, you know, not
too little, not too much, just right.
You know, and that's what people say.
Oh, it's just a word.
But when I realized that there were lotsof people that actually didn't like the
word that that was when I knew that thiswasn't just a word, you know, there's
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something that cuts deeper with this word.
And so if you think of your life asa scale, too much stress on either
side of the scale, stresses the scale.
So, so too much.
So you have to create habits orcreate something that sustains
that skill that keeps it balancedand for it to be balanced.
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It has to be something youcan sustain for a long time.
So in essence, that's what Logom is.
It tries to remove stresswithin your control.
You know, out of your life.
So as a personal ethos, it'sa fantastic ethos, right?
Because in your personal life, it'strying to make you live your best life.
And it's trying to removestress within your own control.
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But then when you take thismindset into a group setting,
Well, it tries to do the same.
It tries to do what it, youknow, and that means it tries to
remove stress within its control.
And so anything that can be seen asstressing, if it's difference, or if
it's somebody that's been too much, ittries to kind of create this homogeneity.
And that's where the problem comes.
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Once you get it.
then you can almost anticipatehow it will react in any scenario.
Sweden is a country which, since theSecond World War, has defined itself
by a social democratic politics,examples of which can be seen in the
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Million Programme of the 60s and 70s,where a public housing scheme was
launched to build a million homes.
Perhaps this homogeneity that Lolatalks about could be said to be built
into the social democratic principlesby which Sweden has been governed
through the course of the 20th century.
But is there space for discussionsaround race in this progressive approach
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to creating an inclusive society?
The, um, social democratic ideaof a people's home and so forth,
it was not a race neutral concept.
More from Michael Mceachrane ifyou look at the history of social
democracy, its current manifestations,it is fairly clear that it is not
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too concerned with racial equality.
And that it is premised onprivileging white Swedes.
And if you now, also if you lookat the way you look at these so
called million program areas, theywere then built between 1965 and
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75, affordable public housing.
Of course, in the beginning, theseSo called suburbs were dominated by
white Swedes, but growing amounts ofimmigrants moved into these areas.
There has been white flight.
And today you would find that in all, uh,or at least most of these areas, they are,
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they are dominated by, by people of color.
White Swedes are aminority in these areas.
Perhaps the most internationallyfamous Swedish political figure is
former Prime Minister Olof Palme.
Palme was the biggest symbol forthis sort of progressive cosmopolitan
social democracy based on equality,not only at home but also abroad.
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As some of the leading proponents ofthis social democratic governance,
Gunnar and Alvar Myrdal emphasisedthat if Sweden was to be morally
and politically consequential in itsegalitarianism, it had to not only
promote equal rights within borders.
But outside Palmer's socialdemocratic party was in power as
the million program was going on.
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But then in 1986, news from thestreets of Stockholm shook the world.
Within the past few minutes, we've heardthat the Prime Minister of Sweden, Mr.
Olaf Palmer, has beenassassinated according to SW
Prime Minister's assassination.
Olof Palme was on hisway home just before.
Olof Palme was very much, uh,someone who embodied this spirit,
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um, in his third world solidarity.
However, there was also a one sided.
view of one's own goodness that did notinclude one's own complicit involvement
in colonialism, racism, white identitymaking, and other such things.
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This was never a part of this socialdemocratic spirit represented by Palme,
and it was its greatest weakness.
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Paul Gilroy, the British sociologist,once defined the idea of Sweden as
a place without cultural shame orguilt, as Swedish exceptionalism.
That feeling that even when you'reusing the most vile language, um,
that is really hurtful to somebody,that you can still feel like, oh it's
not a big deal, just get over it.
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You know, we're all veryliberal and progressive.
Minna Salami grew up in Finlandand Nigeria and studied political
science at Sweden's Lund University.
She's the author of a book calledSensuous Knowledge, A Black Feminist
Approach for Everyone, and runs Ms.
Afropolitan, an award winningblog looking at feminism from an
African perspective and the Africandiaspora from a feminist perspective.
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Minna's blog, Ms.
Afropolitan, has been going for over adecade, and the term Afropolitan is one
that Afropean is often compared with.
I was initially hesitantabout what I perceived as
Afropolitan's inherent elitism.
But Minna's work changed my mind.
Ultimately, both portmanteaus are abouttrying to create a collective term
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for people living outside of Africa,but still connected to the continent.
So the term Afropolitan was a termthat I came across in 2009 in a
now famous essay by the authorTaiye Selasi called Baba i Babar.
Selasi was describing various,uh, environments in which you
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would encounter people of Africanheritage from all across the African
continent, but also the diaspora.
She was seeking to pinpoint somethingthat this kind of, uh, multifaceted
group of people shared in common.
And what she then discovered that we wouldshare in common was something that she
described as Afropolitanism, which wasa sense of being very strongly vested in
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your African identity, but also in a kindof cosmopolitan identity at the same time.
So I launched my blog in 2010.
In the next three, four years orso that I was blogging, and Miss
Afropolitan was becoming increasinglypopular, the term Afropolitan started
to frame a lot of conversations.
