Author: Migrant Tales

What do Finland’s political parties think about refugees and immigrants?

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There were two interesting stories published this week about what political parties in Finland feel about refugees and immigrants. The findings are based on a questionnaire answered by candidates running for city council. Elections will be held on Sunday, October 28. 

YLE revealed that 31.5% of all PS candidates fully agreed that their municipality should not accept any refugees versus 4.6% who disagreed totally. That was followed by the Center Party (7.1%/11.9%), National Coalition Party (5.8%/15.9%) and Social Democrats (3.9%/27%).

The Greens were the most favorable to refugees. Only 0.3% totally agreed that their municipality should not accept any refugees while 60.7% totally agreed.

One of the questions asked by MTV3 was if the candidate thought that there were “too many immigrants” in their municipality.  Surprisingly, the PS thought there were just enough immigrants while other parties thought there were too many.

 

The question by MTV3 is pretty loaded since it’s extremely rare that anywhere, even in countries with few immigrants, people would state that there are too few  foreigners.

That is why the response by the PS is very revealing since it may show remorse by some candidates for the party’s tough anti-immigration stance.

Joseph: What being Finnish means to me (Part II)

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This is part II of Joseph’s blog entry, What being Finnish means to me.  Click here to see part I.

By Joseph*

…Later on I discovered rap music to deal with my feelings. There were just so many things wrong in this society that I saw all the Somalis and other foreigners not integrating well enough into Finnish society. They grew up in gangs and were rebelling against a society that had excluded them socially with racism and prejudice.

Something I connected with these people. Maybe it was because of the loneliness or simply due to the feeling of being an outsider that brought us together.

I started hanging around with Somalis at the age of fifteen and I was the only so-called ”white boy” of the group.  Even so, we did all kinds of crazy stuff young adolescents usually do. We connected despite the fact that we came from different cultural backgrounds. We were like brothers growing up in a hostile world.

My friendship with this group resulted in trouble and social workers wanted to take me away from my mom. My mother sent me to live with my dad in the United States,  where I ended up in a boarding school. I got bullied a lot at the new school and was called a Russian because I spoke English with a foreign accent.

Calling me a Russian and being a Finn was as bad as calling a woman a whore. Being a citizen of two nations and being rejected by both is very painful. Racism is a sickness that reveals a person’s fear about something he cannot understand or deal with.

When I came back to Finland and spoke English with an American accent, people no longer recognized me as a Finns. They constantly shouted at me and told me to go back to where I came from. Some even called me a Russian or Arab. In my opinion, the identity we carry is a personal matter that nobody else can place on you.

I get very angry and bitter at my Finnish side when I remember what happened to me as a child and young man. I once even wanted to erase my roots and renounce my Finnish citizenship and move to faraway country.

Despite these initial setbacks, I calmly accept that I am a Finn who is a citizen of this country and who can speak Finnish fluently.  I love my Finnish roots and find inner peace in them when I walk in the woods, whether I am  in Helsinki or sit by a lake enjoying a sauna. I can never forget going fishing at our cottage with my grandpa and all the good times I spent in Finland. I have learned a lot of wisdom from my grandma and grandpa.

What does being a Finn mean to me? It means that even though Finnish people suffered a lot in the past, they managed to learn from their mistakes, pull through, create a vibrant economy, well-functioning social-welfare state and great educational system that is an example for many countries.

I have to forgive those people who mistreated and bullied me in the past because I wasn’t a so-called typical Finn. I understand that not all Finnish people are like them. I can therefore say honestly that some Finnish people who I have met are one of the best people I have ever known. They are so honest, humble and sincere that it is difficult to find people like them elsewhere.

I sometimes fall in tears when I think about what Finland has done for my family.

When I travel abroad, I tell people proudly that Finland is the only country in the world that paid back their debt to the United States. I can never hate the country where my mom and grandparents were born and, importantly, gave us an opportunity to start life anew.

Long live the Finnish Sisu! Be proud of your home country and roots!

* Joseph spoke on condition of anonymity. 

Joseph: What being Finnish means to me (Part I)

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By Joseph*

I came to Finland at the age of three. I spoke only English and understood Spanish since my mother was a Finn who lived many years in Venezuela.  We moved to a small city called Lappeenranta in eastern Finland. It is a beautiful city and the current unofficial capital of Karelia after Finland ceded Viipuri to the Russians after the Continuation War (1941-44). 

