Comment: I came across this neat website on Twitter called Le monde n’est pas rond (The world is not round). The website describes itself as “an international artistic newspaper, based in Luxembourg, that explores the contemporary realities of migration, borders, and human rights through the publication of articles, art and illustration, photography, prose and poetry.”
Why not pay it a visit.
The racist harassment that children are exposed to in Finland is either played down or sidelined completely, according to a statement by Save the Children (Pelastakaa Lapset), an association founded in 1922 that aims to improve the lives of children in Finland and abroad.
Satu Kanninen, an adviser of the ogranization, told Migrant Tales that it’s important that a social ill like racism is debated openly.
“This wasn’t the case four years ago,” she said. “We are now starting to debate racism in earnest [in this country].”
Save the Children said that any type of racist harassment that children may suffer is not only unacceptable but boils down to questioning daily and constantly their Finnish identity and their right to belong here.
The feeling of security that a child may feel is undermined when he or she is a victim of racist harassment.
Kanninen agreed that in many respects the debate about racism in Finland boils down to accepting cultural diversity.
“What does being pure Finnish mean?” she asked, adding that in this century the acceptance of cultural diversity will be an ever-important topic.
Migrant Tales published this month a story about Rebecka Holm, a 14-year-old adolescent who rallied enough courage to write a letter to HBL that changed her life.
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.
By Race Files
No, I don’t mean car blinkers. I’m referring to the kind of blinkers that are used to keep race horses looking straight ahead at the jockey’s goal while blinding them to the distractions on either side.
Racism blinkers us. It imposes a kind of tunnel vision, causing social problems to appear to be related to differences in race and culture (and not racism), while blinding us to the common roots of many of our problems.
The study conducted by the Pew Research Center on Asian Americans that I wrote about in my last post is a good example. In it, Pew reports that 49% of Asian American adults have college degrees compared with 28% of adults in general. In addition, Asian Americans are reported to have substantially higher median household incomes and wealth than the general population, and then describes the relatively high levels of education and financial success of Asian Americans as distinctive racial characteristics.
There are significant problems with Pew’s number crunching you can read about in an excellent article in COLORLINES. But even if we put those problems aside, there’s still the issue of how ascribing relative Asian American success to race blinds us to the real social and economic realities dictating these outcomes, and how those realities affect everyone.
Here’s what I mean. In surveys measuring the educational levels of the most highly industrialized nations, the U.S. is scored at about average. That’s pretty bad news for the nation that is the richest by far, and the former world leader in education. It is for this reason that visas must be fast tracked for certain highly skilled workers, resulting in skewed educational attainment statistics among some immigrant groups, including some of the most educationally privileged of Asian immigrants.
And on that question of higher incomes and household wealth among Asians. Is it more useful to study these indices of success as racial characteristics, or to ask ourselves why the median income for Americans in general is so low?
According to Peter Edelman, 20 million Americans earned incomes less than $9,000 a year. Six million Americans have only food stamps as income. Half of U.S. jobs pay less than $34,000 a year. A fourth pay less than the poverty rate for a family of four. These statistics bring down the median income of Americans, even as that median obscures the reality for those on the bottom of the U.S. economy.
The poorest and most vulnerable are disproportionately people of color, and that’s all about racism. Racism is also at work when we allow negative racial stereotypes to lead us to blame people of color for the problem of persistent poverty. But looking for solutions to poverty in racial or cultural characteristics, as the model minority myth that is tacitly promoted by the Pew report leads us to do, takes us nowhere.
Whites in the U.S. have the highest per capita incomes. With the blinkers on, it’s easy to fall prey to the idea that white privilege translates into direct financial benefits for all white people. But then, how do we explain the fact that whites also constitute the majority of those who are poor?
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the average CEO of major companies in the U.S. earns in 10 hours what a typical worker earns in an entire year. So maybe the explanation is that income and wealth is not evenly distributed among whites – that the real driver of poverty is how the rich value the labor of the rest of us, regardless of race.
But it’s tough to know the nature of things we refuse to see. Among those things we’re blinded to by racism are our common humanity, our shared problems, and our linked destinies. Time to take off the blinkers. If we don’t, we might find that we’re racing to nowhere while the answers to where we ought to be heading lie in joining forces with our perceived opponents on either side.
