The oddly unspoken topic of racism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

“Racism is a refuge for the ignorant. It seeks to divide and to destroy. It is the enemy of freedom, and deserves to be met head-on and stamped out.”
Pierre Berton (1920-2004)

Many visitors have come and gone on Migrant Tales. Those that jump the MT ship the soonest are those who choose to justify a social ill like racism. Some have gone as far as to claim that there is no racism in Finland.

A recent blog entry by Mark highlights how hate and racism are perpetuated even by the police.

Establishing an autocratic regime is relatively easy in a country with poor infrastructure. In Argentina, where the country’s telephone network was mostly out of order, it was simple to shut the country from the outside world and spoonfeed censored news by the military rulers to the public.

Irrespective of the censorship that was imposed on Argentina in the 1970s, people did have access to newspapers like Le Monde, The Guardian, Washington Post and others that wrote regularly about the human rights violations committed by the military junta.

If we have in Europe enough historical information and evidence that show us beyond any doubt the destruction that xenophobia and racism have caused on our continent, why do we still consider such social ills worthy of our support?

If you are a pessimist, the answer you may hear may shock you: People and politicians support xenophobic and racist behavior because they are xenophobic and racist themselves.  In Argentina, the military regime, which was one of the most ruthless in Latin America in the last century, was able to carry out its crimes thanks to the support it had from the public.

There must be something wrong with our educational system if we’re still influenced so much by xenophobia, racism or autocratic regimes, which are the enemies of our freedom.

A journalist from a local newspaper told me recently that the reason why they don’t write a lot about racism cases is because they don’t want to give racism any attention.

That kind of a stance is exactly what has made xenophobia and racism grow in Finland and Europe. Not noticing it, or ignoring such a social ill, will not help it go away. It will, contrarily, encourage it to become bolder.

We cannot afford to be silent in the face of those forces that aim to usurp our freedom and well-being.

Like Berton pointed out, racism must be faced head-on and stamped out.

Finland and cultural diversity in 2012 will be published on December 28

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales will publish on December 28 its review of the major events that shaped 2012 on the cultural diversity and immigration front in Finland. Contrary to 2011, this year’s review will be called Finland and cultural diversity in 2012.

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Finns colonized Argentina in 1906. Some, like Eelis Heikkilä, made a meager living by picking bananas.

Why have we changed the name?

The answer is simple: The real issue being debated in this country isn’t immigration per se but acceptance of cultural diversity. How inclusive is our society to “otherness?”

As far as we can tell, there is one party as well as many politicians from other parties who are fighting tooth and nail to keep Finland white physically and spiritually. In their myopic world, the only “good” Finn is a white Finn.

We disagree. Being Finnish is a personal matter and does not hinge on how anti-immigration parties and groups define it.

Thanks to the over 1.2 million Finns that left this country between 1860 and 1999, Finnish culture and identity is richer than some people would like to admit.

No matter how many obstacles these anti-immigration and counterjihadist groups place on our path, the tide turned many decades ago. The ever-growing cultural diversity we see within our borders today is fueling a new sense of Finnishness that is proud and diverse.

If you have any suggestions you would like to make concerning the most important events that took place in Finland in 2012 on the cultural diversity and immigration front, please drop us a line ([email protected]).

Thank you for your support and for making Migrant Tales one of Finland’s most successful blogs.

 

 

 

The same face of intolerance lives amongst us today

Posted on by Migrant Tales

When I was growing up in the 1970s, one of the matters that followed me around was the constant news of the mass murder and cemetery silence imposed by ruthless Latin American dictatorships. If you lived in one of those countries where human rights violations were the rule, you were confronted by two options: take up arms or be quiet. 

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Read “Uncovering Crimes of Argentina’s Junta” here.

Much of the bloodshed that took place in Latin America during that tumultous decade could have been averted if there would have existed democratic institutions and respect for civil liberties.

It is a tragedy that millions of people were denied the right to express their opinions democratically.

In many respects, but in a different context, the same type of exclusion is taking place in many parts of Europe today. Ethnic groups like the Roma, Somalis, Turks, blacks, Muslims, Jews and other minorities are still treated like third-class citizens and with contempt in some countries.

Even if these groups are not persecuted in the same way like political dissidents in Latin America were four decades ago, they are treated with contempt. We can never be at peace as long as we allow poverty, ignorance and apathy to silence whole groups.