When I moved to Finland, I was too young to understand how such a radical change could mark my life. I soon forgot how to speak English and learned to speak Finnish perfectly.

When I moved to Finland, I sensed something wasn’t right. I got bullied by the kids who lived next door to us and who came from so-called functional families. My parents divorced when I was about three years old. I still remember travelling abroad and asking my mother when she’d come back to live with us in Finland.

There is something unique about Finland. There’s the peaceful atmosphere that I have not experienced anywhere else.  Even so, I remember being woken up as a kid at our apartment by yelling and shouting drunks in the street.

Finland still suffers from a deep scar that dates back to the war with Russia and when Finland was a part of Sweden for about 600 years. This continues to affect Finns and their identity. Some feel they are not good enough or that they should be ashamed of their roots because they were ruled for so many centuries by the Swedes and Russians.

I started school at the age of seven and I remember being hit and kicked by five boys. The teacher blamed me for the fight when I told him what happened.

Maybe the hate and xenophobia that some Finns felt about the Russians back then was because Lappeenranta is a border city next to Russia.

I switched schools many times when I was growing up in Finland. I was one of the top Finnish-language students in class getting A’s (10) and B’s (9) on tests.

I switched and promoted my nickname because it was more Finnish than my real name, which is difficult for some to pronounce. My mom spoke Finnish to me and my brothers so we’d fit in better and not get bullied so much by other kids.

As you can imagine, searching for acceptance led to a very rebellious adolescence since I tried finding love in the wrong places. It was a defective way to cure those scars for not having a father and for being mistreated and bullied  continually for just being myself. I was just an innocent little boy who couldn’t understand why all this happened to me.

When i moved to Helsinki at the age of 10, I used to escape the pain I felt inside of me by visiting the public library. I spent as much as nine hours daily in the library reading all kinds of books like literature.

Part II will be published Wednesday. 

* Joseph spoke on condition of anonymity. 

Race Files: Why “Racist” Is Such a Powerful Word

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By Scot Nakagawa 

There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about the term “racist.” Cognitive psychologists, political pollsters, and communications consultants have weighed in about how to talk about racism and advance an equity agenda while not alienating white people by labeling them racists.  Many advise never using the term to describe people, instead suggesting we only criticize actions. Some have gone so far as to argue against using terms like racism and racist at all, calling it a losing strategy and directing us to focus on actions and outcomes that result in unintentional inequities instead.

All of that is fine to a point. I tend to think it’s a good idea to focus on actions and assume the best of people. It’s the right thing to do if for no other reason than that it exercises and strengthens our generosity. Without generosity, coalitions and alliances don’t work, and authentic solidarity across racial differences is impossible.

But even as we try to embrace the best in each of us, we ought not forget that racist actions are attached to racist attitudes. Those attitudes may be so integrated into the common sense of our society that those who harbor them aren’t doing so consciously, but that doesn’t mean those attitudes don’t exist, nor that they aren’t damaging.

We need to call those attitudes out and make what’s common exotic. Unless we do, the logic of racism will continue to dictate the pace of progress toward justice, and that disparages the rights and humanity of those who are racism’s victims. It’s an approach that allows whites sensitivity to being labeled racists to dictate that racism with continue to reign.

Whites are about 78% of the American public. According to Gallup, about 19% of whites were opposed to interracial marriage in 2007. That’s a pretty small minority of whites, but in total number, that’s something like 49 million people. There are only 69 million or so non-white people living in the U.S. That means that the number of whites who oppose interracial marriage is greater than all of any one U.S. racial minority group. Why are they so afraid?

I believe what whites have to fear is white people.

When white supremacy was challenged by the racial justice movements of the 1950s and ’60s, white elites pivoted from overt racism and co-opted the language and symbols, but not the substance, of  racial justice. By doing so, they were able to position themselves as champions of a new colorblind code of civility that reduces structural racial injustice to an attitudinal problem. This enabled them to block attempts to reorganize unjust power relations while deflecting responsibility for continuing injustice on overt racists who were cast as ignorant, immoral, and backward.

