Author: Migrant Tales

Our ignorance of others and our ability to change

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Sometimes when hearing the arguments of some Finns and Europeans on immigrants, minorities and immigration is like returning to the nineteenth and/or part of the twentieth century. Our educational system has failed miserably if in 2011 people still believe cultures have certain predictable traits or that our genes guide our behavior like robots.

 We’d probably end up with the following conclusion if we studied the hate speech and arguments made by anti-immigration groups and then compared them with what people said over a hundred years ago: Different enemies and players, same reasoning.

The racism, xenophobia and prejudice we hear today is nothing more than the plagiarized arguments used in the past.

A good example is a claim by populist groups in Finland and elsewhere that Islam is the biggest threat to Europe. If we turned the hands of time back about 70 years, the same claims were made about the Roma, Communists, and Jews, who were seen as a threat to society.

Even if some Finns, who should know better like Aalto University senior lecturer Kyösti Tarvainen, believe that all one needs is a pocket calculator to see the Muslim threat, the future rarely reveals itself in such a simple fashion.

Similar predictions were made about the Jews in Finland in the 1880s about their high birth rates. Today, however, Finland’s Jewish population totals about 2,000. That is a far cry from “the millions” that were supposed to take over this country.

One of the biggest flaws that anti-immigration groups make about other ethnicities is a claim that such groups are incompatible with our society’s values. Even if they don’t use a pocket calculator, they employ their ignorance and prejudice to conclude that “other” people (not us) are controlled like robots by culture and never change. Any elementary social science student can prove this claim false.  Cultures and people change constantly.

If these cultures that are constantly ostracized by populist Europeans groups like the Perussuomalaiset party of Finland never changed,they would provide them a service. Since they cannot change they would in time die off. If such groups vanished because they were maladapted it would likewise spell then end of  the popularity of anti-immigration political parties, which base their support on hate rhetoric.

Even if  the same arguments are still out there being fed by a more modern version of our ignorance than over a century ago, it seems incredible that in the age of the Internet and modern technology we still seek refuge in our petty views and stereotypes of others.

If I could draw a cartoon of modern man and women and our relationship with other cultures, I’d picture it with the missing link ancestor sitting in front of a laptop speaking on his iPhone. The primate ancestor may have evolved in tool usage but is still in the “stone age” when it comes to understanding the world never mind how to interact with other cultures.

Ramapathicus was a more evolved primate than our missing link ancestor. It existed 8.5-12.5 million years ago. Source:  Leccos Ramapathicus.

That is why when we speak of racism, xenophobia and discrimination we have to ask a simple question: Why are these matters a threat to our society?

Answer: Because they are based on plagiarism and ignorance but, like all humans, we have the ability to learn and change.

YLE: Yritykset mainostavat työntekijöidensä suomalaisuudella

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Comment:  Is this how equal opportunities never mind social equality is supposed to work in Finland? The Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) claims in a story below that a number of small cleaning companies in Finland advertise that they only use Finnish employees.

Husein Mohammed of the Ombudsman for Minorities believes that this type of advertising may be illegal since it discourages employers from hiring immigrants.  

At least for an immigrant, such a claim by a company is a clear message to non-Finns: Don’t even waste your time asking for a job here.

The European Union as well as in Finland make it very clear in the laws that this type of discrimination is illegal. In the United States they call it intentional discrimination. 

“If they (cleaning companies) keep their promise (that all of their employees are Finns) then they are guilty of discrimination, which is illegal,” said Muhammed.  

The Ombudsman for Minorities official does not directly blame employers but clients who demand that Finns to do the job as opposed to immigrants. 

Last month in the city of Salo a black odd-job man  was laid off because of his ethnic background.  He was rehired after the case received wide coverage in the Finnish media.

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Useat pienet palvelualan yritykset mainostavat itseään sillä, että heidän kaikki työntekijänsä ovat suomalaisia. Vähemmistövaltuutetun toimistossa suomalaisia työntekijöitä korostavaa mainontaa pidetään arveluttavana. Jos markkinointi vaikuttaa työntekijöiden valitsemiseen, se voi olla myös laitonta.

