“Papa, Am I a Negro?” The Vexed History of the Racial Epithet in Norwegian Print Media (1970–2014)

Abstract

This study explores the portrayal of blacks in Norwegian print media between 1970 and 2014 as refracted through the prism of the epithet “Negro” (neger). 4174 references covering 30 newspapers are analyzed employing a Critical Race Theory conceptual framework where the tenets of “racism as normal,” the principle of interest convergence, and subversive storytelling are salient. The findings reveal, contra some claims that “Negro” has been employed as a “neutral” biological descriptor in Norway, that the epithet verbally incarcerates blacks in a web of racist stereotypes that tap into topoi of blacks as either the eschewed or exotically essentialized “Other.”