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And I think that it was, for all of thekind of criticism, that it also warranted,
um, which was that it was, uh, a kind ofa neoliberal terminology, because, uh,
you know, if you go back even to TaiyeSelasi's essay, where, um, you know,
these are people in the diaspora in anightclub, if I remember correctly, so
you're instantly kind of alluding to, youknow, that Afropolitans would be people
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who are, uh, privileged in the sense thatthey, they live in the West and they're
able to go out and party and whatnot.
Quite warranted critiques, but at thesame time, I think it really opened up a
very interesting space that was describingsomething that, as I said, something that
existed but hadn't really been named.
There's a kind of almost a liminalspace, uh, uh, in which People of African
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heritage in Europe, in the case ofAfropean, and in the world, in the case
of Afropolitan, have been shaping ourstories and having to sort of position
our, our narratives with terminologiesthat are predominantly political.
So movements like Pan Africanism,the Black Atlantic, and enslaved
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people's histories, Black nationalism,all of these, these movements,
which are very political innature and incredibly important.
But I think there was, there was aspace that was more cultural and more
to do with how we're reacting to.
modernity, or post modernity even,or even meta modernity, if you like.
So both Afropean and Afropolitan, Ithink, have contributed with tremendous
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value in terms of trying to just teaseout what is this space, what is it to
exist as a person of African heritage,as a black person in the world, and
to be able to position yourself quitefirmly as both, to find a sense of
belonging that feels simultaneouslyAfrican and global at the same time.
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This feeling of wanting to give backto a society but not feeling able to is
perhaps down to the fact that foreignerstrying to integrate into European
societies often come up against a rigidset of traditions, having to erase their
own cultural identity in the process.
In Minna's book, SensuousKnowledge, she writes about Euro
patriarchal knowledge systems.
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saying that we must challenge andchange these biased structures.
And she lays out a black feministapproach to creating a sense of belonging.
Her writing shows how our current approachto knowledge in the West is fundamental
to the disconnection that people ofAfrican descent sometimes feel in Europe.
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So, Ogbon is knowledge in Yoruba,um, which is one of the most
widely spoken African languages,emanating from southern Nigeria.
Ogbon, according to the, to the ancientmyths and the ancient philosophies
of the Yoruba people, Ogbon, whichis knowledge, is something that was
given to the people by the gods, sothat they would be able to, to create
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harmony and to have thriving societies.
What is unique about Ogbon is that itwas divided into Ogbon Ori and Ogbon Inu.
They mean knowledge of thehead and knowledge of the gut.
But in, in English, what we tend tosay is, um, emotional intelligence
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and intellectual or rational thinking.
The gods, when they gave Ogbon to thepeople as a, as a gift, they said that
you needed Ogbon Ori In order to haveknowledge, if you only had one of these,
then you didn't really have knowledge.
It's an approach to knowledge that ispredominantly about interconnecting
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and synthesizing realms of society,of knowledge production, of existence,
really, that are typically separated inwhat I call Uh, Europatriarchal knowledge.
We're basically encouraged from avery early age in the Europatriarchal
system to create binariesbetween pretty much everything.
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So between women and men, humansand the non human natural world,
science and arts, politics and art.
Sensuous Knowledge is resisting thosebinaries and hierarchies which they
end up creating and, um, insisting onexisting with and within each other.
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So what might this SwedishAfropean philosophy sound like?
An artist and musician seeking to fusethe Western musical traditions with
her roots in Africa is Sofia Jornberg.
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The music you're hearing is MusikawiSilt, performed by Sofia and Hailu Mergia.
Sweden has been and is still a placewhere They have lived very homogeneous
in their ethnical group growing upfor me my friends in school They
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were like, oh no, i'm not blonde.
I'm not blonde.
Whatever.
It doesn't matter But apparentlyyes, it does in sweden.
I don't have a black community.
This is also very unique If you're adoptedyou don't have that Normally, like if
you're generalizing, I don't have a blackcommunity at all Uh, the style and the
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type of music is jazz, contemporary,classical, opera, and performance art.
And when I'm in something, almost alwaysit has to do with extended techniques
of voice and what voice can be.
Why I try many different thingsand do many different genres
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is something that is, um, Veryrooted in my identity as a person.
I have, uh, gone back to myroots, and I'm very happy for it.
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The music from Ethiopia is veryrich, and I've been listening
to it since I was a child.
And one of the reasons why I can beso positive in this, uh, respect is
because I got to play with one ofthe Ethio jazz stars, Hailu Mergia.
And I felt with Playing withhim, he taught me also the
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execution of the, this music.
Musikawi's Stilt is aninstrumental song and that's kind
of a signature melody for me.
For Ethiopian jazz, uh, that has no text.
So there's no meaning in that sense.
There's no narrative.
Um, it's just a great song.
It's a great composition, but
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to perform it myself was notsomething I thought I would do.
I don't believe nobody should believethat if they do, that you have to have
a certain skin color in order to performwhatever music you want to perform.
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Sophia's words made me think of themyriad experiences of the black community.
Whenever I've been out in Stockholmwith Stephen, who was born in the city,
I really do get the sense that he'sa part of the city's cultural fabric.
