By Jonathan M. Feldman, March 4, 2020
POLITICALLY CORRECT BUT DISINGENUOUS NONSENSE
An article in University World News dated January 18, 2020 declares that the word “Negro” cannot be used, even for historical search purposes–at least that is the view of some politically correct students. As Jan Petter Myklebust explains: ” A social media storm has erupted over the disciplining of a senior lecturer at Uppsala University after four students complained when she used the Swedish word neger (negro) as an example when asked how to look up in older archives words that today are considered controversial or offensive.”
The article continues: “Reine Rydén, deputy head of Aronsson’s department, who attended the meeting, when asked why the word ‘negro’ should not be used, told University World News that was a matter of the university’s equal opportunities policy, but ‘if you ask for my personal opinion, I can reply with a counter question: are there any reasons why we should use that word at lectures?’”
THE POST-COLONIAL USE OF THE WORD “NEGRO”
This debate has two aspects. First, whether the word “Negro” was always a term used to degrade African Americans in terms of the time in which this word was used. In Junior High School in 1944, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote an essay called “The Negro and the Constitution.” The first words of this essay clearly show how the use of the word “Negro” then and the deconstruction of African Americans’ subservient position could go hand in hand. King wrote: “Negroes were first brought to America in 1620 when England legalized slavery both in England and the colonies and America; the institution grew and thrived for about 150 years upon the backs of these black men. The empire of King Cotton was built and the southland maintained a status of life and hospitality distinctly its own and not anywhere else.”
Sixteen years later (in 1960), King delivered an address, “The Negro and the American Dream,” where he declared: “This afternoon I would like to speak from the subject, ‘The Negro and the American Dream.’ In a real sense America is essentially a dream–a dream yet [unfulfilled]. It is the dream of a land where men of all races, colors and creeds will live together as brothers. The substance of the dream is expressed in these sublime words: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” This is the dream. It is a profound, eloquent and unequivocal expression of the dignity and worth of all human personality.'”
The same year King gave that address, James Hicks at the Amsterdam News (perhaps the leading African American newspaper centered in Harlem) gave notice to both “misinformed Negroes” and “white people downtown” that a “New Negro” had arisen in Harlem. Opponents to this “New Negro” were berated as “Uncle Toms.” So reports Peter Blackmer in a dissertation published in 2018 at the University of Massachusetts.
In a fight over political appointments in the early 1960s, Jackie Robinson, the African American baseball legend, suggested that moves by the reform movement were part of a bipartisan effort “to hold the Negro down.” We learn about Robinson’s use of language from Duane Tananbaum’s book Herbert Lehman: A Political Biography. The exact same expression was used in an editorial by the Louisiana Weekly in The Evansville Argus on March 7, 1941 (page 6). That editorial also declared: “Where the Negro is most oppressed, other prejudices flourish like narcotic weeds. If the bell of intolerance tolls for one, it tolls for all.”
A TOUR THROUGH SWEDISH DICTIONARIES
The second part of the critique asserts that the English word “Negro” and Swedish “neger” are not equivalents, with the original controversy centering on the use of the latter term. Is this claim substantiated? Let us first turn to the Modern Engelsk Svensk Ordbok, published by Prisma in Stockholm in 1964, 1965, and several other years up to 1978, in the version I have with a 1974 copyright. In the English entry under the word “Negro” is found the Swedish equivalent “neger.”
Turning next to The Svensk-Engelsk Ordbook (by Astrid Tornberg and Mrgareta Ångström) which contains the Engelsk-Svensk Ordbok by Ruben Nöjd, published by Esselte Studium in Stockholm 1973, the word neger in Swedish is translated as both the word “negro” in English and the N-word in English. These two words in English are both linked back to the word neger in the English part of the dictionary.
In 1987 Vincent Petti and Kerstin Petti published Norstedts lilla engelska ordbook (Stockholm). Here the word “negro” is translated again as neger (in Swedish).
In 1991, Bonniers Svenska Ordbook, first published in 1980, translates the word neger as follows: “person av svart ras i Afrika, el. med afrikansk härstamning (ordet anses numera ofta nedsättande).” It acknowledges that now the word is often considered derogatory.
In 1996, the authoritative Svensk-Engelskt Lexicon (published by Skolverket and distributed by Norstedts Förlag) gave the following entry for the Swedish word neger: “person som tillhör en folkgrupp med svart hy…Negro.” There is no N-word equivalent offered.
In some four different dictionaries equate the words “Negro” (English) and “neger” (Swedish) in one way or another. The linkage of the word neger to the N-word does occur, but that linkage also encompasses another linkage to the word “Negro.” In a fifth text, the Bonniers dictionary, we get the idea that often negern is considered in the negative sense, but it is not clear that the dictionary contextualizes the potential dual use or different usages of the word, in an historical context at least.
In Swedish, as in other languages, it is common for a Swedish word to have multiple meanings in another language. One reason why this heterogeneity occurs is that there are many, many more words in English than in Swedish.
CULTURAL IMPERIALISM FROM BELOW
By blocking the appropriate understanding of the word “Negro,” especially in its historical context, would be “politically correct” persons are encouraging a total misunderstanding of the use of this word, particularly for Swedes curious about African Americans’ political reality within the United States. Instead, a Swedish version (defined by the open-ended and ambiguities surrounding the word neger) is used to interpret the meaning of this term in the worst possible way. In this world view, superficial ideas about postcolonialism are used to actually invalidate how actual black persons or persons tied to the African diaspora actually think, speak, and act. Instead, the ambiguities of Swedish words–or more accurately their over-determined character–are used to blot out history, including an authentic post-colonial opposition to oppression.
One can only conclude that pseudo post-colonialism is a useful tool to blot out authentic post-colonialism. And just with Sweden’s “feminist foreign policy,” politically correct words and understandings are used as wrapping paper to conceal the dirty laundry of society (be it arms exports or an arrogant anti-intellectual stance that would make philistines proud).
Please note that the word negern can be used as the N-word in a Swedish context as one news story makes clear. Yet, the original events described concern the academic use of language for historical purposes and understanding. Only in an arena where nuance is impossible, very much the case in the post-truth era, would the two usages of negern be conflated. And there’s no doubt about racism against Afro Swedes either as UN investigations have argued.
Swedes suffering from racism and marginalization could be empowered with new media platforms, cooperatives, and political networks. They can’t be empowered by word games, but certain academic elites and politically correct wannabes prefer the word games as a primary mechanism for displacing power accumulation by the marginalized and oppressed.
