Tag: colonialism

Facebook (Petra Laiti): The price of Finnish colonialism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales comment: Today’s news that Parliament’s constitutional committee voted against the Sámi Parliament Act is a big blow to Europe’s only indigenous group. The parties that voted against the act were the Center Party, National Coalition Party (Kokoomus), and the radical-right Perussuomalaiset.*

I wrote in the forthcoming European Islamophobia Report 2022 the following: “Another big test for Prime Minister [Sanna] Marin is the Sámi Parliament Act, which the Centre Party has relentlessly opposed. The long-overdue act will give Europe’s only indigenous group the right to self-determination as envisaged in the ILO Convention 169 (Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989). Opposition to the act reminds other minorities, like Muslims, how Finland views different minorities and their rights.” 

Petra Laiti

Millions of Ukrainians are coming. How long will it take before our goodwill turns into open hostility?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Remember 2015, when some 1.3 million million asylum seekers came to Europe from countries like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia? Europe says welcome! Tervetuloa (welcome)! Meillä on tilaa (there is room for you)! After the initial outpouring of support and understanding for these people fleeing wars that we had started, attitudes took an abrupt turn for the worst.

New soundbites emerged: Go back to your countries! Social welfare bums! Illegal “refugees.”

Behind those sinister phrases were plans to make life as difficult as possible for these asylum seekers, who were mainly non-white and Muslims.

Today, Europe is ready to grant Ukrainians and foreigners fleeing war in Ukraine special protection status. If approved, it would give such refugees automatic residence permits, work permits, and access to social welfare for up to three years.

In 2016, the EU was welcoming, sometimes with open arms, asylum seekers from outside the EU. Photo: Enrique Tessieri
Continue reading “Millions of Ukrainians are coming. How long will it take before our goodwill turns into open hostility?”

New York Times: Hillary Clinton should blame European racism, not migrants for the rise of populism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Hillary Clinton says that migration is the main reason for feeding European populism.

Migrant Tales disagrees. Europe is such a racist region plagued by its colonial and post-colonial history that was and still has its hands drenched in genocide and exploitation.

Don’t blame the migrants, Clinton. Blame European racism for the rise in populism.

 

Read the full story here.

 

 

Brexit-inflicted UK is so racist that even white Europeans are targets of racism and rage

Posted on by Migrant Tales

It would be wrong to conclude that Brexit is the cause of the racism we are witnessing today in the United Kingdom. Surprised? Not really. What would you expect from a country that has a dark history in global domination, exploitation, and genocide? 

The common thinking of some people about the United Kingdom is that it was its divine right to colonize, enslave, exploit, pillage and commit genocide on a mass global scale. Britain is as much out of touch with its racism and bigotry as it is in acknowledging, apologizing and compensating its victims. 

The racism we are seeing today in the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States, Australia and elsewhere is the same ogre that conquered and pillaged the world through the greed of colonization and slavery. 

Below is a story in metro.co.uk that highlights the illness facing Brexit-inflicted United Kingdom, where even white Europeans are targets of racism and rage. 

Read the full story here.

Thank you Patrick Yu for the heads-up.

Wouter Van Bellingen: Black Pete is an aberration that will become history

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Wouter Van Bellingen, 45, is a Flemish human rights’ activist who has fought for racial justice in Belgium. One of the issues that he has challenged is the racist legacy of Black Pete (or Zwarte Piet). Apart from issues like cultural appropriation and disrespect for minorities like blacks, the United Nations declared in 2015 that Black Pete was a “vestige of slavery.”  

Elected in 2007 as the deputy mayor of Sint-Niklaas, Van Bellingen became the first black deputy mayor of Belgium. Presently is the director of Integration Pact (Integratiepact), an association that promotes integration and inclusion of migrants and minorities in Belgium.

Every year Flemish- and Dutch-speakers celebrate Black Pete from the end of October to December 6.

Van Bellingen remembers as a child and adolescent growing up in Flanders that Black Pete was “mental torture” for him and other black children.  Blacks are the most discriminated group in Belgium and at the lower end of the poverty scale. Black Pete reinforces stereotypes about blacks like belittling their intelligence, according to him.