The work that I do now, like, as aDJ, as I've done a lot, and playing
at clubs, the way that black music isportrayed, or urban, if we use that
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word, is portrayed, is just such a clear,segregated line between, uh, the cultures.
Instead of just, you know, seeing musicas music, it has to be like urban music.
It's like Tyler, the creator,said there in an interview I
heard him do after the Grammys.
He doesn't like that word, urban,because it's just, it's another way
of saying the n word, basically.
I think it's problematic thatwe don't see and hear music as
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music and see people as people.
I'm so split up, basically, becauseat the same time, I'm so happy to see,
like, you know, people of color, youknow, having interracial relationships.
At the same time, I'm so sad to evenbe thinking about it in that way.
It saddens me that I even react in 2021.
But it's, you know, it's just so mucha part of, of growing up, being aware
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of, you know, the color of my skin.
And yeah, I'm just longing forthe day when, when that's not
even an issue anymore, when wedon't think about it at all.
Stephen Simmonds was partof the first generation of
mixed race children in Sweden.
But I wanted to know what theexperience for young mixed race
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children in Stockholm is like now.
I asked Lola Akinmade Akerström about someof the challenges she faces as a parent.
Lola, earlier on you mentioned, um,The piece that you wrote, uh, for the,
for the New York Times, in that piece,you describe Sweden as the ultimate
white savior, um, that notion that,that, that, that Sweden almost sees
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itself as a hero, that, and feels sorryfor black people and wants to help.
Could you tell me a bit more abouthow this has played out in your home
life with your biracial daughter?
Yes.
Yeah.
And, and, and that's the thing, youknow, it's, uh, she came back from school
saying that, uh, Uh, our friends wantedher to protect me because I'm Black.
And at first I understood, oh, maybeit's, you know, kids, they're trying
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to understand what happened with GeorgeFloyd and things that happened in the U.
S., trying to make sense of it.
But then the next day she comesand says, oh, they also feel sorry
for her because she has brown skin.
And that's when I realized, okay, What arethe conversations going on in those homes?
Are they saying, Oh, arewe part of the problem?
So are they saying we need toprotect these people because
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they can't protect themselves?
Have they taken agencyfrom all black people?
Like we can't protect,like we have no agency.
And so what I was trying to say inthe piece is that, because this is,
With Sweden's reputation in the world,you know, and I'm a big advocate for
Sweden, you know, I admire Sweden forkind of taking a global moral stance.
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But the issue is when you kind of wearthat cape that bad things happen somewhere
else on and unless I come in to save.
Nobody can take care of themselves.
That's where that kind ofwhite saviorism comes in.
Instead of saying, okay, how can I bequiet and actually listen to people
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and how they want to be supported?
Because sometimes it's not, it'snot, uh, a matter of just sweeping in
and grabbing people and saying, see,you're in a corner, you're safe now.
It's actually saying, okay,what gives you purpose?
How can you give back?
I think about this a lot becausethere was an asylum center that I
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used to go visit here in Sweden as aphotojournalist, and I used to spend
time with the asylees, talk to them.
One of the things they keptsaying is, We are locked here in
paradise in the middle of nowhere.
You know, we have skills.
We want to be part of society.
We want to give back.
We want to feel like we have purpose.
And yet if we complain, weare seen as being ungrateful.
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And one of them told me that hewould rather go home and die fighting
than die in paradise doing nothing.
Yes.
How can you criticize whenthe person that's helping
you like is also helping you?
It's a very kind of weird relationshipthat a lot of foreigners feel.
Because it's like, okay, whencan I stop saying thank you?
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And actually now move on with mylife and, and, and purpose in life.
That's the space a lot of foreigners feel.
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So many people of African descent havebeen left behind by the Swedish system.
As the writer Owen Hathaway has written,social democracy is now a place only for
those who can afford to take part in it.
This disjuncture between left wingpolitics and black and working
class communities is something thatis happening all across Europe.
And unlike in America, or on the Africancontinent, there's a less assured sense
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of black identity, unity and politics.
Here in Sweden and this coursefor Scandinavia at large, there is
no strong Afro Swedish identity.
There's not a sense of a nationalblack community and especially not in
any cultural sense, any ethnic sense.
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There's a great diversity of ethnicbackgrounds and cultural identities among
people of African descent in Europe.
However, There is some solidarity amongpeople of African descent in, in, in
Sweden, among the younger generations thathave grown up in Sweden, given, you know,
similar backgrounds, similar situation,being racialized in similar ways.
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One's, uh, physical appearancesand, and ancestry, uh, taking
on similar social meanings.
And so I would distinguish betweenthese forms of solidarity and identity.
Creating a sense of sharedidentity is something we're
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trying to do with Afropean.
And Stockholm, with its relativelysmall black community, is fairly early
in the creation of this identity.
But talking to Minna, Michael, Lola,Stephen, and Sophia, I began to see that
by opening up the terms we use, whetherit's Afro pean, Afro politan, or Pan
African, we begin to see glimmers ofan inclusive and united Black diaspora.
