The year is 2020, and still, people of the Romany minority are refused entrance to a hotel and spa in Rantsalmi, located in the region of South Savo. Jim Crow is alive and well in some parts of Finland.
The receptionist of the Hotel & Spa Resort Järvisydän refuses entry in the video below to Roma women. When they ask if this is the hotel and spa’s policy, the receptionist says, “yes.”
It is shameful that this is still happening in a country like Finland, which claims to have one of the best education systems in the world, a comprehensive welfare state, and laws that are supposed to ensure that everyone is equal before the law.
Helsingin Sanomat published today an extensive investigative journalism story about the exploitation of foreigners by cleaning companies. Apart from Finnish (paywall), the full story is in English, Farsi, and Arabic as well.
The Helsingin Sanomat article writes about cleaning company employers’ false promises, exploitation and long working hours, underpayment of wages, human trafficking, threats, and blackmail, These sad facts are nothing new about how some cleaning companies operate in Finland.
Even so, it is a good matter that Finland’s largest daily by circulation writes about how greedy companies exploit the country’s most vulnerable groups.
Politics is another factor that distorts and undermines any meaningful steps to tackle exploitation in the Finnish labor market.
The Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, a party that bases its popularity on anti-immigrant racism and nativist nationalism, argues in parliament that foreign labor would drive down salaries.
Really? Do you mean that foreigners that enter the labor market are clamoring to be pad less than white Finns? Don’t they want to be paid the same salaries? Shouldn’t it be the job of the unions and society in general to protect the rights of migrant workers?
One factor that emerges from the exploitation stories of migrants and asylum seekers is that foreigners run many of these companies.
On SMC Cleaning’s webpage you will find only happy white people.
Here is a recent case of an asylum seeker who is a minor and worked at a car wash run by an Iraqi for 10 euros a week. Yes, you read correctly: 10 euros a week.
The owner had gone as far as to ask the minor’s father to pay him 30,000 euros so they could get a residence permit.
Bewilderment emergeswhenever Seida Sohrabi, who identifies herself as an expert on Kurdish affairs and elementary school teacher, comments on her narrow views of how migrants should adapt in Finland.
Having read her opinion pieces, I feel sorry for her Muslim students at the school she teaches. I hope their parents denounce her if she prohibits their daughters to wear the hijab or give them water-downed teachings of their religion by white Finns who are prejudiced.
Sohrabi is playing the “foreigner” and the media – and herself as well – loves it. Have you ever wondered how such eternal “foreigners” of our society speak perfect Finnish without any accent?
The reason for the latter is that they are Finns with non-white backgrounds but play the role of the “eternal foreigner” because it suits them, the media, and their peers.
They claim to represent other migrants but in fact, all they represent is their own unique group.
There are many others in the same league as her. Some of these are Morocco-born Junnes Lokka, Marco de Wit, who is of Dutch background, Miki Sileoni, whose father is Argentinean, and Gleb Simanov.
While Sohrabi and the people above come from different backgrounds, all of them hate one religious group: Muslims.
In the United States and according to the Urban Dictionary definition, an Uncle Tom “is a black man who will do anything to stay in good standing with the white man including betray his own people.”
In Migrant Tales, we have translated Uncle Tom to “Tuomo-setä,” “setä Tuomo” and “mamu-setä.”
Like in the United States, an Uncle Tom in Finland is a non-white Finn who will do anything to suck up to white Finnish culture even if it means sticking a knife in the back of his or her own people.
In the simplest terms, intersectional feminism is a tool to gain a broader view of how gender discrimination works. When studying gender discrimination, intersectionality enables us to take other factors as opposed to just one into consideration, like ethnic background, sex, disability, and sexual orientation.
One of the most preposterous affirmations Sohrabi makes is that new terms like intersectional feminism are not needed because social equality, gender equality, and fairness have characterized Finnish culture.
Really?!
How do you then explain high unemployment among some ethnic groups in Finland? Remember in October when they published a study by Akhlaq Ahmad about labor market discrimination in Finland? The study reinforced what we’ve known all along: ethnic discrimination is commonplace in Finland’s labor markets.
How come people of color or non-white Finns are underrepresented in almost in the media, politics, and policymakers? How come do people with foreign-sounding names earn smaller salaries and get less social security than white Finns?
Migrant Tales insight: When I published this story about four years ago, I imagined was certain that his presidency would be a fiasco. It was the same hunch I had in 2011 when the Perussuomalaiset scored their historic parliamentary victory. I wrote: “Far-right populism is an illness inflicting Europe at present and it now has a beachhead in Finland.”
It looks like Donald Trump is heading for an upset victory over Hillary Clinton in the US presidential elections, according to the New York Times.
A friend in California asked me a few weeks ago what would happen if Trump was elected US president. I told him that the demise of the United States as a world power would speed up. We are living in difficult times.
