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CHAPTER 4: Disappearing Act: The Forgotten History of Colonialism, Eugenics and Gendered Othering in Denmark Bolette Blaagaard and Rikke Andreassen In a political era haunted by the return of nationalist agendas, regrettably Denmark emerges as a pioneer. As in many similar cases, this status has an historical and scientific trajectory.This chapter will point to two major events in Danish history—Danish colonialism and eugenics—which are continuously and actively forgotten through lack of information and education on the topic. We argue that this non-memory of Danish colonial and scientific history has severe implications for the current political climate, and that the lack of acknowledgment of the historical past contributes to a positive Danish national self-understanding and to approaches that are implicitly and explicitly gendered. The chapter illustrates how gender and race are inter-connected, and how the understanding of race has historically played into constructions of gender and vice versa.1 Denmark is a small country of less than six million inhabitants situated in the southern part of Scandinavia. Politically, Denmark has a strong tradition of governments that support the welfare state. Through the years Denmark has developed and sustained an all-embracing welfare state, which has secured the citizens of the state free health care, education and pensions among other things. Denmark is often cited as one of the first European countries to strengthen women’s causes by granting women the right to vote in 1915, legalising pornography in 1969 (which was seen as a liberalisation of women’s sexuality as well as of men’s), legalising abortion in 1973 and providing affordable day care for children. Because of this track record, Denmark can be said to be an open-minded and tolerant society.2 However, struggles for equal 1 Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence Against Women of Color,” Kvinder, Køn & Forskning 2, 3 (1991/2006): 7–20; Rikke Andreassen and Anne Folke Henningsen, Menneskeudstilling. Fremvisninger af eksotiske mennesker i Zoologisk Have og Tivoli (Copenhagen: Tiderne Skifter, 2011). 2 Anette Borchorst, Ann-Dorte Christensen, and Birte Siim, “Diskurser om køn, magt og politik i Skandinavien,” in Kønsmagt under forandring, ed. Anette Borchorst (Gylling: Hans Reitzel, 2002), 247–267. 81 rights, sexual and reproductive rights have been won on the basis of sameness: that is, cultural, political and religious beliefs were expected to be the same for all women regardless of ethnicity, class, sexuality, personal preference and so forth, as were the personal and professional goals of women in Denmark. Equality had to do with being treated the same, as if the same, not equally among different beliefs, desires and ambitions. Recently, as different cultural, political and religious identifications have become more visible in Danish media, debates about how to accommodate differences are becoming pertinent and not least racialised. As Western societies are increasingly perceived as multicultural and globally connected, the premise of sameness is in need of rethinking.3 This rethinking could take place not only in the media, but also in classrooms. The Danish debates about difference and multiculturalism rarely make use of the term “race”. Viewed as an old-fashioned term and connected to biological determinism, which has since been rejected, “race” is abandoned in favour of the term “ethnicity”.4 However, not all “ethnicities” are labelled “ethnic”. The norm of Danish, “white” ethnicity is often un-named and is taken for granted as that which the “other” is measured against.5 Hence, whiteness is an invisible but ubiquitous assumption in many of the Danish discourses on race and ethnicity.6 Moreover, the category of “ethnicity” easily slips into the category of “religion”.7 Furthermore, contemporary racism in Denmark is often focused on the religious minority of Islam and on perceived cultural differences between Danes and the religious “other”, while the colonial past and the discourse of eugenics are largely suppressed and forgotten.8 However , we will show here that these histories are important to how racism is 3 Birte Siim, Medborgerskabets udfordringer—etniske minoritetskvinders politiske myndighed (Aarhus: Magtudredningen, Aarhus Universitet, 2003). 4 Rikke Andreassen, Anne Folke Henningsen, and Lene Myong Petersen, “Indledning,” Kvinder, Køn & Forskning 4, 8 (2008): 3–10. 5 Ibid. 6 Bolette Blaagaard, “European Whiteness: A Critical Approach,” Kvinder, Køn & Forskning 4, 8 (2008): 10–22. 7 Tim Jensen, “Religion in the Newsrooms,” in Implications of the Sacred in (Post)Modern Media, eds. Johanna Sumiala-Seppánen, Knut Lundby, and Raimo Salokangas (Gothenberg: Nordicom, 2006); Rikke Andreassen, Der er et yndigt...

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