(31:58):
The Afropean podcast is brought toyou by Reduce Listening and Afropean.
com.
It's written and presented by me,Johny Pitts, and produced by Femi
Oriogun Williams, with productionassistance from Charlie Towler.
This episode is supportedby National Geographic.
You can read more stories from BlackEurope in my book Afropean, Notes from
Black Europe, which is out now, publishedby Penguin in the UK and translated
(32:22):
into French, Spanish, Italian andGerman, Polish, Dutch and Portuguese.
Afropean, the journal, a photographicessay bringing together 20 years of
images and ephemera from my work,is out now, published by Morel.
And why not contribute your ownstory to the website I run with
Yomi Bazawe, Natalumin, TolaOsitelu and Nina Kamara, afropean.
(32:44):
com.
Next time on the Afropean Podcast.
You have generations and generationsof Portuguese people that return back
to Portugal that had that relationship.
Afro diasporica, afroconsciente, afro futurista.
Producing memory aboutoneself is a political act.
(33:04):
This clash is happeningtoday, happening now.
Afro pean podcast,
the Afro pean podcast.
Welcome to the Afro pean Podcast, anew series traversing the Afro European
diaspora, sharing the voices of.
People whose identities and experiencesshed light on a Europe often missing
from official national narrativesand pocket sized tourist guides.
(00:29):
We aim to explore what it means tobe at once African and European at a
time when Europe is redefining itselfboth politically and culturally.
I'm Johny Pitts and in this episode, we'rein Stockholm, made up of an archipelago
stretching across 14 islands whereLake Mälaren flows into the Baltic Sea,
stockholm is a city of magnificent beauty.
(00:52):
On the surface, Sweden can't be saidto have had the same colonial past as
other European powers to the south likeFrance, the UK or Portugal for example.
But that's not to say it doesn't existand later we'll be finding out all about
Sweden's role in Western imperialism.
But first, my introduction to Stockholmcame through the city's music scene
(01:12):
when a generation of multi ethnicSwedes came of age in the 1990s.
That Generation X includes Quincy JonesIII, son of the legendary American
producer, Neneh Cherry, a Swedish popstar half sister, Titio, Eagle Eye Cherry.
There were award winning singerssuch as Awa Mane and Jennifer
Brown, and hip hop artists suchas Timbuktu, ADL and Ken Ring.
(01:38):
Perhaps my favourite of all these artistsis Sweden's acclaimed soul singer Stephen
Simmonds, who later became a good friend.
The son of a Jamaican father and Swedishmother, Stephen released his debut
album Spirit Tales in the late nineties.
(02:00):
And I was wowed by his fusion ofMarvin Gaye esque vocals and Bob Marley
consciousness with something truly global,sitars as we're hearing now in his track
Universe, rain sticks, Swedish orchestras,and the type of ambience you usually hear
in down tempo European chill out music.
(02:23):
There was also a very Swedish sortof melancholy in the music that can
be found in tracks like Alone, thatperhaps hinted not only of the long,
cold winters, but of Stephen's place assomebody with brown skin in Stockholm.
My fate has been sealed, myfate has been shown It's left
me no shield, it's left me alone
(02:50):
I began by asking Stephen what itwas like growing up in the city.
Sweden is a beautiful country.
It's secure.
We have a lot of the social safety netsthat a lot of other countries don't have.
Unfortunately, during the last fewyears as these right wing, more extreme
parties have grown stronger, I do feela change in some of the attitudes.
(03:14):
Racism exists here.
There are racial difficulties.
I have one vivid memorythat still sticks with me.
It's like, we have this traditionin Sweden where your class can
sell stuff to make money forlike class trips and whatnot.
Comic books and stuff like that, yougo door to door and sell these to
make money so we could, you know,have a, uh, like a school field trip.
I went, uh, selling these, thesemagazines with a Caucasian friend.
(03:37):
And one of the ladies who opened the,opened the door said, you know, that
she didn't, she didn't want to buyfrom , me She just wanted to buy from,
you know, from my, from my friendand I was like 10 at the time, you
know, so that has stayed with me.
And, uh, it's always a sense, Ithink, of, of, of, of being aware
(03:57):
of, of the color of your skin andbeing aware that I am different.
It's just so sad that that's stilla factor, you know, it very much is.
When my father came here in the earlyseventies, you know, he was, you could
probably count the, the, the blackpeople on, you know, on one hand.
There were problems then.
My father experienced a lot of racism and,and, but at the same time there was also
(04:19):
a sense of of curiosity, I think, from alot of Swedes and like, you know, coming
from Jamaica, you know, and you know,like when Bob Marley came here to play in
Sweden, you know, he hung out with my dad.
It was just like a reallysmall Jamaican community.
So it was, I think it was kind ofexciting for Swedish people to see
this different culture and thesedifferent kinds of music coming here.
(04:42):
The problem has been that the governmenthere has kind of shacked all the non
Swedes in these different communitiesinstead of trying to integrate people.
That has grown into a problem.
Compartmentalization ofpeople is never a good thing.
We need to mix it up.
