I hope you spent the morning warming up your What The Everloving Hell reaction muscles, because this will require you to use all of them. It's the Swedish minister of culture cutting up a taxpayer-funded cake baked to look like a racist caricature of a black woman at the opening of an exhibit about the horrors of female circumcision, and a crowd of people laughing while she feeds a piece of it (red velvet, natch) to the actor in blackface someone hired to poke their head out from a hole in the table so that it looks like the cake is alive and crying. Ok, folks — we're declaring moratorium on smug talk about how much better everything is in Sweden.
The cake's actually a piece of performance art by Makode Aj Linde, who plays the yelling head and says that the cake's meant to be provocative social commentary on the issue of female circumcision in Africa as it's viewed by the West. And Swedish Minister of Culture Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth says she was asked to cut the cake as part of her official appearance at the event, which she describes as a "bizarre situation." According to Aj Linde's Facebook page, Liljeroth was asked to whisper "Your life will be better after this!" before cutting into the crotch.
If this performance art were an Ikea bedroom set, it would be the Whatderfük collection.
Many Swedes are incredibly uncomfortable with photos from the event, where it appears that Liljeroth is not troubled at all by her role in the performance art, smiling, laughing, and drinking. And the crowd pictured laughing all around her sure looks like it's full of assholes, too. Kitimbwa Sabuni, spokesperson for the National Afro-Swedish Association, called the event a "racist display" making light of racism in Sweden and highlighting problems rather than solving them. No shit.
Sabuni has called for Liljeroth to resign from her post for being a clueless jagoff, but Liljeroth hasn't apologized.
Not only is this embarrassing for the country of Sweden, it's truly a dark day for Team Cake.
Minister in racist circumcision outrage [The Local]