Read whole story.

Ten matters that ignite the debating spirit of Migrant Tales

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Migrant Tales will never censor opinions that aren’t racist. One of the strengths of this blog has been its diversity of opinions  on immigration,  Finnish identity and other topics.  Even so, some matters get our adrenalin circulating faster than others. Here are the top 10:

  1. People telling an immigrant that while all foreigners live off welfare, he or she is the exception
  2. The Perussuomalaiset (PS) worldview (provincial and simplistic answers of the world like on immigration)
  3. Exclusive views about Finnish culture and what it is (time-warp syndrome)
  4. Tight definitions of who can claim a place under the Finnish sun (denial of immigrants’ and minorities’ historicity in Finland)
  5. Racism repackaged as freedom of speech (eg A PS MP or a Finn assuring us that racism is a minor problem in this country)
  6. Racism as racism
  7. People who still romanticize about fascism in the twentieth century (PS MP’s Juho Eerola’s fascination with Benito Mussolini’s economic policy, for example)
  8. People who romanticize about fascism in the twenty-first century (Counter-Jihadists)
  9. Far-right and right-wing populist parties that lure votes by spreading hatred of immigrants (Danish People’s Party, Progress Party and Sweden Democrats to name a few)
  10. Short-sighted politicians who lack leadership and who are too weak and corrupted spiritually to defend everyone’s civil rights

Multicultural Finns: “Accepting yourself is the first step”

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Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. 
Martin Luther King, Jr.

A guest speaker gave on Friday her recipe on how young adolescents from different countries living in Finland could build a space for themselves in society. Two matters struck me from the twenty-one-year-old young woman’s talk: The first and foremost matter is acceptance of oneself and to reach out — if possible — to those who loathe you.

The woman, whose father is a Black USAmerican and mother Finnish, kept the class mesmerized by these two key points.

She said that in Finland and the United States she was always seen as a foreigner. “In Finland people asked me where I was from and in the United States people thought I was from Finland,” she said. “One day it dawned on me that instead of looking for people’s acceptance, I had to first accept myself. It happened on a chat site when I read a comment by a black woman.”

Some may claim that being white in Finland is easier than being a visible minority. Since visible minorities cannot hide from the sometimes hostile stares of society, visible minorities can. Hiding, even denying, one’s identity can, however, have devastating impact on one’s self-esteem.

If one would want to write a shocking book about racism in Finland, all they’d have to do is find Russians who attended elementary and middle school during the 1990s. Apart from being ridiculed at school for having a Russian background by the classmates, this happened with the silent approval of the teachers.

Even if my mother is Finnish, I am happy that I did all my schooling in the United States from grade two. How much ridicule would I have had to take in the Finnish school system in the 1960s and 1970s? At least my otherness was acknowledged, even respected, in the United States.

AFP: ‘Tintin in the Congo’ racism trial opens

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Comment: Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, a native of the Democratic Republic of Congo, wants Tintin in the Congo to be removed from bookshelves in Belgium.

“Imagine a seven-year-old black girl discovering ‘Tintin in the Congo’ with her classmates,” he said. Mondondo denounced the book’s depiction of blacks as “lazy, docile and stupid” and “incapable of speak(ing) French correctly.”

Another matter that adds generous quantities of salt to injury is Belgian rule in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Writes Time magazine in a 2010 issue: “Belgian Congo was one of the most bloody and cruel colonial regimes in Africa. The original inspiration for Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, it was claimed for King Leopold II in 1885 by the explorer Henry Morton Stanley. For 23 years, the area — the size of France, Germany, Norway, Spain and Sweden combined — was the King’s personal possession. Leopold’s agents pioneered a ruthless forced-labor system for gathering wild rubber: villages that failed to meet the rubber-collection quotas were required to pay the remaining amount in amputated hands. Some estimates say Congo’s population fell by 10 million during that time.”

Hergé, who had never visited the Congo, changed some of the racist content in the book in 1946, when the color version was published. In the first black-and-white scene he said to the pupils about Belgian geograph: “Let’s talk about your country, Belgium!” That was changed to a math class.

