Resisting racism in everyday life: from ignoring to confrontation and protest

ABSTRACT

Racial discrimination takes many forms and so does opposition to it. In contrast to the dominant emphasis on institutional or state efforts to counter racism, we examine how members of racially minoritized groups resist racism in their everyday lives. Drawing on forty-one qualitative interviews with young, mainly Black, people in Norway, we identify five distinct ways in which they actively counter racism, as opposed to passively accepting or adapting to it. Participants resisted racism by ignoring, confronting, sharing experiences about, reporting and protesting it. Our analysis explicates the characteristics, potential outcomes and social function of such resistance to racism. The study contributes to the literature on everyday racism and antiracism by making it evident how those at the receiving end negotiate and actively oppose racist experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Antiracism
• racism
• everyday
• resistance
• racial prejudice
• racial discrimination

Introduction

From when I was five to thirteen I experienced racism, and I understood that I was treated differently because of my skin colour. […] To me, it would have been easier if racism was spoken aloud, if racists rather stood up and said: “you know what? Just keep to yourself.” That would have been a lot easier to deal with.

Benjamin’s (33) experience as a young Black man reflects how subtle forms of racial prejudice are often hard to call out for those facing it. While overt racism is rising with the mainstreaming of far-right ideas (Mudde 2019), more covert forms of prejudice are still most common in Western countries (Essed 1990, 1991). Benjamin further underlined that it was “sad that one gets so used to hearing these types of racist comments, that one almost stops reacting.” He was quick to add: “I think we need to continue to say no in these situations and keep fighting racism because it is so widespread.”

Groups affected by racial discrimination have always opposed it, whether explicitly or implicitly (Elias, Mansouri, and Paradies 2021a, 319). Members of racial minorities fight racism as part of their everyday life (Aquino 2016), but unless their efforts involve social protest and receive media attention they are rarely recognized. Research parallels this trend. While numerous scholars have studied racism and racialization and the role of public antiracist initiatives, few have attended to the type of opposition referred to as “everyday anti-racism” (Lamont and Fleming 2005; Paradies 2016).

Unfortunately, this scholarly neglect of resistance to racism has resulted in a “flattening of history” by giving the misleading impression that colonialism and racism emerged largely uncontested (Bhattacharyya, Virdee, and Winter 2020, 3; but see e.g. Taylor 2016). Just as racism manifests in myriad ways, so do responses and opposition to it (Bonnett 1999). While some people merely contemplate the racial prejudice they encounter, others engage in assertive confrontation (Hyers 2007). Opposition to racism ranges from state responses through legislation, to the work of civic organizations and social movement protest, to informal individual and peer group efforts that challenge racism in the everyday.

Based on interviews with racially minoritized people in Norway who participated in the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, we identify the distinct ways they resist prejudice, discrimination and hostility. Most importantly, we explore the different ways they oppose racism by ignoring, confronting, sharing experiences, reporting and protesting. Through these responses, participants negotiated and managed their own negative experiences, but also contributed prominently to a broader struggle against racism.

Racism and racial discrimination

The idea of races maintained through notions of different phenotypes, ethnicities and cultures, produces a variety of forms of racism (Lentin 2008). Broadly speaking, racism involves assigning people negative characteristics based on their “real or imaginary” difference, thus depicting them as subordinate and using that subordination to legitimate discrimination and hostility against them (Memmi 2000, 172). We understand the notion of race and racism as social constructs (Dixon and Telles 2017) and floating signifiers (Laclau 2005) filled with varied meanings across time and place (Hall 2017). Nonetheless, race is always used to categorize humans. What we refer to as racism are thus the negative manifestations of such categorization of “races” (or people of a differing skin colour, phenotype, “ethnicity”, “cultural background”, etc.). We also use racial prejudice and racial discrimination interchangeably with a somewhat similar meaning. Finally, we refer to our participants as racially minoritized people, which includes those groups in society that have been actively minoritized, and who share experiences of exposure to systemic and individual racism (Gunaratnum 2003).

Definitions of racism include both individual attitudes and cultural schema, as well as structural racism that involves “preexisting consequential inequalities like racial dominance” and society-wide processes that “create or maintain racial dominance” (Shiao and Woody 2021, 491). Given such broad criteria, the presence of racism is often difficult to evaluate and measure (Miles [1989] 2003, 17). Racism should, therefore, be specified and investigated in relation to its particular socio-geographic and historical context (Nowicka 2018). For example, although racism is widespread in Norway (e.g. Führer 2021), relatively positive attitudes towards immigrants are also reported, and the country is sometimes described as tolerant and non-racist (Hernes and Knudsen 1990; Pew Research Center 2018). This has also become part of the national identity (Gullestad 2004). Attending to race in this context is thus at times perceived as irrelevant, problematic or even racist, and some researchers have argued that it has been difficult to initiate public debates about racism (Bangstad 2015; Harlap and Riese 2021). This resonates with the situation in other European countries (Lentin 2008), where racism can be perceived as something of the past, being located elsewhere or linked only to marginal extremist milieus (Wekker 2016).

