Tag: Racism

What does Finland fear as its society becomes more culturally and ethnically diverse?

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What do you think are the main issues that migrants and minorities face in Finland? Is the majority population having a difficult time sharing public spaces with migrants and minorities? Are Finns suspicious of difference? Do they fear that they’ll lose power and privilege as our society becomes ever-culturally and ethnically diverse?*

One of the most significant problems facing our ever-growing culturally diverse community is that there are too few migrants and minority participation. It’s like an all-male board championing for women’s rights.

How does tokenism down out our voices in those associations that are supposed to stand up for our rights?

How could we change this?

 

Read the full story here.

* By cultural and ethnic diversity I mean anti-white-supremacist. White Finns are as well a part of our culturally diverse society, even if some, I suspect, believe that “them” are those that are culturally different from us and “us” are the white Finns. 

YLE News: What Prosecutor General Raija Toiviainen forgets to tell us about growing hate speech in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

There’s a lot of evidence of how Finland denies an issue like racism and near-constantly plays down its impact on migrants, minorities, and society in general. Prosecutor General Raija Toivainen claims in a YLE News story that racist statement lead to bitterness, radicalization, and terrorism. 

Fine. I agree, but then states:

“Racism’s targets are driven into a corner, where it is easy to become bitter. This creates the perfect breeding ground for organised crime or even terrorism… People who have been chased to the fringes of our society are easy to manipulate and cajole into extremist groups. Do people that spread racist hate speech realize the effects of what they are doing?” she wonders.

So hate speech and hate crime drives “victims” into a corner and from there they become radicalized and terrorists.

While this may be the case, Toivianen forgets to tell us about the danger of terrorism by white Finns. Why didn’t she mention Anders Breivik, the Norwegian who murdered in cold blood 77 people in 22/7?

And what about the complicity of the politicians and public officials who should know better?

Hate speech is the soil from where violence breeds. It is indiscriminate and emboldens white Finns to commit crimes, even terrorist acts. Hate speech and racism affect everyone in society.

Hate speech and racism affect everyone in society and not just one group.

We should never forget this fact, but it’s convenient and allows us to “condemn racism” and never leave our racialized comfort zones.

Read the full story here.

Continue reading “YLE News: What Prosecutor General Raija Toiviainen forgets to tell us about growing hate speech in Finland”

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Defecting from a single-issue party like the PS of Finland

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Pekka Sinisalo defects from the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* to the Blue Reform party because, under Jussi Halla-aho,  it is a single-issue party. Before the PS imploded in June, it was a supposedly a 1.5-issue party. The Finnish media forgets that the PS is the only party in modern Finnish history that decided to target and capitalize on Islamophobia and racism. Those that form part of Blue Reform haven’t apologized and are part of that disgraceful history. 

 

Like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in Finland racism and fascism is a matter of interpretation. Source: YLE.

* After the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13 into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. Despite the name changes, we believe that it is the same party in different clothing. Both factions are hostile to cultural diversity.  One is more open about it while the other is more diplomatic. 

A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: White washing in Finland

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If Finland had a very effective white washing* process in place from independence, who dismantled it or was it ever dismantled? I have my serious doubts.

Blackfaces are still aired on Finnish television. The clip above was shown on Pressiklubi on October 6, 2017, and the full movie in 2016.

In the 1970s, when it was forbidden for Sami children to speak their own language at Finnish schools, children learned that “n” stands for the n-word. They learned that no matter how much an n-word washes her face, it would not whiten.
A racist ad of how a detergent literally whitewashes little black children published in a sport’s magazine in the beginning of the last century.

 

* Someone who is looked at as leaving behind or neglecting their culture and assimilating to a white, western culture. Source: Urban Dictionary.

Groups like Suomalaisuuden liitto were responsible for whitewashing and killing diversity in Finland

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If there is an association in this country that is guilty of whitewashing and killing cultural diversity, one of them is Suomalaisuuden liitto or the Association of Finnish Culture and Identity. 

It would be naive to believe that the same structures that aimed at annihilating the Sami culture and the hostile and systemic social exclusion of the Roma in the past have disappeared. You can actually find them everywhere: in our integration program for newcomers, education, and the generally accepted narrative that gives white Finns their identity, power, and privilege to exclude minorities and migrants.

Even if whitewashing is a formidable foe, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t people, associations, and institutions in this country that want to dismantle this racist system. We are, however, still too few and too weak to make a real difference.

I know what whitewashing is because my family was affected by it.

Despite the fact that one of my long lost late relatives, Jacob Weikan (ca. 1785-1848) was the first Jew to get a residence permit in this country in the eighteenth century, anti-Semitism and nationalism forced and encouraged my family from my mother’s side to abandon their Jewish identity.

The whitewashing was so thorough that my grandfather, a captain in the Finnish defense forces and a White Guard, hid his Jewish background all his life with his nationalism. Very rarely did he speak about his Jewish roots but expressed it in a question that wasn’t supposed to be answered: Do we have Jewish roots?

Integration was a different matter in the first half of the last century compared with today. One way was to change your “foreign” surname into a Finnish one.

The document below shows how my grandparent’s family changed their surname in 1931:

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.

Is it a surprise that the chairman of the Association of Finnish Culture and Identity is none other than Sampo Terho, a former member of the Perussuomalaiset* (PS) party  and today’s minister of European affairs, culture, and sport?