When will Trump build his infamous wall with Mexico? What about banning Muslims from the US? How many women will he grab by the genitals? How much racism and bigotry will he unleash in Europe on top of the racism and bigotry that we’ve seen already?
What are we to make of Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Sebastian Tynkkynen’s hate speech convictions? An Oulu appeals court upheld the PS MP’s second conviction for ethnic agitation. The first one was handed in 2017.
Two convictions are a pretty dark stain in an ordinary party, but for the PS, it may be a feather in one’s cap.
Tynkkynen may face further charges in a third hate speech case.
Is he planning to be the top MP with the most hate speech convictions?
It sure looks that way.
One of the most distasteful matters to read about ethnic agitation convictions are the excuses.
Writes Yle News: “He had argued that the post was political expression that was protected by freedom of speech. Tynkkynen also claimed that the text only referred to certain individuals, and did not imply that terrorism is unique to Islam.”
Tynkkynen plans to appeal the ruling to the supreme court and to the European Court of Human Rights.
The announcement by the PS MP clearly shows how little he understands what freedom of speech is. They act in such a hostile way for two reasons: they are bullies and political opportunists.
If politicians like Tynkkynen had their way, vulnerable minorities like Muslims would be put in a shooting gallery and attacked in the most hostile way possible.
It would be naive to think that words don’t have consequences.
The appearance of an Islamophobic party during this decade that spreads white supremacy and hate speech wholesale should concern us all.
We wrote Wednesday that the Finnish Air Force quietly dropped the swastika as the symbol of the Finnish Air Force Command. But not so fast. The swastika continues to adorn the Air Force Academy.
An article in DW of Germany asks how an anti-Semitism symbol like the swastika made its way to Finland.
Writes the BBC: “The symbol will always be intrinsically linked with Nazi Germany and its crimes, even though its roots go back many thousands of years.”
“The swastika entered Finland’s air force through a Swedish nobleman, Count Eric von Rosen,” the article reports. “He had gifted a plane to the air force of Finland in 1918, with a blue swastika painted on it. Rosen used to consider the swastika a good luck charm.”
Even if the use of the swastika is different than in Germany, one wonders why Finland persisted in its use way after World War 2?
History is one answer and how we played down our role and alliance with Nazi Germany. If some historians are to be believed, Finland fought a separate war against the former Soviet Union.
Would the removal of the swastika from the Finnish air force after the country signed an armistice with the USSR in September 1944 have incriminated Finland and put it in the same league as minor Nazi allies Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Romania?
There are much more facts that that are still hibernating. One day they’ll come out.
I remember right after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, I spoke with a commander of the Finnish air force and asked him if there were plans to replace the white-blue-white roundel again with the swastika.
Taken slightly aback by my question, he answered that there were no such plans.
Even if swastikas were not placed as markings on airplanes, it was still the symbol of the Finnish Air Force Command.
All of this, however, changed very quietly. Helsingin Sanomat reported on the change thanks to a tweet by Teivo Teivainen, a professor at the University of Helsinki.
It is highly likely that since the swastika always raised eyebrows especially abroad, the era of removing statues thanks to the #BlackLivesMovement which made it easier to remove the old Finnish air force symbol.
Air Force Chief of Staff Jari Mikkonen admitted in an interview with Helsingin Sanomat that the symbol often attracted negative and even “angry” attention abroad.
“We are not ashamed of the swastika we use, it is not related to Nazi Germany,” said Mikkonen.
In the new era of bringing down old statues and raising new ones, one of these that should go up is of Rosa Emilia Clay, a teacher and Finland’s first African who got citizenship.
As the gap between Joe Biden and US President Donald Trump widens in the opinion polls, populist-far right parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* are feeling the pressure.
Much of the hate fuel that PS and other like-minded politicians feed on from Trump is starting to run out if the US president loses on November 3.
The 1 + 1 = 2 campaign strategy is to speak in code, attack vulnerable groups like asylum seekers, and spread white Finnish supremacist mumbo-jumbo that is hostile against migrants and minorities.
All of the 39 (now 39) PS MPs got elected to parliament with one message: We hate Islam.
The PS’ waning popularity is not only based on their anti-Muslim rhetoric but on the support they draw from Trump, Vladimir Putin, Victor Orbán, Xi Jinping, Kim Jung-un, and others.
All of the politicians mentioned above base their rule on human rights violations, disrespect for diversity, and their autocratic instincts.
Trump’s biggest fans in Finland are Jussi Halla-aho and the PS. In the tweet above, he states that he digs Trump and believes that the US president is the best thing that happened to the United States and the Western World. Source: Twitter.To put the racist icing on the Halla-aho cake, he tweets that no PS wants to see Finland turn into a multiethnic or multicultural society, which is present in our program and in everything we do.
