Hmm...

Reading in Norwegian (a language I have been learning for e year and a half), not the easiest thing to do. It requires time and effort. It's a challenge. I was reading about the debate about the word "neger" in Norwegian media. What was surprising to me is that most Norwegians think the word has no negative meaning and that they use it without being racist and without meaning any offence. It all sounds good, but lots of Africans living in Norway (some even born here) feel the word has negative connotations and wish that people would stop using it. The author of the book (Gullestad) thinks that a group can choose what they want to be called (fair enough, right?) and she proves with dictionaries and lexicon entries that the word has negative connotations after all. She wants people to stop seeing just the colour of a person and that we should notice other things about people. She tries to challenge the Norwegian way of thinking when it comes to dark skinned immigrants.By using words such as "we" and "them", she says that whiteness in Norway is made as a norm and that those people who have dark skin (even if born in Norway) cannot be Norwegian because they don't look like regular Norwegians do. I remember the first week I was in Norway and I was walking with a friend who is from Africa and he was talking and joking around and there was this old lady in front of us and when she turned around and saw he was African she put her hands in her head (as if to protect her). I felt bad for my friend and pretended like I didn't see, but he had noticed it and joked about it but I know it must have hurt him at least a little bit. The book challenges some ideas that are accepted as normal and that makes it interesting to read, it gives me new points of view and new things to think about.