Some claim that the present time is a post-racial era, where racism is perceived to be largely non-existent because dominant views of racism fail to capture its implicit and insidious forms (Ikuenobe 2011, 163). Today, racism exists largely through covert behaviours that often go undetected, and people are thus often unaware of the many actions that may be considered racist (Coates 2011). Despite documentation of racial discrimination in areas like the labour market, housing and interpersonal interactions in Europe and Norway, this has rarely been described as racism (Harlap and Riese 2021; Midtbøen 2021). When the concept of racism is being used it also encompasses different phenomena (Rogstad and Midtbøen 2009). Violent attacks justified by racist ideology are unambiguously described as racism, but the most widespread racial discrimination and prejudice in Norway involve subtle forms of everyday racism related to racialization and perceptions of nationhood (Dankertsen and Kristiansen 2021; Erdal 2019; McIntosh 2015). Many people practise covert forms of racism that involve less risk of opposition, personal stigmatization and being labelled racist (Høy-Petersen 2021). This often manifests in the form of “racial micro aggressions” during interpersonal encounters (Sue et al. 2009) or the downplaying of racial inequality (Dunn et al. 2009, 5). These subtle expressions of racism were the most common for participants in this study.

Resistance to racism grew in momentum during the BLM mobilizations across the Western world (Ellefsen and Sandberg 2022). The killing of George Floyd in May, 2020, and the BLM protests that followed were one of several transformative and historic events that have, at least temporarily, caught public attention and accelerated mobilization against racial discrimination (Dave et al. 2020). However, while collective mobilization and public attention are important in countering racism, there are multiple other ways that racially minoritized people negotiate, manage and oppose racism.

Resistance to racism

Racialized people respond in a variety of ways to racism, including active opposition and more passive or hidden reactions (Carter Andrews 2012). A US study reports a broad spectre of emotional responses, most common were feeling disrespected and anger, followed by a feeling of being insulted, disappointment, frustration, outrage, hurt and shock (Carter and Forsyth 2010, 189). Context and history influence reactions as well. A European study of Muslims, for example, reports how they remain silent when encountering racism “to avoid problems with the authorities” and out of fear of punitive sanctions (Lems 2021, 1206–1207). Such inexpressive emotional reactions arguably fit the “ordinary” victim image, meaning they are ways of coping with racism by withdrawing socially or passively accepting a subordinate status (Warren 2000).

Contrary to passive and inexpressive emotional reactions, people who experience racism also actively oppose, confront and resist these encounters. Active responses include confronting and “deflating” situations where racism is encountered and educating out-groups (Fleming, Lamont and Welburn 2012, 402). People who experience racial discrimination thus “position themselves” in confrontations in ways that shape them as subjects and not only as subjugated, which also involves opportunities for resistance and autonomy (Ohnmacht and Yildiz 2021, 150). Minoritized groups have, for example, resisted racial prejudice that “attempt[s] to render them as absent as still air,” by asserting their presence in public space (Krause and Li 2020, 15). More formal ways of responding to discrimination include legal court suits (Feagin 1991, 103) and other ways of reporting racism to authorities.

A comparative study of how affected groups responded to incidents of racism in the US, Brazil and Israel found that Arab Palestinians were resigned and cynical and thus frequently remained silent, while African Americans confronted racism with less hesitation than Jews from Ethiopia and the Middle East, who tended to downplay their exclusion (Lamont et al. 2016). This study demonstrates the variety of responses to racial discrimination across historical and geographical contexts and populations. It also reveals the importance of seeing interpersonal prejudice as a “process” or “exchange” that may take many forms, rather than being a fixed endpoint of unavoidable victimization (Hyers 2007, 8).

Following Whitehead (2015, 375), we understand these individual responses as “moment-by-moment production” of everyday actions that resist racism in “naturally occurring interactions.” The five ways of resisting racism that we describe share many similarities with what others have termed everyday antiracism, or ordinary people’s active responses to racism (Aquino 2016, 105; Yarkin 2020). Our perspective views opposition to racism “from below” and shifts the focus from political discussions on how to combat racism to investigations of how people resist racism in their day-to-day lives (see Lamont and Fleming 2005; Pollock 2008).

Nongovernmental organizations and public agencies have a wide repertoire of strategies to counter racism and racial prejudice (Elias, Mansouri, and Paradies 2021a, 335). These involve training, campaigns and organizational developments that differ markedly from the everyday resistance to racism that we examine in this study. Resisting racism “bottom-up,” for example, involves victims confronting perpetrators, personal efforts to bridge cultural differences and strategies to repair stigmatized identities (Aquino 2020). Such resistance is often employed during everyday interactions and can therefore be understood as a “street skill” (Elias, Mansouri, and Paradies 2021a, 326) but it can also expand into or be fuelled by social movements. People who participated in BLM demonstrations, for example, have reported increased confidence in confronting racism (Ellefsen and Sandberg 2022).

