Tag: Cultural diversity

Book review: “The Myth of the Muslim Tide”

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One of Migrant Tales’ aims has been to bust urban myths about immigrants and minorities. A book published last week by Alfred Knopf Canada, The Myth of the Muslim Tide, aims to do just that concerning Muslims. 

Writes Doug Saunders, the author of the book: “In the U.S., anti-Muslim bigotry has reached such alarming levels that four of the leading Republican presidential candidates went mostly unchallenged as they spread patently false notions about Muslims and Islam, often at the behest of their rich Islamophobic funders.”

Saunders tackles a number of myths like: Islamization and high birth rates; the majority of immigrants are and will be Muslims; Muslims want to live in ghettoes; Muslims are not loyal to their host countries; as well as others.

Read original book review by Haroon Siddiqui here.

 

Sandhu Bhamra: If you are not White, you are not-Canadian-enough

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By Sandhu Bhamra*

Are you Canadian?

I am not talking legality on right to vote and accessing free healthcare, but the sense of being, being Canadian.

Let me walk you through a mini questionnaire to help you understand where I am going with this:

When you think of Canadian identity, what do you think of?

White? Hyphenated? Multi-racial?

(Did you think Aboriginal?)

What about culture?

South Asian? Asian? Polish? English? Latino?

(Again, did you think Aboriginal?)

Or Canadian?

So, what is Canadian culture?

Canada officially has a multicultural policy, which treats all Canadian citizens with dignity “regardless of their racial or ethnic origins, their language, or their religious affiliation”.

Or simply, in the words of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau who introduced the policy in 1971, “two official languages and no official culture”.

When there is no official culture, what is that we call Canadian culture?

Born and raised in India, identity wasn’t the first thing on my mind when I landed as a permanent resident nine years ago. I grew up in an urban enclave in India, where the first language of communication was English. I spoke Punjabi, my mother tongue, at home and am well versed in India’s national language Hindi.

On landing in Vancouver, the street signs in Punjabi language, and whole lot of services, both private and government, available in my mother tongue, pleasantly surprised me.

I realized there were services available in a host of other languages. I loved the respect given to plurality of cultures in Canada – the richness of different sounds, textures, and colours was fascinating.

I thought this is the place to be. After the few initial hiccups, my husband and I decided to stay for good. We eventually became citizens, had a family, and now cannot imagine living anywhere else.

But my faith in plurality of cultures was in for a rude shock when I went to register my daughter for kindergarten early this year. The morning of the day the registrations opened, I was first in line, excitedly waiting to fill the form.

As I filled in the details, I came across a harmless–looking column: ‘other languages spoken at home’. I have been home-schooling my daughter (basic pre-school material), so it has been in English. But my husband and I take great pride in our heritage, and speak both Punjabi and Hindi at home. We listen to English, Punjabi and Hindi music, and watch TV shows and movies in all three languages, so I wrote Punjabi and Hindi as the additional languages.

Little did I know that would change the way I viewed Canadian identity.

Apparently, if you speak a language other than English at home (I guess French doesn’t count here) your kid gets automatically assigned to the ESL program.

ESL? English as a second language program. The school secretary explained that at an orientation at a later date, my kid would be tested for ESL. I thought fair enough. For all kids to perform equally well, it only makes sense if all had the same level of English proficiency. I said to her, don’t worry my daughter will pass the test. And that’s when the full force of what lied ahead hit me.

It didn’t matter if my daughter passed, the secretary explained – there is no pass or fail in ESL, just levels. Every kid who listens to sounds made in a language other than English at home gets into the program.

It didn’t make sense to me. Next moment, I was sitting in the principal’s office, a Canadian educator with Asian roots (her ethnicity is relevant in context to this post). For the next half-an-hour or so, she tried to reason in her Asian accent the importance of the program. I told her I recognized the value of ESL; all I didn’t understand was – how was this language program relevant to a child who spoke fluent Canadian English?

Because ESL just didn’t cover a language issue, she explained. It was an introduction to Canadian culture. And what exactly do you mean by that, I asked her. She wavered in her replies, giving me examples of teaching kids about “ham” and “Canadian sports” and “traditions” or other things “Canadian”. She got personal to convince me – if it weren’t for ESL, her son wouldn’t be working in IT at The University of British Columbia!

I asked her if they put a White kid in ESL or do they assume that all White children have a good command of English language and know everything “Canadian”? She confirmed my worst fear: even if my daughter were a fourth-generation Canadian, as long as she listened to Punjabi and Hindi music, she would be in ESL.