Read original blog entry here.
This piece was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.
Olin mennyt viettämään koulujen päättäjäisiä yhteen puistoon. Kun olin jo jonkin aikaa jutellut yhden lukiolaisen kanssa, hän alkoi kysyä mistä vanhempani ovat tulleet. Vastasin Suomesta. Se on teknisesti totta koska olen adoptoitu. Sitten hän kysyi missä heidän vanhempansa tulevat. Vastasin Suomesta tietty. Sitten hän jatkoi juttelua muista asioista.
Itselleni jäi ikävä tunne suuhun siitä. Miksi minun pitäisi alkaa selitellä mistä minun vanhemmat on. Toinen oli miksi hän ei uskonut, että vanhempani voisivat olla Suomesta. Tämä oli kuin jostakin stereotyyppisestä keskustelusta, jossa värillinen joutuu selittämään mistä tulee ja nykyinen asuinmaa ei ole oikea vastaus. Olisin kyllä voinut vain sanoa heidän olevan Kiinasta niin asia olisi mennyt ihan helposti ohi ilman lisämutkia. Mutta ei nyt viitsinyt alkaa valehdella. Mitä se kertoo Suomesta jos kelpaava vastaus ei ole Suomi? Ovatko nuoret nyt yhtään sen vähemmän rasistisempia.
Tämä tapahtuma olisi voinut olla olankohautus juttu, jos se olisi ollut vain yksittäinen tapaus, mutta tämä on kohtuu normaalia, jos päättää liikkua kadulla ja olla sosiaalinen. Parasta varmaan olla epäsosiaalinen niin välttyisin tällaisilta kohtauksilta.
By Enrique Tessieri
For some anti-immigration groups, my background as a Finn must be a nightmare. The bad dream these groups dread to see is nothing more than the present and future staring back at them. It is the new Finland of the twenty-first century looking, together with others from our ever-culturally diverse society, confidently at the future.
Some anti-immigration groups and even some white Finns dread us because we are the long-overdue Finland that has been swept under the rug for so long with the help of nationalism and concocted myths.
The bad news for those who cling to these views about ourselves is that war, which is glorified by such groups as an important quality about our Finnishness, will play a lesser role in our identity. The history of those days, which only served to underline who are enemies are, will be undermined by our more open and diverse view of ourselves and the world.
This new way of looking at ourselves will seek effective solutions not constantly remind us and keep us from never leaving that ditch of the wrongs of history. We survived those times and now we must build a new reality because our survival in this century depends on it.
My great great grandfather David Nykänen and his grandchildren Alexander and Ira Cherkassky. Alexander, who was born in Boston, and his sister visited their grandparents of Mikkeli every summer. The picture was taken in the mid-1920s in Mikkeli (Vuorikatu 13). In the background the Naisvuori Observation Tower. (Tessieri family collection)
You may ask, dear reader, what made me so different from you in the previous century? Let’s answer that question from my mother’s side.
My great great great grandfather was Jacob Weikain (1758-1848), the first Jew to be granted permanent residence in Finland in 1832. His grandchild, Karl Jakob Hantwargh, a goldsmith, raised with his wife Anna Johanna a big family of eight children in Sääminki, located next door to Savonlinna in Eastern Finland.
Even if my relatives of Savonlinna lived in a very rural part of the country at the time, they were very international. Some of them worked in St Petersburg before the October 1917 Revolution and naturally spoke fluent Russian, French among other languages.
My great aunt Irma married a U.S. diplomat, who worked in countries like the former Soviet Union, China, Afghanistan and Kenya.
My aunt Irma (standing right) with her husband Angus Ward chatting with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip in Nairobi, Kenya. Irma had come a long way from those rural landscapes of Savonlinna where she grew up. (Tessieri family collection)
Another great aunt called Lally wed Eero Tammisalo, a Helsinki University professor, was the personal dentist of the first presidents of Finland up to Marshal Carl Mannerheim.
