Thank you very much for your participation in the “Beyond Stereotype” event last night. It got nicely crowded and a little bit to warm in the theatre. The feedback I got in the lounge afterwards was very positive.
Some would have liked to have had more time for discussion – and so would I – but after 2½ hours of sitting down (not counting Nabils exercises) on Thursday night I think it was the right decision to break up. After all it was 21.30 in the evening and the music was waiting outside.
The discussion can continue – either on this site, on 7iber.com or on some of the other bloggers site as on Roba’s which have drawn a large number of comments (some agressive) on Arab stereotyping. Unfortunately I didn’t notice this until today.
A couple of follow-ups from last night:
While some would have preferred more and more political discussion another person suggested to me, that the theme was too sensitive in this part of the world for a political discussion and that we instead should focus on the more sociological aspects of stereotyping like blogger Miriam did very nicely. In some ways I agree to this, since I believe it is important to understand stereotyping not only as a negative phenomenon but also as a sometimes positive and very useful way of dealing with people. Everybody is stereotyping – not because we want to – but because our brain can only process so much information at a given moment. The trick is to move from stereotyping (generalising) into individualisation. And that is what we do, whenever we get in personal contact with somebody. I know it is a cliché but that is one of the reasons that tourism – in particular individual tourism – is very important to fight negative stereotyping.
One the other hand as a principle I do not agree that some issues are too sensitive to be discussed – quite the opposite – those issues in particular need to be discussed. That being said, my 18 months in Jordan has taught me, that the reaction to discussing some topics is so aggressive and negative that it is – today – futile to even engage in such a discussion. But stereotyping is not one of those issues.
Will Omar Marzouk be back in Jordan? Most probably – we at the Embassy will try to do our best to get him back to do a complete stand-up show – hopefully this year. If we succeed we will let you know right away.
I didn’t get the possibility to comment on a sceptical remark from the audience about the lack of Danish negative stereotypes on the net. I do not claim scientific value to my research but I actually didn’t manage to find some really negative Danish stereotypes through Wiki or Google (only in English). Maybe it is because we are just a very small population of 5.5 million (like Jordan) or simply not interesting enough as an ethnic group. Even searching for Scandinavian negative stereotypes didn’t yield much. Didn’t look for specific Jordanian stereotypes – but I guess it will be difficult as well. These three links were the best I could find for Danish stereotypes.
What are Danes like? Yahoo Answers Yahoo Answers 2
If you can come up with links to “better” (negative) stereotypes of Danes please do.
Where can you watch the full version of “An Arab comes to Town”? I was told that it will be released on DVD soon – in the meantime the Embassy together with the Royal Film Commission are planning an open-air screening at the Film Commission late May early June – probably in connection with a workshop with the participation of the Directors Georg Larsen and Ahmad Ghosien. We will announce the screening in the same way as we did with the “Beyond Stereotype” – through the Royal Film Commission and 7iber.com
UPDATE: An article from Jordan Times about the event.
April 17, 2009 at 13:35
Hello you’re Excellency,
Thank you for a lovely night yesterday, it turned out to be a better Thursday night than playing cards with my friends over sheesha!
I raised my hand couple of times but seemed that Nabeel was looking some where else!
Anyway, my intended comment was more about the whole portions presented and here it is below:
Stereotypes, from a personal experience can be caused by Ignorance and the lack of exposure to who ever you are stereotyping
Mariam mentioned that boy in Jerash, I was that little boy 16 years ago but in Zarqa where I grew up. Am not sure if you know, but Zarqa is a conservative city so my “own world” was a Muslim world where all the good dudes are. It was smooth and lovely until I had my first “Christian” exposure. A new family moved next to the school and woop, they are not Muslim! Am not sure why it happened, but in my mind, every thing that I despise as a Muslim should exist in non-Muslims!
We (me and my school colleagues) threw stones at their back yards and we shared stories how sisters would sleep with their brothers, hell ya, there are Christians!