The message I got was: if you are not White, you are not-Canadian-enough.

I thanked her, and walked out asking to sit on the Parents’ Advisory Committee.

The new definition of ESL sadly reminded me of the residential schools: the ill-fated program that destroyed the culture, identity and sense of being of Canadian Aboriginal peoples in the name of assimilation.

It is not fair on my part to compare a harmless-sounding program like ESL to a national tragedy of residential schools that destroyed generations and continue to evoke bitter memories for Canadians. But with my new understanding of ESL, veiled as a language program, and intended to teach non-White kids about “Canadian culture”, I can’t help but draw the comparison of a similar “assimilation” that the Aboriginal kids went through.

I calmed myself and reasoned, if a child who lived in a war zone in Afghanistan were to come and start school here, he or she would have to know more than just English to fit in. In this context, the program seemed fair.

But three things are out of place here: first, the wrong impression that ESL is only about language. It is actually about conversion to “Canadian culture”. (The fact is I didn’t get a clear definition of “Canadian culture” from the school principal I spoke to.)

Secondly, you cannot use a blanket column to put kids from varied backgrounds in ESL just because a language other than English is spoken at home.

Is it justified to club a child whose initial formative years were in an urban school in China with a child who spent first five years of his or her life in a refugee camp in Afghanistan with a Canadian-born, raised child who knows ice hockey from field hockey, took the first steps with Caillou, can tell a dime from a nickel, sings Canadian rhymes and a flag means the Maple Leaf, just because he or she speaks another language at home?

Still, I would give the benefit of doubt to the ESL program for better “assimilation” of my children but it’s my third point we need to consider seriously: the unfair treatment to the White child whose grandparents or great-grandparents or great great-grandparents came to Canada before the “Others” came in.

A nation with physical borders has to have a commonality (other than hockey) to exist peacefully. If we have the benefit of equality of all cultures, why this is not getting culturally crossed over?

If my kid is going to learn about “Canadian” things, doesn’t the White kid have a right to know about Vaisakhi, Diwali, or Eid? Not on a special multicultural day where kids dress up in “their traditional” wear and talk about “their culture”.

Instead of telling our kids (White and non-White alike) to respect the Aboriginal land we live on and be thankful for the rich heritage they have given us, we “study” them like a species. To me, that is breeding White vs. Other identity.

This “Other”, who lived in huts and wore feathers or came from foreign mystical lands of flying carpets and snake charmers (doesn’t matter if two generations before him or her have lived in Canada) has to assimilate in the “White” culture. Where is Trudeau’s no official culture?

This reminds me of a video project I did sometime ago. The main character was a second-generation South Asian and was filmed in both Canada and at location in South Asia. The second person of South Asian heritage in the piece was I, since I narrated the story.

There were two minor characters, one Middle Eastern in descent and one White. For time constraints, we had to pick one of the two. For me, the Middle Eastern was a stronger character in terms of background story that gave depth to the narrative. For my partner on the project (a White guy), it made more sense to keep the White person – not on strength of background story but to make the overall piece more “Canadian”. I still remember his awkward laugh and hesitation as he said to me, if we keep the Middle Eastern character, the video piece wouldn’t look and sound “Canadian”.

My partner is a nice person and a friend, but I was disappointed to see how he viewed Canadian identity. A senior (another White person) called the final shot and dropped the Middle Eastern character. He didn’t say if it were for “Canadian identity” purposes, but just the White person suited the story more. It has weighed on my chest since.

I still cannot imagine living anywhere else, but I want the Canadian identity to truly reflect the plurality of cultures.

*Thanks for reading. I am a Canadian journalist with transnational experience. An award-winning broadcaster, print and web reporter, I have reported across major media platforms – print, television and web for over a decade. I just started this blog in an effort to deconstruct identity in inter-racial, inter-cultural, patriarchal modern world. For detailed biography and portfolio, visit my website.

Read original blog entry here.

This piece was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.

Pepper spay attack against gay-pride event in Oulu, Finland

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What kind of worlds live inside the heads of people who make political statements by attacking an event like North Pride, a sexual-diversity festival organized through Sunday in the northern Finnish city of Oulu?  

Writes YLE in English: “A discussion event in Oulu on the situation of gay asylum seekers was the target of a pepper spray attack that led one speaker to be hospitalized on Thursday evening.”

The hospitalized speaker was Left Alliance blogger and city councillor hopeful Dan Koviulaakso, who was rushed to hospital after an attacker pepper sprayed his face.

