The nation of Denmark has been making the news lately because of Donald Trump and Greenland. The island nation belongs to the Danish, and the re-elected President wants to buy it or take it over. But, that’s not the only thing Denmark is aware of when it comes to the United States. This year marks key anniversaries in the U.S. civil rights movement. How Denmark views this history can give a window into how Europe sees the United States.
So I’m here in Odense, Denmark’s third-largest city, to discover what some of my peers think about this issue. If you want a picture of how Danes and other Europeans view the US, you could do worse than a five-student focus group at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU).
All students are either undergrad or graduate students in SDU’s American Studies department. Four students in this group are Danish, and one is Italian—Elena Berardi, age 26. She’s finishing her master’s degree. And to hear her, you’d think the initial European impression of the U.S. is a positive one.
“My maternal grandparents were from the southern part of Italy,” she says. “My grandfather was liberated by the Americans during the Second World War, so he always said, ‘Okay, those Americans, they were very great to us and they helped us.’
“I also think Italians have the American Dream. We also have a lot of icons and figures in the Italian-American community.”
Matthias Vingaard, age 25, is also working on his master’s degree. His interest in American political history is based on how it has impacted Europe’s.
“I'm very interested in history, especially political history,” he says.
“The US Constitution is the longest constitution that still exists to this day, and the (American) Revolution inspired the European revolutions later on, so the US has from the beginning been very influential for European countries as well.”
Meanwhile, undergrad Sebastian Allensen, age 21, studies the US with a global focus.
“We've always talked about politics in my family home, so I've grown up with that. And we've always talked about American politics, because that’s also very important to how the Danes perceived themselves, I think.
“But mainly I'm interested in the role of capitalism in the United States, and also how American foreign policy has had consequences for people around the world.”
It’s when you get into the topic of civil rights in the US that things get dicey.
Graduate student Benjamin Lundgaard, age 26, brings up the concept of the ‘American dilemma.’ “The idea that America has, that everyone is equal, right? Written into the Declaration of Independence,” he says.
“(Americans) claim that everyone is equal, but they don't treat people equally. And that, I think, is the way I’ve been educated about the Civil Rights Movement, in comparison to our movements (separate) from the US.”
This year, Alabama is observing the sixtieth anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the attack on Black voting rights marchers on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge. But it’s not the only anniversary being observed this year.
When the students are asked what comes to mind when they think of the US and civil rights, there’s one figure they repeatedly mention: Rosa Parks, and how she began the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Parks is not only a regular topic of conversation among students, but among their professors too. Dr. Jørn Brøndal is an author, historian, and professor of American Studies at SDU with a long interest in Black history.
He’s even written a textbook on the subject, that covers the story of Black America from Colonial times to the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020.
“When (Parks) died a couple of years ago, there was massive coverage in the Danish mass media,” Brøndal says.
“Danish youth know about Rosa Parks. Know about Martin Luther King. They probably haven’t heard about Fred Shuttlesworth. They probably haven't heard about Bob Moses, and maybe some have heard about John Lewis.”
While Bloody Sunday may not make much of an impression on the focus group, Brøndal says the impact the incident had on the United States was clear to see even from Denmark.
“When Bloody Sunday came around in the United States, as far as I recall, the ABC Network shifted from a documentary about the Nuremberg process against the Nazis, and switched to what was going on at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
“And I think that that kind of shock that you saw in parts of the United States that was probably replicated in many European countries.”
What Brøndal describes in his textbook and his students call the ‘American dilemma’ is as old as America itself. That the United States was founded on a revolutionary promise of equality, but the ‘land of the free and home of the brave’ has often failed to deliver that promise to all of its citizens.
Brøndal recites the opening lines to the Declaration of Independence.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights..."
“That is what sort of interested me, and also the fact that the person who at least was the main author of the Declaration of Independence was Thomas Jefferson, was an enslaver.”
When it comes to Black Americans themselves, Danes tend to hold stereotypes that don’t always line up with reality. The story of Black America is a complex one, marked by tragedy and triumph, discrimination and acceptance, poverty and wealth. Brøndal says these accounts often occur at the same time.
“Many Danes also associate African Americans mostly with poverty. They don’t realize that there's a huge middle class, for instance, in Atlanta and in many other American cities.
“They don’t realize that, but simply associate African Americans with inner city violence and inner city poverty, and with maybe a little bit of Mississippi poverty.”
Back in the student focus group, it seems like undergrad Lukas Fausing, age 22, can’t help but feel what’s going on in the United States is reflected in how Denmark treats its own minorities.
“I think (it’s similar) as in the US, where minorities might feel like second class citizens in some way,” he says.
“In Denmark, I think back to how it’s been covered that when refugees or immigrants with a foreign-sounding name search for jobs and they write their résumé but their name is not something that sounds Danish, they get rejected.”
Vingaard agrees, saying how America’s Black Lives Matter movement focused on racially-based policing, a similar situation to what exists in Denmark.
“Some people have criticized the Danish police for going to the so-called ghettos more often than other places. So although the problem is not the same, or at least it's not that extreme, you still have the debate and something similar is happening.
“And you can find many people in Denmark who have an idea that the Danish police are racists and they are misusing their power to some extent. And then you also have some other people saying, ‘No, no, they don’t, that's not true.’”
As the world gets closer to December’s sixtieth anniversary of the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Rosa Parks may come up in conversation more and more in Denmark and Europe.
Based on my conversation with the students, she’s clearly a powerful figure in a mass movement that has impacted and inspired people all over the world to this day. But why? Berardi has a simple answer.
“I think it's because she was a woman, and I’m very proud to say that as a woman.
“She just switched seats on a bus. I think that was actually the very revolutionary move that she made.
“She did something that I think a lot of people wanted to do, but she had the guts to do it.”
