You don’t eat brown children. And I can’t shut up

(The Nation): The first option is of course the simplest: Do nothing. Don’t say anything.

Actually, there are good reasons not to write about this. Brown-stained attitudes belong on the scrap heap of history, and are expressed by a few people who – one can hope – are without impact. They can be overlooked, overheard, dismissed as dirt.

I am, of course, talking about the reactions to Stabburet’s redesigned, yellow liver paste box. In a desire to better reflect the actual population in Norway, as we look in society today, the manufacturer Orkla has found new children and taken pictures of new faces for the liver paste box. Faces with different skin tones.

And that’s where the limit goes for a small group of people, who are not afraid to express themselves in the comment fields on social media:

People write “No, what the hell”, “This is not good”, “No æsj fyyyfaen”, “Get the black boxes away” and “I do NOT eat brown children”. Actual.

Also read: Ariana (9) is harassed on social media: “I do NOT eat brown children”

And then the question is: Shut it up or deal with it?

“It’s certainly far from the attitudes I find in my immediate environment and social circle,” said a friend of mine. He believed that the liver-posting reactions are backward-looking guff from environments which may also be aware that they are out of date and in the minority.

And precisely the feeling of being in the minority makes people irritable and loud. Anger often comes from anxiety. A fear that something is about to change, or has changed too much. Something safe and familiar is disappearing, the world as people knew it, Norway as it looked in the 50s.

It is understandable that those who fear diversity are afraid of losing something. Throughout history, people have experienced change that was not for the good, experienced that when something happens, it has not been to their advantage.

Of course it feels harrowing. Whether it is the neighborhood, the school class, the workplace or the country’s population as a whole, disruptions in the world order can be unpleasant for those who like fixed frameworks and stability.

Then protest is the easiest way out. When men have to include women in boardrooms, when your children choose a different life path and career than you, when gay people get rights you thought you should have alone, or brown faces appear where you are not used to them.

Fear and prejudice stroll hand in hand when the cotton-wrapped experience of belonging to the majority is challenged.

Then I could certainly pass by this everyday racism in silence, not paying attention to xenophobia and anxiety. In any case, it is useless to think that you will change something or someone by writing with a moral finger. It leads nowhere.

Nevertheless, I went for option two: To take a counter-argument.

Because I would do that if one of my friends said this directly to me, in a physical, social context. If she looked at the liver paste box with a picture of nine-year-old Ariana Chantelle Antonsen and concluded: “I only buy those with Norwegian skin”.

“Huh?”, I wanted to say. Asked what she thought about this girl who grew up in Norway, has a mother who grew up in Norway and has not even visited her grandparents’ original homeland, Sri Lanka. “What really separates her from a girl with fair, Nordic skin?” I would ask. And was genuinely curious about the answer.

Also read: Hope the liver paste box can help others: – It was a shock

Stupidity gets free rein to establish and develop if Ibsen’s compact majority says nothing. The dehumanization of people – writing people off as different and inferior – is equally ugly no matter where on the scale it is: whether it is expressed through ridiculous, petty reactions to liver paste packaging or in the great, catastrophic ravages of war.

The disturbingly persistent belief that some people are better than others is defunct. But combined with a delusion that generosity and sharing automatically entail a loss, losing or having to give something up, it is a combustible cocktail that is the origin of countless conflicts and much human suffering.

Last week it was 25 years since 17-year-old Arve Beheim Karlsen was chased to his death, into the river in Sogndal, by two men who shouted “Kill him, kill that negro”. Arve was adopted to Norway from India.

Almost half of children and young people with a minority background experience racism, shows a recent report from Bufdir. 70 percent of those with an African background, 63 percent among those with an Asian background. But most people who are subjected to racist remarks choose to ignore it and pretend it’s nothing.

Now the opportunity lies there, in a yellow liver paste box on the kitchen table: Talk about it.