(05:13):
Sweden has, since after the Second WorldWar, promoted itself very actively as
a country untainted by histories andlegacies of colonialism on the side
of the colonized and former colonized.
(05:35):
Sweden's relationship to a world beyondits borders stretches far into the past.
And to find out about Sweden's colonialhistory, I got in touch with Michael
McCachran, a researcher and activistwho focuses on the African diaspora in
the Nordic region and Europe at large.
So if you look at Sweden's historyand its relationship to colonialism,
(05:57):
yes, Sweden was never a major colonialpower such as Britain or, say, France.
However, Sweden was in many ways alwaysinvolved in the colonial economy.
Most of the iron that was used inthe transatlantic trade for some
(06:19):
time was Swedish iron, includingthe iron that was used for shackles
and these sorts of things, but alsoa so called voyage iron to trade.
For about a hundred years from theend of the 18th century until 1879,
I believe, it had a colony in theCaribbean, which today is called St.
(06:44):
Bart.
On the Swedish flag, it was a fairlysignificant so called slave port in the
Caribbean because it was a free port,so they didn't have to pay any taxes.
Sweden also benefited fromconsuming cheap colonial goods,
cotton, coffee, sugar, of course.
(07:07):
Sweden has also adopted theworldviews of, of, of racism and
white supremacy and so forth, thatwas also established with colonialism.
So Sweden is very much a part ofthe history of colonialism and
its legacies, which are stillreverberating in Swedish society.
(07:28):
Today, um, about 2 percent of the Swedishpopulation are people of African descent.
The majority of them are so called firstor second generation with a immigrant
background in the Horn of Africa.
(07:50):
Stockholm is all islands.
I mean, the city itself isbuilt on 14 different islands.
It's got over 30, 000islands in its archipelago.
Leading on the island I live on isjust one of, you know, Stockholm's
kind of greater island around the city.
Lola Akinmade Akerström is a writer andphotographer living in Stockholm whose
(08:13):
recent novel, In Every Mirror She'sBlack, looks at the experience of three
black women in contemporary society.
I live, uh, kind of northeast on an islandcalled Lidinger, like 15 20 minutes from
the center of town, kind of on the train.
And there's so many things tolove about Stockholm, you know.
I am one of its biggest advocates.
I write a lot about thecity, about visiting.
(08:35):
I did move to Sweden,but it was via the U.
S., you know, so I had, I grewup in Nigeria up until I was
15 and then moved to the U.
S.
when I was, uh, you know,15 to start college.
So I had lived in the U.
S.
for 16 years before moving to Sweden.
Lola also wrote a book called Logomin 2017 about the cultural phenomenon
(08:56):
of this very Swedish concept.
So the culture shockwas more between the U.
S.
versus Sweden.
You know the one ,Logom whereeverything kind of has to be balanced
and you have to be a lot morecognizant of the space you take.
Coming from the U.
S., which is more of a more kindof confident culture where you
do take up space, you know, andyou do show that, yes, of course,
(09:18):
I am worthy of taking up space.
That was the big culture shock comingto Sweden where everybody had to kind of
step back a bit and almost try to blendin, not stick out too much for no reason.
I was really fascinated by thiscultural way of navigating the world
and I wanted to get deeper beneath it.
And so that's why I wrote the bookto kind of explore the mindset.
(09:40):
Could you tell me more aboutthis word Logom and how it kind
of connects to Swedish society?
Yes.
So, you know, on the surface it's,it's, it's, It means, you know, not
too little, not too much, just right.
You know, and that's what people say.
Oh, it's just a word.
But when I realized that there were lotsof people that actually didn't like the
word that that was when I knew that thiswasn't just a word, you know, there's
(10:02):
something that cuts deeper with this word.
And so if you think of your life asa scale, too much stress on either
side of the scale, stresses the scale.
So, so too much.
So you have to create habits orcreate something that sustains
that skill that keeps it balancedand for it to be balanced.
(10:26):
It has to be something youcan sustain for a long time.
So in essence, that's what Logom is.
It tries to remove stresswithin your control.
You know, out of your life.
So as a personal ethos, it'sa fantastic ethos, right?
Because in your personal life, it'strying to make you live your best life.
And it's trying to removestress within your own control.
(10:48):
But then when you take thismindset into a group setting,
Well, it tries to do the same.
It tries to do what it, youknow, and that means it tries to
remove stress within its control.
And so anything that can be seen asstressing, if it's difference, or if
it's somebody that's been too much, ittries to kind of create this homogeneity.
And that's where the problem comes.
(11:09):
Once you get it.
then you can almost anticipatehow it will react in any scenario.
Sweden is a country which, since theSecond World War, has defined itself
by a social democratic politics,examples of which can be seen in the
(11:30):
Million Programme of the 60s and 70s,where a public housing scheme was
launched to build a million homes.
Perhaps this homogeneity that Lolatalks about could be said to be built
into the social democratic principlesby which Sweden has been governed
through the course of the 20th century.
But is there space for discussionsaround race in this progressive approach
(11:50):
to creating an inclusive society?
The, um, social democratic ideaof a people's home and so forth,
it was not a race neutral concept.
