Today I go a little off-theme and relate an anecdote instead of a news story. Well, it starts with a story at any rate. There's a long article up on Information about how Danish cultural norms may be responsible for keeping immigrants out of professional Danish football. While Sweden has several high-profile footballers of "color", Denmark has practically none. I'll try to get around to translating it at some point, but its quite long and detailed, and you might want to save yourself the wait and run it through Google Translate. The article and study behind it are not clear-cut, though you do get a fresh and interesting angle on some of the specific mechanisms of culture which affect, and possibly slow, integration of immigrants. It's also possible to extrapolate problems with football to everyday life here, but how far that can be taken is very open to interpretation.
What I wanted to touch on though was an exchange I had with a Dane about the subject. To sum the results of the study up in one line, it says that footballers of immigrant origin frequently give up playing in Denmark because they feel that Danes run their teams as collectives with rigid rules and restrictions on personal playing style, which have more to do with culture than football itself. In the exchange I had, it was pointed out to me that if anything, the study shows that immigrants themselves are responsible for integration going wrong because they give up too easily. Which I guess is a valid point, depending on how your look at it. That interpretation will of course not get more immigrants to play football here, and in the end Denmark still won't have star immigrant players like Sweden does.
So I said something back, that ... this problem is not restricted to football, and that immigrants, myself included, withdraw from interacting with Danes because we are tired of all the cultural demands, demands which don't seem to be as prevalent in neighboring countries. The response was "well it's clearly in how you want to look at it. Stop being so negative and focus on the constructive". At which point I said cheers and bowed out of the discussion, demonstrating more of that quitter spirit immigrants are famous for. A fruitless exchange no doubt, but at least it allowed me to put words on something I've been trying to get out for a while.
I guess it's become socially acceptable in modern Denmark to automatically reject criticism, because a lot of Danes are insecure about the country and prefer to hear what's right about it, instead of wrong. Denmark is in the midst of sweeping social change brought about by the current government, and it's something that many Danes feel is needed, even though I guess many of them are not at all so confident about where it's taking them.
The way in which foreigners are expected to formulate their comments are so restrictive, much like playing Danish football is, that I for one give up - it's not easy to criticize something when you can speak only in the affirmative. A few years back I was told to stop complaining, get off my ass, and write a book or start an integration club. You know, something constructive. How can you possibly reply to that? That's not a suggestion, that's a blow off. How did my observation that we have an unfair immigration policy get turned completely upside and suddenly be about me not having enough drive to author a book? I guess a lot of government supporters are published then? As it turns out I took the man's advice to heart and started blogging, though I'm not so sure this was what he had in mind.
The rule of thumb seems to be, don't criticize Denmark, ever. Rather, suggest ways to improve it. Only, "improve" implies things could be made better, so that might also get people's backs up. Better yet, propose a different kind of perfect. That would be the diplomatic approach. There is never anything wrong with Denmark, only ways it can be made more right. When making your constructive suggestion/flattery, apologize first, and be sure to include clear proposals for how you will lead the way. And do get cracking immediately, because people will be watching intently waiting for you to fail. Janteloven, you have to love it. No I mean, you have to love it - that part's not optional.
Of course not everyone here thinks that way - Denmark is hardly without internal critics. But you won't find a lot of this coming from the people who voted for the ruling coalition. No, those seem to be ones who insist that any situation can be made to look completely right if you turn the world upside down. It's inconvenient, and Sweden calls a lot to ask why everything is suddenly falling upwards, but things will work that way. Besides, everything is relative, depending on how much effort you're willing to put into interpreting relativity. And you do want to make an effort, don't you? You don't want to be the one holding the team back, right?
24 comments:
Do you know this ad by Enhedslisten? I fell for it the first time I saw it, of course. XD
They take it so personally as well.
I mean, if I call Løkke incompetent and the immigration rules unfair etc... why the *hell* should Lars Q. Larssen of Larssby get upset?
Seriously guys, political discussion is not meant to be a full contact sport. You don't need protective equipment to take part.
Yes. It's exactly this! Thank you.
an interesting read... thanks from a lonely foreigner lost in Denmark's system
It's all true. Never criticise. It seriously endangers hygge, once more, and that is totally unacceptable. Imagine the weather was bad, how can one be constructive about that? By lighting a small candle on a small paper plate next to small paper Dannebrog...?
You are very right. So I do not mean to divert the subject by saying this and drawing parallels to something else.
It's just that having been not just an immigrant in Denmark but also in the US (and elsewhere) most of what you write about Denmark I recognize also from the US. Especially the ridiculous and contra-logical "criticism or suggestions of improvement implies it is not already perfect, which of course it is, so what we propose, is just to make it more perfect".
