As we hold our collective breaths and await to know the identity of the bombings in Boston Monday, too many don’t see a suspect but a whole ethnicity or religious group. Tim Wise put it very well in an opinion piece where he makes some distributing revelations about the power of whiteness. If we understand…
Month: April 2013
The Boston bombings reveal a deadlier blowback
I was shocked to hear about the twin bombs in Boston and my heart goes to the victims. Two days after the incident, however, speculation has been rife about the probable ethnicity of the perpetrator. The eerie silence of the killer suggests that this was probably carried out individually. The latest story on the…
European Network Against Racism statement: Europe is losing out by failing to recognise the talents of migrants and ethnic minorities
March 9, 2013: Migrants and ethnic minorities contribute hugely to Europe’s economic, social, political and cultural life. But failing to recognise and value this contribution –or worse, setting barriers to migrants’ participation in society– results in a waste of these many talents. This has a damaging impact on Europe’s resilience to the economic crisis, its creativity,…
How can immigrants and visible minorities clear the minefields of misinformation?
There is an interesting news story on today’s YLE that raises a timely question: Not why there is so much misinformation spead about immigrants, but what does this reveal about us as a society? Does it bring to light ignorance or a subtle conspiracy that permits us to have and eat our racist cake simultaneously?…
Julian Abagond: The term “illegal immigrant”
By Julian Abagond The term “illegal immigrant” (1930s- ) means an undocumented immigrant, one without papers to stay in the country. The older term was ”illegal alien”, common in English in the 1970s and 1980s, rare in American news stories since 2003. An illegal immigrant can mean someone who: crossed the border illegally, overstayed a student or…
Migrant Tales administrator area access disabled temporarily due to widespread brute force attacks
I noticed this message late-morning Sunday when I attempted to access Migrant Tales from another computer. Let’s hope that this matter is resolved soon and that this is a general problem. Roughly a year ago we were deactivated for 13 hours and received hostile emails. Those who speak out for freedom of speech, or the…
Alppilan koulun tapaus: Tämänkin perussuomalainen katsomus pilasi
Susannah Suomessa käydään nyt Alppilan koulun tapauksen takia suurta keskustelua koulujen työrauhasta ja opettajien kannoista omasta työstään. Suurta adressia lähti vetämään perussuomalainen Sami Rautavuori Vantaalta. http://www.adressit.com/pelastakaa_opettaja_antti_korhonen Tänään la 13.4. kuitenkin, adressin facebookryhmässä, https://www.facebook.com/koulukurikuntoon käytiin asiatonta, törkeää keskustelua keskustelua Alppilan “pojan”, siis oppilaan perheen VAHVISTAMATTOMISTA taustoista, ja sillä alettiin tehdä perussuomalaista politiikkaa. Päivityksen oli julkaissut ryhmän…
Margaret Thatcher’s New Right and Finland’s Perussuomalaiset party
As Perussuomalaiset (PS) leader Timo Soini promises that his party will become the biggest party in next year’s European parliamentary elections, which would give him a spring-board to score a similar election victory as in 2011, it’s still too early for the party to reveal how it would deal with its usual enemies like the…
Institute of Race Relations: ‘May we bring harmony’? Thatcher’s legacy on ‘race’
Comment: Finland lags behind most European countries when it comes to immigration, ethnic relations and populism. One cannot avoid some of the parallels with Margaret Thatcher’s Britain of the 1980s and Finland today. One reason why her New Right policies still exist after a quarter a century since she was forced from office, is because…
Scot Nakagawa: The Other Side of Anti-Black Racism
Give me a place to stand on and I will move the earth Archimedes By Scot Nakagawa I’ve argued in the past that the fulcrum of white supremacy is anti-black racism. A fulcrum, you probably already know, is what one rests a lever on to give it, well, leverage. Without it, a lever is just…