Tag: Multiculturalism

guardian.co.uk: Anders Behring Breivik had no legitimate grievance

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Comment: Another excellent analysis piece by the Guardian of London over the political impact of Anders Hering Breivik’s killings and how politicians are still refusing to stand up and show leadership. They prefer instead to eerily pin the blame on immigrants during these dire economic and political times for Europe. The analysis sites “the failure of multiculturalism” as “racism’s most elastic alibi.”

Write Gavan Titley and Alana Lentin: “Despite the fact that Anders Behring Breivik was not permitted to publicly justify his actions in public on Monday, a scrambling defence of his repertoire of prejudice is already in full swing,” they continue. “(Wall Street Journal writer  Bruce)Bawer blames mainstream politics for failing to address the corrosion of Europe by Islamicisation and multiculturalism, meanwhile The Jerusalem Post cautions that ‘Oslo’s devastating tragedy should not be allowed to be manipulated by those who would cover up the abject failure of multiculturalism.'”

As the economic situation worsens and our lives in Europe aren’t helped at all by what happened in Oslo, it is incredible how political leaders even in countries with small immigrant populations like Finland are blaming the “failure of multiculturalism” when, in fact, it is their own failure and of their policies.

One of the biggest answers that they have yet to give is what is the nexst step if “multiculturalism has failed or is dead?” How do we make our societies more acceptant of  cultural diversity and how do we avoid the mistakes and our past issues with racism?

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Gavan Titley and Alana Lentin

Despite the fact that Anders Behring Breivik was not permitted to publicly justify his actions in public on Monday, a scrambling defence of his repertoire of prejudice is already in full swing. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Bruce Bawer, who is quoted by Breivik in his manifesto 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, emphasises his repeated warnings that a rightwing extremist may use violence to address “legitimate concerns about genuine problems”. Bawer blames mainstream politics for failing to address the corrosion of Europe by Islamicisation and multiculturalism, meanwhile The Jerusalem Post cautions that “Oslo’s devastating tragedy should not be allowed to be manipulated by those who would cover up the abject failure of multiculturalism”.

Read whole story.

SPIEGEL Interview with Economics Minister Rösler: “I Used to Dream I Was a Vietnamese Prince”

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Comment: Below is a very interesting interview with Vietnamese-born German Economics Minister Philipp Rösler on Spiegel Online. Rösler was brought up in a German family when he was nine months old. Rösler is for many immigrants and Germans of immigrant descent a role model.

The economic minister also questions indirectly Angela Merkel’s claim in October that multiculturalism has failed.  Spiegel asked him if Germany’s policies towards immigrants have been too indulgent with those who refuse to integrate. “My belief is that our policies have offered too little, in terms of language courses for example,” he said. “Punishment shouldn’t be our first response.”

Another interesting point Rösler made was on Muslims living in Germany. “There are around 4 million Muslims in the country and they to help to shape it, so yes, it’s also correct to say that Islam belongs in Germany.”

He had good advice for those that ridicule immigrants and minorities.  “How is someone supposed to become part of society when he or she is told from the beginning, “You’re not really a part of us?”

In my opinion, the last statement, “You’re not really a part of us,” is what exposes the true nature of the anti-immigration beast of parties like the Perussuomalaiset. 

How are people supposed to integrate and embrace our culture if these groups are constantly building walls around Finland?

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German Economics Minister Philipp Rösler, who was adopted into a German family from Vietnam at a young age, insists that he never had problems because of his background. He spoke with SPIEGEL about integration, discrimination and what it means to be German.

Read whole story.

New World Finn: How many Finnish Canadians and USAmericans?

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Comment: Those who like to insult and ridicule immigrants and refugees in Finland, and who still believe Finns are some lost tribe in this part of Europe who have not mixed with anyone, should pay close attention to the statistics below. If over one million Finns would not have emigrated from this land from 1860, our population would be over 7 million today.

Thanks to immigration, Finland’s cultural diversity is richer than what many of us want to believe. The interesting question to ask is why this hasn’t been acknowledged. Is it because it would force us to ask serious questions about who we are as a nation? Would many of our myths about ourselves be challenged?

Thanks to New World Finn, an English-language quarterly published in the United States for this information.

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During the late-19th century and early 20th century, over 300,000 people from Finland migrated to the United States and, to a lesser extent, Canada. While there had been a sporadic flow of immigration before the mid-19th century, the bulk of the migration did not start until about 1870.