Something can not be made "more perfect"! That is a violation of language and logic. Perfection means that any change would be for the worse. The extend of this absurd nonsense goes so far, that the title of Obama's primary speech was "A More Perfect Union"... the guy is a professor and and supposedly very eloquent, and yet, to appeal to the "America is perfect" crowd, he has to say such nonsense.
Of course the US is not perfect. And of course Denmark is not perfect. To believe or affirm that it is so, is an obstacle for dealing with the very real problems that exist - and therefore an obstacle for fixing them.
Therefore we need people like you (and, I like to believe, me) to push forward the serious criticisms. Criticism is constructive. Someone needs to be pointing out the flaws - regardless of whether that someone knows how to fix them - if we are to become aware of them and improve our society.
In Denmark, as in the US, the nationalists, nativists and perfectionsists also like to insist, that as non-natives we are to shut up, that we don't have a right to criticize the country in which we currently live, or that we simply cannot understand it. This is of course just more nonsensical bullshit.
Someone who is totally embedded and set in a culture and set of traditions is the person who is the least likely to notice how things could be different. Immigrants may actually have an advantage in that respect, being able to see what is specific and different in the new culture, thus not taking it for granted and seeing it as "natural".
And even if that is not so, then the objection is still bullshit: Anyone has the right to point out flaws and potential improvements in the place they live, since that society affects their lives. Heck, even if they didn't live there, they'd have the "right" to criticize it.
As an Englishman who has lived in this perfect society for 37 years, i can wholeheartedly agree with the writer.
In my position as Picture Editor for a national daily i participated in the daily editorial meetings. This was the perfect place to experience the narrow minded mentality of the natives. As a foreigner in this country one is expected to keep quiet and under no circumstances criticise ones adopted new home.
You can get away with murder, but
NEVER with criticising the perfect society, after all Denmark is the center of the universe. Danes have an inbuilt automatic reflex when confronted with critic, they silence it to death. I have lost count of how many times i have experienced this phenonomen. These people just cannot accept the fact that other people from other countries see through different eyes. I have countless examples both from my personal and business life.
One thing Danes seem to need is that people from abroad say something positive about thier homeland. Unfortunately they dont allways get the response they hoped for. One example that comes to mind was the outgoing American ambassador who when interviewed by my old newspaper let ripp about the Danes racist attitude to all foreigners. In any other country his words would have been the subject of intense scrutiny and debate, but not here. It was never brought up again. One day they might learn not to ask outgoing ambassadors on their opinion of the country. It happened also with the US ambassador after Clintons period, that was DR TV Avisen at Kastrup. That time the criticism was directed at the lack of commitment from DK to fulfill their obligations to NATO.
Nothing in the next days papers.
These people live in a dream world, and have allways done so.
I amm seriously thinking of returning to the UK, purely because i am sick to death of all these small minded morons who truly believe that DK is the best country in the world. Well they can keep it.
So..."Danes can't tolerate criticism"...but when I criticise you Manky for having double standards, for cherry picking articles and behaving just like those you apparently hate so much...I get censored?! You want to excert control over the discussion in the comments...allowing only comments who applaud YOUR points of view...Why so insecure?...
Jules, that is very telling. Do you have a link anywhere to the outgoing ambassador's comments, or did they go into a memory hole? I would really like to read them.
On an extremely trivial note, the one thing that Danes seem to almost get violent about when it's criticized is their holy rugbrød. Anyone else notice that? Seasonticket has, of course, because we've discussed it, but anyone else experience it? They take it mighty mighty personally. (That, and any inference that their water is not the absolute finest on the planet makes the average Dane see red, it would seem...)
Anyway, if you're bored at your next family gathering, make some childish jokes about the bread and watch the fun that ensues!
Thirty-seven years? You would have got out sooner had you killed someone.
I have found a way of hacking the system. You nod really enthusiastically and speak as if *everyone* thinks the same way and you can get Danes to agree with you about almost anything. It is only when it seems to be a voice from the wilderness that you get any "oh no, we don't think like that here!"
It would be un-hyggeligt for them to challenge you for a start.
Channel your inner-pedagog and say things with complete assurance "everyone knows societies are judged on how they treat their weakest members. DK has a LOOOOONG way to go in those terms. EVERYONE says so."
It's like dealing with men, in a lot of ways, you have to make them think like it was their idea before you can get them to accept or agree to something..