My grandmother Aino was born and brought up in Mikkeli, a town located about 100km west of Savonlinna. She was very international as well and fluent in Finnish, Swedish, Russian, English and even spoke some French. Her first marriage was with Paul Cherkassky. He was already a celebrated violin virtuoso in his teens.
Like many at the time, Paul had fled the Russian Revolution and moved to Finland, where he served as concertmaster of the Helsinki City Orchestra during 1919-23. As a violin soloist, he gave the premiere performances of the Six Impromptus of Jean Sibelius at the composer’s request. In 1923 he was invited to become a member of the first violin section of the Boston Symphony.
Even if my family was never afraid to explore the world outside Finland like hundreds of thousands of Finns who emigrated between 1860 and 1999, I am especially concerned about those Finns who still speak of our ethnicity in the same terms as some political leaders in the 1930s.
I can say with confidence that if we don’t allow these antiquated views about our national identity to get the best of us, the future will be ours as a unified nation bonded by our diversity. A key value that will strengthen our society will be mutual acceptance and respect.
There never was, is nor be such a thing as a “typical” Finn. The so-called typical Finn is only a social construct.
If my ancestors from five generations who made their lives in Finland could speak to us today, I am pretty certain that they would wholeheartedly agree with what I am saying.
Sasu Xinhang Öländer
”Olenko suomalainen?” on niitä kysymyksiä, jotka yhdistävät kaikkia toisen polven maahanmuuttajia. Mutta kaikista kipeimmin se koskettaa värillisiä. Kantasuomalaisten keskuudessa kuuluu välillä lausahdus maassa maan tavalla mutta mitä tämä sanonta oikeasti tarkoittaa.
Abdirahim Husu Hussein sanoi kerran maahanmuuttajien poliittisessa paneelista, että on täysin kyllästynyt tähän sanontaan. Hän asettui sanomaan, että eikö somalit jo eläneet maassa maan tavalla. Tietyssä mielessä Abdirahim asetti kysymyksen. Mikä oikeasti riittää?
Tätä me emme usein kysy. Mutta meidän on silti aloitettava siitä. Jos haluat elää suomessa on sinun sopeuduttava ympäristöön. Kovin pala onkin kielen oppiminen. Suomen kieli on yksi vaikeimmista kielistä. Samalla suomen kielen opetus kouluissa on pirstaleista ja usein ala-arvoista. Vanhemmille maahanmuuttajille kielen oppiminen käyttökelpoiselle tasolle on useimmiten lähes mahdotonta. Lasten kohdalla oppimisen mahdollisuudet ovat useimmiten erittäin hyvä. Tämä johtuu siitä että lapset omaksuvat uusia asioita helpommin ja he useimmiten kasvavat pitkälti kantasuomalaisten keskuudessa. Nyrkki sääntö on, että ensimmäinen sukupolvi harvemmin oppii uuden asuin maan tavoille, mutta toinen polvi oppii.
Sitten tulee kulttuuri kohta. Tässäkin kohdassa ensimmäisellä sukupolvella useimmiten on hankaluuksia myötäillä ympäröivää kulttuuria. Heidän lasten kohdalla tilanne on monimutkaisempi. He oppivat koulun kautta erittäin hyvin mitä on olla Suomalainen ja Eurooppalainen. Ongelmaksi tulee silti, että opetus ei ole monikulttuurista. Suomen koulut valitettavasti ovat pahasti etnosentrisiä. Opetus antaa värillisille lapsille ulkoisuuden tunteen. He eivät kykene löytämään itseänsä koulusta samalla tavalla, kuin valkoiset oppilaat. Tämä voi johtaa kahteen mahdolliseen tilanteeseen.
Ensimmäinen on koulutuksen täydellinen hylkääminen koska kouluilla ei ole mitään tarjottavaa värilliselle lapselle. Tavallaan parempi vaihtoehto on koulutuksen vastaan ottaminen. Tässä vaihtoehdossa on enemmän hyötyä, mutta pahoja sivuoireita. Tärkein oire on omiensa mahdollinen hylkääminen. Tämä johtuu siitä että sinä et enään usko, että veljesi ja siskosi eivät ole enään samalla viivalla. Sinä olet nyt käynyt koulun ja oppinut miten olla suomalainen/Eurooppalainen ja näin ollen olet asteen ylempi. Tämä nähtiin siinä miten Afrikkalaiset ja Aasialaiset jotka ovat käyneet Eurooppalaisen koulutuksen olivat irtaantuneet omien maanmiesten todellisuudesta. Pahin on mahdollisen itseinhon synty. Et usko olevasi yhtä hyvä jollet osoita käytökselläsi, että Eurooppalaisuus ja valkeus on hyvä. On mainittava, että median antamat viestit hyvästä/pahasta ja kauniista/rumasta vahvistaa tätä ajattelu mallia.
