What do you mean by "tons of things keeping people out?"
Like fees, administration, tests... (In Sweden if a student has good enough grades the school must admit them. I think admission is blind but I'm not sure)
Yes it is, but when you are given enough support (E.g free books, free meals, free other meal of the day if the school day is long enough, an house that is open from 7-7 to sit in and study, free bus rides around the town, a school that lets you use it's houses to have a party...) That can be negated.
It doesn't. At all. But is does make it so much better. What I mean is that when everyone's footing is more equal it doesn't negatively impact performance.
I'm thinking that it might help more that Sweden doesn't appear to have as much of a history of, ynno, systematic oppression and hate. That might help a bit. Aren't most minorities in Sweden recent immigrants? I remember you talking about some far-right immigrant hating going on over there.
We do. You know those schools where Americans put Indians? We had those for Sami people. We used to sterilize people. Like, nazi Germany thought we were cool. In fact Sweden has a history of immigration and discrimination. A long one. Remember the Vikings? In the 800s? They discovered America, and they raped and pillaged. That is not a figure of speech by the way. They would steal women and children from France and England and hold them as slaves. Trälar, Thralls. They lived in horrid conditions. In fact, I think that the opposite of what you say is true. A country WITH a history of immigration is better at dealing with it.
No, we had an institute for racial biology in the 1930, not everyone in Sweden could vote until in the 1960. It is quite recent. There is still systematic oppression of Roma people. I could go on. For fucks sake someone burned a mosque in my school town this Christmas and I have facebook friends who celebrated. And this is not recent. Sweden was VERY racist in the 1930's.
No, I do agree that racism was present, but the level of oppression in slavery and then segregation is something that didn't exist in Sweden. Almost every Western country had dabbling in eugenics when that fad went around, but (as far as I know) nowhere produced as much hate as America.
Well, no. I mean, Germany? That's Europe, not America.
Yes, but you can hardly say the US is more extreme than that.
Okay. I'm going to be mean now. Don't take it personally. You're being really annoying in a way Americans often are that I can't stand. You are taking the most dramatic moments of American history and calling that the rule, and when I bring up moments from European history you are calling it the exception. And no, it's really really not. Sweden played a part in the slave trade and owned colonies (kind of) in America before America became America. America is a REALLY young country. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_colonization_of_the_Americas
I don't think so, it just adds another chain of cements. guess it depends a lot on how and when and in what conversation it is though.