Copenhagen: 20 July 2008

Radmandsgade Skole in Nørrebro is one of Copenhagen’s “black” schools. Its library clocks don’t show the times in Paris and New York, but instead the times in Konya, Turkey and Islamabad, Pakistan. These times reflect the incredibly diverse students who attend the school—coming from Arabic-speaking nations, Pakistan, Turkey, Kurdistan, and Somalia in the greatest numbers. The principal of the school—in a quite frank style which would never be seen in the politically correct school style of the United States—told us the difficulties of working with these different groups of students. Her most serious qualms came from working with entitled Danes who she said were the equivalent of first-born Arabic children who say, “I’m a gift from Allah.” She concluded that “we have to cut them down a bit.” To her, the key to integration—the hot button word in Denmark—is education and language. Many Danes worry that a school as diverse as Radmandsgade will become violent with ethnic tensions and that their children will not receive the attention that they deserve with extra time spent on teaching foreigners Danish. However, from what we saw, Radmandsgade Skole seems to effectively teach students from all different backgrounds. And, of course, I will never forget Mikkel scaring little kids following us in the hallways.

Back at the Institute for Human Rights, we debated whether or not Elephantman and other anti-gay rappers who advocate the murder of gays and lesbians in their song lyrics should be censored by the state. Afterwards, a journalist from Copenhagen’s newspaper Politiken attempted to teach us how to write a journalist essay and pull us away from the masses of academic papers that we have written.

That night, many of the Americans—myself included—were shocked to come out of the salsa club and see that Turkey football fans were driving their cars up and down the street honking their horns non-stop and waving flags out their windows to celebrate Turkey’s victory in the match. Later, 60 cars were pulled up into City Hall square (usually covered with only pedestrians) and 300 Turkey fans had formed a mass of people around some cars upon which fans waved flares and shot off fireworks occasionally. The honking parade of fans didn’t stop until the wee hours of the morning.

--Seth Bergeson