The 2000 United States Census lists 623,573 persons who claimed Finnish ancestry. Finnish-Canadians, who claimed Finnish ancestry, according to the 2001 census, number over 114,000. There are many of Finnish ancestry who do not claim it.

The states with the largest Finnish-American populations are: Michigan – 101,351; Minnesota – 99,388; California – 56,526; Washington – 40,290; Wisconsin – 36,047. The communities of Thunder Bay, Toronto and Sudbury form the main centers of Finnish-Canadian activity. Thunder Bay boasts the largest Finnish population outside of Scandinavia.

How many Finns emigrated abroad?

Table 1. Emigration from Finland in 1860-1999

Destination                   1860-1944                              1945-1999
Sweden                             45,000                                    535,000
Other Europe                  55,000                                    125,000
United States                  300,000                                    18,000
Canada                                 70,000                                    23,000
Latin America                      1,000                                       5,000
Asia                                              500                                       6,000
Africa                                       1,000                                       4,000
Oceania                                   3,500                                    20,000

Total                                      476,000                                 736,000

Source: Jouni Korkiasaari and Ismo Söderling: Finnish emigration and immigration after World War II. Migration Institute 2003.                           http://www.migrationinstitute.fi/articles/011_Korkiasaari_Soderling.pdf

Debating Finland’s cultural diversity is opening up old wounds

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By Enrique Tessieri

Ever wonder why immigrants, multicultural Finns, immigration to Finland and refugees don’t have any history in Finland? If historical importance could be measured like a loaf of bread, the history of older minorities like the Saami, Roma, Tartars, Jews and others would be mere crumbs.   

The question why immigrants and minorities don’t have a history in Finland is like investigating the history of the exploited by the exploiters. By not having, or denying a group its history, you forsake them a place in society. Since they don’t exist they have no rights never mind the right to demand them.

In many respects, the social construct of the prototype Finns as the bonafide Finn in the last century was a pretext for steamrolling minorities and denying them their right to be Finns.  It explains why a large part of the population has today difficulty in accepting cultural diversity as natural in Finland.

If we look at the independence of the United States in 1776 or that of other Latin American countries during 1808-1826, there is a big difference with Finland’s independence in 1917. Even though the former loathed the political system that permitted their exploitation under colonialism, a large number of them were former inhabitants or descendants of these European kingdoms. They even spoke their languages as well as practiced their culture and religion.

In Finland, however, it was a different story. History teaches us that we sought independence because we didn’t want to be or were Russians. In order to build a national identity we amalgamated or “fennified” our culture through measures like changing our surnames into Finnish ones. Killing our cultural diversity was acceptable because of our hatred of groups like the Russians.

Does this same hatred affect our good judgement today as a modern twenty-first century nation?

Difficult questions about our history and cultural roots had to be conveniently forgotten by history in order for us to forge a near-monolithic Finnish national identity.

One group that were nearly forgotten were Finnish immigrants and their descendants.

Thanks to the over million immigrants that left this country from the 1860s, Finnish culture has evolved in many lands. Instead of accepting our rich cultural diversity that Finnish immigrants and their descendants gave this nation, we passed strict citizenship laws that disjointed them from us.

Debating what happened to our cultural diversity and why it was nearly erased would be questioning the whole essence of our reason for being as a nation in the twentieth century.

What will come out of such a debate in the future is a question mark. One matter is for certain, however: It should make us stronger at the end of the day because Finnish culture will be more acceptant of its diversity.

Time: Why Speaking More than One Language May Delay Alzheimer’s

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Comment: Migrant Tales doesn’t normally publish health stories but here is one that argues that speaking more than one language may help you escape for a while longer the devastating clutches of Alzheimer’s.

Just like speaking many languages keeps the brain fit, interacting and being a part of many cultures must do the same job. At least it isn’t a disadvantage unless prejudice is the rule in a society. 

In Finland, two associations, the secretive Suomen Sisu and Suomalaisuuden liitto,  believe that cultural diversity is a bad thing that must be opposed at all costs. One of the aims of the latter association is to undermine the role of the Swedish-language minority in Finland.

Both of these associations live in a historical time warp where they fantasize about a Finland that existed in fairy tale books. Both of them have recently gained more political power through parties like the right-wing populist Perussuomalaiset (PS).

The chairman of Suomalaisuuden liitto is Sampo Terho, the EuroMP that replaced PS chairman Timo Soini.

Thank you for the heads up Marcela Santafé y Soriano.

