Sameness instead of difference.
(Reykjavik Metropolitan Police – Iceland)
There is a growing common notion in European countries that multiculturalism has failed, that multicultural societies are problematic and creating some sort of “crisis”. This particular mind-set strengthen the image of Europeans being white and Christian and thus overlooks the diversity of Europeans. It also ignores the mobility of people throughout the centuries. This common notion has resulted in discrimination, inequality and hate crime throughout Europe. European history of colonialism, warfare, holocaust, racism and other actions of unjust and cruelty resulted in implementation of human right legislations and -agreements in the 20th century. In spite of these implementations hate crimes based on antisemitism, racism, islamophobia, homophobia and other prejudice and biases are increasing. The arising believe that Europe today is problematic because of its diversity will only result in more violent, hate and unjust. In my presentation I want to focus on sameness as a core of any diversity training for law enforcement, particularly because much of existing educational programs categorizes
people, where people are put “into boxes” with different labels of religion, race, ethnic origin and so on. Additionally, the concept of culture is being used to be descriptive and explanatory of people’s behaviour and actions to further differentiate people. Furthermore, it´s important that law enforcement as a whole
ensures that the culture within is tolerant as well as it mirrors the society as a whole. I suggest that instead of focusing on what makes people different from each other, for example by using labels and cultures, it´s the only way forward to emphasis sameness of people and for the police to truly embrace diversity within.
