social exclusion Archives - Page 9 of 11

Migrant Tales Literary: Helloless culture

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Migrant Tales

By Dana

Hello!? Well yes, hello! Hello! Let me tell you about a helloless culture.? What is wrong with greeting people anyway?? In Finland saying hello seems very difficult. ?It looks like they’re afraid to say hello even if u told them hello over and over again…and i’m wondering how many times i have to take the initiative and say good morning and greet people in this way.

If i don’t say anything i won’t hear a response, hmmm what a beautiful culture! Oh hello! A greeting and a hi are a way to be friendly to others but here everything is extremely cold and unfriendly. Why? Sure, you and I don’t know it, only they know it and they claim it’s their culture – oh no that word again, culture!

Culture is offers an easy answer to all my questions about the Finns and Finland. Oh and please don’t tell me it’s about being shy or shyness if u exclude me because it means ur not a shy people. So what do you think about greeting people with a hello? What about a course in learning how to say hello? Do u like the idea?

When u or your child visit a place u need to greet others with a hello, it’s important, it’s like telling the other person not to be afraid of you because you’re a friend. How can a child stay silent in such a situation? No respect for adults? Teach them respect, then they won’t leave u in a home for the elderly when u r old and they’ll care for u when you’re old.

Adults should believe that a good way of being friendly begins with a small and humble hi. What should I think of you if I am a foreigner in this helloless culture? Hello ensures peace between people so what’s wrong with saying hello?

Don’t forget to say hello. I won’t abandon my hellos and greetings even if you have…. hellooooooo anyway!

Dear Migrant Tales…when the workplace becomes a hostile place

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Dear Migrant Tales,

Being the only black person at work can be challenging but what about if the workplace becomes openly hostile to you? By hostile I mean being constantly watched by your coworkers, if you make a mistake it’s always a bigger deal than if a white coworker did it, if you’re speaking on the phone, your work mates are the first ones to tell you that you’re not on a break.

I got fired from my last job after working there for about four months. I’ve had many jobs but the last one was the worst. The work atmosphere there was terrible.

I confided in a worker, an older man, at my former job. I spoke openly to him about myself and some of my problems. I found out from another coworker that he was talking behind my back and exaggerating what I had told him.

One day while I was on a break, the person I confided in started to raise his voice at me. He told me that Somalis shouldn’t live in Finland and why don’t I return back to where I came from. I couldn’t take it anymore and raised my voice back at him.

The older man went immediately to our boss and told him that I had raised my voice at him. The boss spoke to us and then told me that he didn’t believe anything I said. He said he believed the white worker because he had worked at the company much longer than I.

I ended up getting fired.

White Finns have effective ways of excluding you at work. At the job I got fired, your opinion didn’t matter because nobody cared what you thought. It’s such a stressful situation! Some of my coworkers even asked me to do their job because they thought I was dumb. I’m not dumb.

I’m extra careful at my new job. I don’t want to get fired again and I’ve learned an important lesson: Not to mix with my coworkers and just mind my own business.

I’d appreciate any good advice on how a black person can survive at a Finnish company.

Abdulah

Abdulah, who speaks to us under condition of anonymity, has appeared on Migrant Tales a number of times.

Migrant Tales Literary: Boycott ?????

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Dana

By Dana

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Land of walls: Finland Finland or prejudice

Prejudice, maybe banter Banter, wow, a hunter

A hunter of humanity Humanity screams out in this land

Land of doubts, a sick land of doubts Thoughts that doubt, a land of colossal hurt

Land of hurt or Finland Finland, yes, a land of sin

Land of sin or ding dong land Ding dong land or land of hate

Land of hate or land of fakes Land of fakes and land that shakes

Scam scam scammers I give you fair waning: scam is a shark

Walls oh walls look at those walls Here, there and everywhere

They play games behind the walls Behind the walls that are inhabited by the darkness.

We speak of two-way integration but too many still believe in assimilation

Posted on May 3, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Finland’s integration law is exemplary in many respects because it aims to integrate newcomers as equals in our society. No law is, however, written in stone and is only as good as the institutions and people that enforce it. One of the matters that some have a difficult time grasping is what two-way adaption, or integration, means and implies.

Integration is the opposite to assimilation, which is one-way integration. Those who are in favor of assimilation, believe that most if not all of the adapting to cultural diversity will be done on their terms. One of their favorite arguments is: “Why should I adapt to them if they are in my country.”

