Thank you for your support in 2012, The Migrant Tales team
Month: December 2012
Promoting tolerance now and tomorrow
In Migrant Tales’ Finland & Cultural Diversity 2012 review, it’s clear that a lot more work needs to be done to promote tolerance. Thanks to Umayya Abu-Hanna’s column on Sunday’s Helsingin Sanomat,* our collective complacency was once again shamefully revealed. Racism, or the lack of acceptance of other ethnic groups as equals in our society,…
My naïvity and the Finns
When I moved to Finland in December 1978, I wasn’t naïve about Finland, but super naïve. I was so confiding that I actually believed all Finns were honest. If happiness were a spider, it would spin a web to catch our good thoughts. Apart from a strong admiration for the forests and people who inhabited…
Finland & Cultural Diversity 2012*
If 2011 was a watershed year for Finland with the historic rise of a hostile party against immigrants and visible minorities in last year’s parliamentary elections, 2012 will be seen as a bittersweet turning point for the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The year will be remembered as a very violent one for immigrants as well. During “Black…
2012 was another disappointing year for cultural diversity in Finland
Without a doubt, 2012 will be remembered as another bad year for cultural diversity in Finland. Finding the usual culprits isn’t difficult: ignorance and intolerance. It is surprising that a party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS), which grew from relative obscurity to become the third-largest political force in parliament in 2011, can wake up the worst…
The oddly unspoken topic of racism
“Racism is a refuge for the ignorant. It seeks to divide and to destroy. It is the enemy of freedom, and deserves to be met head-on and stamped out.” Pierre Berton (1920-2004) Many visitors have come and gone on Migrant Tales. Those that jump the MT ship the soonest are those who choose to justify a…
Finland and cultural diversity in 2012 will be published on December 28
Migrant Tales will publish on December 28 its review of the major events that shaped 2012 on the cultural diversity and immigration front in Finland. Contrary to 2011, this year’s review will be called Finland and cultural diversity in 2012. Finns colonized Argentina in 1906. Some, like Eelis Heikkilä, made a meager living by picking…
The same face of intolerance lives amongst us today
When I was growing up in the 1970s, one of the matters that followed me around was the constant news of the mass murder and cemetery silence imposed by ruthless Latin American dictatorships. If you lived in one of those countries where human rights violations were the rule, you were confronted by two options: take…
Migrant Tales (July 8, 2012): The absurdity of the reverse-racism argument in Finland
Every now and then you’ll hear a visitor on Migrant Tales claim: What about [reverse] racism against [white] Finns!? Racism is a complex problem but one matter singles it out: It is an effective tool to socially exclude, control and exploit other groups in society from vital resources such as jobs and economic wealth. The…
Police college of Finland: are they perpetuating hate?
What an irony. You would think that the publishing of hate crime statistics would be an annual opportunity to raise the profile of hate crime and also to renew efforts to prevent it. But no, the forums are alive with spurious interpretations of what it all means and even attempts to show that Somalis are…