ABSTRACT
Welfare workers’ stock story of colour-blindness is rooted in egalitarianism, universalism and professional neutrality. This chapter displays how the stock story is galvanised in three variations. In the first variation, perplexing culturalisation, welfare workers experience emotional turmoil when encountering refugees’ perceived differences. Through this turmoil, they realise their own superiority of tolerating cultural deviation as well as teaching refugees about equality. In the second variation, controlling racism, welfare workers blame refugees for bringing ethnic conflicts to Denmark, where racism among Danish people is excused on the plea of social deprivation or lack of education. Anyhow, welfare workers are the ones who can control racism. In the third variation, managing, welfare workers are compelled to manage refugees as generalised group members, yet enabling the refugee to become an individual in the universalistic sense of colour-blindness. The chapter ends by recollecting how differences ascribed to refugees inconveniently interfere with welfare workers’ colour-blind self-image, which is conditioned upon an organising principle of sameness. This must be protected for welfare work to stay neutral and universal. By default, Danish welfare workers cannot be imagined to be racist as they operate a reality production that saves their white innocence and ignores racial injustice.
