Tag: Racism

Migrant high unemployment in Finland is a good way to measure discrimination and social exclusion

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Apart from Jim Crow laws and centuries of discrimination, one of the many social issues that the U.S. Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s addressed was high unemployment among blacks. In a country like Finland, which sees work as a crucial pathway to inclusion and acceptance, it’s clear that unemployment is an effective to way to socially exclude and subjugate groups from society.

The expectations of some Finns about migrants is so low that they are willing to accept them to work in low-paying jobs that they would never take.

According to a Helsingin Sanomat article, the jobless rate among migrants rose by one fifth to close to 30,000 migrants compared with a year ago. Migrant unemployment in 2012 totaled over 22%.

As long as unemployment is 2-3 times higher than the national average, it means that migrants, and especially their children, will be denied a better life in Finland.

Why isn’t abysmally high unemployment among some members of the migrant community in Finland an issue? It not only shows, in my opinion, the little social consciousness of some migrants but our little interest in tackling social ills like intolerance and discrimination.

The present situation reveals as well how Finland has benefited from high unemployment among migrants. Not only does it keep certain migrant groups in check, it keeps social workers employed and anti-immigration politicians from parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) in the headlines.

One answer that sheds light on the above-mentioned is that racism makes people and groups invisible.

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Read full story here.

Attempting to answer the question, why we’re not paying enough attention to an issue like high unemployment among migrants, is the problem.

Certainly I can give you a long list of excuses why a migrant is unemployed. What I’m not doing is dealing with the many causes of the problem, like structural racism, or how unemployment and social welfare are used to socially exclude migrants.

True, language and the ability of a migrant to adapt to a new country play crucial roles in that person’s adaption and integration.

Should Finland’s Uncle Toms be called mamus?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Alarm bells go off inside of me whenever I hear migrants, who should know better, claim that racism isn’t a major issue in our society many times standing next to or speaking to white Finns. There are many reasons why a migrant may play down such a social ill. These may include ignorance, prejudice, lack of courage and outright opportunism. 

Whatever the reasons may be, one matter is needed in Finland’s migrant terminology: A Finnish equivalent of Uncle Tom.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, Uncle Tom’ Cabin debut in 1852 as a play that aimed to raise awareness against slavery in the United States.

Despite its noble beginnings, the meaning of Uncle Tom has changed to mean today a black man who will do anything to appease his white oppressors, even betray his race or ethnic group, according to Urban Dictionary.

Migrant Tales had a lively debate in 2011 about what Uncle Tom is and what it would be in Finnish. @HelsinkiObs was kind enough to offer us the following older and new versions of the term: Setä Tuomas and Tuomo Setä, respectively.

While the latter two are good terms that have been directly translated from English, Finland should have its own Setä or Täti Tuomas term. One candidate that would, in my opinion, be a perfect translation is mamu, the shortened word for maahanmuuttaja, or migrant.

Since such a label is shameful, mamu should be spelled in lower case.

The purpose of this column is not to release a social media lynch mob on anyone but to raise awareness of a serious problem that the migrant and visible minority community faces. Betraying a group for personal gain and opportunism is just as bad when a person sells secrets to a foreign country.

How do you spot a mamu?

  • Excessive subservience to white Finns
  • Some mamus claim to be migrants but in fact are Finns since they have lived most of their lives here
  • He or she is a mouthpiece of the arguments used by white Finns to maintain migrants and visible minorities as second- and third-class citizens
  • Plays down and denies, like some white Finns, racism
  • Underestimates the destructive power of racism
  • Never speaks of systemic racism
  • Claims to be against racism but has the same opinions as the worst racists in Finland about minorities in his or her own country
  • Believes that a social ill like racism can be beaten with kindness and understanding

While there are many mamus, one that readily comes to mind is Fija Saarni, MP James Hirvisaari’s aide. Nasima Razmyar’s rebuttal to Perussuomalaiset MP Teuvo Hakkarainen is a good example of mamu-spirited writing.

Razmyar wanted to have an honest discussion over coffee with Hakkarainen after he claimed that Muslims were taking over Finland and Europe.

Moroccan-born Junes Lokka, who’s lived most of his life in Finland, is another sad example of how some with migrant backgrounds become white and spread racism. He’s a member of the Muutos 2011 party with MP James Hirvisaari, one of Finland’s most notorious racists.

Glenn Robinson is editor of Community Village whom I have great respect because his postings shed strong light on how intolerance operates in our society.

