Silence can be very revealing. It’s not what you say but what you do not say. Your inaction and silence in the face of racism, specifically against institutional racism, speaks volumes.
This fact is one of the biggest challenges to Finland during this century.
The outspoken racist is a danger, but the worst threat is the person who remains silent and hides and uses institutional racism to protect his work. In other words, the system allows the person to eat and have his cake simultaneously.
Believe it or not, some principles and teachers working and representing culturally diverse learning institutions don’t believe in cultural sensitivity. They are the fake know-it-alls on racism. They don’t need to update their racist views because they are exceptional people.
Institutional racism allows the same forms of discrimination and privilege to see another day unchallenged.
It is the elephant in the room that must be called out.
See also:
- Kotoutuminen #1: A good synonym for kotoutuminen is too many times the reinforcement of structural racism
- Kotoutuminen #2: A tool of white fragility to rule you
- Kotoutuminen #3: To touch or not to touch
- Kotoutuminen #4: Amalgamate, assimilate is the rule, two-way adaption is a pipedream
- Kotoutuminen #5: Perpetuating the Ulysses syndrome, a chronic stress disorder of refugees
- Kotoutuminen #6: The white Finnish teacher and the migrant adult child. Stop infantilizing!
- Kotoutuminen #7: How do we deal with our prejudices and exceptionalism?
- Kotoutuminen #8: Let’s do away with “us” and “them”
- Kotoutuminen #9: Spreading half-truths about integration
- Kotoutuminen #10: Misleading expectations that will keep you (dis)integrated
- Kotoutuminen #11: The teacher asks the student why Muslims kill people
- Kotoutuminen #12: Integration is as easy as 1+ 1 = 2. NOT!
- Kotoutuminen #13: There is no good Finnish word for inclusion just like with integration before
- Kotoutuminen #14: Disseminate and vanish
- Kotoutuminen #15: Finland only promotes gender equality
- Kotoutuminen #16: Schools should encourage pupils to be proud of their roots
*Kotoutiminen is the Finnish term for integration. It came about in the late-1990s because there was no such term in the Finnish language. Finland is one of the few countries in the world that has an integration law. The many holes this law has is that it does not grasp what integration, or adaption, means for the person who “integrates.”