Challenging a social ill like racism is no easy task. In countries like the United States, slavery was legal in some states for a very long time, between the sixteenth and nineteenth century. Despite the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) and the Thirteenth Amendment (1865), it took a Rosa Parks in December 1955 to ignite the Civil Rights Movement.
Racial inequality is still a widespread problem in the United States.
Must we wait hundreds of years for immigrants and minorities in Europe to be treated as equals?
In Finland, for example, the Romany minority has waited for half a century for social equality.
There was a distressing story on Jyväskylä-based Keskisuomalainen about a young dark-skinned twenty-year-old woman who was in a toilet. One of the white Finnish women standing in line exclaimed upon seeing the black woman: “I’m not going to [sit on the same toilet bowl] as that n-word,” she said speaking to a woman behind her. “You go ahead if you dare.”
The insults by the woman in a Jyväskylä toilet didn’t stop here: “You can fucking go where you came from. I can’t stand people who live off my taxes and leech in this country and live like insects.”
The sad matter of the story is not only the loudmouth racist, but the woman who wrote about what happened on Keskisuomalainen. She didn’t speak up on the spot and tell the racist woman that what she was saying was out of line.
Challenging a social ill like racism isn’t easy. I therefore raise my hat to the woman for at least writing about what happened. I’m certain she’ll never forget what she heard in that Jyväskylä toilet because what she heard is disturbing. Racism not only hurts its victims but some of its bystanders like the rest of society.
Racism can rally some pretty “colorful” people as the video clip below shows.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PL1jDcAHkc8&feature=player_embedded#!
The English Defense League is a dangerous organization. One of its followers claims that he’s marching against “Muslamic law” and “Muslamic ray guns.”*
How do you challenge racism?
By raising your voice and expressing your disapproval if somebody speaks or treats anyone n a racist way.
Since racists are cowards, a strong show of disapproval of their behavior can make them think twice before they think again before opening their mouths.
* Thank you Mikko Kapanen for the heads-up.
Could you elaborate? This seems to be false information.
Romany minority have even more rights than other citizens in Finland. The romany women get an extra allowance, so called “hameraha” for buying those skirts romany women use.
There is absolutely no social equality against romanis, so now you own us an explanation.
And what comes to that Jyväskylä toilet episode, that never happened. It was just a made up story.
Farang
And you know this how, exactly? Have you installed a listening device in the ladies’ toilets of that Jyväskylä department store, or do you dress up in drag and hang around there?
Evidently there were at least three witnesses to this event. Would you bet your house on the claim that it never happened or is this merely wishful thinking on your part? It never happened because you can’t bear the thought that it might have happened? That’s the mechanism of holocaust denial, Farang.
You have a cogent witness statement. Where is your evidence that this witness is lying?
You are wrong. The person who claimed this happened is responsible for providing proof that it happened. If there would have been witnesses, how come we haven’t heard nothing from them?
Farang, get in touch with Keskisuomalainen and tell them that they are making up news.
Farang
Now you are demanding a higher standard of proof than a Finnish courtroom. A witness account is already evidence. It cannot be deemed false out of hand without evidence to the contrary. You have no such counter-evidence, but you nevertheless offer a positive claim that this witness must be lying simply because you do not wish to contemplate the substance of the account that this witness has provided.
Anyway, Farang, answer the challenge: would you bet your house on your confident assertion that this event never happened?
It wouldn’t be a first time that news papers would make up news.
But anyway, back to the topic. If I would be in such position that I would witness something like that, you can be sure that the racist wouldn’t walk out there unchallenged. And I would have made sure the racist would have been humiliated.
I have intervened before and I will in future. Usually just going next to the victim and asking the attackers “do you have a problem?” have been enough to get them going and leaving the foreigner alone.
Don’t get me wrong. Even if I am strongly against Finnish immigration politics and welfare shopping asylum seekers, when it comes to the individuals, I treat them as all humans should be treated, with respect and support. It’s only after someone violates someone, they lose my respect and support.