In many respects, but in a different context, too many Finnish politicians have shown too little interest for the rights and welfare of immigrants and visible minorities. The fact that we grant asylum to refugees and then force them to live separated for years from their families is one of many examples of their scorn.

If we look at the arguments used by right-wing anti-immigration extremist groups in Europe and Finland today, they have the same aim that autocratic regimes had to socially exclude and silence whole groups.

How long can a minority be forced to remain silent? In the United States, it took centuries before Rosa Parks ignited the Civil Rights Movement in December 1955. Hopefully different minorities in Europe react much faster.

The most important lesson we can learn from social movements like the above is that change must come from the group.

One of the oddest arguments one hears in Finland every now and then is that the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS), a party that is the breathing ground for right-wing extremism,  has helped integrate troubled politicians who are multiculturally challenged into the system.

Such a preposterous argument is, in my opinion, only a justification for our fascination with modern-day fascism.

Democracy and civil rights is not a right that one group can own at the expense of others.

Keeping it from other groups is sowing the seeds of tomorrow’s violence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Migrant Tales (July 8, 2012): The absurdity of the reverse-racism argument in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Every now and then you’ll hear a visitor on Migrant Tales claim: What about [reverse] racism against [white] Finns!? Racism is a complex problem but one matter singles it out: It is an effective tool to socially exclude, control and exploit other groups in society from vital resources such as jobs and economic wealth. 

The fact that white Finns are the standard of everything in Finland is enough proof that they wield real power. White Finns don’t have to understand racism because they simply don’t have to. It’s not an issue because they are the standard of this society, the norm. Everyone else has a prefix attached to them like immigrant, immigrant descendant, black, Roma etc.

In May 2011, the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS) party renounced all forms of racism, even positive discrimination, or affirmative action.

It is surprising that when the PS made their preposterous statement, few if any media in this country understood how racist and grotesque it was and how it revealed a serious case of  colorblind racism (let’s pretend we’re equal because ethnic background does not matter, when in fact it does).

Colorblind racism works in Finland in an implicit and explicit manner. Its aim is the same:  ethnic background is not the issue. If it is an issue, it’s your  ethnic background.

  • ·         We have such a wonderful society that we are way past racism so get over it (explicit colorblind racism);
  • ·         It’s your culture, your parents or you that is hindering adaption to our society. In this case I recognize your ethnic background but only to shift blame and wash my hands of the problem (implicit colorblind racism).

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 This graffiti that reads “White Power” in Finnish was on a special elementary school’s wall in Mikkeli, Finland, for months before it was removed. 

Accusing a visible minority, or immigrant of being racist against white Finns, is a good example of implicit colorblind racism.  Since racism isn’t a problem in our society, it can’t be my problem. It’s your problem.

Some successful immigrants or visible minorities who have succeeded in Finland may reinforce the same colorblind racist argument as white Finns. They may claim:  ”I’m not white but I adapted to the white Finns’ world. That is why I am successful. You too can be.”

Those immigrants who have racism issues usually come from countries where such a social ill is the standard. It’s easy for them to accept the white Finn as a standard because they too were the norm in their former home country.  As a result, some embrace the idea of becoming a Tuomo-setä, or Uncle Tom, because they are encouraged to and rewarded by white Finnish society for such behavior.

If you are ever confronted by a person who uses the reverse-racism argument, ask him or her how is the prejudice of a minority as devastating as that of the majority?

White Finns should stop whining about reverse racism because it isn’t an issue. It’s only one of many loaded arguments used by them to justify their racism.

 

 

Police college of Finland: are they perpetuating hate?

Posted on by Mark

lieWhat an irony. You would think that the publishing of hate crime statistics would be an annual opportunity to raise the profile of hate crime and also to renew efforts to prevent it. But no, the forums are alive with spurious interpretations of what it all means and even attempts to show that Somalis are in fact more racist than Finns. Can it be true?

One effect of hate crime statistics being published in Finland is that it brings up once again the unwelcome question of whether Finns are more racist than other nations. This isn’t my question, by the way, but it is one that Finns tend to dwell on, as if there were an acceptable level of racism that a country is allowed to have!

What has also been happening is that international comparisons are made for the statistics within Finland, so that means looking at the different nationalities living in Finland, and providing a league table of the racists among them.