A recent posting by him, Moving the Race Conversation Forward, offers us – and especially mamus – valuable food for thought about the weapons used to maintain racism in our society.

According to Moving the Race Conversation Forward, there are four levels of racism that we should keep in mind. While internalized and interpersonal racism are individual forms of racism, the one that the media, politicians and the public forgets is systemic racism.

Says Jay Smooth of Race Forward (see video clip here): “Once you get past those individual levels, first of all you have to deal with institutional racism: The racist policies and discriminatory practices in schools and world places and government agencies that routinely produce unjust outcomes for people of color. And when you step beyond that level you have structural racism: The unjust racist patterns and practices that play out across the institutions that make up our society.”

How does systemic racism work in Finland? Ask yourself how many black professors do we have at our universities. What about policemen who are visible minorities? Look at the television ads that bombard us daily and ask how many minorities are in them.

Why is it that when white Finns speak of migrants in the employment market, they usually speak of low-paying like cleaning?

Why are unemployment levels among migrants 2-3 times higher than the national average in Finland?

Why isn’t there any debate in our society about systemic racism in Finland?

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PS MP Halla-aho to attend first Council of Europe meeting Monday

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Jussi Halla-aho, who was sentenced for ethnic agitation, will represent Finland at a Council of Europe meeting Monday in Strasbourg, according to Tampere-based Aamulehti, which cites STT. 

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Read full story (in FInnish) here.

The appointment of Halla-aho to the Finnish delegation to the Council of Europe last year prompted a joint statement by the leaders of seven parliamentary parties expressing regret over this move.

One of the aims of the Council of Europe is to promote human rights.

National Coalition Party MP Kimmo Sasi, who is Vice-Chairman of the Finnish delegation to the Council of Europe, said that Halla-aho’s appointment as deputy member didn’t advance Finland’s image as a country that defends human rights.

True, but Sasi forgets that before 1995, when Finland became an EU member, the human rights of migrants were not respected. One clear indication of breaches of human rights were denying Soviet citizens the right to political asylum in Finland.

The fact that Finland’s third largest party in parliament, the PS, doesn’t have any problems with naming an MP like Halla-aho to represent this country speaks volumes about the state of intolerance in this country.

Finland was one of the last countries in Western Europe to join the Council of Europe in 1989. Finland’s special relationship with the former Soviet Union was one reason why Finland took so long to join.

Higher unemployment and economic woes spell big trouble for migrants and visible minorities

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Finland got shocking news Thursday when postal company Itella announced that it may shed up to 1,200 jobs, according to Yle in English. Taking into account that unemployment shot up in 2013 to 7.9% from 6.9% in the previous year, what do these two news stories mean for the migrant and visible minority community?

Those who lived through the early 1990s in Finland, when this country suffered its worst economic downturn in a century and when unemployment soared to around 18%, it’s nothing unusual that migrants were hit especially hard back then.

Since migrant unemployment is normally two to three times higher than the national average in Finland, that means the jobless rate for migrants at that time was 53% in 1994!

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Read full story here.

While unemployment in Finland is still lower today than that 10.5% average for the European Union, migrants and visible minorities have a lot to worry about since the recession will be especially harsh with them during two consecutive election years.

Just like about twenty years ago, the dire economic situation will offer self-declared and closet racists the opportunity to layoff migrants or to make their life miserable at work. How? By letting them know that the shadow of unemployment hangs constantly over them.

Contrary to the early 1990s, when Finland didn’t have a large anti-immigration party like the Perussuomalaiset today, migrants and visible minorities will be scapegoated and victimized relentlessly by greedy and opportunistic politicians.

With the Euro MP elections in May and the parliamentary elections in April 2015, the going for migrants and visible minorities in Finland and Europe is going to get tougher.

The situation resembles a sinking ship where most of the passengers will be sacrificed to the chilling waters because there are too few lifeboats for everyone.

What will make matters worse is the dog-eat-dog climate that will discourage solidarity.

 

Trade Union Pro leader affair: PS leadership claims it is a victim of hate speech

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Perussuomalaiset (PS) party secretary Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo put her two cents on tabloid Ilta-Sanomat Tuesday by stating that Antti Rinne is guilty of hate speech against her party. One matter is an MP filing police charges against a person for having an opinion and the other is for the party leadership to back such action.   

Migrant Tales reported Monday that PS MP Kaj Turunen had filed charges against Rinne for ”ethnic agitation” because he had stated on a Helsingin Sanomat interviews that the right-wing populist party had no scruples and therefore was open to racism and fascism. Kuvankaappaus 2014-1-21 kello 11.27.04

Read full story (in Finnish) here.

