No Longer Just Nordic; Growing Role of Immigrant Communities Is Changing What It Means to Be a Swede
In one of his most popular songs, Swedish hip-hop artist Timbuktu sings of two strangers warily eyeing each other on a Stockholm subway, one a white Swede, the other an immigrant, each with his own thoughts and prejudices.</br></br>"I wonder why he's eyeing me like this," the white Swede asks himself. "Maybe he's planning to follow me and rob me at knife tip. I bet he's a drug user that beats his kids, forces his wife to wear a veil."</br></br>Timbuktu knows something about racial prejudice -- as a black man born in Lund, Sweden, whose first language is Swedish, but who for most of his life has had to deal with the stares, the taunts, the curiosity and the inevitable question: "But where are you really from?"</br></br>From first grade through sixth, he recalled, he fought frequently during recess with a group of three boys who taunted him with racial insults. Even though he's a celebrity in Malmo, which he calls home, he says he is still followed by security guards when he enters a department store. And while his DJ sessions can pack the house, he finds he is denied entry to some clubs.</br></br>"I'm Swedish, definitely, and more and more so now," said Timbuktu, whose real name is Jason Diakite. He is the son of a black American man from Harlem and a white American woman from Scranton, Pa. "But Sweden still has a very clear picture of what a Swede is. That no longer exists -- the blond, blue-eyed physical traits. That's changing. But it still exists in the minds of some people."