Apartheid row at Norwegian school after it segregates ethnic pupils
Bjerke Upper Secondary School in Oslo filled one of the three general studies sets solely with pupils with immigrant parents, after many white Norwegians from last year’s intake changed schools.
The controversy over the decision has highlighted the unease in Norway over how to integrate the 420,000 “non-Nordic” citizens who immigrated between 1990 and 2009, and who make up 28 per cent of Oslo’s population.
“This is the first time I’ve heard about this, and it is totally unacceptable,” Torge Ødegaard, Oslo education commissioner, said on Friday, before pressuring the school to inform parents that the three classes would now be reorganised. The letter to parents read: “Such a division of the students is not in accordance with the requirements of the Education Act. The school regrets this error.”
But Robert Wright, a Christian Democrat politician and former head of the city’s schools board, struck back, arguing that the authorities had been wrong to block the move. He also said that other Oslo schools should start to segregate classes to prevent a situation of “white flight” developing.
REPORTS ON DISCRIMINATION OF ETHNIC NORWEGIANS AND VIOLENCE AND THREATS OF SCHOOL STAFF IN NORWAY…….
Posted on 09/05/2010 by KGS“Why is it racism is we call them ‘black’ and not racism if they call us ‘white’”?
“I never called anybody ‘Nigger’ or ‘Black’ or anything like that. On the other hand, those of us who were White were talked about derogatorily. It was negative to be White, Christianity and Norwegian culture was negative and there were many curses,” says Mari Morken (16) and rattles them off “Whitey, potato and white cheese”Three years ago she couldn’t take it any more. She moved from a school in Groruddalen to a school on the west side. Every morning she takes the subway to the other side of the city to escape the curses and the bad class-environment. Where she goes now, it’s good to have good grades, and she doesn’t stand out because she’s light. Before she made dark stripes in her medium-blond hair. Now she dyes her hair a bit lighter. She’s in the process of ‘taking back’ her Norwegianity, and is happy to be blond without being branded ‘whore’ and cheap’.“Ah, girl, blond whore!”‘Josephine’ was met with these words on the first school day at a high-school in an immigrant-dominated suburb south of Stockholm. Josphine was quite baffled, since aside from her hair color there was nothing about her appearance that would indicate she was promiscuous. She didn’t use makeup and had completely neutral clothing. It was exclusively her hair-color that branded her a ‘whore’.
The decision only came to the parents’ notice earlier this month after Avtar Singh, a Punjabi Norwegian, confronted Gro Flaten, the school’s headmistress, on why his son, Gurjot, had no ethnic Norwegian classmates.
“She said straight out that the school had experienced ethnic Norwegian students dropping out if they weren’t grouped together in smaller classes,” he told Dagsavisen newspaper.
Mrs Flaten told The Daily Telegraph: “We made the decision because many Norwegian students were moving to other schools because they were in classes with such a high percentage of students from other nations. They seemed to be in a minority.”More at Source