This isn’t just something you will find in the hate forums though. On page 58 of the 2011 Police report (recently published by the Police College of Finland and the Ministry of Interior’s Police Department), the researchers themselves provide their own league table (Table 12) detailing racist crimes by foreigners per 1000 head of population, with Somalis top of the list on 10 per 1000 head of population, followed by Iraqis on 8. A quick calculation gives an equivalent rate for Finns of 0.1 per 1000 head of population. Wow, aren’t the Finns so much better than those dirty foreigners? Ugh, well, no actually! Quite the opposite! But you’ll have to bear with me, I’m afraid, because you see, they haven’t bothered to inform the reader just how useless and distorting this kind of statistic actually is.

Several figures for rate per capita are possible here. For example, we could look at those racist crimes that do not involve provocation by another racist. We could also look at the age group 15-34, as this is where the biggest problems lie (66% of racist crimes) and it’s also the segment of the population that is most different in proportions for the different nationalities (see below). Narrowing the focus doesn’t change any of the fundamentals in the argument, by the way.

These simple adjustments give us the figures of 0.028 attacks per capita by Finns aged 15-34, and 0.14 attacks per capita by Somalis of the same age.

It still looks grim for the Somalis, doesn’t it? But calculations made per capita are horribly flawed.

They ignore the fact that many Finns will seldom or never encounter a black immigrant, while the same is not true for black immigrants meeting white Finns.

Let’s put it plain and simple. If 1000 in a 10,000 Finns actually get to meet a Somali (or any other visible foreigner), and one of these Finns is a racist who decides to assault the foreigner, then it’s all too easy to claim that only one in 10,000 are racist because only one in 10,000 assaults showed up ‘per capita’, when in reality, it was one in 1000 Finns who got to encounter a foreigner and were racist. The opposite effect works for Somalis, who will likely encounter people of a different race many times daily.

Let’s show the maths

Two population groups, A and B, where A is a minority and B is a majority. Let’s set the rate of racism at 5% for both Group A and Group B, so we would therefore expect the per capita crimes to be the same. If they are not, then something is wrong with using per capita rates to define rates of racism.

Two key assumption, a racist assault can only be committed by someone who encounters someone else of a different race or ethnicity. One kind of racist is someone who has great difficulty in encountering someone of another race.

Group A – minority
N = 100 (total population of minority)
n = 100 (number of population encountering people of another race)
C = number of crimes per year = 5 (i.e. 5% of n)
per capita rate = 0.05 (based on C/N)

Group B – majority
N = 2500
n = 250 (number of population encountering people of another race)
C = number of crimes per year = 12.5 (5% of n)
(1) per capita rate = 0.005 (based on C/N, i.e. not taking account of n)
(2) per capita rate = 0.05 (based on C/n, i.e. taking account of n)

The first calculation for the per capita rate of racist crime in the majority population (1) is 10 times greater that for the minority than the majority population, even though WE set the rate at EXACTLY THE SAME LEVEL, i.e. 5%, so as to control for it. In equation (2), the rate of encounter has been factored in and it delivers the correct rate of crime per capita.

Conclusion, the rate of encounter can have an enormous effect on statistics of rates of racist crime per capita.

if we used calculation (1), we would be throwing up our arms and saying that the Finns are getting attacked so much more and that the Somalis are ten times more racist, because when you do the maths, that’s what you get (exactly like the Finnish Police have suggested we use the statistics).

Finnish racists when they exist simply have less opportunity to express their racism and so to appear in the statistics. Using the ‘whole population’ therefore waters down the ‘per encounter’ rate and hugely underestimates the rate of racism of the majority population.

To discover the true rate of racist crime, we must adjust for the fact that minorities are by definition rare and encounters with them are likewise rare for the majority population, while for the minority, encounters with Finns are commonplace. We must take account of rates of encounter to arrive at anything like a comparable per capita rate. Hate crimes are available in part to estimate rates of racism. It should be absolutely clear where the per capita figures are horrendously flawed in estimating rates of racism. Common sense, folks.

In other words, adjusting for the Somali minority in the age group 15¬-34 would give us a rate that is 227 times smaller than it currently is and a long way behind the rate for Finns.

Finns = 0.012 attacks per interracial encounter
Somalis = 0.000083 attacks per interracial encounter

Of course this isn’t the end of the story. There are numerous other factors that can also impact disproportionately on the statistics, including the higher percentage of young adults as a percentage in the age group aged 15-35, who are most likely to be involved in street assault. For Finns, they constitute about 23% of the population, while for Somalis, they constitute 40%. This would artificially inflate the Somali figure even further.

