ABSTRACT
While the collection and analysis of equality data including racial identification is common in many parts of the world, prevailing norms of colourblindness and antiracialism prevent such practises in Sweden. This chapter presents a case study of the outrage and indignation that met a Green Party member of parliament (MP) who, in February 2019, proposed that Sweden should collect equality data comprising racial identification. We analyse a comprehensive corpus of opinion and editorial texts, as well as a sample of Twitter posts representative of the colourblind outrage directed at the Green Party MP, as well as at leftists, antiracists, identity politics and associated actors and movements. Our analysis reveals a range of argumentative strategies through which a colourblind, antiracialist status quo is preserved. Colourblind arguments are recruited by both a professional and a lay commentariat, positioning antiracist activists and politicians as a race-obsessed, authoritarian and divorced-from-reality threat to democracy, freedom and social order. In this way, a kind of liberal–conservative alliance is mobilised to resist and deny any substantial effort to engage with the realities of segregation and prejudice, reinforcing colourblindness as the only morally acceptable antiracist stance, in today’s Sweden.