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By Meredith Melnick

There are many ways in which speaking another language may contribute to a well-lived life. You can talk to a whole lot more of Earth’s inhabitants, for one thing. You can also enjoy books, music and films in their original language, and throw a few more “skills” onto your résumé. Now add to that list the findings of new studies suggesting that speaking multiple languages may also help protect cognitive health over the long term.

YLE: Lapset ja nuoret törmäävät yhä näkyvämpään rasismiin

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Comment: Researcher Anna-Maria Soudo of the University of Eastern Finland believes that racist attacks and harassment of second-generation adolescent Finns is more commonplace today than before. She sees the elections of April, where the Perussuomaliset (PS) party won 19.1% of the votes, as an important watershed that has made anti-immigration sentiment more acceptable.

Soudo says that while in Finland we speak a lot about multiculturalism and how people should value different cultures, we see a different reality in the street.

Do you think racism has become more acceptable in Finland after April 17?

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Lasten ja nuorten arjessaan kohtaama rasismi on yhä näkyvämpää. Tutkija arvelee, että viime kevään vaaleissa esille nousseet maahanmuuttokriittiset puheenvuorot ovat tehneet kärjekkäästä ja näkyvästä maahanmuuttokriittisyydestä aiempaa hyväksytympää.

Read whole story.

Turun Sanomat: Emämaan unohtama kansanosa

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Comment: The Finland in our Hearts Festival, which took place in Turku on July 1-4, is a good example of how Finland is slowly accepting its cultural diversity.  No other group are a constant reminder of our cultural diversity than expatriate Finns.  Some 1.3 million Finnish expatriates live abroad.  

Kokoomus Euro MP Villa Itälä, chairman of the Finland Society board and of the Finnish Expatriate Parliament, was quoted as saying on Turun Sanomat that no Finnish government has understood the important of immigration. He described expatriate Finns are “a forgotten people” seen through the stereotypes of the past. The present political atmosphere in Finland doesn’t permit any improvement on this front, according to him. 

One group that has erased almost completely these expatriate Finns with their anti-immigration rhetoric is the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party. Their hostility towards immigrants and refugees in Finland by some of their MPs is a deep insult to the over million Finns that live abroad.

Yours truly chaired on Monday the seminar on Latin America at the Finland in Our Hearts Festival. Apart from talking about Finnish immigration to Latin America, which was small when compared with North America, we discussed at the end what lessons we could learn from these Finnish immigrants’ experiences and how they could be applied to our ever-growing immigrant population.

There seemed to be a consensus among the audience that acceptance was crucial for things to move forward  for immigrants.

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Turku on ollut viime päivinä poikkeuksellisella tavalla kansainvälinen kohtauspaikka. Täällä on kokoontunut tuhansia ulkosuomalaisia, joilla on sitkeät siteet emämaahan, vaikkei heidän arvoaan Suomessa aina muisteta saati tunnusteta.

Read whole story.

Finland’s turning point and its national identity debate

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By Enrique Tessieri

Any student of society can see that Finland is at an important juncture concerning its future national identity.  At this turning point the country appears to be looking in two directions: To our past and to the future.

Those who are looking to the past are not ready (at least yet) to expand their definition of Finnish national identity to include Finns of other ethnic backgrounds.

Their views of Finnish identity is deeply entrenched in the late-nineteenth century, when we forged a national identity that was modelled for the birth of a new independent nation called Finland. While its limitations were never tested before because there were so few immigrants living in Finland, it is on the defensive today.

An indication that it is embattled was the rise of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party in the April election as well as the ever-growing menace of ultra-nationalistic associations like Suomen Sisu and Suomalaisuuden liitto.

Thus the big question we should be asking today is if our former way of looking at our identity applies today? Is it too exclusive? How can we make it more inclusive?

Much of  our perceptions of ourselves as a group have been possible through nationalism, which has helped us overlook some important points of our history to accommodate the myth of our ethnic and cultural homogeneity.

Ethnic homogeneity was reinforced in the past century through eugenics and racial hygiene “theories” that were shamefully put in cold storage after the horrors of World War 2.

Even in the 1960s, Finnish social policy experts like Heikki Waris fed the myth. He wrote in a booklet on Finland: “Racial homogeneity particularly characterizes the Finnish people who have practically no racial minorities…Conseuqnetly, racial prejudice and discrimination are nonexistent (sic!).”

The affirmation by Waris is odd taking into account the over million people emigrated From Finland in the last two centuries. Are these Finns and their descendants a separate or integral part of Finnish culture? Not according to Waris.

