It was a small, almost imperceptible movement. But the shocked journalist Tinne Hjersing Knudsen.
on Thursday morning she was in the subway on the way home after having sent the day’s broadcast of ‘P1 Morning’.
“I was pretty tired. Stood and rocky and everything was normal. That is to say, no one spoke together,” she says.
On a seat diagonally across from the Tinne Hjersing Knudsen sat a woman with a suitcase.
As the seats beside and across for the woman was available, would another passenger sit down.
But then it happened: The two women held eye contact, as the seated woman pushed the other away.
“She pushed to her upper arm – how to completely subtly. And then rolled her suitcase to the other side, so it blocked the three vacant seats.”
Have you experienced a similar experience? Write to B. T. 1929@bt.dk
It could be an expression of uncommon rudeness. But two facts suggest that something else was at stake:
The seated woman was white. The other was dark.The seated woman gave shortly after the space of two white women, who got into the subway, sit on the seats beside her.
Afterwards was Tinne Hjersing Knudsen ‘completely in shock’.
“I didn’t understand what I had seen. I don’t know if it was an example of hverdagsracisme, but it was noticeable, that she afterwards made room for two white women.”
“It was absolutely still and quiet, and the darker woman stood up again – without saying a word,” says Tinne Hjersing Knudsen, who afterwards spoke with the woman.
“She was clearly both shaken and upset about it. But even though she said that it was far from the first time she saw the kind she wished not to make more trouble..”
Experience is not unique. It shows the figures from the Copenhagen Municipality Medborgerskabsundersøgelse from 2017. According to the survey, every fourth young copenhagener with a different ethnic background than Danish experienced to be discriminated against in the train, bus or metro.
the Report has got people on Twitter to keys:
Among other things, writes Natasha Al-Hariri, who is debater of palestinian background:
‘We, who experience the kind of regularly, may well at some point get enough of the kind of conflicts. But that is why it is extremely important that those around us take them for us when we cannot.’
While Tim Whyte, who is the secretary general of Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke, writes:
‘We talk surprisingly little about ethnic discrimination in the public space of DK. We have promised to measure it and do something about it as part of the #Verdensmålene, but makes none of the parts right now.’
