Indicator history

Racism in sports in Sweden was investigated in a report written for the Fundamental Right's Agency (Victoria Kawesa and Viktorija Kalonaityte, 2009). The results from the study shows that the use of racist vocabulary and hate speech during football games is common. A very recent example is when a football player Rikard Bojang was subjected to racist attack by opposing team’s players during a match[1]. Another example is a long-term racist attack, reported by a football player Pascal Simpson of African background. His experience is that his own team’s supporters would scream derogatory racist insults at him during the team’s matches.[2]

In 2006, Chief Editor for the anti-racist magazine Expo, Richard Slätt, wrote in an article in Expressen that it wasn’t racism when football fans threw bananas from the stands at Djurgårdens black goalkeeper Pa Dembo Tourray. Slätts’s argument was that when Hammarby supporters threw bananas at the Djurgården goalkeeper, that it doesn’t have anything to do with his skin color. He argued that it was a misunderstanding which risked eroding the concept of racism and took away the focus from real discrimination.[3]

One reported racist incident in 2008 within football concerns a professional football player with ethnic minority background (of African phenotype), playing for Tibro AIK, who was dismissed from the game after kicking a player from the opposing team. The reason for the kick is a racist verbal attack by the opposing team’s player, something that the ethnic minority player claims the entire opponent team were saying throughout the entire match. Several other players from the Tibro AIK team heard the racist remark as well, and claim that the referee heard it too, but chose to ignore it both when it happened but also in making the decision to dismiss the player from the field. [4]

Another similar racist incident is reported by Aftonbladet 2008, concerning a football player of African descent. The player, Kevin Amuneke, left team, Landskrona BoIS, to play abroad, because he claims that he was subjected to racist attacks by his team members and the club director. Amuneke tells that some of the team members could spit in his face and call him an ape and that no one wanted to deal with these racist attacks in the team. [5]

The anti-racist organization Centrum against racism critized Richard Slätt in an article in Expressen April 2006, arguing that: racism works in such a way that it can’t be isolated to specific places and contexts. On the contrary, it permeates all of society’s aspects, including sports. The numerous violations black sportsmen have had to endure through the years, and oftentimes still endure, make Slätt’s description of sports as an arena free from racist thought structures, which is both naive and frightening. It becomes even more problematic when Slätt, through his article, rejects such an obvious example like the throwing of bananas. Equally naive is the idea that just because “we have always done it” it must be neutral and innocent. If bananas have been thrown before black goalkeepers were part of the team, then obviously it can’t be that serious.[6]

Djurgårdens black goalkeeper Pa Dembo Tourray, responded by saying that he was tired of the banana throwing that usually precedes the derbies. He explained that: People have told me that it’s Hammarby’s tradition to throw bananas in the match against Djurgården, but it has gone too far. [7]

In ice hockey, racist incidents were reported in 2004 concerning the supporters of the ice hockey club of Linköping. The supporters have, over the past years behaved in a racist fashion when their team was playing with other teams that include ethnic minority players. The incidents were those of throwing bananas and making monkey noises at players of African decent during several different occasions. At a different occasion one supporter was tried at court for making Hail Hitler greeting at a match.[8] Two years later in 2006 the same problem was reported to persist by the same supporter group. This time, Johnny Oduya, who has a Kenyan background[9], playing for Frölunda was subjected to racist remarks during the match against Linköping. The director of the Swedish Ice Hockey Association, Michael Englund condoned the racist attacks and told the press that sanctions would be reinforced. [10]

A similar incident was reported in 2007 to have taken place when Södertälje ice hockey club was playing against Huddinge ice hockey club, where an ethnic minority player, Greg Mauldin (American background) was present. Södertälje-fans were screaming racist remarks at the ethnic minority player during the game, something that the director for National competition in hockey, Stefan Bengtsson promised to deal with by making sure that such supporters did not access the game.[11]