For Cosmopolitan, Lola Akinmade Åkerström examined the culture of cultural erasure in Sweden from a Black female perspective:
I often describe living in Sweden like being married to the most attractive man at a party. One who turns heads the minute you walk in with him on your arm. No one wants to know how it feels to be his wife or how he treats you at home, simply being with him is considered achievement enough.
I have lived in Sweden for 14 years, since I moved here for love. Statistically, it is one of the happiest countries on earth.
And yet, as a Black woman I must ask myself, happiest for whom?
As she notes, Sweden is often noted as one of the happiest places to live and other Nordic countries often rate highly. That kind of biased surveying suggests that, because people are happier, bigoted behaviours are close to zero. But nowhere in Europe is immune from racism towards Black people and the numerous cultural and religious intersectional identities that they hold.
Beneath the glossy social veneer of idealism and utopia lies a lot of resentment, deep pain, unexpressed desires, and repressed trauma from trying to integrate versus assimilate. Integration means I accept all parts of my blended identity, including my new additional culture, Swedish. Assimilation means identifying only with your host country’s culture and letting go of your heritage. And assimilation is an impossible thing to ask of anyone. It’s one thing embracing cultural traditions such as Midsummer and learning the language to integrate better, but it’s another to feel like I have to be less Nigerian in order to be fully Swedish.