Dear Sweden, Can I come over? An intellectual exercise in asking for asylum

Ed. note: This is a guest post.

Sometimes I get tired of being a black woman in America. Countless times I’ve threatened to move somewhere else. I’ve even recently joked that maybe I’ll just move to Sweden and ask for asylum. 

This is an intellectual exercise (mostly). And I realize that many people risk their lives to seek asylum in this country and are routinely denied, fast-tracked back to horrible conditions after a completely unjust process. Our mass deportation of undocumented folks is hugely problematic. But that doesn’t erase the reality that Mike Brown’s mother and father testified to the United Nation to make a case for UN intervention on US state violence against black bodies.

One more note before I talk turkey: Sweden isn’t perfect — for example they aren’t always super kind to immigrants and they have a pretty dangerous problem with Islamophobia. But they like people from the US and they have social welfare and maternal leave and even places for black hair care. Also, I like it in Sweden. No one looks at me like I’m a criminal, every one assumes I have an education, and no one blames me for the destruction of my people. Further my kids would always have food clothing and shelter, access to healthcare and a free college tuition.

So here’s the case I may one day lay before Sweden’s Migration Ministers:

“Good morning Ministers,

My name is Adrienne Wallace and I’m asking you for asylum today. As you know, the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees defines a refugee as someone who is “unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.”

I fear returning to my country. I fear raising children in my country. I am afraid that if I return I will not be permitted to live. You see, dear ministers, every 28 hours a black person is killed by a police officer in my home country. Every 28 hours that pass, I’m lucky to be alive. I’m lucky if no one in my family is killed. That I’m here today proves I’m lucky — but that doesn’t mean I’m not afraid.

I have much to fear in the USA. Recently, police shot an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown. Perhaps you heard of his case and the resulting police repression against black people that was so violent the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination asked the US government to halt the excessive use of force against protestors.

Further, The United Nations CERD Vice chairman explained: “Racial and ethnic discrimination remains a serious and persistent problem in all areas of life [for black Americans] from de facto school segregation, access to health care and housing,”

Ministers, the situation gets even more frightening, Black women are nearly “four times more likely to die of pregnancy-related complications than white women. These rates and disparities have not improved in more than 20 years.” I fear that due to inadequate medical care I can’t safely deliver children.

In fact, as Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen explains: “African Americans in the United States are relatively poor compared to American whites, though much richer than people in the third world. It is, however, important to recognize that African Americans have an absolutely lower chance of reaching mature ages that do people of many third world societies.”

Black men in my home country are incarcerated at a higher rate than the black population of South Africa during apartheid. Criminalizing black bodies starts early. Black students represent 18 percent of the total preschool population and a whopping 48 percent of students suspended more than once from preschool. This is unfortunately only the very tip of the criminal [in]justice system in my country.

Ministers, I am not unaware of the reality that it probably appears quite strange for you to hear an asylum plea from a citizen of the wealthiest country in the world, a country in which many others seek citizenship. I am writing not just because of the relative deprivation I face as a black woman in my country, but because of the absolute deprivation I face. I fear for my life, I fear for the lives of my future children. I feel this fear acutely every time I hear a police siren or spot a police officer.

I beg you for the opportunity to live free from this fear of persecution and death because of my race.

Thank you Ministers, thank you.”

Or, you know, something like that. Just saying — it’s dangerous as hell for me, and some days I’m kind of over the fear. Sweden — you might see me soon.