These types of myths about ourselves were reinforced in our citizenship laws as well. Up to 1984, children born to Finnish mothers did not have the right to citizenship only if the father was a Finn.

The view that Finnishness is ethnic is still evident in our laws. A child born in Finland becomes the citizen of her parents’ countries.

Challenging myths that have been built during most of our independence and reinforced by wars is not an easy task but essential if we want to create a more inclusive society in this century. This will become more critical as Finland becomes more culturally diverse through immigration.

Presently, the number of immigrants in Finland is small at 2.9% of the total population, but it is expected to rise to 7%-8%, according to some experts.

Speaking up for Multicultural Finns

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By Enrique Tessieri

Those who play down the impact and poison of racism and indifference in our society know nothing of the plight of Multicultural Finns. Who are they?

A Multicultural Finn is any person who may have grown up in Finland but one or both of his or her parents were born in another country. They can also be native Finns with Finnish parents who grew up in foreign countries.

Like any group that grew up in two or more cultures, prejudice and society’s indifference have been felt especially hard by them.

Groups that have declared war on Finland’s cultural diversity, like many MPs of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, associations like Suomen Sisu and others, impact Multicultural Finns especially hard with their message of indifference.

Whenever these groups point out that Finns should not marry foreigners, or that Finland should remain “white,” they are by the same token denying Multicultural Finns of their rightful and long-overdue acceptance by society.

Acceptance by them of Multicultural Finns would be a death-blow to their myopic view of Finnishness and who has the right to belong to it.

Multicultural Finns are one of the most disenfranchised groups in this country. In school some face constant ridicule and exclusion not only by some of their classmates but with the help of their teachers’ silence.

The damage hits their self-esteem because they are denied a part of their identity, or both in many cases.

They are eternal outsiders due to society’s indifference and denial of their history and identity.

Their acceptance, however, will grow in Finland during this century as our society becomes more culturally diverse.

Why do I write about them and why do I care?

Because I am one of them.  We are the future of Finland today.

Leave my multicultural Finnish identity alone!

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Many of the arguments used by the anti-immigration camp in this country is based on myths from nineteenth century Finnish history. When these groups declare war on multiculturalism what they are revealing is their denial of our cultural diversity as a nation.

When a person or group openly oppose multiculturalism in Finland they’ll never tell you how they plan to make Finland ethnically homogeneous.

Certainly Nazi Germany’s ethnic policies are one horrific reminder of what happened when racial homogeneity became an aim of state policy. Never in the history of humankind have we seen such systematic mass murder on such a grand scale as during Nazi Germany. Not even Stalin’s purges or Pol Pot regime’s killing fields come close.

But let’s ask the following question to those that deny Finland’s cultural diversity:  How can we be “ethnically and culturally homogeneous” if our country was part of Sweden and under Russian rule for six hundred years? How about the over one million Finns that left this country as immigrants in the past 150 years?

Some of these so-called critics who are vehemently against immigration and cultural diversity make it sound as if Finns evolved separately from other groups. There was no genetic and cultural mixing with anyone, period.

These types of arguments, used by parties like Persussuomalaiset (PS) MPs like Jussi Halla-aho, are based on myths that are deeply rooted in nineteenth century Finnish national identity. Instead of celebrating and encouraging  our diversity as Finns after 1917, we erased it in order to build a national identity.

While nationalism was one important cultural eraser that encouraged Finns, for example, to change their surnames after independence and hide and even be ashamed of their cultural  diversity, it has become today one of the biggest obstacles in accepting immigrants and multicultural Finns.

Groups like Suomalaisuuden Liitto have through the PS declared open war against our Swedish-speaking minority.

New Finns is in many respects a deceptive label because we are not speaking of “new” Finns per se but in some cases quite old ones whom we have forgotten or erased from our collective memory. Jews and Russians are just a few to begin with.

Ever wonder why a Nazi-spirited association like Suomen Sisu or its members like Halla-aho don’t openly condemn the works of David Duke? It is because this former Klu Klux Klan member is an enemy of multiculturalism, or cultural diversity.

The video below on an interview with Duke exposes Suomen Sisu’s mindset in a Finnish context. In a recent television program Halla-aho refused to condemn the works of Duke and Alfred Rosenberg, a former Nazi pseudo-philosopher who defended ethnic homogeneity as a state virtue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd69pe_cL08&feature=related

My message to anyone who messes with my multicultural Finnish background is simple, loud and clear: Leave it alone and learn to accept it. If you don’t, that is your problem.