Tag: colonialism

Dissecting Finnish racism and bigotry

Posted on by Migrant Tales

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

 Malcolm X (1925-65)

The quote by one of the most powerful voices to emerge from the U.S. Civil Rights Movements, reveals how racism survived in the 1960s to see another day. Even though the quote by Malcolm X was made about a half a century ago, it still sheds light on how racism survives another day to oppress, exploit and disenfranchise.

When speaking of racism in a country like Finland, the first question we should address is where did it come from. The over 1.2 million Finns that emigrated from this land between 1860 and 1999 offer one answer as does Germany, our former historical big brother.

Like many European countries, Germany had colonies in Africa and elsewhere. Like any world colonial power, it too had to establish a racist system that gave it the moral right to pillage, exploit and commit genocide.

European racism was so rampant in the nineteenth century that it had lost touch with reality and created a pseudoscience called eugenics,  whose sole purpose was to justify the extermination of so-called undesirable non-white ethnic groups. Any group that was deemed undesirable was one that threatened white or colonial privilege.

What kind of colonial masters were the Germans?  They were just as ruthless as the British, French, Spaniards, Italians, Dutch, Belgians, white U.S. Americans, Japanese and others.

Between 1904 and 1908, Germans systematically massacred ancestors of the Herero and Nama people for daring to rebel against their colonial ruler. The first concentration camps were not built by the Nazis in World War 2 but in Namibia by the Germans.

European colonialism was directly responsible for the mass extermination of non-white groups in Tasmania, Latin America and other regions like the former Belgian Congo, where an estimated half of the 20 million inhabitants died to satisfy King Leopold II’s greed. Not only did colonialism bring hardships like mass slavery, it turned against its master in World War I and II by causing the death of some 100 million people.

While there are many examples of how racism found its way to far-flung Finland, it survives amongst us today for the same reasons as it did  in the past.

Any sensible person agrees that racism is horrible and none of us would endorse it openly. We do support such a social ill, however, through our silence, denials and prejudice.

Migrant Tales is living proof of how little we have done in this country to challenge intolerance. It’s sad but true: intolerance will become a bigger problem in Finland as our society become more culturally diverse. The rise of the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS) party is one example that reinforces the latter.

Since racism is a pernicious force, we need leadership to challenge it. We don’t need to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people, only a few are enough to leave a lasting impression.

Leadership can be shown on a public tram by Helsinki Deputy Mayor Pekka Sauri, and by others like Rebecka Holm, an adolescent who decided to do something about racist harassment, and Ricky Ghansha, who forced a “super racist” to apologize publicly for his behavior.

Our struggle against intolerance doesn’t even have to be so public. We can do a lot at the workplace just by reacting to a racist, homophobic or sexist comment. The message must be clear: We won’t tolerate intolerance.

Tim Soutphommasane, who wrote an interesting opinion piece on Australian racism, says the following: “It’s [political correctness] nonsense because the worst form of censorship comes from the opposite direction. Nothing shuts down debate more than the idea that any allegation of racism must involve a moral charge against each and every Australian [or Finn in our case]. That it must mean we are saying there’s something fundamentally rotten about the Australian character.”

Soutphommasane explains why it’s difficult to debate a social ill like racism in Australia and even in Finland since we’re at a loss on how to confront the issue. A strange logic takes place when we play down racism and allow self-censorship to muffle our arguments.

He asks: “Do we go to the trouble of making such fine distinctions between hooligan behavior  and hooligans? Or between criminal behavior and criminals? Why must we take such extraordinary care to avoid offending those who engage in racist behaviour? This is a grotesque form of self-censorship, if ever there was one.”

Not only must we understanding where and how a phenomenon like racism has lodged itself in our society, we must rally leadership and resolve to confront it with its real name.

If we succeed at this,  we’d have made significant progress in stopping new Cadillac models from entering the market every year.

 

Julian Abagond: human zoos

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Julian Abagond 

Human zoos (1500s- ), also known as ethnological exhibits, peoples shows (Völkerschau) or Negro villages, showed native peoples at zoos and fairs. They have been common in the West since the time of Columbus, butreached their height from the 1870s to the 1930s – back in the days of Joseph Conrad, Gauguin, minstrel shows and the birth of National Geographic.

They showed people from:

  • the Middle East,
  • Africa,
  • Sri Lanka,
  • the Philippines,
  • Java,
  • New Guinea,
  • the Pacific,
  • the Americas and
  • the Arctic.