Our study identifies five forms of resistance, or active opposition, to racism among young, mainly Black people, in Norway: ignoring, confronting, sharing experiences, reporting and protesting. The study thus contributes to a broader scholarship investigating how the everyday is integral to processes that both configure and challenge racism (Aquino 2020). By describing these widespread types of resistance to racism, we demonstrate how stigmatized groups are far from passive vis-à-vis the racial discrimination they encounter and unravel the importance of individuals and civil society in combatting racism.

Methods and data

The data for this study are drawn from forty-one qualitative interviews with young people aged 16–33 years. All were of colour and participated in the BLM demonstrations of 2020 in Norway. Interviews were carried out between September 2020 and October 2021, lasting an average of 1.5 h. Participants were recruited online and through informal social networks, we called for people who had both experienced racism themselves and engaged in BLM. Eighteen interviews were conducted in cafes or other public places, while twenty-three were carried out online with video conferencing because of Covid restrictions. We sought out people who were not seasoned activists or heavily involved in antiracist organizing, as we were primarily interested in “ordinary” protest participants and widespread experiences of racism. The sample is diverse in terms of skin colour, previous participation in political protest, and parents’ country of birth (see Table 1).

Table 1. Participant characteristics (N = 41).

Gender
Women	27
Men	14
Age
16–20	15
21–25	10
26–30	12
31–33	2
Complexion
Black^a	30
Other^b	11
Parental background
Africa^c	23
Asia^d	8
Europe^e	1
Latin America	1
Two countries^f	8
BLM as their first demonstration
Yes	18
No	23

^aBlack includes seven biracial participants; they all had one African and one Norwegian parent.

^bOther includes eight participants from the Middle East, two from Asia and one from Latin America.

^cIn Norway almost all immigration of Black people is from Africa. Participants described in the analysis as Black have parents originating in Africa.

^dAsia includes four participants from the Middle East (Muslim countries) and two from other Asian countries. These groups experience different forms of racism, one related mainly to religion (Ellefsen and Sandberg 2021) and another to race stereotypes. We have combined them since this difference is not at the core of this paper.

^eThis participant’s parents originated from Portugal.

^fSix participants had one parent from Norway and one from Africa, one had a parent from Asia while one had a parent from the Caribbean.

In the interviews, we asked questions about experiences of racism, racial discrimination, hostility and prejudice. Asking about racism exclusively would risk excluding subtler forms of racism and responses to them, as some participants might have been hesitant to label incidents as racism because of the sensitive status and history of racism in Norway (Bangstad 2015).

Thirty-three interviews were conducted by the second author with an Iranian heritage, while the rest were done by researchers being from the White majority. Researchers’ positionalities influence interview dynamics and results as it can be easier for an interviewee to discuss racism with another racialized person than with a White person (although this may vary). We observed few differences in the interview data, which might be because participants’ BLM participation had awakened awareness about racism and made stories about it more clear-cut and less flexible and dependent upon the research context. This also points to the major bias and limitation in our data. Since participants had engaged in political protest, this might have shaped the way they understood and talked about racism. Our analysis is primarily theoretical and conceptual, that is, identifying forms of resistance, and we have not counted occurrences of racism, so we do not consider this to be a major problem.

The responses to racism outlined below were identified and coded using NVivo software, following the principle of inductive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2008). We sought to identify different forms of active reactions, or resistance, and after a process of coding and revising the categories, we ended up with five main ones. The resulting categories were used as a guide for the structure of the analysis.

Five forms of resistance to racism

Table 2 and the analysis below lay out the main forms of resistance to racism we identified. For each type, we describe its character, how the participants experienced its outcome and importance, including the possible social function for those who enact it.

Table 2. Forms of resistance to racism^a.

	Ignoring	Confronting	Sharing	Reporting	Protesting
Character	Disregarding experiences of racism	Talking back or responding pronounced when experiencing racism	Speaking/presenting about negative experiences of racism to family, peers and others	Reporting incidents of racism directly, or through others, to authorities	Reacting to racism by organizing or participating in social protest
Possible positive outcomes	Makes everyday life easier; reduces the impact of racism on personal life	Provides self-worth and enables in situ opposition to racism	Helps in coping and devaluating racist incidents; educates the public	Leads to formal sanctioning of racism; confirms the gravity of racist incidents	Connects personal experience to a larger collective; helps facilitate societal change
Possible negative outcomes	May represses negative feelings; contributes to normalization of racism	May escalate interpersonal conflict; reproduces stereotypes	Sharing with out-group can be challenging	Risk of burdens or sanction for the person who reports	Lack of results can cause disillusionment
Function	Self-protection	Refusal of victimization	Social support	Formal sanctioning	Pride and collective support

^a The category “character” is the starting point for the analysis and derived directly from the data. The categories “possible positive/negative outcomes” are also described in detail by participants. The category “function” is based on a more general reading of data and the authors’ interpretation. All categories are simplifications made for an analytic purpose

Ignoring racism

A common way of reacting to racism involved efforts to ignore expressions of hostility by downplaying them, thereby denying their significance (Ellefsen and Sandberg 2021), or using humour to cope with them. This can be seen as a “biographical work strategy” through which people “make sense” of their lives (Ronai and Cross 1998, 99; see also Fleetwood 2019). In this study, it was particularly apparent how participants tried to ignore the racism they faced, used humour to downplay its importance and explained racist incidents by emphasizing the negative characteristics of those who offended them. The latter path was a way of shifting the blame back at those who were hostile.