This move caused whiteness to fracture. The dominant faction of elites adopted a strategy of coded messaging and avoidance of obvious racial conflict, while using overt racists as a foil against which to position themselves as racial egalitarians. When whites are exposed as racists, their anger is in part a reaction to the fear that they will be cast out of the dominant faction of whites and marginalized along with old fashioned racists like the KKK.

If you buy that, what we are up against, at least in part, is a factional fight among whites over how best to maintain supremacy. And for people of color to concede to that by avoiding direct attacks on racism is like cutting off our noses to spite our faces.

Read original blog entry here.

This piece was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.

What do Somali minors sent to Somalia tell us about their treatment in Finland?

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A news story on Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s largest daily, claims that Somali minors living in Finland are being taken against their will to Somalia. The daily speaks of ”a few” cases but suggests that in 2001 the figure may be around 50. 

Statstics Finland claims that during 2001-11 there were about 200 minors who had moved to Somalia from Finland.

While it’s clear that Somalia is still not a safe country to live in never mind be a place to send your children, one of the matters that caught my eye in the story was that these children and adolescents were sent there against their will.

Somaliliitto, the Finnish-Somali Association, said that minors should not be taken to Somalia against their will. “Somalia isn’t still safe and we don’t support the idea that Somalis should return to the country,” Somaliitto chairman, Arshe Said, was quoted as saying on Nelonen.

How were they sent to Somalia against their will?  How did they express their objection?

When I was a minor, I didn’t like moving from country to country. Even so, I had no choice because my parents decided what was best for me.

Does “being sent to a country against one’s will” mean being taken to a country that is politically unsafe, like Somalia?

Addis Ababa consul, Sari Jokinen, was quoted as saying that minors sent to Somalia were taken care of by relatives.

“Some have been very alarmed [about being in Somalia],” she said. “According to the children, there is no health care or possibilities to go to school in Somalia.”

What does the story, and the fact that a few minors go to live in Somalia from Finland, tell us?

It reveals that a very small minority of Somalis families in Finland are worried about how their children are losing touch with their parents’ culture. This is perfectly normal and happens in the best of families.

Some Finns forget that 1.2 million people emigrated from this land between 1860 and 1999. Sending your children to visit their grandparents was and still is an effective way for parents to keep their children in touch with their culture.

Family reunification was another important factor when Finns moved to other countries. Not only did they get their relatives to move to their new country but their neighbors and friends.

When I was a child growing up in California, I was grateful to my parents for sending me to Finland during the summers. I spent those summers with my grandparents getting that important injection of Finnish culture and language so it wouldn’t wear off completely.

Without those visits I would have been a poorer person today.

 

 

 

Racism charges dropped against Danish teacher

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Charges have been dropped against an Odense, Denmark, head teacher who had reportedly abused a group of Muslim students in class, reports The Copenhagen Post. Far-right anti-Islam Danish People’s Party former head, Pia Kjaersgaard, described the whole affair as ”ridiculous.”

“It’s crazy that the police have to get involved in such a case,” Danish People’s Party former chairwoman Pia Kjærsgaard told Fyens Stiftstidende. “I am so affronted on the head teacher’s behalf that she has to meet at the council, and whatever else might happen, because of this nonsense apologised already. Anyone can say something wrong without thinking sometimes.”

One matter that always surprises me about anti-immigration white politicians like Kjaersgaard is how they play down  racism and discrimination. According to them, these types of social ills are “insignificant” never mind “ridiculous.”

Even so, their constant attacks and labeling of immigrants and Muslims in a negative light is always ”important” and ”sensible.”

So what happened at the Ejerslykkeskolen School in Odense and what did the teacher, Birgitte Sonsby, say? According to The Copenhagen Post, the head teacher of the school burst out saying to a group of students in class: ”I’m so bloody tired of you Muslims running the teaching lessons.”

The teacher later apologized for her outburst.

”A situation arose in the classroom and some children needed to be reprimanded,” said Sonsby. They started laughing at me and I lost control. I said some things that I deeply regret and I apologize.”

Shaib Mansoor, the father of one of the children racially reproached by Sonsby and who reported the head teacher to the police, dropped the charges after the media picked up the story and reported what happened at the school.