“Since my classmates knew me they didn’t mess with me at school,” said Van Bellingen. “They [white children and adults before] would come up to total strangers and touch your skin and ask if it was going to stain them. It is not a joke. Some believed that our black skin stained theirs.”

Van Bellingen said that when he was a child, he avoided going to stores because total strangers would stop him on the street and yell, “Look Black Pete!”

“I went to see an MP last week, and her daughter, who was of mixed race asked if she could scrub her dark skin and become white,” he said.

Despite the racism that Black Pete brings out in white people who pay homage to this offensive character to blacks and minorities, Van Bellingen says that matters are improving.

“Matters are getting better in Belgium,” he added. “If you looked at the shops five years ago, you could find Black Pete everywhere. I believe it will eventually vanish.”

Van Bellingen said that his children will still have to suffer “the mental torture” he went through, but by the time he has grandchildren, Black Pete character will become history.

“The majority of the people who live in Antwerp have immigrant backgrounds,” he continued. “The majority disapprove of this practice. It will first disappear in Flanders and then in the Netherlands.”

 

 

Wouter Van Bellingen, who became Belgium’s first black deputy major in 2007, has campaigned fearlessly against Black Pete/Zwart Piet. Photo by Enrique Tessieri.

Growing up with Black Pete got worse for Van Bellingen as he got older.

Continue reading “Wouter Van Bellingen: Black Pete is an aberration that will become history”

Migrant Tales (June 16, 2012): The crux of European racism – too little inclusion, too much race and blood

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Much of the way Europeans perceive themselves as a group today is still deeply embedded in racism. The fact that we haven’t yet even started to confront the legacy of colonialism, which fuels our ”us” and ”them” view of the world, reveals a disturbing fact: There’s still too little inclusion and acceptance in this part of the world. 

Sadder still is the fact that too few of us openly promote more inclusion and acceptance in our society. How many times have you heard your local politician use terms like “mutual acceptance” and “respect” when speaking of immigrants and visible minorities?

Our race-and- blood view of ourselves and “others” explains why some Europeans still have difficulty overcoming the “us vs. them” mindset.

It would be naive, even foolhardy, to claim that the root of European racism does not date back to the nineteenth century, when we were a colonial power.

Racist views of other groups, especially blacks, is still predominant. The drawing is from the Golden Book Encyclopedia. The 1959 edition sold over 60 million volumes. 

Continue reading “Migrant Tales (June 16, 2012): The crux of European racism – too little inclusion, too much race and blood”

ENAR condemns racism against blacks in Europe

Posted on by Migrant Tales

MT comment:  The statement by the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) was published five days before the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream” speech, and the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and of its Abolition. Millions of black Europeans are still victims of racism and discrimination in this part of the world. 

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Over the course of four centuries, approximately 17 million Black Africans were sold as slaves and transported across the Atlantic to European colonies. Racism played a fundamental role in the slave trade by constructing the European myth of an inferior Black race that served to legitimise anti-Black violence. Although science long ago debunked the myths of biological “races”, hostility towards Blacks continues to be embedded in the idea of a separate Black “race”.

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Read full statement here.

23/8/2013- Today, on International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and of its Abolition, ENAR brings attention to the fact that the racist legacy of colonialism endures in Europe. Millions of Black Europeans are still being treated as inferior, continuing to lack equal access to employment, education, housing, justice, as well as goods and services. For example, unemployment among Black 16 to 24 year-olds in the UK is double that for White counterparts. 

Black people in Paris are on average six times more likely to be stopped by the police than White people.