Malaya (19) said that she laughed when people at her school said “things that were not nice.” Ekow (30) similarly described an incident where he was devalued and mistaken for another because of his skin colour:

I’m just like, oh my god, these people never learn. I’m just laughing. I don't really take it to heart because I don’t allow it to affect me in the same way it used to … I don’t react. If people say something I just laugh and smile at them and walk off.

Nilo (20) explained how she tried to forget the racism she had experienced:

I try not to remember, if you start thinking about it, you get a bad vibe, you know. If you only think about what happened to you. Then you start thinking that the world is bad, I cannot do anything, let’s just sleep in my bed [laughs]. I know that it [racism] is there, but I try not to focus too much on it. Just go on with life.

The use of humour and laughing it off was a common way of ignoring racism. These responses are a way to relieve tension or pain (Lynch 2002) and may be important components of coping with and resisting racism. Milgo (19) said that it was “sad and funny at the same time,” illustrating how it was not always easy to ignore or brush it off, but that she tried nevertheless. Hakim (24) was more confident that he managed to ignore it, but the underlying tone was one of dejection:

It’s stuff I can brush off. It’s not stuff that makes me lose my sleep. I see it more like “okay, there are people that have experienced worse, who experience things that stops them, in life.” And then I think, “okay, I must chin up and go on.” When I was a kid, or younger, I got mad, there and then and thought “fuck, this is really unfair!”

Behran (29) similarly emphasized moving on despite experiencing racism:

I have experienced so many incidents that I have, in a way, just shoved it under the rug, or how to say it. I have suppressed it because one just brushes it off and moves on. […] This is just my life. I have become used to it.

While these responses may involve a level of resignation, they result from grappling with life challenges and finding ways to tackle them. For some participants, former responses of getting angry or dwelling on racist incidents had a greater negative impact on them than letting it go. Abebe (29) talked about how experiences of racial injustice used to “eat” up his whole life when he was younger: “I think that’s where my depression and anxiety comes from.” But he subsequently changed his way of dealing with racism: “I’m in charge of it now,” he said. Esi (21) took a similar approach but emphasized that it was not her responsibility to strike at every incident of racism that she experienced: “if I meet someone that’s not nice and I don’t feel like [challenging] it that day, then I just walk away.”

Many participants felt an obligation to confront racism but chose not to because confrontation came with too great a personal cost. Participants knew about different ways of reacting, and they adapted their reactions according to the situation and their mood at the moment. Kayla (23) felt she had to let it go and ignore it because it was exhausting: “It happens so often that if we are to confront it every single time, I will end up hating my life.” Sometimes participants also justified ignoring racism by belittling those that had expressed hostility (Ellefsen and Sandberg 2021). “I feel sorry for them,” Esi (21) said, before elaborating further: “it’s their own loss, they miss out on so much, culture, music, food and everything.” Hakim (24) said that when he worked in a store the one racist he encountered had an intellectual disability, emphasizing that more than anything, he “felt sorry for him.” Leyla (30) said those expressing racist sentiments “have a problem with themselves.” She emphasized: “I’m not the problem, they are.” In this way, aggressors were put in their place, self-worth restored, but it also made the racist incidents less significant and thus easier to ignore. Ignoring racism seemed to be easier and more successful in situations where racism was less clear-cut and when participants perceived those expressing hostility as being beneath them socially.

Ignoring racism may be problematic because it might also normalize racist incidents (Browne, Bakshi, and Lim 2011). As a form of resistance, however, it was important. The primary reason why participants ignored, or attempted to ignore, racism was that it made their own life easier by reducing the negative impact of racism on them. Ignoring racism functioned as a technique to reduce the stress of experiencing racism. Such approaches can reduce the negative impact of racism by giving it less attention and space in the personal as well as public sphere, at least in relation to racism that is primarily meant to provoke a reaction. Ignoring is an individual and informal way of coping by “escaping confrontation” in situ or by “creating emotional distance” retrospectively after a negative incident has occurred (Orupabo 2022, 61). It has important cultural and societal implications and is a form of resistance, but in contrast to the other types of reactions we describe, it is a relatively self-oriented response and also the least outspoken and confrontational.