The reaction of the PS to Rinne’s statement is one of the party’s deceptions exposed in the raw.

Since much of the party’s support comes from Finnish males who feel excluded and victims of society, Rinne’s comment sits well with the image the party wants to give voters. “The image that the party wants to reinforce is that of a socially excluded [male] victim who is misunderstood and has no voice,” a university professor told Migrant Tales.

Sensible people understand that what Turunen did and what Slunga-Poutsalo condoned is ludicrous from a legal standpoint.  We know that the PS is a political party not an ethnic group or religious minority that needs protection from hate speech.

The present incident, which will be forgotten by many but not by Migrant Tales, is another example of the tragic-comic performance by the PS. It not only shows how lost ideologically and susceptible they are to racism and fascism, but to shameless opportunism as well.

It reinforces our view that the PS are a political menace to Finland.

MP files police charges against union leader for naming the PS a party of racists and fascists

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Can you believe that an MP of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, Kaj Turunen, has filed charges against Trade Union Pro chairman Antti Rinne for stating on a Helsingin Sanomt interview that the right-wing populist party had no scruples and therefore open to racism and fascism, according to Uusi Suomi. 

Believe it or not, Turunen believes his party to be some kind of an ethnic group and therefore – in his opinion – Rinne is guilty (sic!) of hate speech and ethnic agitation.

This type of nonsensical behavior by the PS is nothing unusual. Remember, they love to picture themselves as the excluded victim. Turunen is exploiting this image of the anti-EU, anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam party by charging Rinne even if it sounds ludicrous.

That’s how low Finland has stooped with the PS since 2011.

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Read full story here.

Trade Union Pro is the largest private sector union for clerical employees. Rinne is challenging Social Democrat head Jutta Urpilainen for the chairmanship of the Social Democratic Party this spring.

Turunen was quoted as saying on Uusi Suomi that he was “very offended” by Rinne’s statements, which he considered “scary.”

The PS MP from Savonlinna may claim what Rinne said to be scary, but what’s even scarier is how little an elected lawmaker like Turunen understands our right to express ourselves freely in this society.

While the PS tries countlessly to hide its racist statements under the guise of “free speech,” there’s a big difference between criticizing a party and outright racism.

Moreover, there are countless of disgraceful examples of racism in the PS and even that one of its MPs, Juho Eerola, admitted being attracted by fascism. One former and present PS MP, James Hirvisaari and Jussi Halla-aho, respectively, have been sentenced for ethnic agitation.

What does Turunen attempt to win from this?

Expose his ignorance of our civil rights and that he can’t take criticism because it offends him.

 

 

PS MP Jussi Halla-aho doesn’t like cultural diversity, never mind Africans and Muslims

Posted on by Migrant Tales

I’m not going to expend a lot of energy on analyzing what Perussuomaliset (PS) MP Jussi Halla-aho wrote in a recent blog entry. All of what he writes about migrants, especially refugees, is demeaning and negative. One sentence in particular, however, caught my attention and which exposes the anti-immigration politician to a tee. 

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Read full story (in Finnish) here.

Halla-aho, who was sentenced for ethnic agitation, makes a special effort to stress in his blog entry that the measures he’d like to propose to control migration flows to Europe aren’t intended to keep Europe “white” but in the best interests of the countries concerned.

The PS MP’s first deception is exposed when he uses the term migration as opposed to refugee flows. He uses the former as opposed to the latter term because he believes that most Africans, Middle Easterners and Muslims aren’t real refugees but “welfare shoppers.”

If you’ve read Halla-aho and his ilk, their whole argument is based on criticizing immigration policy, which, according to them, allows too many refugees to move to Europe. Now who are those refugees? They are the Africans, Middle Easterners and Muslims that politicians like him loathe.

Rule number one of journalism: Denial is usually what a politician really thinks or feels insecure about.

A good example of the latter would be a politician like Halla-aho who goes out of his way to claim that he has nothing against cultural diversity or a homophobe who denies he’s against gays.

We’ve heard these types of statements so many times before, especially from anti-immigration politicians.

Attorney general inquiry confirms earlier internal investigation by the Helsinki Courts of Appeal

Posted on by Migrant Tales

An inquiry commissioned by the attorney general confirmed an internal investigation scooped by MTV3 in summer revealed some judges of the Helsinki Courts of Appeal harassed women sexually at parties and used racist language, according to MTV3, which cites Helsingin Sanomat.

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Read full story (in Finnish) here.

