Tag: The United States

RACE FILES: Blinkered By Race

Posted on by Migrant Tales

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.

The absurdity of the reverse-racism argument in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Every now and then you’ll hear a visitor on Migrant Tales claim: What about [reverse] racism against [white] Finns!? Racism is a complex problem but one matter singles it out: It is an effective tool to socially exclude, control and exploit other groups in society from vital resources such as jobs and economic wealth. 

The fact that white Finns are the standard of everything in Finland is enough proof that they wield real power. White Finns don’t have to understand racism because they simply don’t have to. It’s not an issue because they are the standard of this society, the norm. Everyone else has a prefix attached to them like immigrant, immigrant descendant, black, Roma etc.

In May 2011, the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS) party renounced all forms of racism, even positive discrimination, or affirmative action. 

It is surprising that when the PS made their preposterous statement, few if any media in this country understood how racist and grotesque it was and how it revealed a serious case of  colorblind racism (let’s pretend we’re equal because ethnic background does not matter, when in fact it does).   

Colorblind racism works in Finland in an implicit and explicit manner. Its aim is the same:  ethnic background is not the issue. If it is an issue, it’s your  ethnic background. 

  • ·         We have such a wonderful society that we are way past racism so get over it (explicit colorblind racism);
  • ·         It’s your culture, your parents or you that is hindering adaption to our society. In this case I recognize your ethnic background but only to shift blame and wash my hands of the problem (implicit colorblind racism). 

 This graffiti that reads “White Power” in Finnish was on a special elementary school’s wall in Mikkeli, Finland, for months before it was removed. 

Accusing a visible minority, or immigrant of being racist against white Finns, is a good example of implicit colorblind racism.  Since racism isn’t a problem in our society, it can’t be my problem. It’s your problem. 

Some successful immigrants or visible minorities who have succeeded in Finland may reinforce the same colorblind racist argument as white Finns. They may claim:  “I’m not white but I adapted to the white Finns’ world. That is why I am successful. You too can be.” 

Those immigrants who have racism issues usually come from countries where such a social ill is the standard. It’s easy for them to accept the white Finn as a standard because they too were the norm in their former home country.  As a result, some embrace the idea of becoming a Tuomo-setä, or Uncle Tom, because they are encouraged to and rewarded by white Finnish society for such behavior.

If you are ever confronted by a person who uses the reverse-racism argument, ask him or her how is the prejudice of a minority as devastating as that of the majority? 

White Finns should stop whining about reverse racism because it isn’t an issue. It’s only one of many loaded arguments used by them to justify their racism.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Racism Review: Frederick Douglass: What, to the American Slave, is Your 4th of July?

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By Joe

On this Independence day it is well to remember yet again a probing and candid speech, “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” given by the formerly enslaved and probably greatest 19th century American, Frederick Douglass, at Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852, at the peak of North America slavery (indeed, about 230 years into that era).

Frederick Douglass

In this era Black Americans were usually not allowed at 4th of July celebrations in the slaveholding South, apparently because many slaveholders feared that they might get an idea of freedom from such events (as if they did not already have such an idea!). Also, Black residents were often discouraged from attending such festivities in the North.

It is in this very dangerous and hostile national racial climate that the great Douglass–increasingly, a leading intellectual of his day and the first Black American to receive a roll-call vote for US President (later on, at the 1888 Republican national convention!)–was asked by leading citizens of Rochester to give an address at their Fourth of July celebrations. He gave them this stinging indictment of racial oppression:

Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too-great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.

But later adds:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Take the American slave-trade, which we are told by the papers, is especially prosperous just now. Ex-Senator Benton tells us that the price of men was never higher than now. He mentions the fact to show that slavery is in no danger. This trade is one of the peculiarities of American institutions. It is carried on in all the large towns and cities in one-half of this confederacy; and millions are pocketed every year by dealers in this horrid traffic. In several states this trade is a chief source of wealth. It is called (in contradistinction to the foreign slave-trade) “the internal slave-trade.” It is, probably, called so, too, in order to divert from it the horror with which the foreign slave-trade is contemplated. That trade has long since been denounced by this government as piracy. It has been denounced with burning words from the high places of the nation as an execrable traffic. To arrest it, to put an end to it, this nation keeps a squadron, at immense cost, on the coast of Africa. Everywhere, in this country, it is safe to speak of this foreign slave-trade as a most inhuman traffic, opposed alike to the Jaws of God and of man. The duty to extirpate and destroy it, is admitted even by our doctors of divinity. In order to put an end to it, some of these last have consented that their colored brethren (nominally free) should leave this country, and establish them selves on the western coast of Africa! It is, however, a notable fact that, while so much execration is poured out by Americans upon all those engaged in the foreign slave-trade, the men engaged in the slave-trade between the states pass with out condemnation, and their business is deemed honorable.

Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and American religion. Here you will see men and women reared like swine for the market. You know what is a swine-drover? I will show you a man-drover. They inhabit all our Southern States. They perambulate the country, and crowd the highways of the nation, with droves of human stock. You will see one of these human flesh jobbers, armed with pistol, whip, and bowie-knife, driving a company of a hundred men, women, and children, from the Potomac to the slave market at New Orleans. These wretched people are to be sold singly, or in lots, to suit purchasers. They are food for the cotton-field and the deadly sugar-mill. Mark the sad procession, as it moves wearily along, and the inhuman wretch who drives them. Hear his savage yells and his blood-curdling oaths, as he hurries on his affrighted captives! There, see the old man with locks thinned and gray. Cast one glance, if you please, upon that young mother, whose shoulders are bare to the scorching sun, her briny tears falling on the brow of the babe in her arms. See, too, that girl of thirteen, weeping, yes! weeping, as she thinks of the mother from whom she has been torn! The drove moves tardily. Heat and sorrow have nearly consumed their strength; suddenly you hear a quick snap, like the discharge of a rifle; the fetters clank, and the chain rattles simultaneously; your ears are saluted with a scream, that seems to have torn its way to the centre of your soul The crack you heard was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard was from the woman you saw with the babe. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! that gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. Follow this drove to New Orleans. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. Tell me, citizens, where, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States.

And then concludes with this:

Americans! your republican politics, not less than your republican religion, are flagrantly inconsistent. You boast of your love of liberty, your superior civilization, and your pure Christianity, while the whole political power of the nation (as embodied in the two great political parties) is solemnly pledged to support and perpetuate the enslavement of three millions of your countrymen. You hurl your anathemas at the crowned headed tyrants of Russia and Austria and pride yourselves on your Democratic institutions, while you yourselves consent to be the mere tools and body-guards of the tyrants of Virginia and Carolina. You invite to your shores fugitives of oppression from abroad, honor them with banquets, greet them with ovations, cheer them, toast them, salute them, protect them, and pour out your money to them like water; but the fugitives from oppression in your own land you advertise, hunt, arrest, shoot, and kill.

The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. “Ethiopia shall stretch out her hand unto God.” In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it:

God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o’er!
When from their galling chains set free,
Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee,

And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and freedom’s reign.
To man his plundered rights again
Restore.

Sadly, our system of racial oppression still persists, even as most white Americans are in denial about its deep and foundational reality. Yet, there remain many people like Frederick Douglass today who still fight to remove this “yoke of tyranny” from us all. May they flourish and prosper. We should remember those now and from the past who fought racism most on this day to celebrate freedom.

ADDENDUM
Some forty-two years later, in the last speech (“Lessons of the Hour”) he gave before his death—at an AME Church in DC, on January 9th, 1894—Douglass made these comments as he watched southern and border states hurtle toward bloody Jim Crow segregation, the new neo-slavery system:

We claim to be a Christian country and a highly civilized nation, yet, I fearlessly affirm that there is nothing in the history of savages to surpass the blood chilling horrors and fiendish excesses perpetrated against the colored people by the so-called enlightened and Christian people of the South. It is commonly thought that only the lowest and most disgusting birds and beasts, such as buzzards, vultures and hyenas, will gloat over and prey dead bodies, but the Southern mob in its rage feeds its vengeance by shooting, stabbing and burning when their victims are dead. I repeat, and my contention is, that this “Negro problem” formula lays the fault at the door of the Negro, and removes it from the door of the white man, shields the guilty, and blames the innocent. Makes the Negro responsible and not the nation….. Now the real problem is, and ought to be regarded by the American people, a great national problem. It involves the question, whether, after all, with our Declaration of Independence, with our glorious free constitution, whether with our sublime Christianity, there is enough of national virtue in this great nation to solve this problem, in accordance with wisdom and justice.