“It was no doubt a strategic attack against us as we oppose the persecution of gay, bi and transgender people. We’re against far-right extremists and racists,” said Left Alliance Oulu city councillor Juha Tapio,  adding that security would need to be stepped up in the coming days.

Apart from condemning such an attack, it is a sad example of how intolerance roams freely our streets and mocks at our civil liberties and democratic institutions. The consequences of the attack become more ominous if we consider that on Sunday it’ll be a year after Anders Breivik killed 77 people in Norway.

Two tragic deaths of Muslims took place in Oulu this year as well.

Far-right anti-immigration/anti-minority groups should know that intolerance has no master. Nobody can control it if you let it out of the cage. It can bite back hard as we saw happen in Norway on July 22.

Finnish MPs, Jani Toivola (Green Party) and Silvia Modig (Left Alliance), are the official patrons of the event.

 

Finland’s and Japan’s demographic and economic decline

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You don’t have to be an expert to understand that Europe and especially Finland are speeding towards a demographic and economic decline of untold proportions. The calamity we face will not come from outside our borders per se but will have the “Made in Finland” label on it.  

There’s an interesting story on the Guardian about how cultural traits  fueled the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe in Japan. The panel’s findings on the disaster could be eerily similar to a future report that studied the causes behind our own demographic and economic decline.

Kiyoshi Kurokawa, a professor emeritus at Tokyo University, states: “Its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture: our reflexive obedience; our reluctance to question authority; our devotion to ‘sticking with the programme’; our groupism; and our insularity.”

As the euro financial crisis deepens, which fuels our ever-growing skepticism and fear of the outside world, our response to the challenges facing our country and region has been ever-bigger doses of nationalism.

Source: Northern Denim Co. 

Our reaction to the euro and various political corruption scandals was the election of April 2011, which paved the way for an anti-EU, anti-immigration and anti-Islam party. How is it possible that a right-wing populist party like the Perussuomalaiset can attract 19.1% (39 seats) of the votes compared with 4.05% (5 seats) in 2007?

Part of the answer to that question must be in our insularity, scapegoating and ever-growing skepticism of the outside world.

Even if some used to call Finland the Japan of Europe in the 1980s, our country resembles today a nation that is inching towards permanent demographic and economic decline.

Foreign workers are moving to Japan these days to fill jobs and to compensate for the extremely low birth rate. Like in Finland, the ramifications of an ever-growing influx of immigrants into a society that has based its identity on ethnic purity are enormous to say the least.

Despite the difficulties we face, there’s still time to save Finland and Europe.

Europe’s future lies in its ability to deal with the challenges posed by its ever-growing cultural diversity and globalization.

That is why we need to learn from countries like Canada, the United States and Australia that have reaped synergies from their diversity more effectively than us.

 

 

Dear Finland, as the heat of summer draws…

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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 of a culturally and ethnically diverse Finland.     

We are not the enemy because we speak out for more acceptance and respect between different groups living in this country. Your real enemies are those who claim with poker faces the contrary and tell you that prejudice and racism are good weapons to exclude others socially.

This cart resting in the heart of the rural Lakelands region of eastern Finland reads in Spanish: “To the woman of my life.”  For some, that woman could be Finland. 

Finland never belonged to anyone, especially to the racists and white Finnish supremacists, those very people who mock and make fun of your diversity. History proves as well that Finland didn’t even belong to the Swedes, the Russians, or even those that call themselves Finns today.

Our identity is a great awakening, ever-changing,  powerful:

Awaken me from eternal sleep

The shadow of those that hate me 

Carry me from these unacceptant lands

 past the midnight summer sun

where rain is so deadly 

that it punctures through skin.

Turning into a guitar

a daring escape occurred to me:

Thrum! Another thrum!

A great leap forward

falling down as a loud thud.

In scattered bits and pieces of me

I will find the way to blast through those nets

that society maliciously weaves.  

There are many examples of those “malicious nets” standing right under our noses today.  Take for example Eino Jutikkala’s and Kauko Pirinen’s “A History of Finland” published in 1974, which claims we Finns belonged to two “races.” Yes, such a preposterous claim was made in this country only 38 years ago!