The idea of league tables per capita that compares minority populations or by implication the majority population is inherently flawed and is in my view an extremely cynical abuse of statistics where there is no explanation of the drawbacks. The work of a racist researcher? Or perhaps a totally incompetent one. Either way, it’s not good enough.

These issues are too important to think that people haven’t stopped to ask themselves what are the underlying assumptions in these statistics and how are they likely to be used, or to have actually monitored how the statistics are being used in the public debate. One look at the comments here or on some of the hate forums reveals just how eager racists are to make use of the police report to disparage immigrants.

Why do we have a league table, if not to make foreigners look bad and to make Finns look better than they are or to hide the true extent of racism in Finland? The idea of a league table is abhorrent and extremely misleading. It’s worse than that, it’s lying.

What adds to the injury is that people rely on these statistics to create profiles of particular national groups as being much more racist than they actually are, and much more racist than Finns.

So, hate crime statistics that are presented in such a way that they actually perpetuate hate crime!

Surely not, Finland, surely not!!!! Tell me I’m wrong!

PS. this article has been edited for the sake of clarity.

Approaching hate crimes in Finland: problem solver or angry boss?

Posted on by Mark

boss-yellingEnrique mentions an interesting comment from a policeman in Mikkeli talking about racism, who compares racism to being hassled when he returns to his home town because he is now a policeman. The comparison is very poor, but it’s also very telling. It is from our mistakes that we really can learn the most.

In the absence of real knowledge about the effects of being racially abused, harassed or assaulted, the policeman can be seen filling in the gap by trying to draw on his own experience. That’s perfectly normal, but it’s also horribly inadequate and dangerous, particularly when it’s a public official. He assumes that because his comparison is to him a minor thing, then racial abuse must also be a minor thing for other people too.

This illustrates all too well that public officials lack the appropriate training. And without it, they just fill in the blanks with their own made up theories and ‘common sense’, which can have the effect of downplaying the significance for the victim of the abuse they suffer as well as completely failing to see or ask what can be done about it and by whom.

Another key thing strikes me. The policeman sees this as a specifically individual problem: It’s caused by individuals and must be dealt with by the individuals involved. The person being abused must make allowances and ‘adapt’ to the abuse. The policeman doesn’t even begin to ask the question of what factors in society, the community, the life of the people involved are making this possible, more likely, or even tolerated. It’s easier to tell someone they must change their behaviour than to try to change the complex and extensive social world in which we live.

We belong to society in the same way that workers belong to an organisation. When an organisation has poor practices and a culture of incompetence that seeks to explain away mistakes by blaming individuals (the angry boss response!), the opportunities for correcting poor management, planning, education, training, and communication disappear. The same can be said for the phenomenon of racism, which is the culmination not only of individual attitudes, but also a set of conditions and practices within society that makes racism more likely.

A similar attempt to individualise problems happens in other immigrant-related issues. Joblessness, poor acquisition of language skills, poverty, and benefit dependency are all seen as exclusively the fault of the immigrants themselves, who are described variously as incompetent, lazy, uncivilised, exploiters, predators, etc. The faults or inefficiencies in the system are ignored.

Going back to our example, when an employer sets out to blame employees for all the mistakes or inefficiencies in the workplace, the employer has effectively put up a barrier to fixing the problem. Many problems can be solved by simply making it impossible for the error to occur, by changing or modifying equipment, by changing practices, by putting in safeguards and checklists, by educating, by increasing the number of personnel etc. While the education of employees is important,  it is good to remember that it is also the least effective method for diminishing errors or inefficiencies. We need more than just media campaigns to stamp out racism.

We need to look at the conditions in society that make racism acceptable, possible and likely. For some people, the answer is that immigrants are the problem, simply because of their mere presence. Such a hate-filled response is a bit like blaming the patient for a failure in medical care. It’s clearly insane.

If you want to ensure that an immigrant isn’t discriminated against in the market place, then employers need to understand what constitutes discrimination. If the ‘labelling’ is poor, then the patient can easily get the wrong medicine. Employers who tell themselves that an immigrant ‘won’t fit into the existing workplace’ think they are giving the right medicine to their organisation, but actually, they are poisoning their organisation, poisoning the immigrant, and poisoning the wider society, because higher unemployment becomes a bigger problem for society and can feed racism and hate-filled grievance.