Assimilation is a lazy and convenient way to exclude and keep others corralled with the help of our suspicion. This integration model is one of the reasons why intolerance is still the rule instead of the exception in many European countries.

Assimilation not only is a lazy model and sustains itself with the help of ethnocentrism, prejudice, white privilege, outright discrimination of whole groups and, worse, by defensive and repeated denials that we don’t have any issue with intolerance.

Take for example Finland’s Romany minority, which have suffered the greatest hostility in our society. They are a good example if any of outright social exclusion.

A US state department human rights report stated recently: ”Groups of Roma have lived in the country for centuries, and Roma are classified as a ’traditional ethnic minority’ in the ombudsman’s report. The Romany minority was the most frequent target of racially motivated discrimination, followed by Russian-speakers, Somalis, and Sami.”

Some Finns are still waiting after 500 years for the Roma, which number about 10,000 in Finland, to turn “white.” By turning white, I mean giving up their traditional dress, identity and ways of life in order to gain greater acceptance.

The paradox, however, is that if they gave up their identity they’d be in worse shape then they are today. The aim of intolerance and the victimization of groups like the Roma, is to wipe them off the Finnish cultural map.

One matter we should be careful to avoid when promoting two-way integration is exclusion by default. The best of example of this is when elementary schools continue to call third-culture children as students with immigrant backgrounds (maahanmuuttajataustainen) irrespective that they were born and have lived all their lives in this country.

Living in a culturally diverse society where two-way adaption, or integration, is the rule is the most effective and less-expensive way to adapt newcomers.

Even if our society promotes mutual acceptance, our laws and human rights play important roles.

The greatest integrators of all are social justice and equal opportunities – the very values we promote in our laws.

Sara speaks out against the racist harassment her son endured at a school in Mikkeli, Finland

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Migrant Tales

What would you do if you heard that an African single mother decided to leave Mikkeli for Helsinki because her eight-year-old child was a victim of racist harassment or bullying at school? Would you just register the news and brush it conveniently under the rug and reassure yourself that these types of things don’t happen where you live?

Migrant Tales got in touch with Sara, an African single mother that spoke on condition of anonymity, to ask what had happened to her son at school. She said that her problems began when her son Julian, then a seven-year-old boy, went to Kattilansilta School.

Migrant Tales published in October 2010 a blog entry about racist spray paintings that were on the school’s walls for months.

While Sara believes that the teachers and principle did everything possible to stop the racist bullying of her son, a teacher in 2010 didn’t seem too concerned about the racist graffiti on the school’s wall. After the teacher admitted that the racist graffiti above had been there since spring and didn’t represent his values, he asked why anti-immigration groups like the Perussuomalaiset and Muutos 2011 are labelled racist whenever they criticize immigrants for getting more social welfare than Finns.

By Sara

I had heard before that racism is a problem in Mikkeli but my child and I were never its victims. My problems started when I finished my studies and when my son Julian started first grade at the local school. Finding real work in Mikkeli was impossible for me. I served as an intern at different workplaces but never got a job that paid me a salary.

One day my son Julian came home and told me that a boy at school was bullying him in a racist manner. He was too young to understand why he was bullied. He asked me why I had given birth to him as a black African and why he wasn’t white like the rest of the children at school.

Soon the majority of his classmates started bullying him. They named him a black monkey and told him to go to the toilet bowl because the color of his skin was like the color of feces. (Sara stops for a moment to contain her tears. She succeeds).

Matters got worse for Julian as the months passed at school. There were fights and nobody wanted to play with him. One day he said he didn’t want to go to school because nobody liked him.

The teachers and the principle were understanding and they spoke to the classmates’ parents. Things got better but for Julian for a while but then things returned to “normal” and the bullying started again. Julian’s classmates are the same age as he so what they know about racism is what they learned from their parents and other children.

Not only did my son complain that he didn’t have friends at school, but he didn’t have anyone to play with after school either. At the apartment block where we lived in Mikkeli, he did have a friend who wanted to play with him but the boy’s mother forbade it.

Last year for the first time in my seven years in Mikkeli, I got two hate mails telling me to go back to where I came from.

Taking into account what was happening at school to Julian and the feeling that things had changed for the worse in Mikkeli for us, I decided to move to Helsinki last fall.

Since then my life has changed for the better. There are more Africans where I live and my son is no longer bullied at school.

It’s incredible, but if you are the only black child at school like Julian was, you’ll get bullied. If there are more black children, bullying doesn’t happen that easily.

I sincerely hope that what happened to me and my son won’t happen to anyone. I don’t wish such pain to befall anyone.