A European-wide survey by the Fundamental Rights Agency also showed that 41% of Sub-Saharan African respondents felt they had been discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity at least once in the previous 12 months. Despite data that show persistent and European-wide racism against Blacks, there are no comprehensive and focused strategies on EU and national levels to tackle anti-Black racism. ENAR therefore issues the following recommendations to the EU and European States: 

– Identify and combat anti-Black racism, or Afrophobia, as a specific form of racism rooted in European colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade.
– Raise awareness about people of African descent in Europe and their positive contributions to European society, history, culture, and economics.
– Ensure that people of African descent enjoy equal access to quality education and address the existence of discrimination against Black students as well as biased school curricula.
– Promote equal justice for people of African descent and tackle disparities in police and border stop rates, sentencing, incarceration, and other inequities in justice.
– Collect and publish EU-wide racial discrimination and inclusion data to empirically document and monitor discrimination and exclusion impacting people of African descent.

ENAR Chair Sarah Isal said: “There continues to be a complacent acceptance of Afrophobia in European societies. To end discrimination against Blacks in Europe, political leaders and representatives must publicly recognise anti-Black racism both as a specific form of racism and as a pan-European problem, stemming from a shared heritage of colonial abuses. It is high time that states and civil society acknowledge that hostility towards Blacks is irrational and grounded in the myth of a distinct and inferior Black race”.

Julian Abagond: Was Hitler evil?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

MT comment: Was Hitler and the Nazis an aberration or a product of European racism and colonialism?  Was the devastation that Hitler sowed the same beast that Europeans had imposed on others in Africa, the Americas,  Asia and Australia? By blaming Hitler and the Nazis for what they did, are we denying the problem of our own intolerance? Was Hitler German and/or white? 

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By Julian Abagond

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Was Hitler evil?

Most White Americans will say yes: he killed 6 million Jews in the Holocaust!

But to avoid any double standard we should apply the same moral reasoning White Americans apply to their own history:

  1. Everyone does it. Tribalism goes back to at least the invention of the spear. History is full of mass killing of civilians: Rwanda, Congo, Darfur, Srebrenica, Hiroshima, Hanoi, Gaza, Dresden, Nanking, Tamerlane, Alexander the Great,  Mongols, Assyrians, Iroquois, the killing of Armenians, Kurds, American Indians, Australian Aboriginals, Tasmanians, Namibians and on and on. If Hitler killed more people than some others, it was because he had better technology.
  2. Technology made him do it. Anyone with Hitler’s technology would have done the same thing.
  3. Europeans kill each other all the time. What’s the big deal?
  4. Jews are racist too. They have forced Palestinians off their land, apply separate laws to them and regularly massacre Palestinian civilians.
  5. Americans are no better. They have forced American Indians off their land, applied separate laws to them and regularly massacred American Indian civilians.
  6. Hitler is not uniquely evil. See above.
  7. Hitler’s intentions were good. He saw the Holocaust as doing the world a favour.
  8. It was the times! The West back then was nakedly racist. Racism had the backing of science. The book Hitler called his Bible was bought by over a million Americans: “The Passing of the Great Race” (1916) by Madison Grant, a rich New Yorker. The word genocide was not invented till 1943 and not properly defined till after the war – by the winners to condemn Hitler! We should not judge the past by current morals.
  9. We should be grateful. Germans invented the printing press, car, jet plane, rocket, etc. They gave us much of the modern medicine that allows most people to live past 40. Albert Schweitzer and other Germans have helped people in Africa. Condemning Hitler without pointing out all the good Germans have done is unbalanced and hypocritical.
  10. Get over it! It took place a long time ago. My family did not take part in it. No one you know was affected by it. Why make such a big deal about it? The past is dead and gone. There are more important issues.
  11. It is racist to talk about racism. Talking about anti-Semitism keeps it alive. Condemning Hitler is divisive.
  12. You can dismiss what Americans say about Hitler: they were his enemies; many of their journalists and historians are Jewish; their schools teach patriotic lies.

Every single one of these arguments, with the names changed, have been used on this blog to downplay American racism, slavery and genocide.

W.E.B. Du Bois:

there was no Nazi atrocity – concentration camps, wholesale maiming and murder, defilement of women or ghastly blasphemy of childhood – which the Christian civilization of Europe had not long been practicing against colored folk in all parts of the world in the name of and for the defense of a Superior Race born to rule the world.

Read original story here.

This piece was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.