Confronting racism

The most common way of reacting to racism in the data was talking back or confronting those who were hostile or racist. Confronting often involved “speaking out” when something unfair was happening (Fleming, Lamont, and Welburn 2012, 405). These confrontations took different forms, from dialogue to humourous exchange, to aggressively telling people off, which sometimes escalated into physical fights. Milgo’s (19) way of confronting racism was mild and friendly. She emphasized that:

In situations that are not very fierce, I feel that I can have a factual discussion and inform them in a proper way. I feel that’s the best way to do it, show them that “what you are thinking is wrong, but you don’t know it yet.” Then I can prove that I’m right. But of course, sometimes it gets a little heated.

This friendly tone has previously been described in cases of anti-Muslim hostility as “entering dialogue” with those who express hostility (Ellefsen and Sandberg 2021). This soft response was present when the racism was less severe and in situations where participants felt superior to and were able to portray the alleged racists as lacking knowledge. Caroline (29) told a person not to use the word mulatto, “she replied: ‘ok, thanks for letting me know, I didn’t know.’ The atmosphere was awkward the rest of that day, but she didn’t know better, so then I let it go.” Bisharo (21) explained the rationale of such responses to racism:

If you deal with it with anger and aggression, nothing good comes out of it. But if you go in there, with a straight face, I have the facts, this is how it is, you cannot do these things, then you get heard. It’s better than going in there angry saying “fuck you, fucking racist.” That doesn’t help. You might get some aggression out, but it’s not productive.

The feeling of superiority sometimes transferred into humour and sarcasm as a way of talking back or confronting racism. Nilo (20) talked about how her well-off high school classmates thought of her as being a “trap star” (drug dealer) and less ambitious because of her skin colour and background from a city area perceived to be less well-off:

They’re thinking, you will get poor grades, you’re not serious. Then, when they saw that I was getting better grades than them, they asked me “what’s your father’s job?” “He’s a taxi driver.” And when I sat there in the physics class, they asked me “are you gonna be a taxi driver too” and then I just replied, “yes, I need physics to become a taxi driver.” [laughs].

Humour can have multiple functions when members of minoritized groups interact with majority group members (Dobai and Hopkins 2020). It can, for example, be used as a diversion technique (Taub, McLorg, and Fanflik 2004) or to make a potentially confrontational situation less serious (Goffman 1974). Liban (26) often tried to reply to racism in a humorous way:

People have a lot of prejudices: “you’re not like them, you’re Norwegian,” they say. Then I tell them: “he he, no shit” [laughs]. I’ve heard it so many times that it’s insane. […] I always reply in a funny way when they say that: “no, I’m not like everyone else, I’m special,” “my momma tells me I’m special.”

Humour can be used as a “shield” (Rappoport 2005) that can help ease the interaction between minority and majority group members (Dobai and Hopkins 2020). Humour can also be a form of “soft resistance” to hegemonic representations and discourses (Laursen 2017), similar to other ways of confronting, and it can combat prejudice by correcting stereotypes.

Sometimes participants were less interested in maintaining a good atmosphere by being friendly and engaging in polite dialogue and instead emphasized the seriousness of the racist incidents and the need for more decisive responses. Haben (25) described an episode where she confronted an acquaintance:

It started with them asking what was for dinner, and I said “fish balls in white sauce,” and she said “can you make that?” And I said “what?” and she said “can you make white sauce? I thought you preferred brown sauce.” Okay, I let that one go, but then she continued: “did you understand what I meant by brown sauce, why didn’t you laugh?” I just said, “it wasn’t funny.”

The acquaintance continued to say that Haben was lucky because she was relatively white and that she thought Black people were ugly and was scared of them. She was perplexed but responded: “This is not ok! I don’t know why you are telling me this. I’m not interested in your opinion about this, and don’t you understand that what you’re saying now is … it’s not nice?” Haben was conflicted and had a hard time believing what she heard. Compared to some of the other episodes she described, the severity of the racism made her feel that a decisive response was necessary. After initially trying to ignore the hostility, she confronted it. Sometimes confronting was easier when it was done as a group. As Heidi (19) said:

If we were with other classmates and then met other schools, then we used to be a bit though, a little cheeky, if someone were a little racist we would gang up on them. You become a little stronger when many join together. Then you’re more comfortable with speaking up.

Kayla (23) similarly described defending herself against racism when she was with friends, but said, “If I am alone I put my head down and move on, because I want to survive.”

Sometimes episodes where participants were not alone could escalate into physical confrontations. Like the late night when Milgo (19) was with friends at McDonald’s and met an offensive drunk man who called her “fucking blackie.” She ended up hitting him over the head with a plastic bottle and the fight escalated, involving their friends. Aron (18) similarly described an episode where he had ended up in a fight with someone over a racist joke. Ekow (30) described how he used to confront alleged racists:

I used to fight a lot. My sister used to tell me, so I could go and beat their face. [laughs]. As a kid, you can basically get away with anything, [laughs] you march into the classroom, you know, me and my guys we would come to the school: “where are they,” looking for the people. Like some rebels coming, you know.

The laughter evident in these stories was of a different kind than that discussed earlier. This laughter was an expression of superiority (Gruner 2000). Such episodes were much less common in our data than the friendly joking and aggressive verbal responses, but they were still part of what emerged in interviews.