Silence is not the way to challenge intolerance.

Read story in Finnish here.

Our lopsided debate on immigration and refugees serves to keep our society white

Posted on April 27, 2013 by Migrant Tales

The most startling fact about a US state department report on human rights for 2012 weren’t the sentences for hate speech handed to Perussuomalaiset (PS) party members such as MP Jussi Halla-aho and Freddy Van Wonterghem, but the discrimination suffered by Finland’s Romany minority, which number about 10,000.

Read full US secretary of state human rights report here.

The report states: ”Groups of Roma have lived in the country for centuries, and Roma are classified as a ’traditional ethnic minority’ in the ombudsman’s report. The Romany minority was the most frequent target of racially motivated discrimination, followed by Russian-speakers, Somalis, and Sami. Ethnic Finns were also occasionally victims of racially motivated crimes for association with members of minority communities.”

If the Romany community is suffering the brunt of discrimination in Finland, why doesn’t anyone raise a fuss about it? Instead or debating a festering issue like intolerance in Finland, we prefer to engage in a fruitless debate on whether Finns are racist or not and/or how many refugees commit crime and abuse social welfare.

It’s quite clear that the whole debate over intolerance in Finland is badly lopsided and highly selective.

There are an estimated 50,000-60,000 Muslims living in Finland, which amount to about 1% of the population. Moreover, the biggest national groups made up by Muslims, like Somalis and Iraqis, number 8,767 (4.1% of all immigrants) and 7,882 (3.1%), respectively, according to The Finnish Immigration Service.

In light of the above, here’s the crux of the issue concerning immigration, immigrants and cultural diversity in Finland: Why do we ignore our historic failure with the Roma while paying so much attention to Africans and Muslims, which are a small minority?

In my opinion, it not only reveals the extent of the victimization and racism against specific groups in our society by certain political parties like the PS, the media and general public, but more importantly our intolerance to people who are different from us and what’s not supposed to be debated.

By portraying certain groups as threats to our way of life, we effectively put in cold storage the all-important debate on cultural diversity. The present debate on immigrants, immigration and cultural diversity resembles in many cases bringing up pedophilia as an issue when debating gay rights.

One of the biggest wise tales of Finnish ethnicity is that it is white. Such an affirmation couldn’t be further from the truth.

Apart from over 1.2 million Finns that emigrated from this country between 1860 and 1999 and mixed culturally and ethnically with other groups in their new homelands, we are seeing the same thing happening today in Finland as more immigrants move to our country.

Does PS MP Olli Immonen have any idea what Finnish culture is?

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Migrant Tales

There’s a three-part story published on Suomen Kuvalehti with Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Olli Immonen, who states why postmodern movies, or those that don’t strengthen Finnish national identity, shouldn’t be funded by the state. Immonen was elected the new president of Suomen Sisu, an extremist association that discourages white Finns from marrying foreigners.

Suomen Kuvalehti published a three-part dialogue between PS MP Olli Immonen and Kalle Kinnunen. Read (in Finnish) part 1, part 2 and part 3.

It’s not only disgraceful that politicians like Immonen can make a case for ”racial hygiene” in today’s Finland and promote an exclusive view of Finnish culture that excludes others from being treated as equals and with respect, but that his far right views have support from voters and the media.

What becomes clear in the three-part news interviews between Kalle Kinnunen and Immonen, is how much in the dark the PS MP is about the role of Finnish culture in the production of new Finnish movies.

Kinnunen asked Immonen what kinds of movies the PS MP considers postmodern and which of them undermine Finnish national pride.

”I throw the ball back in the court of the directors, scriptwriters and financiers and ask them if they have enough courage to break away from internationalism and multiculturalism and bring forth more Finnish culture in films.”

On Monday Migrant Tales questioned whether one of Finland’s anti-immigration hotheads, PS MP James Hirvisaari, knew what racism is. Hirvisaari claimed that he was a victim of racism because he was a member of the PS and was a devout Christian.

The same question now goes to Immonen: Does he have any idea what Finnish culture is?

It’s pretty clear from the dialogue between Immonen and Kinnunen that the PS MP from Oulu has a simplistic view of what he hinks is Finnish culture. For Immonen, Finnish culture is only a concept used by him to exclude those that don’t fit the outdated stereotype of the the blonde and blue-eyed Finn.

Disgraceful behavior that shames and is hurtful to Finland.

It’s the cultural diversity, stupid!