”I wanted to establish a debate and make people realize that there is a problem,” he said. ”It is the only way to get the attention of the politicians.”

Despite having dropped the charges, Mansoor expects Sonsby to get sacked from her job.

Immigrants that look down on other immigrants

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The eagle never lost so much time, as when he submitted to learn of the crow.

William Blake

Some immigrants who have lived in Finland for many decades have adapted so well to this country that even their prejudices and stereotypes are just like those of the locals. Some, like Alain Chiaroni or Freddy Van Wonterghem, however, go beyond the call of duty to give Africans and visible minorities lessons on how they should integrate into Finnish society. 

What unites Chiaroni and Van Wanterghem other than they are both Perussuomalaiset (PS) party members? Answer: Their reactive views on cultural diversity and visible immigrants like Muslims and Africans.

At least Van Wonterghem, a native of Belgium, has failed miserably on the integration front. He got slapped in March with a 420-euro fine for inciting ethnic hatred against a group.

Despite having lived for 38 years in a foreign country, Chiaroni sounds like a nineteenth-century colonial master from France when he speaks of Somalis and Africans living in Finland.

“You could only get citizenship [in the late-1970s] if you had a sound background, a good education, a job in Finland, had Finnish- language skills, ties to Finland, were well-integrated into Finnish society, had two influential persons recommended you [for citizenship], etc…”, he writes in an Uusi Suomi blog entry.

He continues by stating that certain “political circles” in Finland are of the opinion that our country must adapt completely to those immigrants who move here.

“Has Finland lost its common sense?” he asks.

What Chiaroni forgets to ask is a more important question:  Why Finland had so few foreigners in the 1970s and why there was so little foreign investment in the country?

By around 1980, the biggest “foreign” group living in Finland were Swedes, who were mostly Finns that were naturalized Swedish citizens. In the 1970s, Finland’s foreign population totaled a mere 7,000 souls.

Moreover, Finland did everything possible to restrict foreign investment with the help of the Restricting Act of 1939.

Would I want to live in a country where foreigners, black people and visible immigrants were a rarity and where outside investment was the exception as opposed to the rule?

No thanks.

I like how Finland looks today with all its defects. It’s a million times better than in the Cold War years, when  your otherness followed you around like a shadow that marked you for the rest of your days.

 

Julian Abagond: Of mixed-race identities

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COMMENT: Some Finns have resolved the “mixed-ethnicity” question by stating that there is only one kind in Finland. Such an affirmation, that there is only one type of “real” Finn, is as ludicrous as stating that racism doesn’t exist in this country.

What does a white Finn say when he asks about your “other mixed” side? Is that person asking you why you aren’t white? 

Finns with “other” backgrounds are an ever-growing group in this country. We should remember, however, that being an “other” Finn is not only inclusive to ethnicity.

_________

By Julian Abagond

Some misunderstand my position on mixed-race identities.

In the post on internalized racism I said:

God made you to look a certain way and gave you certain gifts to use in the course of your life. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of it. Nothing. It is only narrow-minded, brainwashed people who want you to believe otherwise. … Who think there is something wrong with you for just being you.

One commenter remarked:

What kind of people think there is something wrong with you for being you?

{Ping! silent, little explosion goes off in cerebral cortex…)
Yet the writer of this post believes it is a character flaw if a multi-racial brown- or black-skinned person of multi-racial parents says what they are!

She gathered that from a post I wrote about Tiger Woods where I point out that Nas thought it was a character flaw that Tiger Woods defended and excused white racists.

What Nas said in a King magazine interview:

Tiger Woods standing up for this white lady who said something about him being lynched is a coon move to me. God bless the brother. I like to see him doing his thing, but that’s a flaw to his character.

I point out two other examples of the same behaviour by Tiger Woods in the post.

The issue is not mixed-race identity in and of itself. It is trying to kiss up to whites, especially while distancing yourself from people of colour. It is hard for me to respect that. And, in most cases, this behaviour comes from internalized racism, from self-hatred. That is not a healthy thing.

Racial identity in America is not simple, certainly not as simple as applying a set of rules. It is something everyone has to work out for themselves. But not all courses of action are equal, not all are harmless and innocent. It is a moral, political and psychological decision that carries a cost of one sort or other.

