Rasprat: Samtal om antirasism i Sverige 2010–2025

Det empiriska materialet som avhandlingen är baserad på består av 15 djupintervjuer med personer som själva definierar sig som antirasister samt analyser av 2010-talets kulturdebatt. Karlsson Blom använder ett antropologiskt perspektiv där fältet ses som flera sammanhängande platser, samt en analys inspirerad av bland andra Sara Ahmed, France Winddance Twine och Alana Lentin. Resultaten visar att rasprat fungerar som en språklig intervention i svensk antirasism, där syftet är att synliggöra strukturell rasism och motverka färgblindhet och rasismstumhet. Rasprat existerar parallellt med olika omskrivningar och undvikanden av ordet ras, genom att exempelvis hänvisa till etnicitet eller andra identitetsord. Avslutningsvis diskuteras om antirasism alls kräver ett rasbegrepp; Karlsson Blom menar att rasprat är viktigt, men att antirasism utan rasord inte nödvändigtvis är färgblind eller rasismstum.

In the dissertation RACE-TALK: conversations about anti-racism in Sweden 2010–2025, Lisa Karlsson Blom examines what it means to talk about race in contemporary Sweden. Focusing on what Karlsson Blom refers to as race-talk—the use of words like race, racialization, whiteness, non-whiteness, and blackness for anti-racist purposes—the aim is to deepen the understanding of both the words and their contexts. Three questions are central: what does key concepts like race and whiteness mean for anti-racists and in the cultural debate, how do conversations about race relate to conversations about racism, and how do race-talk relate to anti-racist practice.

The empirical material on which the dissertation is based consists of 15 in-depth interviews with people who define themselves as anti-racists, as well as analyses of the cultural debate of the 2010s. Karlsson Blom uses an anthropological perspective in which the field is seen as several interconnected sites, along with an analysis inspired by, among others, Sara Ahmed, France Winddance Twine, and Alana Lentin. The results show that race-talk functions as a linguistic intervention in Swedish anti-racism, where the aim is to make structural racism visible and counteract color-blindness and silence around racism. Race-talk exists in parallel with various rewordings and avoidances of the word race, for example by referring to ethnicity or other identity terms. Finally, the dissertation discusses whether anti-racism requires a concept of race; Karlsson Blom argues that race-talk is important, but that anti-racism without race-related words is not necessarily color-blind or ‘racism-mute’.