Here I am, 16 years after, couple of my best friends are Christians, and I have 2 Jew friends that if you asked me 16 years earlier, I might thought of kil*** them to what they are doing to Palestinians! Crazy, I know.
“Tagging” people, is the worst thing that could happen I think, the moment you remove the tags from the people around, that would be a great step in the right direction. We might have differences in definitions, like how to “respect” me and vice versa, but that can be discussed
Correction for Omar, “no one is killing Arabs more than Arabs” is not a true statement, even if it was, that doesn’t make the hate for the American government (not the people” any less (at least the people thinks so)
As for the short clips, I will have to disagree with the directors. They picked up what is 11% (as per the politiken statistics presented) and magnified it as the status of immigrants in DK. What about the 52% times immigrants were mentioned as politicians, or the 22% as experts?
The image presented in the movie can happen in Jordan for Jordanians or in Denmark for Danish who are unemployed and receive fund (I saw a couple in Odense)
This of course does not make the status of those any better, but its not fair to look with one eye shut.
Part of making immigrants more “miserable” in DK as I see it is the Danish government and people as you said the Danish people are not very open to outsiders hence; the chances of employment for immigrants are not good when you have a boss who thinks this way. And again, you said the best way to integrate in Denmark if WORKING, after working hours, you close doors!
Wow, that’s too much talk! So to wrap up, what happened yesterday, is a baby step in the right direction which is very good
I thank you and all the other participants for a lovely Thursday night.
April 17, 2009 at 13:49
Thank you Thomas for the lovely evening yesterday. I really enjoyed the event. This is a very important matter. It was good that everyone was able to laugh
April 17, 2009 at 23:44
It was nice meeting you!
April 18, 2009 at 10:00
@Mohammad – it is a pity that Nabil didn’t ask for your comment – it is a very interesting one and illustrates perfectly the need for personal experience.
Being part of the labour market is a seriously important factor for integration and acceptance in the Danish society. For immigrants that came as refugees in the 80′ies it was difficult – unemployment was high, they did not have the required skills or language and many of them (sorry for generalising) wasn’t even expected or encouraged to join the workforce.
That has changed – unemployment is now almost nonexistent – less than 2% – and there is if not outright pressure then at least very strong incentives to be part of the labour market. The most recent figures show that the number of young people with non-danish background is joining the workforce at a higher rate than expected.
As you state you self the movie “An Arab comes to Town” shows a one-sided version of the immigrant community in Denmark – as the director told us that was the purpose – to look for conflict – not for harmony. We have a lot of would-be role models with non-Danish background – but from a media perspective they are not really interesting albeit much more important for the development of the society.
Thank you very much for you comments.
@Observer – glad you made it. One way of fighting stereotypes is to have the ability to laugh about ourselves – an ability that some societies could use a bit more of. Do you know the difference between a Camel and an Ambassador? A Camel can work for a week without drinking – an Ambassador can drink for a week without working!
@Roba –
My remark about the lack of Danish negative stereotypes on the net was a comment to Moose’s question.
April 18, 2009 at 10:25
[...] The Danish Ambassador introduction was good too and his answer to some aggressively pugnaciously formed questions were just great not to mention that arranging such even shows how much they do care about clearing the misunderstanding plus and making smoother bridges between the two cultural or more precisely the different mindset within the same global village. [...]
April 18, 2009 at 14:45
Thomas, I want to thank you for your speech as well — it was, as usually, both sharp and entertaining.
It was fun for me to take part in the event, since I represent the group that gets most of the blame for furthering stereotypes — the media. I hoped to show that morning newspapers like Politiken do actually have a lot of stories about not just the maladjusted, the criminal or the extremist immigrants. Such as the one I showed from Jyllands-Posten (famous for the caricatures) about how immigrants make up 25 percent of economics students. That was a whole page in the front news section, so about 400,000 readers would have seen the picture and quotes from Sandi the Iraqi who was one of the two quoted. That’s definitely not a stereotyping article about an Arab.