The internal investigation, which revealed that some judges acted in a sexist manner parties, revealed as well that they used racist and derogatory labels to name blacks, Russians, Jews and gays.

One of the claims made by a story on Helsingin Sanomat is the Helsinki Courts of Appeal doesn’t believe that the racist behavior of the judges didn’t have any bearing on the sentences they pronounced.

While we don’t have enough information about this case except for an MTV3 story and another one written by Finland’s largest daily, one could rightly ask how could such racist and sexist behavior by judges not impact their impartiality especially in cases involving migrants and gays?

Even if the original investigation doesn’t mention the Romany minority, I wonder what the judges think of them.

A judge is a public figure and his credibility hinges on his or her impartiality. Making racist comments and treating women in a demeaning manner at parties destroys such credibility in one blow.

Migrant Tales Literary: When Finland kicked the shit out of tolerance

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Dedicated to Eila Kännö (1921-2009)*

By Leo Honka

I lived in this land of Finland

from a long, long time ago

before it heard your steps

when it could kick the shit out of tolerance

and walk away with impunity with intolerance

in the streets

as soverign master

Over anything that moved.

You’d be shocked by the things I’ve consumed

with my eyes and ears

and devoured in one gulp

by a thrusted spear through the heart:

The fight to maintain Finland white back then

was pretty easy

all you needed were two sentences:

To keep criminals

and the human trash away.

* Head of the Aliens Office of Finland during 1970-84.  Finland got its first aliens act in 1984, or 66 years after independence. Before this the authorities could detain and deport a migrant with no right of appeal. Some claim that Kännö ran the Aliens Office like a state within a state. 

Image1-44_edited-1

This book, Naisena miesten maailmassa, was published by Kännö in 1990.

How do you explain labor shortage and high unemployment?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Sometimes Migrant Tales gets it right and many times we do. Our sharp associate editor, JusticeDemon, raised and shed light on a very topical issue that is constantly poisoning the debate about our ever-growing cultural diversity in Finland.

In Mikkeli, which is located about 230km north of Helsinki, a Perussuomalaiset (PS) politician, who equates immigrants with white European colonizers that colonized The Americas, and who believes that the region of South Savo doesn’t need any immigrants, claimed recently on Länsi-Savo that there is no labor shortage in Finland.

While there’s nothing surprising that a councilman of an anti-immigration party like the PS can make such a claim, it is odd that the chairwoman of the Social Democratic Party of Southeastern Finland, Satu Taavitsainen, agreed with the PS politician.

The PS councilman, Jukka Pöyry, is so much against immigration that if he’d live in the nineteenth century, he would be against foreign industrial leaders like Finnlayson, Paulig, Sinebrychoff, Rettig, Fazer and other household names today from moving to Finland because “there’s poverty and unemployment.”

Thus the argument made often by anti-immigration politicians is that we don’t need labor immigrants because there’s no labor shortage.

These politicians forget as well that in the EU there’s freedom of movement.

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Read original posting here.

JusticeDemon raises an good point on a comment to ohdake on Migrant Tales. If you want to know if there is a labor shortage in Finland, all you have to do is visit the national job search engine, which reveals 10,639 job vacancies today. Since there’s no obligation to notify job vacancies – writes JusticeDemon – the true number of job openings is probably twice the number of notices.

He continues: “Many of these notices concern more than one vacancy, and many have been open for several weeks if not months. These are also only the vacancies that have been notified to employment authorities. There is no enforceable obligation to notify vacancies, and the true number of jobs available is probably around twice the number of notices.”

At the same time, Finland had in November an official unemployment rate of 7.9%.

JusticeDemon know throws the knockout punch:

Naive perceptions are easily manipulated by forces seeking political power. For example the most natural naive perception from the foregoing fact of 20,000 vacant jobs and 8 per cent unemployment is that the Finnish unemployed are work shy, and that they blame working immigrants for their unemployment in order to distract public attention from their own failings. This particular naive perception appeals to certain types of selfish Conservative mentality, but remains otherwise fairly rare in Finland.

JusticeDemon considers a “naive perception” the assumption that the number of jobs in an economy is constant. This assumes that any newcomer to the job market is somehow taking a job away from incumbent job-seekers.

“This naive perception appeals to authoritarian mentalities with limited cognitive and conceptual flexibility,” continues JusticeDemon. “There are various other naive perceptions that can be and are woven into the public consciousness to serve political ends. For example the view that everything comes down to labour costs, or that everything is the outcome of some massive conspiracy.”