WSJ.com - Not a Swedish Joke
If you find yourself in Malmo, Sweden, and happen to see a homosexual, an imam and a gypsy walk into a bar, it's not a joke. These are just some of the people who can be borrowed -- yes, borrowed -- from the local library for a 45-minute chat in a nearby pub as part of an effort to fight discrimination.
Ullah Brohed pioneered the "Living Library" project earlier this month. "You sometimes hear people's prejudices and you realize that they are just uninformed," she says. And since a library exists to educate, she decided to give Swedish bigots the opportunity to come face to face with the prejudice of their choice. The Malmo library also offers a Danish man (since some Swedes and Danes don't get along too well) and, to our great embarrassment, even a journalist. "Maybe not all journalists are know-it-all and sensationalist," Ms. Brohed says.
Inspired by this example, a library in the Dutch city of Almelo plans to start its own human lending program next month. "The customers can rent a veiled Muslim woman and finally ask her all the questions they would never dare to ask if they met her on the street," says the director, Jan Krol.
An American student stops by: "So okay, I'm doin' a thesis on mass murderer's so I'll take one Iranian, gimme a couple them Iraqi's, some African dictatator's or better yet one of the UN guys who watched the massacres as they raped little boys, maybe a real German if ya got a fresh one, is it true that during high-tide the Dutch libraries let you stick your finger in a dyke, and oh yeah before I forget, throw in a fairy because they know the best places to grab a decent lunch. Take Visa?"
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