Racism

For a while now I have been thinking of writing about an old issue that has proven to be very hard to get rid of. I’m talking about racism of course. A friend of mine showed me a video on youtube that was pretty funny but the discussions around this video and comments made about this video truly pissed me off. I decided that I wanted to speak out about it in my blog but I wanted to calm down first and gather my thoughts. Now, a few weeks have passed and I still don’t know how to go about this subject. It’s hard to write about something so touchy and not get so personal about it. I don’t know what I’m going to write right now but whatever it is that I do write is coming straight from the heart so bare with me.
Racism is a huge problem in Northern Europe. Personally, I don’t feel welcome here at all and I was born here. I used to live in Sweden and I plan on moving back but not because I think that Sweden is the greatest country in the world, but for some other reasons that aren’t worth mentioning now. In a way I look forward to moving back because I have family and friends there. Also, I don’t have to speak English wherever I go and have people barely understand what I say. But I am dreading going back too because I have always felt unwelcome in Sweden. No matter what you do you’re always categorized as the “illegal Turk that sits on their ass all day and lives on the governments money and can barely speak Swedish”. You can’t get away from racism. It’s always there one way or an other. You either get treated like crap, can’t get a job because of your ethnicity and people don’t bother to get to know you because of where you are from. I can’t even count how many times I have heard the argument that the only thing us foreigners do is ruin their lovely country. Well if your country is so lovely and you hate us so much then please stop travelling to our countries and destroy our nature, our culture and respect our values. Please stop taking our inventions and claiming them as your own. Stop eating that banana because it sure as hell isn’t Swedish. Go eat your potatoes and meatballs…but…oh. Damn. Oops! I forgot. Potatoes and meatballs is actually originally a Turkish dish. Foreigners are a part of this place just as much us the original inhabitants. We help build this place, we helped making it what it is today.
I have respected this damn place no matter how badly I have been treated, and it’s time you show me the same respect.