"Amerikanism eller pöbeldåd"? : Amerikansk lynchningspraktik i den svenskamerikanska pressen 1900–1922

Sammanfattning: This thesis investigates the notion, perception and mediation of whiteness in the Swedish-American immigrant newspapers coverage of lynchings of African-Americans between 1900–1922 and how the editors, of both the larger bourgeois and the smaller socialist and communist press, deployed it in the construction of the racial Swedish-American identity to mirror the contemporary American racial hierarchy.  A main departure point is that the Swedish-American identity, in part, was constructed in relation to other racialized groups in America but also to already existing groups in the American society such as the Anglo-Saxons, as the hegemon of what constituted whiteness, but also the descendants of African slaves as the polar opposite.  A crucial claim is that the Swedish-American immigrant group were socialized into the racial hierarchy of the contemporary American society by the Swedish-American newspapers. This was possible due to the Swedish-American bourgeois press normalized the victimization of the African-American community in regards to the practice of lynchings, both by how they reported on lynching cases but also by the very placement of news articles.  This study has shown that, with the exception of the communist press, the Swedish-American press participated in the practice of lynchings by reproducing and mediating different aspects of African-Americans Otherness and blackness to their readers by creating a color line between white and non-white Americans.