European racism is like a Cadillac but has the ability to appear and vanish

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Racism is like a Cadillac, they bring out a new model every year.

Malcolm X (1925-65)

The story of the three Chelsea fans who are suspected of turning away a black person from entering a train on the Paris subway station of Richelieu-Drovat highlights the many “Cadillacs” and shades of racism in today’s Europe as well as its ability to appear and vanish.  

One of the suspects in the Paris metro affair is Richard Barklie, 50, when a black man, Souleymane Sylla, was shoved from entering a carriage. While this was happening, supporters were heard chanting: “We’re racist, we’re racist and that’s the way we like it.”

Barklie claims that the black man was shoved away because the carriage was full and had nothing to do with racism.

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Read full story here.

Continue reading “European racism is like a Cadillac but has the ability to appear and vanish”

UPDATE (Mar. 6): Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism will be updated separately. To see other examples of opinionated journalism in Finland about cultural diversity, please go to this link.

Mar. 6

Olli Immonen rajoittaisi somaleiden maahanmuuttoa (Verkkouutiset)

What’s wrong with this story? We all know what Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Olli Immonen’s xenophobic views are about migration and especially about Muslims. No news here. It wasn’t too long ago when Finnish officials avoided using the term “refugee” for Soviet citizens that were fleeing the USSR since the term wasn’t liked by its giant eastern neighbor. Similarly, there were so few migrants in Finland in the 1980s that such people weren’t even called migrants but aliens. In the Verkkouutiset story the term asylum is only mentioned once even if Somalis are considered refugees fleeing a civil war that has ravaged the country since the early 1990s. Not only does Verkkouutiset accept Immonen’s terminology but sides with it by default. The Verkkouutiset story is a good example of how the Finnish media plays down the humanitarian suffering of groups like Somalis by simply regurgitating an Islamophobes claims that “migration [not refugees fleeing war] from that country” must be halted.

 

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Continue reading “UPDATE (Mar. 6): Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism”

Koko Hubara: The brave woman who founded the brown girl’s blog

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Koko Hubara is a young energetic woman who founded a few weeks ago on Valentine’s Day a blog called Ruskeat Tytöt, or brown girls. The interest that her blog has received in such a short time surprised her.

Why would anyone be interested in a blog about Other Finns? Is it because there are already so many of them but so little attention is paid to such people?

 

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Koko Hubara founded Ruskeat Tytöt blog on Valentine’s Day.

For anyone like Koko, who has had the courage to make that long and difficult journey to her own identity, requires patience and courage. Her sojourn is like building a bridge across a body of water with no banks in sight. Is it a river? A lake? Or, possibly, it could be a vast and endless ocean.

How long will it take to reach the other side, if ever?

Continue reading “Koko Hubara: The brave woman who founded the brown girl’s blog”

Migrants are not a burden to Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The letter to the editor below could be perfectly well applied to Finland. In Finland, migrants and minorities are tired of being called a burden by opportunistic politicians that want to gain with xenophobic sound bites voter attention.  

Sensible Europeans know better and more of their voices are needed in the face of this hostile attack against migrants and minorities.

One good recent example of the near-constant attacks against the migrant and minority community is the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party program on immigration policy. On top of this, the PS chairman, Timo Soini, wondered in an interview with YLE in English why so few migrants move to Finland.

Silence shouldn’t be our language when challenging all forms of intolerance.

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Continue reading “Migrants are not a burden to Finland”

UPDATE (Mar. 6): Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism will be updated separately. To see other examples of opinionated journalism in Finland about cultural diversity, please go to this link.

Mar. 6

Yli puolet nuorista on kokenut syrjintää – ongelmia eniten kouluissa (Helsingin Sanomat)

What’s the missing story in this story? Migrant Tales has written before about how migrants, or children of migrant parents, are together with sexual minorities victims of bullying. The findings of the survey, which is monitored every year,  doesn’t reveal anything new except that the problem persists. The survey showed that 85% of those aged 15-28 years, and especially migrants and sexual minorities, suffered greater bullying than white Finns. But there is an important question missing in the story: What steps are being taken to challenge this type of anti-social behavior? What do the politicians and policy-makers think about the findings? What do they plan to do about the problem? Continue reading “UPDATE (Mar. 6): Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism”

Contemporary Immigration in Greece: A sourcebook

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Dr. Theodoros Fouskas, a lecturer at the New York College, Greece, is editor together with Dr. Vassileios Tsevrenis of a comprehensive book on immigration in Greece. As some are already aware, Greece has seen a surge in xenophobia due to the great number of refugees that enter the country from outside Europe.  

Dr. Tsevrenis is a lawyer, special scientific collaborator at Marangopoulos Foundation for Human Rights (MFHR), and member of the Scientific Committee of the Foundation of Greek Parliament.

Continue reading “Contemporary Immigration in Greece: A sourcebook”

Politicians who fuel and support opportunistically segregation in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Tanja Hartonen-Pulkka is a Perussuomalaiset (PS)* candidate in April’s parliamentary elections. Last year she was noticed by Migrant Tales for all the wrong reasons. Hartonen-Pulkka lives in Mäntyharju, a small town in Eastern Finland with a population of 6,200 people that has a handful of foreign residents. She claimed in fall that at the present rate, white Finns will become a minority in this country. 

Hartonen-Pulkka’s anti-immigration rhetoric hasn’t ended even if she got her fingers burned in August. In a campaign poster she hands you the usual anti-immigration rhetoric that is hostile to migrants and minorities living in Finland:

We must limit immigration. We have to get a handle on social welfare immigration and the cost of immigration has to be lowered. We must first create jobs in order that Finns have work before we can think about increasing the number of skilled migrants [to Finland].

Continue reading “Politicians who fuel and support opportunistically segregation in Finland”

PS’ Timo Soini claims he’s “surprised” that not more immigrants want to move to Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Politicians sometimes say pretty incredible things. What do you think if the leader of Finland’s biggest anti-immigration party in parliament states that he’s surprised that not more immigrants move to Finland? And then the leader of this party, Timo Soini, puts the icing on the cake and is quoted on YLE in English as saying that Finland “is one of the least-immigrated countries in the world.”

Come again, Soini, what did you just say?! You wonder why so few immigrants move to Finland. Well we wonder why the PS is the third-biggest party in parliament if there are so few migrants in Finland.

Migrant Tales has written a number of times about the perils of anti-immigration rhetoric and how it scares away skilled immigrants and foreign investment.

We published in 2012 a blog entry on such preposterous views of the PS headlined, Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming, the super immigrant [3]. Continue reading “PS’ Timo Soini claims he’s “surprised” that not more immigrants want to move to Finland”

Being responsible in debates about immigration and extremism

Posted on by Mark

Extremism almost never sees itself as ‘extreme’

When I was young I studied ‘brainwashing’ as part of my studies in psychology. One feature that constantly emerged was how ‘extreme’ interpretations of events typically took a grain of truth and wrapped it up in a generalisation such that it would act as a shield to any criticism, especially convincing and obvious counterarguments that threatened to unravel the persons’ warped world-view.

This is always tricky ground, for several reasons. This bias is something we all share to different degrees, and so it’s easy to reverse the argument if you start trying to point it out. Being ‘brainwashed’ is to an extent common, we even have an everyday term for it – we call people ‘opinionated’. Brainwashing is, in essence, accepting information as true without fully assimilating it as an independently thinking, critical and empathic individual. In the context of racism debates today, we might talk of pathological bias. Continue reading “Being responsible in debates about immigration and extremism”