They were especially common in

  • Germany (huge),
  • France,
  • Britain and
  • America.

Tens of millions saw them.

Examples:

  • 1896: the Cincinnati Zoo showed Sioux Indians.
  • 1899: “Savage South Africa” in Britain showed Zulus, complete with spears, shields and staged battles.
  • 1904: the St Louis world’s fair showed a “parade of evolutionary progress” with Filipinos and American Indians ranked below whites and with Pygmies just above apes.
  • 1906: the Bronx Zoo showed a Pygmy, Ota Benga, in the same cage as an orangutan.

Iroquois at a 1905 exposition dressed as Plains Indians. Probably in Belgium.

Ever since Columbus natives brought back by sailors were shown to the public, especially at fairs. Few ever made it back home and many did not last long in disease-ridden Europe. A well-known example is Sarah Baartman of South Africa, who was shown in a cage in Britain and part of an animal show in Paris.

“Native villages” were built so white people could see how they lived. Montaigne reported one in Rouen, France in 1533 of Tupinamba Indians from Brazil. Such villages became especially common at zoos and world fairs starting in the 1870s.

To succeed as a native:

  • Play to stereotype;
  • Fit Western ideas of beauty – or go completely against them;
  • Be at ease with audiences;
  • Have a special skill, like ivory carving.

This favoured those who were artists or entertainers in their own land.

The whole thing was staged and played to Western stereotypes:

  • Arabs were like in “Thousand and One Nights” from the 1300s.
  • American Indians were like in the cowboy-and-Indian books of the time.
  • South Sea Islanders were bare breasted and carefree – even though, as Gauguin discovered, that world was long gone if it ever was (but painted it anyway).
  • Black Africans were shown as savage hunters, spears and all, just a step above wild animals – even though most Africans of the time were herders and farmers. One show was called “Gorilla Negroes”.

The Pygmies at the St Louis fair, on the other hand, liked to smoke cigars and wear top hats, which screwed up the show’s racist evolutionary ranking.

Some feared for the safety of white women. In both Victorian England and Nazi Germany, some opposed the shows out of fear of race mixing between black men and white women.

At least as late as 2005 you could still see “African tribesmen” in grass skirts at a Western zoo (in Augsberg, Germany). Butsince the 1930s such things have become uncommon: film, and later television and cheap air travel, were able to give Westerners a much richer-seeming (but not always truer) experience of native peoples.

Read original story here.

 This piece was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.

 

 

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. 

While nineteenth century evolutionism played a crucial role in justifying the exploitation of Africans, Asians and other regions, it was a very effective excuse to justify our domination of other groups. These same arguments are still used today by different groups to justify our racist views.

Julian Abagond asks in a blog entry whether blacks would have raided, pillaged and enslaved so many people if they had had guns and ocean-going ships before whites.

He writes: “Technology advances and spreads unevenly. It is common for one region to have a technological edge over another – yet it is rare for it to lead to genocide, even when the edge is military.”

While Europe’s new inhabitants want to adapt and see their living standards rise in their new homeland, they too are part of the “us-vs.-them” problem. Some immigrants come from countries and societies that are just as racist as Europe.

While the latter may be true, everyone can learn new rules and values in our new or old homelands that promote a well-functioning society.  We should learn that racism and social exclusion are our biggest threats.

European Uncle Toms are as much of a danger to our ever-growing culturally diverse society as far-right groups. They are hindering the creation of a more-inclusive and culturally diverse Europe that can live side by side in harmony and reap synergies.

Writes Migrant Tales:  “The Finnish Uncle Tom is a pretty opportunistic person. He or she believes that the only way to escape discrimination is by accepting those values that promote social exclusion of other groups like immigrants.”

In order to avoid the terrible wars that once ravaged this part of the world, we must strive to create and teach present and future European generations the crucial role that mutual acceptance and respect play in inclusion.

Racism  is the shovel we Europeans use to dig our common grave.

We need more social inclusion in Europe to build a better society tomorrow.

 

 

Our Finnish national identity in the new century

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Glancing through a pile of documents and certificates my late grandfather (1892-1979) had is like entering a time machine. Two certificates catch my attention: a Finnish-language test in 1925 and another one when he changed his surname from Hantwargh to Harvo.  Both documents offer us a glimpse of how a social construct like Finnish national identity was forged in the last century.

Taking into account how some Finns define it today an ever- globalized world, it’s easy to see that their definition of a Finn has its roots in those two documents.