More from Michael Mceachrane ifyou look at the history of social
democracy, its current manifestations,it is fairly clear that it is not
(12:15):
too concerned with racial equality.
And that it is premised onprivileging white Swedes.
And if you now, also if you lookat the way you look at these so
called million program areas, theywere then built between 1965 and
(12:36):
75, affordable public housing.
Of course, in the beginning, theseSo called suburbs were dominated by
white Swedes, but growing amounts ofimmigrants moved into these areas.
There has been white flight.
And today you would find that in all, uh,or at least most of these areas, they are,
(13:00):
they are dominated by, by people of color.
White Swedes are aminority in these areas.
Perhaps the most internationallyfamous Swedish political figure is
former Prime Minister Olof Palme.
Palme was the biggest symbol forthis sort of progressive cosmopolitan
social democracy based on equality,not only at home but also abroad.
(13:23):
As some of the leading proponents ofthis social democratic governance,
Gunnar and Alvar Myrdal emphasisedthat if Sweden was to be morally
and politically consequential in itsegalitarianism, it had to not only
promote equal rights within borders.
But outside Palmer's socialdemocratic party was in power as
the million program was going on.
(13:44):
But then in 1986, news from thestreets of Stockholm shook the world.
Within the past few minutes, we've heardthat the Prime Minister of Sweden, Mr.
Olaf Palmer, has beenassassinated according to SW
Prime Minister's assassination.
Olof Palme was on hisway home just before.
Olof Palme was very much, uh,someone who embodied this spirit,
(14:08):
um, in his third world solidarity.
However, there was also a one sided.
view of one's own goodness that did notinclude one's own complicit involvement
in colonialism, racism, white identitymaking, and other such things.
(14:33):
This was never a part of this socialdemocratic spirit represented by Palme,
and it was its greatest weakness.
(14:55):
Paul Gilroy, the British sociologist,once defined the idea of Sweden as
a place without cultural shame orguilt, as Swedish exceptionalism.
That feeling that even when you'reusing the most vile language, um,
that is really hurtful to somebody,that you can still feel like, oh it's
not a big deal, just get over it.
(15:16):
You know, we're all veryliberal and progressive.
Minna Salami grew up in Finlandand Nigeria and studied political
science at Sweden's Lund University.
She's the author of a book calledSensuous Knowledge, A Black Feminist
Approach for Everyone, and runs Ms.
Afropolitan, an award winningblog looking at feminism from an
African perspective and the Africandiaspora from a feminist perspective.
(15:41):
Minna's blog, Ms.
Afropolitan, has been going for over adecade, and the term Afropolitan is one
that Afropean is often compared with.
I was initially hesitantabout what I perceived as
Afropolitan's inherent elitism.
But Minna's work changed my mind.
Ultimately, both portmanteaus are abouttrying to create a collective term
(16:02):
for people living outside of Africa,but still connected to the continent.
So the term Afropolitan was a termthat I came across in 2009 in a
now famous essay by the authorTaiye Selasi called Baba i Babar.
Selasi was describing various,uh, environments in which you
(16:24):
would encounter people of Africanheritage from all across the African
continent, but also the diaspora.
She was seeking to pinpoint somethingthat this kind of, uh, multifaceted
group of people shared in common.
And what she then discovered that we wouldshare in common was something that she
described as Afropolitanism, which wasa sense of being very strongly vested in
(16:49):
your African identity, but also in a kindof cosmopolitan identity at the same time.
So I launched my blog in 2010.
In the next three, four years orso that I was blogging, and Miss
Afropolitan was becoming increasinglypopular, the term Afropolitan started
to frame a lot of conversations.
(17:10):
And I think that it was, for all of thekind of criticism, that it also warranted,
um, which was that it was, uh, a kind ofa neoliberal terminology, because, uh,
you know, if you go back even to TaiyeSelasi's essay, where, um, you know,
these are people in the diaspora in anightclub, if I remember correctly, so
you're instantly kind of alluding to, youknow, that Afropolitans would be people
(17:33):
who are, uh, privileged in the sense thatthey, they live in the West and they're
able to go out and party and whatnot.
Quite warranted critiques, but at thesame time, I think it really opened up a
very interesting space that was describingsomething that, as I said, something that
existed but hadn't really been named.
There's a kind of almost a liminalspace, uh, uh, in which People of African
(17:57):
heritage in Europe, in the case ofAfropean, and in the world, in the case
of Afropolitan, have been shaping ourstories and having to sort of position
our, our narratives with terminologiesthat are predominantly political.
So movements like Pan Africanism,the Black Atlantic, and enslaved
(18:21):
people's histories, Black nationalism,all of these, these movements,
which are very political innature and incredibly important.
But I think there was, there was aspace that was more cultural and more
to do with how we're reacting to.
modernity, or post modernity even,or even meta modernity, if you like.
So both Afropean and Afropolitan, Ithink, have contributed with tremendous
(18:45):
value in terms of trying to just teaseout what is this space, what is it to
exist as a person of African heritage,as a black person in the world, and
to be able to position yourself quitefirmly as both, to find a sense of
belonging that feels simultaneouslyAfrican and global at the same time.
