“We Foreigners Lived In Our Foreign Bubble”: Understanding Colorblind Ideology In Expatriate Narratives1

Abstract

Racial colorblindness—the desire to not “see color”—or avoiding any use of the term “race” itself, has been an antiracist imperative in post‐WWII Sweden in order to leave behind the prior era of eugenics and racial thinking. Through a multi‐sited linguistic ethnographic study, this article examines how 46 returning Swedish expatriate women talk about race and whiteness in race‐related experiences and interactions, using colorblind language. By analyzing the implicit contextual associations and dissociations made between race, language, subjectivity, and nation, a system of ideas and cognitive structures mapping perceptions and constructions of the world is exposed; of national belonging, racialized bodies, racial hierarchies, and perceptions of the West itself. In their migrant narratives, however, the categories used could be ascribed opposite meanings, depending on subjectivity and context. In this logic, language and nationality becomes “visible” or “hidden” depending on time and place, while “visible whiteness” can be associated with either an undesirable sense of difference or a set of unspoken privileges.