“Will we continue to tolerate such a book today?” asked Mondondo, whose case against Tintin’s publisher is backed by a French anti-racism group.

Should we continue to tolerate any kinds of books that reinforce stereotypes and racism of different ethnic groups?

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A Congolese man pleaded with a Belgian court on Friday to remove “Tintin in the Congo” from bookshelves, arguing that the comic book is littered with racist stereotypes about Africans.  “It is a racist comic book that celebrates colonialism and the supremacy of the white race over the black race,” Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo said as he arrived for the opening of the civil trial in Brussels.

Read whole story.

Iltalehti: Suuntautuminen kerrottava

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Comment: The Perussuomalaiset (PS) have now turned their attacks against homosexuals in Finland. PS MP Mika Niikko said in tabloid Iltalehti that employers should have the right to know whether their employees are gay.

Ignorance or sticking one’s foot in the mouth PS style? 

The suggestion by MP Niikko, who has a murky past with the law, shows that some MPs from the PS still have a long way to go before they begin to grasp the basic concepts of Western liberal democracy.

Here is a link to Ossi Mäntylahti’s blog that exposes Niikko’s murky past and present.

Would an elementary course in civics do the job?

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Perussuomalaisten kansanedustaja Mika Niikko puolestaan sanoo, että hän haluaisi työnantajana tietää työntekijän seksuaalisen suuntautumisen.

Read whole story.

The meaning of the veil and why some want to ban it

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By Enrique Tessieri

Switzerland’s lower house of parliament voted Wednesday 101-77 to outlaw veils like the burqa when using public transport or visiting authorities, reports AP.  The measure, which is being spearheaded by the Swiss People’s Party, will go for a vote in the upper house before federal elections next month.

Oskar Freysinger, a Swiss People’s Party lawmaker, said that the aim of the ban was “to avoid a religious war.”  Freysinger campaigned in 2009 to prohibit the construction of minarets in Switzerland.

What is surprising about these types of bans is the extent some parties and countries will go to brush diversity under the rug. Lawmakers, who should know better in Switzerland, should understand that placing restrcitions on how Muslim women should dress in public is not the only issue. What they are doing is  making a mockery of our democratic values and the important role of  diversity in it.

What is the use of speaking of freedom of worship and freedom of thought if on the other hand we deny diversity?

A colleague put it in the following terms: “Acceptance of difference (and the creative energy from that acceptance) must be done on the terms of those who differ, not the terms of those with power.”

It is important that lawmakers throughout Europe as well as the public should remain vigilant against laws that limit our freedom to be different.

Veil-ban laws in Switzerland expose the weakness of such societies even if they can hide behind formidable military and economic might.

Immigrant’s life: Returning to where we were once from

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By Enrique Tessieri

If you can trace your recent roots to Europe, would it be a good idea to return back to where your parents, grandparents or great grandparents were once from? The same hope and longing for a better life peppered with adventure are some factors that could lure you back to where you were once from.

Returning to where you were once from can be like the immigrant who left and returned many years later to his former hometown. If a journey can change your life why return to the place you were once from?

As the EU’s financial woes continue to mount and as far-right nationalism starts to lift its head, there is an eerie sense of déjà vu that creeps up generations ago from behind.

That creepy sensation is nothing more, like the riders of the apocalypse, the threatening signs of growing nationalism, racism and intolerance that is being sowed in Europe these days.

I returned to Finland thirty years ago and sometimes it does cross my mind as a cold question if my decision was the right one. It’s not myself that I am worried about but my children and grandchildren. Did I return to the Old World from the New and put them in harm’s way?

Just like when my anarchist great-grandfather left Italy as a refugee in the 1890s for Brazil, that decision impacted his family for many generations. Looking at war and the carnage that characterized Europe during the first half of the last century, my late relative’s decision to leave was the right one. By moving to Brazil and then to Argentina we were able to avoid future wars brewing in this part of the world.

It is not my intention to burden the dear reader with my gloom but some hard and honest questions must be asked:  Is the Europe of tomorrow going to be characterized by strife and tin-pot populists who will lead us on the path to ruin?