(19:08):
This feeling of wanting to give backto a society but not feeling able to is
perhaps down to the fact that foreignerstrying to integrate into European
societies often come up against a rigidset of traditions, having to erase their
own cultural identity in the process.
In Minna's book, SensuousKnowledge, she writes about Euro
patriarchal knowledge systems.
(19:29):
saying that we must challenge andchange these biased structures.
And she lays out a black feministapproach to creating a sense of belonging.
Her writing shows how our current approachto knowledge in the West is fundamental
to the disconnection that people ofAfrican descent sometimes feel in Europe.
(19:53):
So, Ogbon is knowledge in Yoruba,um, which is one of the most
widely spoken African languages,emanating from southern Nigeria.
Ogbon, according to the, to the ancientmyths and the ancient philosophies
of the Yoruba people, Ogbon, whichis knowledge, is something that was
given to the people by the gods, sothat they would be able to, to create
(20:18):
harmony and to have thriving societies.
What is unique about Ogbon is that itwas divided into Ogbon Ori and Ogbon Inu.
They mean knowledge of thehead and knowledge of the gut.
But in, in English, what we tend tosay is, um, emotional intelligence
(20:40):
and intellectual or rational thinking.
The gods, when they gave Ogbon to thepeople as a, as a gift, they said that
you needed Ogbon Ori In order to haveknowledge, if you only had one of these,
then you didn't really have knowledge.
It's an approach to knowledge that ispredominantly about interconnecting
(21:07):
and synthesizing realms of society,of knowledge production, of existence,
really, that are typically separated inwhat I call Uh, Europatriarchal knowledge.
We're basically encouraged from avery early age in the Europatriarchal
system to create binariesbetween pretty much everything.
(21:30):
So between women and men, humansand the non human natural world,
science and arts, politics and art.
Sensuous Knowledge is resisting thosebinaries and hierarchies which they
end up creating and, um, insisting onexisting with and within each other.
(21:57):
So what might this SwedishAfropean philosophy sound like?
An artist and musician seeking to fusethe Western musical traditions with
her roots in Africa is Sofia Jornberg.
(22:17):
The music you're hearing is MusikawiSilt, performed by Sofia and Hailu Mergia.
Sweden has been and is still a placewhere They have lived very homogeneous
in their ethnical group growing upfor me my friends in school They
(22:40):
were like, oh no, i'm not blonde.
I'm not blonde.
Whatever.
It doesn't matter But apparentlyyes, it does in sweden.
I don't have a black community.
This is also very unique If you're adoptedyou don't have that Normally, like if
you're generalizing, I don't have a blackcommunity at all Uh, the style and the
(23:04):
type of music is jazz, contemporary,classical, opera, and performance art.
And when I'm in something, almost alwaysit has to do with extended techniques
of voice and what voice can be.
Why I try many different thingsand do many different genres
(23:26):
is something that is, um, Veryrooted in my identity as a person.
I have, uh, gone back to myroots, and I'm very happy for it.
(23:46):
The music from Ethiopia is veryrich, and I've been listening
to it since I was a child.
And one of the reasons why I can beso positive in this, uh, respect is
because I got to play with one ofthe Ethio jazz stars, Hailu Mergia.
And I felt with Playing withhim, he taught me also the
(24:08):
execution of the, this music.
Musikawi's Stilt is aninstrumental song and that's kind
of a signature melody for me.
For Ethiopian jazz, uh, that has no text.
So there's no meaning in that sense.
There's no narrative.
Um, it's just a great song.
It's a great composition, but
(24:40):
to perform it myself was notsomething I thought I would do.
I don't believe nobody should believethat if they do, that you have to have
a certain skin color in order to performwhatever music you want to perform.
(25:02):
Sophia's words made me think of themyriad experiences of the black community.
Whenever I've been out in Stockholmwith Stephen, who was born in the city,
I really do get the sense that he'sa part of the city's cultural fabric.
The work that I do now, like, as aDJ, as I've done a lot, and playing
at clubs, the way that black music isportrayed, or urban, if we use that
(25:25):
word, is portrayed, is just such a clear,segregated line between, uh, the cultures.
Instead of just, you know, seeing musicas music, it has to be like urban music.
It's like Tyler, the creator,said there in an interview I
heard him do after the Grammys.
He doesn't like that word, urban,because it's just, it's another way
of saying the n word, basically.
I think it's problematic thatwe don't see and hear music as
(25:47):
music and see people as people.
I'm so split up, basically, becauseat the same time, I'm so happy to see,
like, you know, people of color, youknow, having interracial relationships.
At the same time, I'm so sad to evenbe thinking about it in that way.
It saddens me that I even react in 2021.
But it's, you know, it's just so mucha part of, of growing up, being aware
(26:10):
of, you know, the color of my skin.
And yeah, I'm just longing forthe day when, when that's not
even an issue anymore, when wedon't think about it at all.
Stephen Simmonds was partof the first generation of
mixed race children in Sweden.
But I wanted to know what theexperience for young mixed race
(26:31):
children in Stockholm is like now.