Toisaalta Suomalaissuusta opitaan myös ympäristöstä. Ympäristö maahanmuuttajilla on pahasti vaihtelevaa. Osa maahanmuuttajista elävät monikulttuurisesta ympäristössä jossa asuu myös kantasuomalaisia. Ja toisaalta osa elää ympäristössä joka on monikulttuurinen mutta kantasuomalaisia ei näy hirveästi. Sellaisessa ympäristössä on huomattavasti hankalampaa suomalaistua. Voisin sanoa sen olevan lähes mahdotonta. Tässä näkyykin selvästi kantasuomalaisten tekopyhyys. He haluavat maahanmuuttajien suomalaistumista, mutta eivät ole valmiita asumaan heidän kanssa.
Sosiologi Sam Richards totesi, että sehän on ihan hullua olettaa maahanmuuttajien sulautuvan ympäröivään yhteiskuntaan, jos hallitseva ryhmä ei ole valmis asumaan heidän kanssa. Miten sinä voit oppia olemaan suomalainen, jos ympärilläsi on vain ainoastaan maahanmuuttajia. Tämä on maahanmuuttokriitikoiden pahin karikko. Jos Jussi Halla-Aho ei ole valmis asumaan Somalien kanssa, ei hänellä ole mitään moraalista oikeutta sanoa, että heidän pitäisi suomalaistua.
Ne jotka uskovat ”maassa maan tavalla” slouganiin näkevät, että mitään muutosta ei ole tapahtunut. He näkevät kulttuurit staattisina elementteinä, jotka eivät ikinä muutu. On suuri virhe uskoa että kulttuuri olisi staattinen. Kulttuuri on alituisessa muutos tilassa. Sekoittuminen on alituinen ilmiö, jota tapahtuu aina monikulttuurisissa yhteisöissä.
Vaikka suomalaiset eivät siitä ehkä pitäisi niin suomalaisuuteen on liittynyt aina vain uusia elementtejä. 1940-50-luvun sukupolvet eivät nuoruudessa kykenisi ajattelemaan, että he saattaisivat hakea Thaihierontaa, akupunktiota, syödä kebab aterioita, nauttia intialaista tai nepalilaista ruokaa ja tuskinpa he voisivat ajattelevan, että miten monen kirjava Kampin ja Asematunnelin edusta voisi olla. He tutkin kykenisivät uskomaan, että he voisivat aivan itse tehdä kiinalaista ruokaa eksoottisilla aineksilla, jotka sinä voit ostaa Hämeentieltä. Jos haluat nähdä maahanmuuton niin tee panorama asematunnelin historiasta.
Nämä analyyttiset todisteet annettuna on meidän palattava alun kysymykseen, mikä tekee sinusta suomalaisen. Jos suomalaisuus on pelkkää tietoisuutta Suomen historiasta ja kulttuurista niin silloin Abdirahim kommentti on oikeutettu. Maahanmuuttokriitikoiden tarvitsee kävellä vain Suomen kouluihin nähdäkseen sen sukupolven. Sukupolven maahanmuuttajia, jotka ovat omaksuneet Suomen heidän toiseksi identiteetiksi. Mutta he löytävät myös kadotetun sukupolven. He ovat värilliset. Värilliset jotka ovat tehneet kaikkensa, mutta se ei riitä vieläkään. Heille kysymys ”milloin olen suomalainen” vaanii olan takana aina, kun ventovieras kysyy mistä tulet. Aina kun he kohtaavat syrjintää, he muistavat, että vaikka he itse mielessään olisivat suomalaisia niin suurimmalle osalle suomalaisia he ovat yhä maahanmuuttajia ja kuokka vieraita. Heille suomalaisuus muuttuu helposti taakaksi. He joutuvat pohtimaan aina mitä he sanovat, kun kysymys tulee. Mitä kantasuomalaiset haluavat kuulla heiltä ja mitä he uskovat. Samalla he kamppailevat median ja yhteiskunnan heijastamia stereotyyppejä vastaan. Stereotyyppejä jotka ovat negatiivisia ja pahin kaikesta on, että värilliset alkavat uskoa siihen.
