CASE STUDIES
Blue and Yellow Heroes
How does it feel when you’re in your national colours one day, standing on the podium, receiving your medal and basking in the applause, and on the very next day, in the streets of your own country, you walk into a sports store and feel like a suspect from the minute you step in? And how does that feeling of prejudice – due perhaps to your skin colour or a slight foreign accent when you speak Swedish – affect the way you feel when called on to wear the national colours? That is the question that SVT Sport set out to explore in a 2021 documentary series Blue and Yellow Heroes, hosted by SVT commentator and former Swedish athlete Alhaji Jeng. The series aimed to spark national debate about the societal inclusion of Swedes with a foreign background.