He concluded thus, his very last words ever spoken in public:

But could I be heard by this great nation, I would call to to mind the sublime and glorious truths with which, at its birth, it saluted a listening world. Its voice then, was as the tramp of an archangel, summoning hoary forms of oppression and time honored tyranny, to judgment. Crowned heads heard it and shrieked. Toiling millions heard it and clapped their hands for joy. It announced the advent of a nation, based upon human brotherhood and the self-evident truths of liberty and equality. Its mission was the redemption of the world from the bondage of ages. Apply these sublime and glorious truths to the situation now before you. Put away your race prejudice. Banish the idea that one class must rule over another. Recognize the fact that the rights of the humblest citizen are as worthy of protection as are those of the highest, and your problem will be solved; and, whatever may be in store for it in the future, whether prosperity, or adversity; whether it shall have foes without, or foes within, whether there shall be peace, or war; based upon the eternal principles of truth, justice and humanity, and with no class having any cause of compliant or grievance, your Republic will stand and flourish forever.

Read original blog entry here.

This piece was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.

Abagond: Kumbaya anti-racism

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I dedicate Abagond’s most recent blog entry to the Finnish media.

Comment:  I met a journalist from a local paper and we spoke about racism in Finland. He said that the daily had a policy of not reporting too many racism cases in the city because it would be acknowledging the problem. 

The reasoning behind the journalist’s words are pretty far-fetched:  If we don’t hear about racism cases in our society it means that it isn’t a problem. By not reporting too many racism cases we ensure that we won’t become racists.

If there is a threat that is impoverishing our society today, that danger is racism. 

Taking into account our aging workforce and our ever-growing army of pensioners, Finland needs racism like a hole in the head.  

It’s crucial that we debate this social ill openly.  

____

Julian Abagond

Kumbaya anti-racism (c. 1970- ) is where racism is fought by not talking about race, by not seeing people’s skin colour, by not saying certain words or expressing certain thoughts out loud that are politically incorrect.

People often quote Martin Luther King, Jr in support:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

And sometimes they even quote Morgan Freeman, who informed Mike Wallace in 2005 that the way to get rid of racism is to – “Stop talking about it.”

To talk about race, like this blog does, is therefore “divisive”, it keeps racism alive, it is unenlightened, it spreads hatred.

So now most White Americans keep their children from becoming racist by not talking about racism!

It might sound good – except it does not work.

Instead of wiping out racism it has replaced one sort of racism – the open hatred of Jim Crow racism – with another – the silent, subtle contempt of colour-blind racism.

Martin Luther King said something else:

When we view the negative experiences of life, the Negro has a double share. There are twice as many unemployed. The rate of infant mortality among Negroes is double that of whites…

After 40 years Kumbaya anti-racist thinking in America:

  • the black unemployment rate stood at 2.1 times the white rate;
  • black babies are 2.6 times more likely to die than white babies.

It also goes against common sense:

What if we applied the same philosophy to other forms of marginalization:

Sexism: I do not see you as a woman, I see you as a person.

Classism: Once we stop seeing people as rich or poor everyone will have the same amount of money.

Anti-Semitism: Talking about the Holocaust spreads hatred and keeps anti-Semitism alive.

In practice the Kumbaya approach is used to silence talk about white racism. So instead of questioning white racism and helping to tear it down, it keeps that racism in place, untouched.

For whites that means they get to keep all the advantages of being white in a white racist society while at the same time sounding anti-racist. At least to themselves. It is yet another morally broken piece of white racist thinking. It is anti-racist in form not function.

For people of colour, the Kumbaya approach leaves them wide open to internalized racism – to self-hatred and self-doubt. It leads them into trying to “transcend” race, to be “American” or “Christian” or “universal” or “just me” – or even an honorary white. But trying to “transcend” race in America means, in effect, trying to be white. As if there is something wrong with being black or Asian or Chicano.

Martin Luther King:

We must stand up and say, “I’m black and I’m beautiful,” and this self-affirmation is the black man’s need, made compelling by the white man’s crimes against him.

Read original story her.

This piece was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.

Racism Review: Racial Profiling in France and the U.S., (Pt.1)

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By 

On April 11, 2012, the special prosecutor in the Trayvon Martin case issued a second-degree murder charge against George Zimmerman who, in the affidavit, is described as having “profiled” the unarmed 17 year old teenager before firing the fatal shot. In that document, the word “profiled” stands alone without mention of race or color, casting doubt, for some, on whether race was involved.

