James Baldwin (1924-87) is one of the greatest and most insightful writers, essayists, and activists of black USAmerica. With the help of his words, we are capable of seeing the beast that has oppressed and tormented the black.
James Baldwin
His Insights offer as well a glimpse at our monster.
There has been a lot of debate about what is Finnishness and who can claim it.
Writes Eddie S. Glaude Jr. in his biography of Baldwin (Begin Again) that “No matter what (US)America said about him as a black person, Baldwin argued, he had the last word about who he was as a human being and as a black man.”
One’s identity is a personal matter. Those that impose identity labels on you are using their power and privilege to exclude you.
“…the white man’s motive (to retain power and superiority) was the protection of his identity; the black man was motivated by the need to establish an identity.”
The latter quote speaks volumes about the plight of second-generation Finns.
I got to know Amir* in 2016 when he was living in the Kolari asylum refugee center. Thanks to his help and those of others, the asylum seekers of the reception center organized a demonstration that ended with the deputy manager, Jari Sillantie, getting sacked.
Amir, an Iraqi, came to Finland in 2015 like so many of his countrymen.
He writes:
I’m sorry I didn’t send you a long time ago; I spent all these years in poor condition and full of stress.
I’m tired and have suffered a lot from 2015 to 2021; psychological pressure and my nerves tight. There is no such thing as mercy or humanity [here]. We have suffered a lot of stress and other things. We cried so much that we got sick to the point where we could never sleep normally again.
Asylum seekers demonstratingat the Kolari asylum reception center in May 2016.
We have been interviewed by the authorities several times and have received rejections on asylum for trivial reasons. The reason is that they don’t want to help us. If they wanted to, they would do so. Once in an interview, my wife threw herself on the floor and urinated on herself. There was no mercy or humanity despite what happened.
I have many problems in Iraq, and I even submitted papers to the authorities proving this. I was the reason why they killed two people who were with me. My friends accused me of being part of the group that killed my friends, but they were wrong. They still don’t believe me.
We had a lot of problems when I lived with my wife in Iraq. My wife’s brother got injured in a demonstration, and they burned down his house.
An asylum seeker demonstrating in Kolari in May 2016.
We started to go to a church in Finland for a while because they gave us some food and aid. My children liked going there, but something unexpected happened. One day, when we were returning from the church, another brother of my wife called. My son answered the phone, and a big problem emerged when my father-in-law, a Muslim, overheard the conversation that we had gone to church.
My father was a Christian, and I had many problems because of this in Iraq. When my father-in-law overheard us, he started to curse and curse until he began threatening us. He stated that he’d kill his daghter and me because I deceived his daughter to change religion. The threats did not stop. He started to spread them in Iraq, vowing to kills us.
All the suffering my wife has endured has caused her to commit suicide more than once. I have visited many psychiatrists and taken a lot of medicine. My wife, even my little son, went to see a psychiatrist.
We don’t have anyone here or in Iraq who would care for us. And on top of this, the police are now telling us to leave and go back to Iraq. They have threatened to cut off all financial aid, housing, everything. I asked them where we were supposed to go with three young children.
I have thought many times that I have wasted seven years of my life in Finland. I was given an ultimatum together with my wife’s children to go back to Iraq. They gave me 30 days to decide. Next week I’ll be expelled from the refugee center, and I don’t know what will happen to us after that.
*Amir is an assumed name used to protect his identity because he is an asylumseeker. The story was lightly edited.
Sexual assault, especially suspected cases, is heatedly used by anti-immigration parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and public services like the police to demonstrate how some foreigners are. The police admitted today to a mistake in tabulating suspected sexual assault cases during 2020.
The mistake originates from a foreigner suspected of sexually assaulting his wife 141 times. Since the person was reported as 141 individual suspects, the amount for 2020 is therefore too high.
The police and Statistics Finland have confirmed the mistake.
The correct percentage of all suspected sexual assaults last year was 27.2%, not 38.5%.
Another interesting finding of the sexual assault statistics is that Northern Europeans, not Western Asians (Middle Easterners, Persians, and other nationalities), committed most suspected sexual assaults.
Why didn’t the media make a bigger deal about this fact?
Northern Europeans had the most sexual assault cases (58.9%), as many as 80% of alleged sexual assault against children.
Another important legal point that media coverage forgot to mention is that a person is innocent before proven guilty by a court of law. The number of convicted cases for sexual assault is only a fraction of the suspected ones. In 2019, 12.9% of all suspected cases were handed convictions.
The Finnish government of Prime Minister Sanna Marin plans to overturn the country tightened immigration law and family reunification requirements, which came into force a year later after a record 32,477 asylum seekers came to Finland in 2015. The then government of Center Party Prime Minister Juha Sipilä, the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party was a partner together with the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus), tightened the immigration law that, among other matters, made family reunification harder.
If passed, the new law will come into force in 2022.
While some may claim that there is nothing dramatic about doing away with tightened rules that came into force in 2016, there was already a tightening of the law in 2011.
Isn’t it a surprise that Helsingin Sanomat did not publish a person of color to go with the story? The Finnish media usually publish such pictures when migrants or asylum seekers are the topic. Read the full story here.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that one of the main factors behind these changes was the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS) party’s growing popularity in the polls and its historic election victory in April 2011.