I asked Lola Akinmade Akerström about someof the challenges she faces as a parent.
Lola, earlier on you mentioned, um,The piece that you wrote, uh, for the,
for the New York Times, in that piece,you describe Sweden as the ultimate
white savior, um, that notion that,that, that, that Sweden almost sees
(26:53):
itself as a hero, that, and feels sorryfor black people and wants to help.
Could you tell me a bit more abouthow this has played out in your home
life with your biracial daughter?
Yes.
Yeah.
And, and, and that's the thing, youknow, it's, uh, she came back from school
saying that, uh, Uh, our friends wantedher to protect me because I'm Black.
And at first I understood, oh, maybeit's, you know, kids, they're trying
(27:16):
to understand what happened with GeorgeFloyd and things that happened in the U.
S., trying to make sense of it.
But then the next day she comesand says, oh, they also feel sorry
for her because she has brown skin.
And that's when I realized, okay, What arethe conversations going on in those homes?
Are they saying, Oh, arewe part of the problem?
So are they saying we need toprotect these people because
(27:38):
they can't protect themselves?
Have they taken agencyfrom all black people?
Like we can't protect,like we have no agency.
And so what I was trying to say inthe piece is that, because this is,
With Sweden's reputation in the world,you know, and I'm a big advocate for
Sweden, you know, I admire Sweden forkind of taking a global moral stance.
(28:00):
But the issue is when you kind of wearthat cape that bad things happen somewhere
else on and unless I come in to save.
Nobody can take care of themselves.
That's where that kind ofwhite saviorism comes in.
Instead of saying, okay, how can I bequiet and actually listen to people
(28:23):
and how they want to be supported?
Because sometimes it's not, it'snot, uh, a matter of just sweeping in
and grabbing people and saying, see,you're in a corner, you're safe now.
It's actually saying, okay,what gives you purpose?
How can you give back?
I think about this a lot becausethere was an asylum center that I
(28:43):
used to go visit here in Sweden as aphotojournalist, and I used to spend
time with the asylees, talk to them.
One of the things they keptsaying is, We are locked here in
paradise in the middle of nowhere.
You know, we have skills.
We want to be part of society.
We want to give back.
We want to feel like we have purpose.
And yet if we complain, weare seen as being ungrateful.
(29:06):
And one of them told me that hewould rather go home and die fighting
than die in paradise doing nothing.
Yes.
How can you criticize whenthe person that's helping
you like is also helping you?
It's a very kind of weird relationshipthat a lot of foreigners feel.
Because it's like, okay, whencan I stop saying thank you?
(29:26):
And actually now move on with mylife and, and, and purpose in life.
That's the space a lot of foreigners feel.
(29:57):
So many people of African descent havebeen left behind by the Swedish system.
As the writer Owen Hathaway has written,social democracy is now a place only for
those who can afford to take part in it.
This disjuncture between left wingpolitics and black and working
class communities is something thatis happening all across Europe.
And unlike in America, or on the Africancontinent, there's a less assured sense
(30:20):
of black identity, unity and politics.
Here in Sweden and this coursefor Scandinavia at large, there is
no strong Afro Swedish identity.
There's not a sense of a nationalblack community and especially not in
any cultural sense, any ethnic sense.
(30:43):
There's a great diversity of ethnicbackgrounds and cultural identities among
people of African descent in Europe.
However, There is some solidarity amongpeople of African descent in, in, in
Sweden, among the younger generations thathave grown up in Sweden, given, you know,
similar backgrounds, similar situation,being racialized in similar ways.
(31:09):
One's, uh, physical appearancesand, and ancestry, uh, taking
on similar social meanings.
And so I would distinguish betweenthese forms of solidarity and identity.
Creating a sense of sharedidentity is something we're
(31:30):
trying to do with Afropean.
And Stockholm, with its relativelysmall black community, is fairly early
in the creation of this identity.
But talking to Minna, Michael, Lola,Stephen, and Sophia, I began to see that
by opening up the terms we use, whetherit's Afro pean, Afro politan, or Pan
African, we begin to see glimmers ofan inclusive and united Black diaspora.
(31:58):
The Afropean podcast is brought toyou by Reduce Listening and Afropean.
com.
It's written and presented by me,Johny Pitts, and produced by Femi
Oriogun Williams, with productionassistance from Charlie Towler.
This episode is supportedby National Geographic.
You can read more stories from BlackEurope in my book Afropean, Notes from
Black Europe, which is out now, publishedby Penguin in the UK and translated
(32:22):
into French, Spanish, Italian andGerman, Polish, Dutch and Portuguese.
Afropean, the journal, a photographicessay bringing together 20 years of
images and ephemera from my work,is out now, published by Morel.
And why not contribute your ownstory to the website I run with
Yomi Bazawe, Natalumin, TolaOsitelu and Nina Kamara, afropean.
(32:44):
com.
Next time on the Afropean Podcast.
You have generations and generationsof Portuguese people that return back
to Portugal that had that relationship.
Afro diasporica, afroconsciente, afro futurista.
Producing memory aboutoneself is a political act.
(33:04):
This clash is happeningtoday, happening now.
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