Being a Finn had little to do with your place of birth but is due to jus sanguinis, right of blood. Your citizenship is not determined by place of birth but by having one or both parents as citizens of that country.

The first document proving that my grandfather spoke perfect Finnish is understandable in the jus sanguinis context. The second one, which was from 1931, states at the following:

In light of the petition made by military instructor Harald Vilhelm Handtwargh, the governor of the province of Mikkeli grants his family permission to change their  surname to Harvo; this is backed by statements from the vicar [of the Lutheran church], Suomen Sukututkimusseura [Finnish Genealogical Society] and the Suomalaisuuden Liitto [Association of Finnish Culture and Identity]…

Taking on a new national identity was relatively  easy in the last century as long as you were white, nationalistic and didn’t make too public your foreign roots. In the case of my grandfather it was his Jewish background.

Today there are totally new demands placed on our society with respect to inclusion and “us.”  How we included and excluded people and groups in the last century is, I believe, what is causing us to fall flat on our faces and hindering us from seeing the bigger picture of what Finnish identity is in the new century.

Since we are a young nation with a young identity there is time to make it more inclusive. But for that change to happen it requires us to see the world in a radically different way than today.  A good example is some of our feelings towards the Russians and that fear of being a small nation constantly under threat.

It’s clear that in order to build a more inclusive and culturally dynamic society, we have to break away from our past hatreds, prejudices and myths.

But let’s not fool ourselves, breaking free from them will be a long process that will take a concerted effort and generations.

This document gave my grandfather the right to change his surname from Handtwargh to Harvo in 1931. 

One good way to become a more inclusive society today would be to change Section 5 of the Constitution from jus sanguinis to jus solis, right of the soil, nationality or citizenship granted to a person born in country.

The whole idea of jus sanguinis is deeply rooted in how ethnicity and nationality were defined in the nineteenth and greater part of the twentieth century.

While I am happy that Finland is an independent country today, we cannot escape the fact that it was built on nationalism and racism that was ever-present in Europe before and even today.  Thus our independence was in many respects an ethnic thing. We didn’t like the Russians never mind Russification.

The racism and nationalism that existed in Europe in the nineteenth century had a clear role: It justified the colonization and exploitation of other people in Africa and Asia. It was very ethnocentric as well. We thought that we were the epitome of civilization and therefore it was our right to  exploit others because they were less “advanced.”

As we know, World War I exposed the barbarism of our “civilized ways” and was pretty good reality check.

Hopefully our culturally diverse identity will not resemble an excerpt from Heikki Waris’ “An introduction to Finnish history” on page two:

“A fourth aspect is the high degree of homogeneity of Finnish society. Racial homogeneity particularly characterizes the Finnish people who have practically no racial minorities, the less than three thousand Lapps in the northernmost arctic communities making up the largest racial minority group. Consequently, racial prejudice and discrimination are nonexistent.”

Apart from avoiding mention of the Roma of Finland and Finnish expats and those with international backgrounds, Waris’ affirmation are quite humorous from today’s perspective.

Myths help cover up an injustice or crime

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Just like the light from distant suns allow us to see events that took place billions of years before present, history plays the same role but in  humbler terms. Many of the problems we face today are the result of the injustices and crimes that took place a long time ago. 

There is an interesting story on guardian.co.uk about the questionable legacy of the British Empire.

The daily writes: “Then tragically, and almost overnight, many of the formerly oppressed became themselves, in the colonies, the imperial oppressors. White settlers, in the Americas, in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, Rhodesia and Kenya, simply took over land that was not theirs, often slaughtering, and even purposefully exterminating, the local indigenous population as if they were vermin.”

It’s interesting how able we are as humans at covering up the treachery we commit constantly on our most cherished values.

Myths help us to brush under the rug our barbarism. Myths are mortal as well and need to be constantly defended and strengthened with new myths and nationalism. Sometimes nationalism isn’t enough and an extreme steroid like xenophobia must be used to bolster it.

All types of wars and conflicts rely on the collusion of myths. If we couldn’t use myths to hide our dark side, how could we live with ourselves after taking part in an atrocity like war? Myths help to set in motion future wars and conflicts that will eventually be covered up by new myths.

How much do Finland’s myths of past wars and conflicts help to justify racism, prejudice of newcomers and suspicion of those 1.2 million Finns that emigrated mostly to North America and Sweden between 1860 and 1999?

If one of the aims of racism is to exclude other groups from controlling resources (work and economic well-being), myths ensure that minorities’ access to them will be hindered.

The real cuplrit behind power and wars are myths.