Ugly racist incident ushers in an ugly racist future

Sep 29, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Three Chinese tourists – a man and his elderly parents– arrived from China at the Swedish hotel hours before their paid reservation began. They then asked hotel management to let them spend the remaining hours in the lobby. In the hospitality industry such a request is met with a commonsensical approval in any part of the world.
If one makes a hotel reservation to begin Monday morning at 6 AM and you arrive at midnight, there is no way the hotel will turn you down if you request to sit on a chair in the lobby reading tourist magazines. In the first instance you are the guest of the hotel; you chose that hotel therefore management will try to be as generous as possible.
They say in the retail trade business that the customer is never wrong. In the tourist business, they go beyond the call of duty to make sure you are comfortable.
Swedish management disallowed the Chinese tourists to remain in the lobby until it was time to check in. The Chinese refused to leave. The police were called in. The tourists were ejected and the police forcefully took them some distance away from the hotel to a deserted section next to a cemetery.
It is my inflexible opinion that if those three persons were White Americans or White Germans or White anything, the hotel would not have acted so insensitively. The horrible dimension of this ugly incident is that the three persons could have been harmed by hooligans or skinheads or robbers at that desolate place where the police dumped them.
This was racism plain and simple. The Chinese government was angry and delivered a no-nonsense protest note to the Swedish government. At the time of writing, it seems that the quarrel has escalated. What kind of analysis should one put on this incident?
There are two important dimensions. First, the country Sweden. If this could happen in Sweden, then the world has become a dangerous place.
When I entered the halls of academia over forty years ago, political theorists classified Sweden as one of the bastions of true liberal democracy. On every level of democratic governance, Sweden stood above the other White countries. It was regarded by academics who study politics as a success story of capitalist democracy.
In the just concluded national election (two weeks ago), the extreme, racist, neo-fascist party pulled 17 percent of the votes. Every left wing or moderate or socialist party lost seats. Sweden has now joined the list of former White liberal countries that have gravitated to sickening far right and racist platforms, including the United States.
You have an Italian Deputy Prime Minister that says the most obnoxious things about non-white people. Non-white persons could easily lose their lives if they walk alone at nights in places like Poland and Hungary. All over Europe, with the exception of France, there is an explosion of a racist backlash.
Canada stands out most graciously as a lovely exception to the rule.
Australia has a long history of cruel racism but the words of English cricket star all-rounder. Moeen Ali in his recently published autobiography adds more graphic details of how uncouth Australians are. White folks are quick to dismiss non-whites as below their standards. Non-white countries are seen as filled with people who are yet to “catch up.”
The non-white test cricketing nations are West Indies, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. Ali wrote that the cricketing nation that he found to be the most uncouth, unpleasant and philistine (my word) is Australia.
The Windrush scandal in the UK is one of the saddest moments in modern Commonwealth relations. Several dozens of Black Caribbean folks who were legal residents of the UK were picked up and deported to various CARICOM countries.
In the US, police are frequently summoned by White folks if they see Black people in any kind of circumstances including their presence in university cafeteria or university dorm as happened twice the past three months.
The second dimension relates to the phenomenal rise of China. There is growing resentment of the superpower status of China by the developed world. The October issue of Le Monde Diplomatique (English edition) has a useful article about Trump’s decision to impose trade tariffs on China. The writer argues it is more than just trade. It is also about the emergence of China’s global status.
This fury against non-white people in White countries is becoming extremely dangerous; emphasis must be on the adverb “extremely.” I see painful tragedies ahead. There will be violent deaths of non-white people in Europe, the US and Australia.

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