Now it makes sense to me by Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges once claimed that memory sometimes scared him.

 

 

 

Spiegel Online International: Skulls of Colonial Victims Returned to Namibia

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Comment: This gruesome story on Spiegel Online International is dedicated to all those in the Finland and the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party who  still continue to believe in racial superiority of the white man over other ethnicities. True, white racists in Europe don’t make such a distinction so clearly as in the early part of last century but it is still there behind the true context of their statements.

Instead of saying that such an ethnic group is “inferior” compared with one’s own, they speak of cultural differences. How many times have we heard these groups state that “x” is so barbaric that they could never be part of our society?They are saying, in effect, what some were saying in the early part of last century: We are superior to this group.  They can never be like us and therefore are excluded and rejected. 

In history there are too many grim example of the barbarism that Europeans carried out on other groups. Certainly World War I and II were rude wake up calls that revealed our potential for barbarism.

The Piltdown Man hoax is another example of academia’s collusion in maintaining myths about our national superiority.

All of the European colonizers committed atrocities in Africa. The story below by Spiegel Online International tells about what the Germans did in modern Namibia.

The German online newsmagazine writes: “The story of how the remains came to be transported back to Germany is horrific. They belonged to the victims of German colonial troops, killed mercilessly following a Herero uprising in January 1904 which left 123 Germans dead. After the decisive Battle of Waterberg in August 1904, the Herero fled into the desert towards Botswana, pursued by German troops. Thousands were killed as they fled; out of a reported 80,000, only around 15,000 reached the neighboring country. The massacre is considered to be among the first genocides of the 20th century.

In October 1904, the German commander in Namibia, General Lothar von Trotha, gave his infamous order to kill any Herero, armed or not, found within the limits of German colonial territory. The skulls in Berlin, which mostly came from Herero who had died in prison camps, were sent back to Germany for supposed scientific studies aimed at underpinning the doctrine of racial superiority of Europeans over Africans.”

What kind of stain is this on our European history and are we still playing the same game today but differently?

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Germany revisits the dark chapter of its brief colonial history this week with the return of 20 skulls belonging to genocide victims in a former colony. A Namibian delegation is in Berlin to take home the remains of those killed more than a century ago. This could be just the beginning of such reconciliations.

Read whole story.

Violence and racism are always in the eye of the victim

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By Enrique Tessieri

Are the Perussuomalaiset (PS) a violent party? Despite a story that was published widely by the media last week, there were no conclusions made from an ongoing study that a part of the PS approves violence, according to think tank Demos. The British-based think tank will, however, publish the results of a wider study on online populism in Europe later this year.

“Demos understands that the source of the stories came from a private briefing during which no link between the Finns party (PS) and violence was made. Allegations about the research findings had not been verified or checked with Demos,” according to a statement by the think tank.

So what gives? Nothing, really, except for a storm in a tea-cup by the PS which are throwing punches at shadows about the conclusions of the Demos report, which were never made in the first place.

But when one reads the Nuiva manifesto and anti-immigration views of the likes of PS MP Jussi Halla-aho, James Hirvisaari and others, it’s not difficult to conclude that violence and hostility come in many shapes and forms in Timo Soini’s party. Those that perpetrate violence and racism are naturally the last ones to admit it.

A quote by Scottish psychiatrist R D Laing’s (1927-89) could apply well to the world of denial that the PS is presently immersed in:  “We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love.” In other words, some PS MPs attack the common decency of  people and masquerade this hatred as free speech.

That is how low some politicians have stooped in Finland lately.

Whether these groups spew racism or show their anti-democratic credentials  on social media sites such as Facebook, rarely is the victim’s opinion asked by the Finnish media although this happens occasionally. There is no better source to comment on a social ill like racism than the victim.

Why does the PS cry foul every time they stick their foot in their mouths or when they expose their odd sense of humor like branding journalists “bloodthirsty hyenas?”

Because their hostile statements and views on groups like immigrants is violent and rightfully questioned by the media and our sense of decency.