Category: Enrique

Timo Soini on racism: See no evil, hear no evil

Posted on by Migrant Tales

It is surprising how a politician like Timo Soini of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party can argue anything he wants on television about immigrants and visible minorities. His objection to positive discrimination on a debate on MTV3 Wednesday is a case in point. 

Migrant Tales has  written in the past about colorblind racism, which is one of the most common forms of racism in Finland. On the surface, racial colorblindness may sound fair but the truth is that skin color and ethnic background still play powerful roles in our society.

Writes Psychology Today: “Colorblindness is the racial ideology that posits the best way to end discrimination is by treating individuals as equally as possible, without regard to race, culture, or ethnicity…However, colorblindness alone is not sufficient to heal racial wounds on a national or personal level. It is only a half-measure that in the end operates as a form of racism.”

I still have a hard time figuring out what is worse: Soini’s colorblind statements or the fact that some journalists and politicians still don’t challenge this form of racism more strongly.

Imagine what a political scandal Soini would have faced if he asked to abolish positive discrimination in countries that are culturally diverse and have large immigrant populations.  The PS chairman’s stand on the issue is in the same political league as other far-right parties like the British National Party, Danish People’s Party and teabaggers of the U.S.

I met a member of Hommaforum at a seminar recently who was totally against positive discrimination. Sitting next to us was a black woman from Africa.

I asked him if he thought that Finland was today a society that was way past racism and discrimination. “Do ethnicity and cultural background play a role?” I asked. “What you are saying is that it makes no difference whether you are black or white.”

It’s clear that the PS’ stand on immigration and cultural diversity suffers from colorblindness.

The party’s declaration against all forms of racism in May 2011 is a good example of the colorblind racism that afflicts the PS.

The party may claim that it is for labor immigration and that it has a handful of white immigrant candidates running for city council.  This is only a red herring that aims to cover up the party’s issues with cultural diversity.

Here is a recent blog entry by Migrant Tales that puts in perspective the PS’ thinking on what kinds of immigrants should apply to come to Finland and how they should integrate into our society.

 

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

Posted on by Migrant Tales

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.

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

Posted on by Migrant Tales

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

Posted on by Migrant Tales

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

Posted on by Migrant Tales

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

Posted on by Migrant Tales

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

Posted on by Migrant Tales

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

Posted on by Migrant Tales

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.

 

 

 

The lack of cultural diversity is impoverishing Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Jussi Jalonen, a Tampere University history researcher, asked recently why a populist party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) continues to grow in popularity despite the numerous scandals that have riddled the group. There is an answer: Finland’s lack of cultural diversity.

How is it possible that a party like the PS can win 39 seats in the last parliamentary elections from 5 seats previously? The answer: Finland’s lack of cultural diversity.

How is it possible that the Finnish media, politicians and the general public were swept off their feet by the PS’ anti-EU, anti-immigration and anti-Islam message up to April 17, 2011? The answer: Finland’s lack of cultural diversity.

Contrarily, if Finland were a country that would have had larger ethnic and religious minorities in the last century and if these were promoted in a spirit of social equality (tasa-arvo), we’d never be in the political and ideological mess that we are in today.

There are many examples of how a society can grow and reap synergies from cultural diversity. Some positive examples are Silicon Valley, Canada, the United States, Argentina, Australia and many others.

Since no society is perfect, never mind one that is culturally diverse, there are poor examples we should avoid. One of these is the former apartheid system of South Africa.

The recent example of the black Mannerheim movie is proof of some Finns’ hostility towards diversity and how we continue to cling at any price to our cultural and ethnic myths.

In many respects, the “one-people-one-nation“ view of white Finland is the making of our own social Frankenstein. We have promoted it from day one when we declared independence from Russia on December 6, 1917.

Even if PS chairman, Timo Soini, claims that his party has 27 “immigrant” candidates running for office in the municipal elections, it reinforces the party’s hostility towards diversity. Thanks to these candidates, PS’ “one- people-one-nation” political message is strengthened as a result.

Immigrants who have little idea about how our open society functions democratically and, worse, have no enthusiasm to throw overboard their baggage of hate and racism, is one of the threats facing our society.

It is surprising to note that many of these immigrants aren’t those with the least education, but those that have good professions and economical means to assimilate into white Finnish society.

Throughout the last century, Finland has been a negative model for cultural diversity despite the fact that 1.2 million Finns emigrated from this country between 1860 and 1999.

Finland’s social and economic life savior is not keeping Finland “white,” but becoming culturally diverse.

If we fail in this task and do not promote modern Nordic values such as mutual acceptance and respect, our society will become ever-polarized. The same Civil Rights Movements we saw in the United States emerging in the 1950s and 1960s will become a reality in Finland this century.

Since we have done everything possible to kill cultural diversity from the last century as opposed to defending and promoting it, we are paying today a high price for our shortsightedness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mamukriit-Looks: The who’s who of anti-immigration Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

You’ve heard of Per-Looks, the latest fad taking the Finnish social media scene by storm last week.  We now give you Mamukriit-Looks, a gallery of Perussuomalaiset (PS) politicians running for office in the October 28 municipal elections who have built their political careers on anti-immigration and anti-Islam sentiment.

In the picture gallery below, you will find politicians that have been fined for hate speech, Counterjihadists and who have applied for membership in a neo-Nazi association. One candidate even suggested that it was a “patriotic” shooting certain politicians and boiling Muslims alive.

Sad but true.

MAMUKRIIT-LOOKS