Or maybe that "write a book" comment got lost in cultural translation ... according to http://politiken.dk/kultur/boger/article901127.ece 80% of Danes write, and a quarter of those would like to be published. If that is the case then I stand corrected. Maybe it's time to write a Manky book about Denmark!
Partly inspired by this blog, I've started my own expat blog, which should probably rather be called an inpat blog, since I'm not actually ... in all cases, I have decided to start a blog in Spanish, where I expect to come across some of the same topics which are also covered here:
http://gringoflamenco.blogspot.com/
depending on time available and such things, of course. But reaching out in many languages is good :-)
The only 'quitter' foreigners I meet are the ones who appear to be integrated and happy going to school to learn how to be pædagogs and viceværts. They bend over backwards for a quiet life and at some point they start believing the crap they have to follow.
Plenty of us give the appearance of being successful here, because we know how to reply to the danish pressure. It's quite simple really, so long as you know what you should say.
It's a walk and a talk and if we do it well, they will stay off our backs and perhaps even hold us up as shining examples of 'good foreigners'. Those who pretend to be integrated are my personal favourites. Those who actually gave up and gave in and believe the shit they come out with have my pity, especially the women.
They are really sad. it's like something inside of them died. But they chuckle along to all the racist jokes by their Danish coworkers and say they don't mind at all. They have a sense of humor and don't 'overreact' to being mocked.
@madsen : Maybe you missed out on the series of posts a few months back, but this is not a debate blog. We just had too many rant posts, and people ranting at ranters, and it was rather out of hand. This is a blog for expats in Denmark, and as such as I'm trying to keep the comment atmosphere at least generally friendly for us. It's not like it's that easy for us to find places where we can speak our minds.
So you can accuse me of cherry picking stories, and then cherry picking comments - start a "manky is full of crap blog", by all means. Cherry pick all the great integration success stories, and the countless blog stories by foreigners who love living here.
If you want a comment included, keep it constructive. In most cases I will approve stuff that contradicts me, as long as it's rational.
@agger :
Fluent in Spanish too? As a typical english-speaker, I can only squirm in discomfort when I think how bad I am at picking up a new language. Well done though, and good luck with it. The more angles we have on this, the better.
@vhs
The interesting thing about the USA is that it is very widely mocked for stifling criticism of itself, yet at the same time integration of immigrants clearly works there. For me, American culture has always had easily-achievable entrance requirements. It doesn't mean it's not arrogant (or a host of other negative things which are open to debate), but you can get there - you can "live the American dream" as a first generation immigrant, easily. Work hard, and learn some english. Keep your accent, your clothes, your goat, your three wives, whatever. Not quite the same as what we have in Denmark...
But yeah, all criticism is good. The worst thing that happens is you get proven wrong and no one listens to you anymore. And I can only agree that nationalism and all its attachments are at the heart of the issue here, in both countries.
@everyone else
Guffaws at the comments!
Yeah, one of the reasons "integration" works in the US, may be that there is no "integration" (in the Danish sense of the word). There's a lot of idiots, just like in Denmark and elsewhere, but it's also a big place. There might be "speak only English" movements and other nativists which are in content equiavalent of Danish mentality, but an important difference is: they do not usually make government policy. Their influence is local and doesn't so much affect localities where people do not agree with them. In Denmark those segments on the other hand are transformed in to government policy and their hate/xenophobia/uniformism become structural in the whole society.
In the US you do not "need" to be (forced) "integrated" in to every part of the existing dominating culture. You do not have to eat apple pie and TV-dinners, unlike Denmark where it's almost government policy that you have to eat a certain amount of pig if you want to be a real, legal, Dane. There might be people who think you should in the US, but they live in their community, and as an immigrant you can choose to ignore them. In the US there are lots of "parallel societies" and no structural/legal demands that you "integrate" in to the dominant, white, society with everything that implies. It is possible to live as you like by simply forming your own community. In Denmark the big fear is precisely that: The fear of "parallel societies", or rather: communities, where the state does not have total control and people might be different. Imagine, if people didn't accept "our" values, traditions, culture, etc then how can we know what they think and do? No, they must be made to become just like us, so we can keep our sense of control. This fear exists too in the US, but it doesn't have the same structural power, so it is easier to say "whatever" and go on ignoring it. In Denmark, this small village-mentality, that in the US can't really affect other communities, have become the state-policy: All of Denmark must be like one little homogeneous village.