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Would it be fair to say that the biggest challenge facing Finland during this century is accepting its cultural diversity and deconstructing our white national identity in order to make our society more inclusive? Will this happen easily?

The central issue being debated in Finland today about immigrants boils down to one question: How much cultural diversity are we willing to accept?

There aren’t any political parties in this country, except for the Perussuomalaiset (PS) and its extremist Suomen Sisu faction, which are openly against white Finns marrying people of different ethnicities. Even so, it’s clear that this attitude is quite widespread in our society.

If we’d like to see an even bigger picture of how this works in practice, we could take Cuba’s Fidel Castro example of how he got rid of his political dissidents by allowing them to flee en masse to neighboring Miami.

Less dissidents, more perceived unity.

Finland has seen over 1.2 million emigrants move mainly to the Americas and Sweden between 1860 and 1999. Just like Castro, Finland benefited in the same way. Apart from the socialists and communists that fled Finland after the Civil War of 1918, Finland was able to forge unchallenged a social construct like the “noble” white Finn.

It didn’t matter that hundreds of thousands of Finns had moved to other parts of the world and intermarried with other ethnicities. The way Finnish language evolved in Finnish immigrant communities, and how our view of our changing identity changed as a result, interested only a few.

Paradoxically, we wanted our Finnish expats to retain their Finnish culture and identity at all costs. Today, however, we want our immigrants and newcomers to do totally the opposite: Be like us (white Finnish) we tell them. Learn our culture, speak our language adopt our way of life.

The Finnish Lutheran Church has started to take a strong stand against racism like this story about multicultural families reveals about the discrimination their children face in our society. If there are people who are on the frontline of our ever-growing cultural diversity, they are these exemplary mothers.

Any person who thinks that immigrants don’t want to adapt and succeed in their new homeland know very little about immigration. An unsettling question arises: How can you integrate into a society that doesn’t accept you?

It’s clear that white Finland will not cede much of the high ground to cultural diversity. Expect then the following: lip service about two-way integration but what is really happening is one-way integration (assimilation) in most cases. Wherever two-way integration occurs, it usually happens on a short leash.

A good example of the latter is the following statement I heard from a politician in private. “There is room for immigrants in this country” but “building mosques is out of the question.”

Since it was easy to assimilate “foreigners” in the last century into Finns, it’s a bit more complicated in this century. It was easier in the previous century. All you needed was language, be white, adopt a Finnish surname and substitute your “foreign” background for ardent nationalism.

You’ll need much more than a surname change and a few nationalistic sound bites to be accepted as a Finn with equal rights in this century.

Post-Jyväskylä: Where do we go from here?

Posted on February 2, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Considering how the media treated before the April 2011 election racism and far right ideology and how social media sites were teeming with racist online lynch mobs, we are today waking up from the hangover of our state of social inebriation. The aftereffect will not go away in a day, week, or month but will take a very long time to wear off.

Instead of alcohol, Finland has been consuming and experimenting with racism, nationalism and far right ideology as answers to our ever-growing cultural diversity The more it drinks, the more we lose touch with reality and what is good for us.

Was it a coincidence that the attack in Jyväskylä marked exactly the eightieth anniversary when Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany as chancellor and transformed the country into a totalitarian state?

When speaking of far right violence and racism in Europe, we cannot avoid addressing social ills like intolerance.

Claiming that social exclusion of white Finnish youths is one of the main factors behind what happened in Jyväskylä is only addressing part of the problem without seeing the whole picture.

Reading a number of editorials about what happened in Jyväskylä, only one by Savon Sanomat cited racism as the real culprit. It wrote: “An even greater threat from organized extremist movements is a sort of daily racism that is targeted against immigrants and even to our [Swedish-] language minority. Attitudes in Finland have changed course, which isn’t anything to brag about.”

The Kuopio-based daily makes a valid point. Every day racism, xenophobia and attacks against our Swedish-speaking minority feed far right and populist-nationalist groups. They are the 98 octane fuel that permit it to spread their intolerance.

Bears hibernate in winter but so can countries for many years when they live in a state of denial. Finland is no longer a nation owned and controlled by just white Finns. It is a fact that we are an ever-growing culturally diverse nation.

Let’s not give an Andres Breivik the opportunity to commit murder on a mass scale before we understand that our response to intolerance was inefficient.

Everyone in Finland has the right to be treated as an equal member of society and with respect.

Some sectors of our society have a very hard time accepting this. They are not only white marginalized Finnish youths, but a far bigger group that extends to all sectors of our society.