In confrontations that escalated or where anger was an important driver, there was a risk that reactions would become too intense or aggressive and thus reproduce racial stereotypes instead of contributing to their dissolution. Participants still saw the confrontation, in whatever form, as the most appropriate response to racism. This might have made it easier for them to give examples of confrontation than other responses to racism. What we describe as confronting racism includes various responses and covers everything from attempts to enter into dialogue or teach uninformed people about racism, to more aggressive verbal responses and physical confrontations. Confronting could be done individually or with others, but always happened in face-to-face situations. Like ignoring, confrontation was a response that refused victimization. The reaction was both self- and other-oriented in the sense that the offended person confronted racism to preserve their self-respect (not accepting the offense), but also to educate, reprimand or punish people who expressed racism.

Sharing experiences of racism

Another way of reacting to, or resisting, racism was to share the negative experiences with others, primarily with minoritized friends or peers that could relate to the racism. In such conversations, sharing and listening to others helped generate new knowledge for coping with life (Grier-Reed, Madyun, and Buckley 2008) and managing identities (Goffman 1974). Some participants also emphasized the importance of sharing experiences of racism with members of the White majority population to educate them about racial discrimination. While sharing episodes of hostility with other racially minoritized people was helpful, participants had mixed feelings about having these conversations with majority group members.

Kris (18) said that “I feel that, if you’re in the same boat, it’s easier to relate.” Sophie (24) similarly emphasized the importance of having friends with a similar background with which she could share and discuss experiences of racism:

I grew up in an environment that was very white, and I have a lot of White friends. I love them a lot [laughs], so it’s not that, but they don’t have that experience. So for me it has been important to seek out milieus where people care about antiracism and where it concerns them personally. To have self-confidence and seeing that this is ok to say, think, feel. It’s mainly people who have experienced the same that can relate.

A supportive peer group usually included members of other racially minoritized groups. Semira (27) said it was “nice to have someone that understands a bit more, where you’re coming from” and added:

I have a colleague at work that is Pakistani that I can talk to. Even though he’s not Black, he’s minority. I feel it’s good, and there isn’t anyone else who understands this in the same way there, and they won’t either.

Hawa (24) combined ignoring and sharing her experience as forms of resisting racism:

If it’s only small comments, then I let it go. But if it is something that makes an impression then I talk to friends and family about it — so that I get to express myself. You can’t just carry it with you because no matter how much you believe in yourself, you will get influenced by these things. So it’s good to talk about it and share experiences with people who might have tips on how to handle it the next time.

Hawa raised two important purposes of sharing experiences. The first is to vent and devaluate the experiences to make them easier to cope with. The other involves hearing out and thus learning from others about how to handle similar episodes in the future. Sharing thus also provides a shared opportunity to increase ones “repertoire of everyday resistance” (Johansson and Vinthagen 2016) to better tackle racism.

Kayla (23) explained that everyday racism in Norway involved widespread expressions about ethnicity that she often experienced as “sneak attacks”: “These are things I can discuss with my friends. We discuss: was that OK, what do we think about that?” Milgo (19) emphasized that humour was often part of her response:

Most of the time it happens in a funny way. So I don’t say “oh my god, it happened to me, I’m sorry.” I say “hey guys, this happened to me” [laughs] and then I tell it and its more funny than sad. I think I do it just for humorous purposes.

This could sometimes expand into satire (Fleetwood 2019). As when those with discriminatory sentiments were described by exaggerating certain derogatory and stereotypical traits. Humour sometimes went from being a “shield” to what Rappoport (2005) describes as a “sword.” In these cases, instead of easing interaction and releasing tensions between groups, humour escalated tension and conflict (Billig 2001; Dobai and Hopkins 2020).

The main arena for sharing experiences of racism was among friends and other racially minoritized people. Sometimes, however, participants also emphasized the importance of sharing their experiences with members of the White majority. Charifa (31) stated that she could get comfort and support from others who had experienced racism, but that “it’s more important for me that those who haven’t experienced racism get to hear about it.” Milgo (19) agreed:

I think it is even more important to share with people that haven’t experienced racism. […] It’s important to talk about these things. Someone who hasn’t experienced it, I think it’s good for them to hear that this happens, I feel that can make a change.

Such statements must be seen in relation to the sample criteria of participants in our study. Sharing stories of racism on social media escalated with BLM and was pivotal for mobilization dynamics (Yang 2016). This has even been presented as a prerequisite for a broad mobilization against racism (Ellefsen and Sandberg 2022). This context might have facilitated the emphasis participants placed on the importance of sharing. In a context of social mobilization, sharing expanded from being self-oriented (easing coping and increasing the individual’s repertoire of resistance to racism) to include increased awareness of and mobilization against racism in both racially minoritized and White majority groups.

