When I came to live permanently in Finland over 40 years ago, people like me were seen as an ethnic anomaly. Sometimes having a different skin color or looking “foreign” meant receiving microaggressions like people shoving your child with a lighted cigarette that burns them, or hearing a perfect stranger saying something racist to you in public.
I know children who aren’t white Finns of hiding from the sun because it darkens their skin. What kind of a society do we live in where children see the sun as something negative because it tans their beautiful brown skins?
The more culturally diverse Finland becomes more racism. The only reason why some Finns believed that there was no racism in the country was that there weren’t enough foreigners or “foreign-looking people” to load off or test how racist they are.
Matters will get worse before they improve.
The hostile environment, political cowardice and the rise of a hostile Islamophobic party are just a few signs on the wayward journey.