That very same day, on the other side of the Atlantic, lawyers in France filed a landmark civil lawsuit, the first ever alleging racial profiling* against the police force. All fifteen claimants in the suit are Black or Arab, and all but one is a French citizen. The word “racial” in the English translation of this type of profiling is however deceptive. Race in France is a highly taboo concept and word, expunged from political discourse and rare in everyday use. What gets translated as racial profiling, un contrôle au faciès, refers instead to an identity control or stop-and-search by the police, based not on race but arguably appearances alone.

Comparatively, these cases resonate on many levels and show how race-conscious and race-blind models still produce the same outcome: racial profiling. Although neither country has had the political will to confront this issue, the French lawsuit and one filed in New York in May represent major challenges to French and U.S. stop-and-frisk practices that have gone unabated. These lawsuits are also an important litmus test of racial profiling in stops-and-searches by police since primarily men of color in both countries are singled out.

France has long cultivated an official race-blindness, raising the maddening question of how to fight and document racial profiling when race itself is unacknowledged or evaded. Race and ethnicity are absent in the French census, and ethno-racial statistics are banned under French law, making it hard to document any form of racial discrimination. “If you mention ‘ethnic’ or ‘racial’ statistics to a French person,” states French sociologist Michel Wieviorka, “he or she will consider you to be a racist. The French do not consider ‘race’ as a social construction, they consider it to be a physical definition of human groups, and will not accept it.”

The new Socialist government under François Hollande acted quickly on this issue, introducing reforms that would require French police to give a receipt to people stopped. Doing so creates at once a paper trail where none had previously existed and a possible weapon in battling racial profiling. But Hollande’s administration faces a hostile police union that publicly denounced this initiative as racist and ferociously denies racial profiling, even though Arabs and Blacks are targeted.

Reports by Human Rights Watch and the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) tell another story, one showing excessive, multiple, and abusive controls of people of color, in particular outer-city youth, in direct violation of people’s rights. Per OSJI findings,  “Blacks were overall six times more likely than Whites to be stopped by police while Arabs were generally 7.6 times more likely than Whites to be stopped by the police.”

But how can profiling that is actually racial be identified in race-blind countries without a social concept of race? And, how, in the pursuit of justice and equality, can the pernicious effects of thinking and classification in racial terms be avoided when using such a concept? Not only does race-blindness deny the obvious, but when it is law or policy, deprived of historical context, it strips anti-racists of the rhetorical weapons they need to battle racial oppression.

I address these questions in Part 2.

Read original blog entry here.

Related blog entry on Migrant Tales: The scars of ethnic profiling. 

*In Europe we tend to use the term “ethnic” as opposed to “race” as in the U.S.

 This piece was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.

~ Trica Danielle Keaton, PhD, Associate Professor, African American & Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt Unviersity, is the author, of several books, most recently the co-edited volume, Black France / France Noire: The History and Politics of Blackness (Duke University Press, 2012). This volume includes a preface by Christiane Taubira, who was recently named Minister of Justice by President Hollande. With thanks to Mamadou Diouf, Roy Jensen and Stephen Steinberg for their encouragement and invaluable comments on an earlier drafts of this work.

Blaming undocumented immigrants is sweeping the issue under the rug

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The treatment of an ever-growing problem like undocumented immigrants in Finland by the media and politicians resembles a debate where nobody really wants to tackle the issue. Our attention too often shifts to the undocumented immigrant, who is seen as the culprit and root of the problem. 

The ongoing  debate resembles discussing the reasons behind prostitution. Is is the woman’s fault for offering sex or the customer’s who buys such services from her? Who is to blame: demand, supply, or both?

Another problem with the debate on undocumented workers in Finland and Europe is terminology. The media and the rest of the public use a dehumanizing slur like “illegal.” Calling a human “illegal” is wrong and not only permits the employer to wash his hands of the problem, but is disrespectful. It opens the door to ethnic profiling and victimization of groups like immigrants.

If we take an extreme case like the United States, where there are an estimated 11-12 million undocumented workers, the answer why this type of activity takes place is clear: Businesses and the economy benefit immensely from undocumented workers.

As long as there are clear economic benefits for employers and the economy to hire undocumented workers, it’s wishful thinking that the issue will magically disappear. Moreover, our attention should shift  to the real culprit, the employer, rather than victimize undocumented workers.

Certainly undocumented workers are part of the problem but not in the same degree as employers, who have more resources and choices open to them than undocumented immigrants.