Tiger Woods is hardly the only mixed-race person I have written about. For example:

  • Danzy Senna, who can pass for white, sees herself as mixed race but has never distanced herself from being black.
  • Anatole Broyard, who passed for white to become a literary critic, all but disowning his mother and sisters.
  • Peola of “Imitation of Life”, who passed for white and turned her back on her black mother to be accepted by whites.

I have no issue with Danzy Senna, but the other two did the very thing I am talking about. This is not about me imposing the One Drop Rule on mixed-race people, as some think, this is about them being low lifes.

Selling out to whiteness, of course, is hardly limited to mixed-race people. Nearly all White Americans do it. And even some people of colour who are not mixed-race – like Michelle Malkin. Or Rented Negroes. It is what “The Boondocks” makes fun of in Uncle Ruckus.

 

 

 

Banning circumcision would be the first step in undermining religious freedom in Finland

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Why is it that anti-immigration parties and politicians are usually making a case or drafting legislation to outlaw circumcision of boys or ban Muslim women from wearing burkas? Is it because they have a soft spot for Muslim or Jewish children and women?

Take a whiff of their arguments and you will find an obvious red herring. The real issue why they are interested in attacking these rights is their  loathing of Muslims.

It is therefore no surprise that an anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) is so keen to outlaw circumcision of under fifteen-year-old boys. The PS MP spearheading the new law is Vesa-Matti Saarakkala, who doesn’t hide his disdain for Muslims.

Only 21 out of 39 PS MPs have endorsed the draft bill. Some names worth mentioning are Counterjihdists Jussi Halla-aho, Olli Immonen, James Hirvisaari and Juho Eerola.

What the PS MP won’t tell you is that this first measure, to outlaw circumcision, is one of many steps to infringe upon the civil and human rights of different religious groups in Finland.

Saarakkala could learn a lot from the German government, which recently backed new legislation that aims at ending a long legal dispute over circumcision, reports BBC.

The new law, which will be voted on by the end of the year, will make circumcision legal as long it is done by trained experts and that the parents are informed of any medical risks.

Writes the BBC: “The row over circumcision began in June when a court in Cologne said that the ritual circumcision of a four-year-old Muslim boy, in accordance with his parents’ faith, had caused the child bodily harm. The case came to court after a doctor carried out the circumcision, and it led to medical complications.”

After this case, the German Medical Association told doctors in Germany to stop circumcising boys.

The recommendation by the German Medical Association forced Jewish and Muslim groups to challenge the ruling, which they considered “an affront [to] their basic religious and human rights.”

Finland’s present demographic challenges are a threat to its prosperity

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Finland will see dramatic changes to its population age structure in the next four decades, when the number of over-64-year-olds will soar by 941,000 to 1.639 million people, according to MTV3, citing Statistics Finland. Likewise, our labor force will shrink by an estimated 600,000 people in about 25 years. 

It is surprising, if not worrying, that the majority of politicians, never mind political parties, don’t consider Finland’s demographic woes a serious enough problem to address today. Few if any speak openly about attracting skilled immigrants to the country as one of many measures to slow the worrying trend.

In many respects, these politicians are hostages of their own complacency and shortsightedness. It’s very difficult to speak out in favor of immigration and cultural diversity when such politicians have been silent or made in the past slipshot comments on the issue.

But why would any sensible immigrant want to move to a country that doesn’t appear interested in them? Moreover, what’s so attractive about a country where it takes a long time to learn the language, has high taxes, long-and-cold winters and does everything possible to remind you that you are an immigrant?

Didn’t 19.1% of the Finns vote last year for the Perussuomalaiset (PS), an anti-EU, anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam party?

Pekka Myskylä of Statistics Finland, however, believes that our foreign population will account for 16% of the total population by 2057.

In a blog entry published in December 2009, Migrant Tales wrote that the number of pensioners will rise from the present 17% (905,000 persons who are older than 65 years) to 27% by 2040 and 29% (1.79 million) by 2060, according to Statistics Finland, Better medicare will fuel this trend, with persons over 85 years rising from 2% (108,000) to 7% (463,000).

What Finland doesn’t need today is a party like the PS that fuels xenophobia and instills fear in the hearts and minds of Finns on issues like immigration.