I predict that after Trump is ejected from the White House, populist and racist parties may have their hate fuel reduced significantly.
The US is going through a revolution that is shaking its racist foundations. There is no return to the past when whites ruled.
The same is happening in Europe as well. We, too, will have to confront our colonial and racist past in a way we never expected.
As the troubled dust settles over Friday’s vote in parliament that kept Perussuomalaiset (PS)* Juha Mäenpää’s immunity from persecution, the arguments for or against have little or nothing to do with freedom of speech but expose white supremacist privilege.
Even if the Finnish constitution and integration program speak of a two-way process, in practice, it is only a one-way street.
Bengt Holmström, a Finnish economist who received the Nobel Prize in economics in 2016, said it all two years ago in an interview in YLE.
James Baldwin (1924-87) gives us a glimpse of what it means to be black in the United States. I am confident that people of color and other minorities feel the same way in Finland. We speak about social equality for all (Section 6 of the Constitution), but who are entitled to it?
“It’s good for them [migrants],” he said. “By the same token, it would let them move up the [social] ladder, and it would not irritate Finns so much [because foreigners have done little to nothing to build the country’s social welfare system that has taken white Finns decades].”
While Holmström says that the best way of integrating newcomers and their children in Finland is social inequality, others say it less directly but mean the same thing.
Turku University assistant professor Markku Jokisipilä is another “learned” Finn who defends white Finnish privilege to the core. It became evident after Friday’s vote in parliament, concerning Mäenpää’s parliamentary immunity.
A year ago, Mäenpää labeled asylum seekers, which is code for Muslim in the PS vocabulary, “an invasive species.”
Without even weighing how offensive the PS MP’s words are to migrants and minorities in Finland, Jokisipilä believes that the incident could encourage greater self-censorship among MPs.
“It remains to be seen whether there will be a list of topics that cannot be talked about with the same openness and critical thinking of other topics,” he said in Turun Sanomat.
He also suggested in the interview that there were different types of cultures. Since this was the case, politicians and people, in general, should be able to criticize different cultures or ethnic groups.
One matter that I have never understood, when reading the mindset of people like Holmström and Jokisipilä, is why is it ok to speak in a demeaning manner of migrants and minorities, who don’t have the same privileges and power they enjoy?
Why wouldn’t anyone try the same crude and offensive expressions with women?
Indeed, such women are white, and all hell would break loose as we saw with the Jukka Hankamäki misogynist publication fiasco of “Truth inciters.”
The reaction to Hankamäki’s publication, which was taken down from the Internet two days after its publication, does not imply that there is full gender equality in Finland.
FINNISH WHITE PRIVILEGE #71
Hate speech, as the Mäenpää case shows, is not only an example of white Finnish privilege but its supremacy over non-white people. White Finnish privilege has such deep roots in our society that we have people like Holmström, Jokisipilä, even political parties like the PS, openly endorsing status-quo social inequality.
Disagree? Listen to the excuses for Mäenpää’s racist invasive species outburst by MPs of the PS, National Coalition Party, and Christian Democrat parties. Some of these included: “[Mäenpää] chose his words incorrectly, it was a gag, a joke, a slip [of the tongue], a bad joke, those who don’t understand [what he said] have no sense of humor.”
Yes, true. It may be “a joke” to some in parliament, but I doubt that it is for those people whom Mäenpää labeled in the most hostile and demeaning manner.
There have been a number of social media posts about how health-care workers assume what is your cultural and linguistic background.Not only do they make the assumption, but label you in such a way.
While some of you may say that I am being hypersensative, what would a black USAmerican think if I asked him if he spoke English and where he was from?
I have lived most of my adult life in Finland and I still get asked by some health officials if I speak Finnish and where I’m from.
Here is a short dialogue of what happened this week at the dentist’s.
The dentist asks in English if I speak Finnish.
Me: “Yes I do” (responding in Finnish).
Dentist: “Oh, ok, but where are you from? You have a foreign name.”
At this moment I felt a bit uncomfortable. Why should I explain my background to the dentist? It’s my teeth that she should worry about.
Me: “I was born in Argentina, grew up in the States and my mother is Finnish.”
Even if I told her that “I grew up in the United States,” she determined that I was only from South American.
Dentist: “My husband is a foreigner and we have travelled in South American countries like Peru, Chile and Bolivia.”
Me: “Is your husband from South America?”
Dentist taken slighly aback: “No, he’s German.”
I told the dentist that in this day and age, there are a lot of Finns that don’t have Finnish-sounding names.
FINNISH WHITE PRIVILEGE #70
I hope that Finnish children are giving a different education about Finnish identity and Finns than what the middle-aged dentist received.
The dentist’s questions about my background felt like a rude example of white Finnish privilege.