Stereotyypit ja Internoidut rasistiset uskomukset tekevät suomalaisuus identiteetistä ongelman. Ensiksi olet epävarma kuka sinä olet ja toiseksi et tiedä mitä uskoa itsestä. Oman arvon tunnistaminen on on ongelmista vaikein. Mistä tiedät kuinka kykenevä olet kun yhteiskunta heijastaa hirveän negatiivisen kuvan sinunlaisista. Yrität olla suomalainen, mutta mikään ei tunnu ikinä riittävän. Kun kuulet Maassa Maan Tavalla on sinun kysyttävä etkö sinä jo elä niin.
Martin Luther King sanoi Where Do We Go From Here Chaos or Community kirjassa, että pahin asia jonka ihminen voi menettää on tietämys omasta arvosta ja omasta kulttuurista. Ei ole olemassa pahinta haavaa kuin sielun haava. Vahvin vastalääke tähän on ylpeys. Ylpeys omaan rotuun, etnisyyteen/kulttuuriin ja uskontoon. Kun sinä olet tietoinen omista juurista ja ylpeä niistä, silloin rasismi ei voi tuhota sinua sisältä päin. Malcolm X, Steven Biko ja Martin Luther King toimikoon profeetoina tällä tiellä.
The Migrant Tales blog gets emails from people who speak with hand on heart about the challenges they face as immigrants or Finnish with international backgrounds in our society. Here is one of these published in November 2009. The real name of the person has been changed. Here is a letter from Ida:
The underlying problem in Finland is that [white] Finns can never fully understand what racism is if they have never played that role of being a minority. They can fill all the facts and knowledge of the books in their heads but still can never understand what the true meaning behind racism is. And there is no arguing with them because they already know all the facts and figures.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I can’t change people’s minds about certain things [like racism]. They have their own mindset of things. Hell, it took me pretty long time to re-wire my brain to think differently after all that brainwashing in Finland. Imagine, I used to have prejudices against [my own group the] Chinese. It would take a lot more for Finns to think more open-mindedly.
I spent almost all my adult life [trying] to find acceptance and proving to myself that I was one of them. I did all this at the expense of my identity. Well, now I am just tired. I am who I am and I don’t need their acceptance. I don’t need to be one of them. And I am happy that I have found a country where otherness is cherished and celebrated and where I don’t need to hide or be ashamed of being Chinese. Finland can never be my home because I can never feel comfortable enough to be myself there. And they will never see me as one of them either. So, that’s that.
By Enrique Tessieri
What type of feelings does the term mamu, the shortened form of maahanmuuttaja, or immigrant, awaken in you? Mamu is less commonly used today than before but you can still see it peppered in the media. A fresh example is the Green Party’s Vihreä Lanka.
In order to call somebody a nickname you have to know the person pretty well and then proceed with caution. If Finns call immigrants mamu is it then ok in the media for men to call women gimma and women call men, äijä?
My blood boils every time I see the term mamu in print. Even twilight-zone terms like maahanmuuttajataustainen, or a person with an immigrant background, are offensive because they exclude rather than include people in our society.
Bloggers like JusticeDemon have correctly pointed out on a number of occasions how difficult it is to figure out what maahanmuuttajataustainen actually means. At our school, a so-called maahanmuuttajataustainen refugee may have lived in three countries. Most of those years may have been in Finland.
Why is it important to know if a person — and especially a child — has an immigrant background or not? The most important matter for that person is acceptance and respect.
Prying into a person’s background and, on top of this, calling him an offensive nickname or giving him an obscure identity are pretty offensive in my opinion.
If you see people doing this don’t be afraid to point it out.