During the European Action Week Against Racism (March 15-23), I had the opportunity to visit an elementary and middle school in rural Eastern Finland. The event, which was organized by the Red Cross, asked elementary and middle school students to do a posters pointing out the good and bad things about Finland. Some did short…
Tag: acceptance
A must-see video about who we Finns are
If there is one matter where Finland’s ever-growing culturally diverse society must still work on, it’s instilling greater acceptance and respect for those who are different from white Finns. For me, this is central in our struggle to live in a country that is acceptant and respects others irrespective of their backgrounds. After moving over…
Comment: Finland & Cultural Diversity 2013
This year’s Finland & Cultural Diversity 2013 report by Migrant Tales reveals something that we’ve known all along but had difficulty challenging: Accepting others who are different from us as equals. This is unfortunate considering that we have all the legal means to do so. Our Constitution guarantees cultural diversity and sees discrimination as a crime….
My naïvity and the Finns
When I moved to Finland in December 1978, I wasn’t naïve about Finland, but super naïve. I was so confiding that I actually believed all Finns were honest. If happiness were a spider, it would spin a web to catch our good thoughts. Apart from a strong admiration for the forests and people who inhabited…
The same face of intolerance lives amongst us today
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…
Dear Finland, as the heat of summer draws…
Dear Finland, As the heat of summer draws attention to your ever-changing sub-arctic beauty, you may have wondered why Migrant Tales has become a voice of the immigrant and visible minority community in Finland. We are always humbled by your presence on our blog. In truth, we are nothing more than a new confident image…
Migrant Tales is a blog that accepts who we are where we are
I sometimes wonder where I get the strength and inspiration to write at least one blog entry a day on Migrant Tales. It’s not that I have the luxury of giving 100% of my time to this blog because I have a job and a life as well. Migrant Tales is a powerful voice because it is a hand-on-heart operation running on the fuel of passion for social justice and equality.