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Exposing* white Finnish privilege #39: The Hollywood ending of racism that will never happen in Finland

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There is one characteristic when watching for some years Finnish journalists, public officials, politicians and the public debate about racism: Everything will end like in a Hollywood movie, and we’ll live happily forever.

Happiness for some doesn’t hinge on ending racism in this country but on perpetuating it so that white Finns could have, at the cost of minorities, power, and privilege.

This type of wishful thinking permits journalists like Pressiklubi host Sanna Ukkola to provoke and flex her muscles at minorities by putting on an Amerindian feather hairpiece and show a clip of Pekka ja Pätkä blackfaces before diving into a sensitive topic like cultural appropriation.

Read Sanna Ukkola’s opinion piece (in Finnish) here.

Ukkola went even further by – yes, she did this – got in touch with a teacher’s employer at a school to point out that his tweets were out of line. The teacher, Tero Hannula, tweeted a poll asking whether Ukkola should wear a dunce cap, a Perussuomalaiset cap, a Ku Klux Klan hood or a bottle of all-purpose adhesive on her head.

Ukkola also went after blogger Suvi Auvinen and asked for a correction but didn’t make clear what she wanted to be corrected.

Continue reading “Exposing* white Finnish privilege #39: The Hollywood ending of racism that will never happen in Finland”

Defining white Finnish privilege #38: Cultural appropriation and racism are quaint discussion topics between white Finns

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Sanna Ukkola is a YLE journalist who has stuck her foot in her mouth a number of times. Hosting Pressiklubi on Friday was a clear example when she put on an Amerindian feather hairpiece and showed a clip of Pekka ja Pätkä blackfaces to the audience. 

While she excused herself for wearing the hairpiece, the whole talk show was a fiasco and an embarrassment to YLE. Is cultural appropriation ok? We don’t know because the talk show didn’t take a clear stand on the issue.

Two of the guests, Matti Virtanen, a Talouselämä journalist, and conservative National Coalition Party councilman, Tere Sammallahti, added more injury to pain with their comments about cultural appropriation. The other guest was Left Alliance chairwoman Li Anderson, who disagreed with almost everything that the two other guests said.

Virtanen claimed that it was ok for Miss Helsinki candidates to wear the hairpiece because it was a copy and therefore didn’t insult anyone.

Yes, right, Virtanen. You have privilege and power to make such a point but not the moral authority because you are white.

Meet the candidates who are vying to be crowned Miss Helsinki. Source: Tämä päivä.

If Virtanen and Ukkola stuck their foots in their mouths, Sammallahti ended up with a Frankenstein shoe in his.

See original tweet by Outi Länsman here.

“Now that I have a 1.5-year-old boy child at home,” he said, “I hope he won’t have to grow up in a work where he’s made to feel guilty for being born white and, probably, heterosexual.”

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Tigthening immigration and asylum policy is putting a noose around our Nordic values

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I spoke this week to a Syrian refugee who got his residence to stay in Finland. He said that his wife and two children are living abroad and cannot come to Finland (because he isn’t working). He stated that he hadn’t been with his wife and children for two years.

After tightening family reunification laws last year, Center Party parliamentary group leader MP Antti Kaikkonen believes that the government has gone too far in tightening immigration policy, according to Lahti-based daily Etelä-Suomen Sanomat. The Center Party believes that the 2,600-euro/month salary requirement to bring your spouse and two children should be changed. 

The suggestion by Kaikkonen has received a flat no from the Blue Reform (“New Perussuomalaiset”*) party that defected in June from the “Old” Perussuomalaiset (PS) party to not lose their ministerial posts since the Center Party and National Coalition Party would not have accepted the PS under Jussi Halla-aho in government.

Halla-aho, who has built his political career on Islamophobia, was convicted In 2012 for ethnic agitation and breaching the sanctity of religion.

As we have seen recently, the tightening of Finnish immigration and asylum policy has not only succeeded in killing our empathy for the suffering of others but showed what novices our politicians and decision-makers are when it comes to migration and cultural diversity. We have done great harm to our own values and sense of justice with the tightening of such laws.

The case of the Syrian man who lives in despair because he hasn’t been with his family for two years is not the only case.

When Finns emigrated in mass to North America before World War 2, they not only brought their families but their relatives, neighbors, and friends. The more, the merrier!

Blue Reform MP Simon Elo gives the thumbs down to Kaikkonen’s proposal of loosening family reunification guidelines. Source: Facebook.

Continue reading “Tigthening immigration and asylum policy is putting a noose around our Nordic values”

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Unspeakable politicians and their own gain

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White Finns rarely consult migrants and minorities on anything important. They may ask them their opinion on x and y but the final decision on policy is made by them because you don’t really count. And then there are people like Jussi Halla-aho, Laura Huhtasaari, Timo Soini, Wille Rydman, and many others who pour gasoline and stoke the fires of ethnic hatred in this country. It is unspeakable that they do so for their own gain. 

Timo Soini telling an Old Perussuomalaiset racist to behave. at the end of the day, Soini got his fingers burned and ejected from the party. If there is a person who gave fascism, racism, homophobia, and sexism a platform in this country, that person is Soini.

* After the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13 into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. Despite the name changes, we believe that it is the same party in different clothing. Both factions are hostile to cultural diversity.  One is more open about it while the other is more diplomatic. Both could be called the “new” and “old” PS. 

A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.