ABSTRACT
Today, the term ‘race’ is seldom used in Nordic countries, be it in public or academic discourses. ‘Race’ is associated with the prevailing biological racism of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, as is clearly expressed in the exhibitions of exotic people. The atrocities of Nazism and colonialism led the majority of Europeans to reject biological racism; as a result, the term ‘race’ disappeared in the Nordic countries. Thus, racial terminology and analytical categories like ‘racial visibility’ and ‘racial appearances’ are (almost) never used in contemporary public discourses, and only seldom used in academic discourses. ‘Race’ in the Nordic countries is viewed as a historical phenomenon we have left behind; instead, the term ‘ethnicity’ has been applied to the previous decades’ discourses and scholarly work. 2 Recent Nordic scholarly debate has included some fierce criticism of some younger Nordic scholars’ re-implementation of the term ‘race’ as an analytical category. 3