I found this blog a few weeks ago, and have just returned hoping that it was still active. I'm very happy to see that you are still alive and kicking. Like Jules I'm a long timer - 18 years and counting - but despair of having to grow old here and while understanding Danish mentality can't integrate my own values withín it and wouldn't be accepted anyway if I tried. I remember the interview with the outgoing US ambassador, whom I met a couple of times, and agree that his words bounced soundlessly off the Danish media establishment without leaving as much as a trace. Danes are not really responsive to critiques by foreigners, but there are a few commentators who stick their heads out. Casten Jensen for one: come to think of it his wigfe is English.
I might be wrong but i get the feeling that the majority of people who participate on this blog have not lived here for as long as myself. If you had been a resident during the cold war you would have had another insight into the mentality. For myself it sickened me to know that people like my father fought for freedom in Europe, but that it was wasted on these people. Denmark, the only country in western Europe that never made any attempt of resistance, that openly collaborated with the Nazis and then had the audacity to support Soviet doctrine at the same time as being a member of NATO.
These people have so much to answer for but lacking in character will never change.
Truly, "There is something rotten in the state of Denmark".
I have for many years now been blogging,,,writing articles.... following and participating in debates,..attending seminars and even written a 90 page research paper which examines the facts, statistics, causes and effects over the last 28 years of the intergration issue in DK. As a consiquence of all this work and research, the "solutions" needed to turn this rather ugly situation around became very clear. After more than 4 years of presenting this to politicians , organisations,,all the way up to the prime minister..trying to get anyone to consider the possibility that it might work....I am 2 millimeters from giving it up.
I have read MANY thousands of comments and interviewed many hundreds of people who voice exactly what is echoed in this blog... you cannot critize the system, the methods, theresults, or anything else danish,,,, or the responce is ,,you can just leave.
Every year more and more people I know personally and hear about ,,simply give up and leave. They leave thier friends, thier family, thier children,,and give up because they cannot take the indignity of the treatment that is the status quo in DK twords forigners.
The media makes it seem as if its only against muslims,,,but its not,,its against everyone who isnt pure danish. I have been here over 17 years,,,,have 3 children and have fought with everything I have to be a part of making a chnage,,, to integrate, and while on the surface it appears that i have at least accomplished the integration part,,in reality it is not at all so.
I never though I would get to the point where I would give up...but I think for many of us we loose a bit of ourselvs,,our values, our respect for the society around us who insist on treating all forigners as less than second class citizens. I think we can all agre that there are some wonderfull things about dk and danes,,but the integration and treatment issues way overshadow those in the end.
I give up....... they win,,,,I beleive that I will join the mases who have had enough and must leave those things we love and hold dear...as we cannot continue to be in such a hostile and limiting enviroment which parctices such intolerance and xenophobia.
To all the danes who do not fit into these catagories ,... thank you for being willing to admit to what needs to be changed ......and to supprting the efforts being made to change it.
To al the danes who fall into th eother catagories,,,,,
you can always tell a dane...but you cant tell him much!
And to the today's article:
Foreigners don't feel comfortable with Danish football culture.
So - of course - the football culture has to change.
Yawn ... wonder what tomorrow's subject will be.
- - -
thank you. After 10 yrs here, after wotking in many brunches, after creatiing my own business I am so sikck and tidred of this double standards, unwelcoming, unjust and poor in all types choices country and people. The overwinning peasents moral, the absence of ability to look critical in their own misery, the rejection of any new trends hiding behind the false protection of traditions, all that is nowadays Denmark. Awful to pay half of your income in the tax to support "svage grupper" that enjoy their status, unprifessional social workers who do more harm than benefit, dying monarchy, religion that we do not belong to.
Alice in Wonderland, country of absurd.
I agree with a lot of the comments. I found out rather quickly that it's better not to criticise this place, since inevitably it causes problems, possibly an invitation to leave the country, and social isolation (the latter actually might be a good thing).
So what do I do now when I meet a new Dane? I tell them what they want to hear: 'Danmark er en flot, lille land, og Margarethe er en dejlig, klog dronning, og naturen i Danmark er så smuk ...
You get the picture.
But here is a tip to throw the Danes: Gush about the place for 10-minutes and then tell them that you are shocked that in this fantastic country, which is one of the best in the world (the best, actually), you can't understand how a monstrosity like Danske Folkeparti could exist. Then ask them why so many more Danes vote for far-right politicians compared to in other countries.
It throws them because you're a fan of Denmark, right?
Mr. Manky, where are you?
Miss your blog and comments on Denmark!
If you don't get back soon, I will become a very dissappointed fan of yours!!!
Yours respectfully
Vibeke
Thanks for noticing Vibeke :) I'm still blogging, just not as frequently. It's a combination of running out of things to say, and being very distracted by hobbies and friends.
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