Participants who shared their experiences with other racially minoritized people described that it generated social support and positive outcomes. Talking about racism with majority group members, however, sometimes resulted in increased tensions, came at a greater personal cost, and also had more ambiguous results. Caroline (29) said she often was mistaken for a “Nigerian prostitute” and described sharing that experience with a White friend:

When someone tried to buy me my best friend told me “don’t worry about it.” But if it had been someone with a more similar background, maybe they would have understood and seen that it was something we had to talk about right away.

Sharing experiences of racism with out-groups can be challenging, but overall this form of resistance to racism was viewed positively by participants. Sharing experiences of racism is a retrospective and primarily narrative form of resistance. In a different context, Fleetwood (2019, 1719) describes it as “a way to reframe or reinterpret experience” but also to “enact a different story next time.” Sharing generated social support for participants, helped them cope with negative experiences and opened an opportunity for learning about better or new ways of resisting racism in the future. Some participants also emphasized the importance of sharing these experiences more broadly to educate and mobilize against racism.

Reporting and protesting racism

A less frequent way of resisting racism was to report incidents to authorities, such as an employer, teacher, police or others in a position of authority. Reporting racism is often the modus operandi of public agents in antiracism initiatives and the preferred strategy of government, local municipalities and other authorities (Gellman 1991). The main rationale behind this strategy is that reporting makes racism visible in official statistics and that sanctions will prevent further incidents. However, in this study, participants rarely reported racism to authorities. It came at too great personal cost and seldom had positive outcomes.

Aron (18) had a friend who filed a complaint to the police about a hate crime after he was beaten up unprovoked. Except for this incident, most examples of reporting in the interviews concerned offensive language that was reported to authority figures like teachers and employers or supervisors at work. The word “neger” (negro) was at the core of many of these incidents.¹ In a few cases, reporting racism triggered a positive outcome. Emil (26) said, “someone called me negro. I told my mom, she told the headmaster, he talked to the guy and he came and said he was sorry. It never happened again.” More often, however, the reporting led nowhere. Kris (18) explained what happened at a football match:

He came over and said, “if you don’t give me the ball, I’ll break your legs and send you back to your home country.” And then he told my friend something similar. After the match we talked to the referee and he said that he was gonna “do something about it, that’s not how it’s supposed to be in sports” and all that stuff. Nothing much happened though, really. Nothing.

Sidra (23) also lost faith in reporting her negative experiences: “there’s a lot of incidents, mainly during junior high school, but at that time I had already stopped telling teachers that I received a lot of negative comments.”

Sometimes reporting racism triggered consequences that went contrary to what was intended. Charifa (29) described how her fellow employees at a nursing home where she worked were saying that “all foreigners this and that” and when she talked back, one of them said, “if you don’t like what I have to say you can go back to where you came from.” Charifa decided to tell the team leader:

The first things she said was “well, what would you like me to do about it then?” Then after a lot of back and forth she said, “let’s have a meeting to talk about this.” […] The meeting ended in “everyone needs to be nice to each other” and “we all agree that these things don’t belong in this working environment,” “we cannot say nasty things to each other,” bla bla, bla. But then what happens next is that this boss systematically stopped giving me more work.

Reporting is the only formal route of resisting racism discussed in this study, and it was rare. As Norway and the Nordics stand out globally for its high level of trust in authorities and public institutions (Andreasson 2017) one could maybe have anticipated reporting to be more widespread. Reporting also had highly unpredictable outcomes and frequently involved personal risk or cost. Most often participants described reporting as having little or negative consequences and it sometimes backfired as is evident in Charifa’s case. This resembles findings of other studies; instead of treating the reported problem as a testimony that should be taken seriously, the complainer is depicted as the problem. Dismissing racism in this way can even be a way of enacting racism (Ahmed 2021).

Negative experiences with reporting also played a part in motivating protest participation for some participants. Protesting is the most clear-cut form of resistance that we analyse in this paper. It was usually motivated by personal experiences of racism and knowledge about racism more generally. Serawa (26) explained her way from reporting to protesting:

I remember clearly. There was a boy in my class that bullied me a lot. He called me “brown poo, negro and you’re so Black,” all that stuff. I told the teacher and she gave me a really stupid answer. She told me, “but you are a negro.” After that I thought that there is no point in telling the teacher if this is what she thinks. So, that’s why I went to the [BLM] demonstration, to support my people.

Sidra (23) had a similar experience: “When I have talked to my parents about how the school dealt with the cases of bullying I experienced, my mom and dad often say, ‘they didn’t know any better.’ But, for how long is it going to continue?” The lack of change and results from reporting motivated both Sidra and Serawa to engage with BLM.

Experiences of racism and lacking sanctions from authority figures stirred participants to protest. Sophie (24) explained that “it’s personal, but also political, and it can be difficult to distinguish sometimes.” Ekow (30) relatedly described that “the main reason I went there [BLM protest], first of all, is that I am Black, I have experienced racism.” Then he added, “we also had to do our part, everybody was doing their part.” Esi (20) summarized the experiences of many participants:

There is a limit to what you can take. It gets tiring after a while when you personally have gone through this. Even if you try to brush it off, it influences how you think and what you do. But for me, I didn’t mainly think about myself when I went to the demonstration. I was sad, frustrated, I thought about all the people I know, all the deaths and everything that has happened. And then I thought about the future. I will probably have children – and they should not have to go through this.