Jutikkala and Pirinen state: “The Finns and the Hungarians are not blood relatives not to any appreciable degree, at least – whereas the Finns and the Estonians are quite closely related. Both of the later belong to the so-called East Baltic race, which is relatively short-skulled and of medium height. However, among the Finns, especially among the inhabitants of western Finland there are many representatives of the ‘Nordic’ racial type, which is characterized by a long skull and tall stature.” [1]

Another school textbook published in 1942, adds that a person who belonged to the Nordic race was “tall, slim, blue-eyed, had blond hair and red cheeks.” [2]

Apart from teaching racist myths about ourselves, how can our school textbooks  forget to mention that over 1.2 million Finns emigrated and mixed ethnically and culturally with other people in faraway lands?

In many respects, the tens of thousands of visible minorities in Finland today are like Rachel, the main character of Heidi Durrow’s novel, “The Girl Who Fell From the Sky.” Rachel is society’s idea of race, class, and beauty.

Durrow’s father is a black USAmerican and her mother is Danish.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ2__1b15gY&feature=related

Durrow describes Rachel to be the following person: I think her greatest wish was to be one thing. She wanted to be understood and she wanted to be as complex as she was, and so she goes around trying to do and be one thing, which is a good student. And she becomes a big reader and the world kind of opens up to her in this way. And she thinks that if I am excellent, then definitely I will be understood and this whole race thing won’t matter. 

I think that’s still true today that if you strive for excellence then ultimately, maybe, you can maybe get beyond the shadow of race, maybe you can transcend the ways in which people may limit you because of your background, whether it be your racial background or your educational background or your economic background in many ways.

[1] Eino Jutikkala and Kauko Pirinen: A History of Finland. Praeger Publishers, New York, 1974. p. 7.

[2] J.E. Aro, J.E. Rosberg and L. Arvi P. Poijärvi; Koulun maantieto. Otava, Helsinki 1942. pp. 31-32.

Cultural diversity in Finland: The high price of being too alike

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As a writer and person with a multicultural background, I have been seeking to narrate a more inclusive and accurate history of Finland. Taking into account that over 1.2 million people emigrated from this country between 1860 and 1999 and our ever-growing immigrant population, aren’t both of these facts enough proof of our cultural diversity?

The question we should, therefore, ask is why have we denied our cultural diversity for so long? Why do some still deny it?

Since we have had our heads buried for too long in the sand thanks to social constructs like Finnish culture and ethnicity, their aims have been sinister: to exclude instead of include.

A middle school geography book published in 1941 claims that Finland had two predominant “races:”  Nordic and Eastern Baltic.* These races were still mentioned in history books published in the 1970s.

Our narrow view of ourselves reveals many things about our society and the challenges we face today. It explains the rise of the  Perussuomalaiset (PS) and Jussi Halla-aho, both of which are reactions to Finland’s ever-growing cultural diversity and internationalization.

Finns have paid a high price for being too alike for too long. Forging a monolithic national identity based on myths was a short-term solution to a complex issue.  It explains why some of us don’t understand how racism is a threat and why the media and public were dazzled by the PS before the April election.

Blame all of this on the fact that we were taught and made to look too alike. It explains what is essentially wrong with us and why it has encouraged a strongly one-sided view of history, the role of “others” in our country, and permitted us to erase an important part of our cultural heritage.

Are we a minority? This picture was originally taken in the early 1980s in Los Angeles, California.

I am confident that the Finland we are building today is and will be very different from the one we built in the last century. It will be more confident, stronger and lasting because it will be based on inclusion, social equality and acceptance of our cultural diversity.  Our diverse make up as a nation offers us different experiences but we should never forget one crucial fact: We are not separate.

*J.E. Aro, J.E. Rosberg and L. Arvi P. Poijärvi: Koulun maantieto. Otava 1941. p. 32.

Ethnic minorities now make up more than half of all births in the U.S.

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By Enrique Tessieri

How did some pocket-calculator demographers in Finland and Europe take the news that for the first time in U.S. history minority births surpassed over half of all births?  

A pocket-calculator demographer is anyone who uses birthrate and calculates it with years to warn us that group x will outnumber us in numbers and take us over.   

Kyösti Tarvainen, a senior lecturer at Aalto University, is one such pseudo-demographer who has warned us with his trusty pocket calculator about the Muslim population threat in Finland.

Similar predictions were made about the Jews of Finland in the 1880s. Today, however, our Jewish population totals a mere 2,000 souls. 

The whole assumption that membership in our society is based on ethnicity instead of  values and inclusion reveals what is terribly wrong in the ongoing debate. People are not a group per se, but are individuals with free will. They are not robots guided by an autocratic god called Culture as some would want us to believe.

The most important variable missing from the calculation of these pseudo-demographers is that cultures change constantly. Cultures takes in, rearrange, exchange and balance new ideas from their environment on a constant basis.   