Another example is how to implement appropriate ‘alarm’ systems so that we are doing all we can to prevent discrimination. One such alarm would be an indicator of how many immigrants an organisation employs, which can be compared to local or relevant demographic data. This is not an idea about quotas, but a way to draw attention to possible poor employment practices that are disadvantaging immigrants. In some sectors, immigrants are overrepresented in the workforce, and this too can be an alarm bell that they are being exploited, either as cheap labour, or in poor working conditions. How we choose to act on this information as a society is a question on its own, but without alarm bells many situations that threaten social cohesion, justice and normal living for immigrants can all too easily be ignored or go unnoticed.

Any minority in society needs special protection and safeguards. This requires a society wide approach!

Yes, the individual is important. An immigrant needs to be equipped and willing to do the jobs that are available. But it’s all too easy to blame an immigrant if they don’t have exactly the right skills. Yet an employer who ignores the capacities of employees or fails to provide up-to-date training and career advancement opportunities will very quickly find any workforce inadequate.

In just the same way an employer has a responsibility to ensure the staff are properly equipped for the jobs they need to do, so too does society need to equip immigrants to take advantage of their citizenship. Employees have responsibilities too, but the more conscientious the ’employer’, the more they avoid a ‘blame culture’ approach to problems, then the more the ‘staff’ are willing and able to realise their own individual potential.

So, the key message for me is that we need to take a less individual approach to immigration issues, especially racism, and to look at the wider conditions of society that perpetuate racist behaviour and attitudes. We need to build in more safeguards to make discrimination in various ways impossible, or at the very least to build in comprehensive and adequate monitoring and alarm systems that can alert us to the problem and give some clue as to a solution.

We need to get out of this ridiculous blame game and this pointing the finger at individuals – or ethnic groups as if they were individuals. It should be clear to all of us that an individual functions in a society. Ignoring or dismissing ‘the society’ part of the bargain is like an organisation claiming that its own management and workplace practices have no role whatsoever in the behaviour and effectiveness of its staff.

Hate crimes increase in 2011 in Finland: And now, what?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

What do the 918 suspected hate crime cases in 2011 in Finland tell us about ourselves as a society and what should our reaction be to such a social ill? And now, what?

Considering that the majority of crimes go unreported, it’s clear that hate crimes reported to the police are only the tip of the iceberg of a much wider problem.

l_1084-medium1

This tabloid billboard from 1996 states that the Somalis are not going to move from Finland. The majority of hate crimes reported last year were against Somalis.

Migrant Tales has written previously about how difficult it is to report hate crimes in Finland. Some policemen don’t even believe that racist harassment should be reported.

One policeman in Mikkeli told a group of immigrants that racist harassment is a minor affair. It’s like when he gets hassled in his hometown by the locals, who remind him that he is a policeman.

A recent report on hate crimes in Wales showed how people adapted to such abuse.

Heaven Crawley, director of the Centre for Migration Policy Research at Swansea University, said that they endure “everyday racism.”  Adapting to such harassment could encourage one to not use public transport, cover up one’s skin so people cannot tell a person belongs to a minority, young women may prefer not to wear the hijab because it targets them for racist abuse.

While the Police College of Finland report is a shameful chapter for a society like ours that bases its values on social equality, Nordic democracy and tolerance, the biggest culprits are not those who commit hate crimes but those who still turn a blind eye to such a social ill.

While the hate crime report by the Police College of Finland showed a 7% increase from 2010, not a single politician spoke out or expressed concern about the report.

It is very difficult for the majority of Finnish politicians to speak out against racism, hate crimes and intolerance in general as long as one of Finland’s largest political parties, the Perussuomalaiset, promotes intolerance and is the refuge for anti-immigration extremists.

What keeps us as a society from speaking out and condemning a pathological disorder like racism, which is at the root of the majority of hate crime cases?

Are we afraid to admit that intolerance is an issue – or are we quiet because deep down inside some of us still think that racism is ok?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Police College of Finland: Hate crimes rise by 7% in 2011

Posted on by Migrant Tales

A total of 918 suspected hate crimes were reported in Finland in 2011, which is a 7% rise from 860 cases in the previous year, according to the Police College of Finland. Compared with the previous years, suspected hate crime cases have not risen significantly, according to researcher Iina Sahramäki.