So when you say that:
“We have a lot of would-be role models with non-Danish background – but from a media perspective they are not really interesting albeit much more important for the development of the society.”
– I have to contend that it’s not really true. As I said at the conference, it has a lot to do with the way people notice and remember information; the boring nonviolent stories about well-adjusted and succesful immigrants (such as the Sandi the economics student or Mohamed the teenage song star) are quickly forgotten. We have hundreds of these ‘positive’ stories, but people either forget them shortly after or don’t notice them in the first place. It’s a bit frustrating for us in the media to hear again and again that we don’t care about these stories when we actually make a lot of them. That said, we probably don’t make enough or we (especially the tabloids) put too much emphasis on the dramatic stories about gang violence et.al.
@Mohammed:
I probably skipped throught that statistic about our use of sources too fast; I was worried I was exceeding my time limit. Actually the statistic was much more embarassing for us than you think. The total distribution of the 614 sources used in the 223 immigration stories covered by the survey:
* 52 percent DANISH politicians
* 22 percent DANISH experts
* 11 percent ‘ordinary’ Danes
and a paltry
* 15 percent immigrants of all kinds (politicians, experts, people on the street)
So less than one in six of the people we quote in stories about immigrants are actually immigrants, and a staggering 85 percent are ethnic Danes. And that’s in the big three serious morning newspapers (Jyllands-Posten, Berlingske, Politiken) who pride ourselves in hearing all parties; in the tabloids, I fear, the picture is even worse. That’s truly embarassing. And this is something we have to do much better, as my editor said when he was confronted with the figures.
Best, Adam
April 19, 2009 at 09:15
Thank you Mr Ambassador
i agree, more use of personal experiences were required instead of speaking general reasons and theories, what matters the most is what the people experience in real life
@Adam,
Thank you and i apologize for the misunderstanding
However, as you said, people love the “violent” stories, but i believe whats happening is that the media is feeding that need instead of balancing things and maybe change the “diet habits” of people
maybe you can list a violent story and add a remark that this is one case. I hate when a headline says “a muslim blew up” whatever thing, thats like making islam a race and applying a steretype to this race
If 2 men fought for something they are not just 2 men, they are a muslim and a jew (for ex) and that adds a whole audience where muslims will backup the muslim guy and the jew would do the same, hence the issue is not resolved, on the contrary, it explodes :S
Regards, Mohammad
April 19, 2009 at 21:12
I certainly don’t want to defend everything we do in the media. We have many faults, as do the people we choose to quote. The story from 2005 I showed at the conference is one of the sad cases in recent years of how especially Muslim immigrants are being targeted in the current political climate. (The story quoted a Danish right-wing politician as saying Muslims are the main reason Danes don’t get more children; the logic being that immigration — which he somewhat oddly equated with Islam — is costly and impoverishes the ethnic Danes).
The Danish media, even the tabloids, can not really be accused of being overtly anti-immigrant, or for that matter anti-Muslim. If we frequently saw headlines like the imaginary “Muslims attacks two Danes”, that would be the case, but we don’t. The problem is more subtle — that most stories about Muslims are in a negative context, or that we quote right-wing politicians more than we quote immigrants.
And that’s not good enough, in my opinion. We are, if I may rephrase your argument, feeding the beast instead of changing its diet.
But it’s tricky. If we suddenly downplay or ignore stories about crime committed by youth gangs from other countries, we can legitimately be accused of hiding the truth. We are constantly trying to tread a line here — and different media do it different ways (my own is frequently accused by the right wing of being way too ’soft’ on immigrants, especially Muslims).
I wish I could say we could see a clear way forward. We are certainly not ignoring the problem, not our own role in the debate.
April 23, 2009 at 17:55
[...] the event, the Ambassador wrote some thoughts about the evening on his personal blog: Thank you very much for your participation in the “Beyond Stereotype” event last night. It got [...]