It’s wrong to think that we are first and foremost an ethnicity.  The fact that we have been educated and brought up to think in this way reveals why racism, ethnocentrism and prejudice are so ingrained in our society.  

Martin Luther King Jr. said it well in his famous I have a dream speech of 1963:  “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

 

 

 

Do we write too little or too much about a social ill like racism?

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By Enrique Tessieri

A friend of mine recently said that one of the reasons why some don’t like Migrant Tales (MT) is because we write too much about racism.  Do we treat a social issue like racism fairly on MT? Do we write too much or too little about it?

Certainly I would be happy if there were no reasons to write about such a social ill in this country. I even hope that what I write on this blog isn’t true.

Having written a lot about this topic, given talks and debated with many Finns for a number of years, there’s one matter that must be taken into account:  Some Finns feel offended if a foreigner tells them that there’s racism in their country.

Our aim on MT is certainly not to offend anyone but to debate an issue openly. If we can identify the problem, we can take  steps to challenge  and correct it.

Racism, xenophobia and hatred are greater threats to our values and society than some may believe.  Apart from ruining lives and holding back the  potential of a country, these social vices have been the smoking guns behind almost all the wars that have ever taken place in Europe.

Why do we still write about Nazi Germany if the fall of Berlin took place 67 years ago?  Why would we even want to bring to justice, never mind write about the crimes committed by Bosnian Serb wartime commander, Ratko Mladic, whose trial began Wednesday in The Hague?

Among the many war atrocities that Mladic is believed to have been responsible for are the deaths of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995.

You may correctly ask why crimes like the Final Solution or ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia took place?  Haven’t we learned from our past wars and mistakes?

Even if our collective memory is too short for comfort, those same phantoms of xenophobia, racism and hatred that spooked us into war in the past continue to roam those same streets inhabited by our fear and ignorance.

But let’s return to the original question: Do we write too little or too much about racism on MT?

There’s probably no consensus, but there are two answers:  Those who are most affected by racism believe too little attention is given to the issue, while those who are least affected by it claim the contrary.

Whatever the case, we should never give refuge to a social ill like racism through our silence.

 

 

 

 

 

The answer to our prejudices and racism in Finland lie in our emigrants

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By Enrique Tessieri

It’s clear that as Finland becomes more culturally diverse this century, it will one day make a startling discovery: we are culturally rich and diverse. Some of those historians and social scientists that have kept us in the dark for now should reread their history over and over again until they get it right. 

One of the most interesting questions about why we don’t acknowledge our cultural diversity enough in Finland is the question itself. Why hasn’t it been acknowledged? In which groups’ interest has it been to not stir things too much on this front?

As a person with a culturally diverse background who is a Finn, I have always been amazed by the simplistic and fictitious ethnic and national view we have of ourselves as Finns.

Today there are officially over 50,000 couples in this country that are bicultural, according to the Population Research Institute (Väestöliitto).

But like all far-reaching discoveries you will most likely find the answer under your nose.

All of those Finnish emigrants that left this country in large numbers from the 1880s not only faced a brave new world but a culturally diverse one as well.  What role did their whiteness play in integration and in shaping attitudes of other groups?

What did the Finns think of blacks in the United States and what were their attitudes towards Amerindians? What did they think about marrying outside the group? What did some members of their community say if their spouse was black?

All these questions that were relevant well over a century ago are topical today in Finland. The only problem, however, is that for some reason we have avoided looking into this question.

It’s clear that some immigrant parents not only want their children to retain their customs but marry within the group. This was an important goal for some parents but became less important for the children never mind grandchildren.

One of the discoveries I made while doing fieldwork on a Finnish colony in Argentina from 1977 was their view of other ethnicities like blacks from Brazil and mestizos, a term used to describe people who have mixed European and Amerindian ancestry.  The darker the person, usually implied greater rejection from the community.

The way they rejected such bicultural marriages was with the help of prejudice and racism. Some actually believed that marrying a mestizo would condemn you to a life of poverty.  All the bad qualities of the white Finnish colonizer were the fault of the mestizo spouse.

Some of these racist attitudes and prejudices that some colonizers had of other groups were not only learned in Argentina but came from Europe.

I have a lot of data gathered through long interviews of how some Finns viewed other groups that were ethnically different. If I have such information I am certain that this type of information can be found among Finns that emigrated to North America, Africa and other parts of the world.

If researchers are serious about studying racism in Finland, they should look under their noses. The information is there waiting to be uncovered.

Our Finnish national identity in the new century

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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.