“If we look the previous years to 2008 (when the Police College of Finland started to report hate crime statistics), there hasn’t been any significant growth,” she told Migrant Tales.

The majority (86%) of suspected hate crimes were racially motivated. Other factors included religious background (6.6%), sexual orientation (4.6%) and disability (2.6%). Three cases (0.3%) involved transgender victims.

Somalis were the single biggest national group that were victims of hate crimes in Finland in 2011.

Table 1. Suspected hate crimes in Finland by year.
Year              Cases
 2011………..918
2010………..860
2009………1,007
2008………..859
Source: Police College of Finland
Read full report here (in Finnish).

Finnish police to have new anti-ethnic profiling guidelines in force in 2013

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Rainer Hiltunen, Ombudsman for Minorities head of office, told Migrant Tales that talks have taken place with the Finnish police to draft new guidelines and more effective monitoring to ensure that ethnic profiling doesn’t happen. The new guidelines are expected to be in force in 2013. 

Kuva 106

The Ombudsman for Minorities office expressed concern in spring about higher-than-average complaints from foreigners that they were being indiscriminately stopped by the police for spot checks.

Interior Minister Päivi Räsänen confirmed in April that the Finnish police doesn’t ethnically profile anyone.

Foreigners are sometimes stopped in Finland by the police when looking for undocumented immigrants, according to Räsänen.

“One of the problems [concerning ethnic profiling] is that when the police stop a person, they sometimes forget to tell them clearly why they have been stopped,” he said. “Better monitoring of the police in this respect is crucial to discourage ethnic profiling from happening.”

The Ombudsman for Minorities official saw England as a good example for the Finnish police to follow.

“The Stephen Lawrence case is a good case in point that shows how institutional racism can undermine the effectiveness of the Metropolitan Police of London,” he said.

 

 

What are immigrants supposed to adapt to?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

One of the biggest questions when speaking of the integration of immigrants and visible minorities in Europe and Finland is what are they supposed to adapt to. In theory everything sounds perfect in our law books. What happens on the ground, however, is a totally different story. 

Kuva 79

This abandoned Cadillac reveals the crude face of integration. Great expectations but difficult to fulfill because the car has no engine. The children of immigrants are one vulnerable group.

The shameful xenophobic and anti-Semitic events going on in Hungary and Eastern Europe, Greece and elsewhere are enough proof that the region has some serious issues to deal with.

In my home country of Finland, matters have gotten so bad that in 2011 the Perussuomalaiset (PS), an anti-EU, anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam party, rose from the minor leagues to become the country’s third-largest political force in parliament.

The PS is today the fertile breeding ground for right-wing extremism in Finland.

Two crucial articles of our Constitution should not be forgotten when speaking about integration:

Chapter 2 Section 6  (No one shall, without an acceptable reason, be treated differently from other persons on the ground of sex, age, origin, language, religion, conviction, opinion, health, disability or other reason that concerns his or her person).

Chapter 2 Section 17 (The right of everyone to use his or her own language, either Finnish or Swedish, before courts of law and other authorities, and to receive official documents in that language, shall be guaranteed by an Act…The Sami, as an indigenous people, as well as the Roma and other groups, have the right to maintain and develop their own language and culture).

I am confident that Finnish officials have the best intentions in mind when they look at the integration of newcomers. There is, however, a major obstacle when speaking of effective integration and inclusion of immigrants in our society: lack of funds and not seeing any worth in cultural diversity.

This shouldn’t surprise us. The whole social construct of Finnish national identity is based on narrow terms. We need, however, to change that culture radically. Instead of reinforcing our exclusiveness, new generations of Finns should be taught the importance of inclusion, mutual acceptance and respect for diversity.

Why would anyone want to embrace the culture and values of any society that is outright hostile to them?

You have a choice in Finland: Become an an Uncle Tom (Tuomo-setä).

In Finland the definition of aTuomo-setä could be any immigrant or visible minority who betrays other people like himself by becoming and adopting the same values that exclude others socially.

Taking into account the negative atmosphere and the inability of Finnish society to accept and permit cultural diversity to become the standard, it would be naive if not foolhardy to forget your roots and identity when adapting.

Your greatest asset to our society is your culture and identity.

It’s not being third-rate white Finn.