Being a migrant for a number of generations is special. Why do some of us are always hoping to go somewhere but we are always returning?
New immigrant arrivals in Argentina during the beginning of the last century. Source: Google
My late father, Nemo, put this surreal situation in the following words: Being at a railway station is like being in the land of nowhere with a sense of being somewhere else, or estando en una estación de tren es estar en la tierra de nadie con un sentir de estar más allá..
For some, this state is a feeling of intense joy because there is so much anticipation.
Diana Bellesi is an Argentinean writer and poet who put the latter state in the following words:
Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party MP Sebastian Tynkkynen was convicted for a third time of ethnic agitation, according to Yle News. The two previous convictions were handed down in 2016 and 2017.
The Oulu District Court handed Tynkkynen, who is the PS’ third vice president, 70 day fines amounting to 4,400 euros.
The PS MP naturally denied any wrongdoing, and that conviction ran against his right to free expression.
“Why was it necessary to speak [out against Muslims who are a danger to society], taking into account what was happening behind the scenes with respect to the sexual abuse of children and how it undermined security in general,” he was quoted as saying in Iltalehti and continues: “I saw back then that I had a moral obligation to speak out against this.”
A “moral obligation” to speak out against sexual harassment? How disingenuous of you, MP Tynkkynen.
Let’s look at media coverage and how the police and politicians reacted to sexual harassment cases of minors in Oulu in 2018-2019. Back then, MPs like Tynkkynen were fueling the fires of fear against asylum seekers, which are mostly Muslims.
One of the biggest challenges and shortfalls of Finland’s integration law is that it is one-sided: Here is a list of things you must do to adapt to our society. This aim is very general, and if you start to study it closer, you will find no answers.
While language is essential, and Finland places a lot of emphasis on this, it is not your get-out-of-jail pass to live “integrated” and happily forever. As people of color and other minorities know, integration is a two-way street.
Considering the present political landscape and how much minorities influence the public policy of migrants and minorities, we are still a long way off and on the wrong path to achieve a society that respects difference.
If we look at school children in one of the world’s best education systems, why is it that some dark-skinned people are ashamed because they aren’t white enough? This fact forms part of a backdrop of discrimination and bullying at some Finnish schools.
Treat with tweezers whenever percentage figures are used to depict sexual assault cases by migrants.
A government-commissioned study published Thursday concluded that migrants are over-represented in suspected sexual assault crimes, perpetuating a toxic narrative. Such generalizations give ammunition to Islamophobes like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party to maintain and reinforce racist stereotypes.
To look at how the Finnish media reported the study, we’d have to look at what the media and study did not mention.
For one, the study cites suspected sexual assault cases but also mentions convictions. The media took the bait and cited with gusto suspected cases and concluded that “migrants are overrepresented” in sexual assault crime, accounting for 37.5% of all cases. That compares to 57.4% of sexual assaults by Finns.
In Finland, as in other Western countries, a person is innocent until proven guilty by a court of law.
Radical-right Islamophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party MP, Sebastian Tynkkynen, who has two ethnic agitation convictions and a third pending, is trying to get the most political mileage from an incident at an #elokapina demonstration.
Some unknown persons at the demonstration allegedly attempted to attack Tynkkynen and shoved him. The police asked if the MP wanted to press charges, and he said it wasn’t necessary apparently because nothing serious happened.
All types and forms of violence should be condemned, but why are the PS making up a big fuss about the incident? The whole affair, in my opinion, appears like a storm in a teacup.
The incident with Tynkkynen overlooks other forms of verbal and physical abuse and violence that the PS have promoted for years and continue to spread.
Why don’t we see more leadership among politicians? What about the media? Why don’t they openly condemn racism, and especially Islamophobia, and appear worried about the growth of these social ills thanks to the likes of Tynkkynen and the PS?
White Finnish privilege #80
The answer to the above question lies in the double-standards of our society made possible thanks to white Finnish privilege.
Violence against white Finns gets a lot more attention than what migrants and minorities see.
It is the same feeling of anticipation you have at an airport, where you are in the land of nowhere with a sense of being somewhere else.
You are wrong if you if you believe that there is only one way of traveling. As a migrant who has travelled all of his life, I have learned that there are many modes of travel.
Landscapes upside down or rightside up? Photo: Enrique Tessieri
Geography
Traveling with the help of geography is the easiest way of acquainting oneself with a new place. All you have to do is let your eyes do the recording and, presto! The sceneries and experiences that enter through the eyes usually release pleasant sensations in the mind and heart due to their novelty. Even though traveling geographically is a bit for dummies, there are other modes of travel.
Spiritually
When you travel in this way, you fall into a sort of trance daydreaming of places near and far away with a fuel called imagination. Fueling imagination is done by arousing it with the help of a good book and maps. Some of the initial beatufy of this mode of travel has been lost with the Internet.
Imagination
With the helo of imagination as a mode a travel, history can be converted into a personal time machine. Have you ever imagined while gazing at very old pictures what it would be like if you could enter them and chat with the immobile people? What would they say and what would I tell them?
Culturally
My favorite mode of travel is culturally. In order for this to be effective, I need the help of geography, spirits and imagination to sumerge myself in culture. If I do everything right, I can enter and leave cultures at ease traveling light as a feather.
