Ucchedavāda;230547682 said:
What does it actually mean to "embrace the culture"? Practically speaking, how do you determine if somebody has embraced Danish culture?
I don't think you can. It's much easier to point out when someone has not, but that's really unfair to immigrants that just even one mistake in a frankly bizarre culture from an outside perspective means you are now "the other".
Because Danish culture is weird... I mean the basics of speaking the language, respecting traditions, and respecting the laws should be easy enough to keep if you're willing to learn. Even if Danish as a language can have challenges, especially in pronunciation. Like it was made to be full of shibboleths and words that are not pronounced at all what they look like.
But even if you got all that perfectly, there are so many little things that are impossible to know until you violated it and thus exposed yourself as "the other". The infamous Jantelov being the obvious one to trip over, because it makes no sense, yet everyone does it. In short it means
"Don't think you're people. You're not. You're not special, you're just another part of the whole. You're not better than anyone." Yeah... Good luck with that one if you're immigrating to Denmark from a culture where being proud of your accomplishments is seen as a virtue. If you're good at something that others are not, then fuck you. You're special and we hate you. Do note that this is not a racial hate as such... we hate everyone who thinks they're special.
You can probably see how that is trouble when someone immigrates with a different culture and actually is special and sticks out from the herd. And if they dare to be proud of that, then that's that for a good first impression. With both parties hating the other for reasons that seem obvious to themselves, but utterly alien to the other. Because Danes can be really, really weird like that.
Denmark is such a paradoxical society sometimes. I'm not making any excuses for this proclamation, I find it as disturbing as anyone else here. But, I do understand it, and that bothers me. This whole "What does it mean to be Danish?" debate is just... yeah. In theory, it would actually be nice to have that put into words, but the people who asking the question should not be the ones running this. Besides, if being Danish gets defined as being special, we're going to have to hate ourselves, too. Maybe we already do.