Social protest was motivated by experienced racism, lack of faith in reporting and scepticism about public authorities’ commitment to antiracism. Reporting and protesting are thus tightly connected forms of resistance, and both are also retrospective and proactive. They aim to create wider societal change, but also to secure the self-respect and pride of victims of racism. While reporting usually involved disappointment, protesting was seen as important for countering racism publicly and collectively. Political mobilization was particularly important in this study since interviewees had participated in BLM demonstrations, and our research was conducted in the wake of these protests.

Concluding discussion

Describing responses to racism as resistance highlights how they were active responses to racism as opposed to withdrawal and passive adaptation. Analysing them as such shows the agency of groups that are often presented as powerless and solely as victims of prejudice, discrimination and hostility, both in research and public debate. Ignoring, confronting, sharing negative experiences, reporting and protesting were sometimes employed interchangeably and these forms of resistance could overlap. Humour for example, was frequently used across most types of responses, but in different ways, with different outcomes and functions. Some of the quotes presented in the analysis could possibly have been placed in several categories, depending upon interpretation. We would still argue that the five different categories we have described differ analytically in their core characteristics, function and potential outcomes (see Table 2). Moreover, they all made it easier for racially minoritized Norwegians to cope with everyday racism and refuse victimization. Some were also a call to action and provided support and instilled pride.

The outcomes of resistance to racism differ based on the form of resistance in question, but also across time, place, actors and groups. An effort to resist or oppose racism could even trigger a backlash that impeded its positive impact. A similar risk of backlash is documented in public antiracist efforts, which paradoxically increased tension between minority and majority groups (Elias, Mansouri, and Paradies 2021b). The resistance against racism in the everyday that we have identified may be met with considerable counter-opposition, which may again “play a powerful role in co-opting people into silence” and triggering a shift in their responses towards passivity and adaptation (Mitchell, Every, and Ranzijn 2011, 331). The outcome of all these forms of resistance is therefore uncertain, and one should be careful with romanticizing certain groups of people as “resistant subjects” (Ohnmacht and Yildiz 2021, 164).

We are still confident that employing the five forms of resisting racism we have identified is beneficial for members of racially minoritized groups, mainly by facilitating social support, collective solidarity, empowerment and the maintenance of self-worth, and a defence against the negative impact of stigma (Averill 1973). The positive outcomes are also interconnected. Opposing racial prejudice, for example, contributes to reclaimed dignity, which may lead to increased confidence and inspire collective action that may trigger socio-structural change (Hyers 2007). This change may, in turn, influence the micro interaction of racist encounters and the way victims respond. Responses to racism are “debated, learnt and performed in secure in-group settings” (de Jong and Duyvendak 2021, 16; Lamont et al. 2016). Engagement with a greater collective influences people’s perceptions of and reactions to injustice (Whittier 1995). Thus, what may appear as an individual’s resistance or coping strategy is in fact both collective and cultural. The momentum of the BLM movement, for example, influenced how racially minoritized people responded to racial prejudice, most profoundly shifting responses to racism from ignoring to confrontation (Ellefsen and Sandberg 2022). These efforts to resist racism are not unique to the Norwegian context but resemble widespread responses seen across countries and studies (e.g. Fleming, Lamont, and Welburn 2012; Piwoni 2022).

The bottom-up resistance from “ordinary” people has been under-attended in the scholarly literature on antiracism (Aquino 2020). Rather than treating racism as a fixed “objective reality”, our study has examined the distinct types of reactions – verbal, physical and interpretive – that racially minoritized people use to “establish or dispute” racism (Marvasti 2006, 542). Societal conditions certainly structure micro-level expressions of racial prejudice (Essed 1991), but by attending to the everyday in which people experience racism, we can also capture how members of racially minoritized groups negotiate, manage and resist racism. The forms of everyday resistance to racism we identified stand out and are tightly related to civil society and social movements, as it provides support for those targeted by racism and opposes outright racism as well as racial micro aggressions. This everyday antiracism “from below” (Aquino 2016, 2020) works independently of state efforts and is, at least in our view, both more important and potent.

Acknowledgment

We are grateful for the assistance of Maja Vestad in this study, particularly with transcribing interviews and recruiting participants. The study was part of the Radicalization and Resistance research project (https://bit.ly/radicalization-resistance). The study has been assessed and approved by the Norwegian Center for Research Data. Its guidelines for obtaining informed consent and for protecting participants’ privacy were followed, and the names we use for participants are pseudonyms.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Norwegian Research Council [grant number 259541].

Notes

1 “Negro” has a different history in Norway than in the US, but has increasingly been used, and seen as, derogatory and is an unacceptable term in contemporary Norway.