The first time I knew of an undocumented worker in Finland was in the 1980s. He worked for  a restaurant called Mexicana in Helsinki.  The cook, a Mexican, complained about low wages, long hours and how he had to sleep at the restaurant.

Whatever your view of this serious problem, a good and effective way to begin understanding and tackling it is by asking why this type of activity happens too often right under our noses.

Ethnic minorities now make up more than half of all births in the U.S.

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By Enrique Tessieri

How did some pocket-calculator demographers in Finland and Europe take the news that for the first time in U.S. history minority births surpassed over half of all births?  

A pocket-calculator demographer is anyone who uses birthrate and calculates it with years to warn us that group x will outnumber us in numbers and take us over.   

Kyösti Tarvainen, a senior lecturer at Aalto University, is one such pseudo-demographer who has warned us with his trusty pocket calculator about the Muslim population threat in Finland.

Similar predictions were made about the Jews of Finland in the 1880s. Today, however, our Jewish population totals a mere 2,000 souls. 

The whole assumption that membership in our society is based on ethnicity instead of  values and inclusion reveals what is terribly wrong in the ongoing debate. People are not a group per se, but are individuals with free will. They are not robots guided by an autocratic god called Culture as some would want us to believe.

The most important variable missing from the calculation of these pseudo-demographers is that cultures change constantly. Cultures takes in, rearrange, exchange and balance new ideas from their environment on a constant basis.   

It’s wrong to think that we are first and foremost an ethnicity.  The fact that we have been educated and brought up to think in this way reveals why racism, ethnocentrism and prejudice are so ingrained in our society.  

Martin Luther King Jr. said it well in his famous I have a dream speech of 1963:  “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

 

 

 

Racism Review: Free Speech for Anti-Semites and Other Racist Folks: Debates in Europe

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By

There are some important and interesting debates on hate speech in Europe, with critics of new and old hate-speech laws often parroting “first amendment” arguments one often hears in the US.

The useful e-zine called Eurozine has several interesting article now on various sides of this debate. Check it out here.

And there seem to be more interesting websites debating “free speech,” such as this one, Free Speech Debate.

Read original blog entry here.

This piece was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.

We must fight for greater cultural diversity representation in our democracy and society

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When I grew up in the United States, most if not all of our most popular television series kept us doped in a fantasy world where the only people that counted were white Europeans who spoke English. We read history as well but there was too little about the “other” USAmericans: immigrants, Latinos, blacks, Native Americans and a long list of others that built the United States. 

Like democracy, the cultural diversity of a society should have representation.

If cultural diversity were used as a yardstick to measure our level of respect for different ethnic groups and their participation in our society, most of the countries of the world would be run by despotic regimes were the voices of these  groups are either underrepresented or neglected.

A question: Why do ethnic groups exist? Why are they more marked in some societies and less in other ones? Is group privilege the real culprit?

We have seen throughout time many battles won by minorities over unjust political systems that scorn and exclude such groups. One of the most powerful forces that has, however, challenged such segregated systems and succeeded is the power love.  

It’s incredible to note that only 45 years ago there were still laws in the United States that prohibited in 16 states people of different ethnic groups marrying. In the landmark Loving versus Virginia case, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a ban on interethnic marriages. Mildred Delores Jester Loving and Richard Perry Loving were criminally charged in Virginia, where interethnic marriages were banned.

Loving: Grey Villet's photograph captures Richard Loving kissing wife Mildred as he arrives home from work in King and Queen County, Virginia, April 1965 Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2088040/Photographs-Lovings-interracial-marriage-time-banned-16-states.
Loving: Grey Villet's photograph captures Richard Loving kissing wife Mildred as he arrives home from work in King and Queen County, Virginia, April 1965. Source: Daily Mail. *

Despite laws that prohibit people of different ethnic origins from marrying or, worse ones like apartheid in white-ruled South Africa until 1990, some unwritten laws by society are far more sinister. Such written or unwritten laws that exclude and keep different groups apart are nothing more the fruits of the arrogance that racism gives others to justify their domination of political power and society’s wealth.

Those people who marry outside their group are bonded through love. These types of marriages and unions have advanced humankind  or “Scientific Adam and Eve” by diversifying the gene pool of future generations. They constantly remind us that culture and ethnicity change.

Could it be that naive view of the world depicted with the help of our subjective history, ethnic view of ourselves and all-white television series reveal what is terribly wrong with us? If we read history and watched more shows that encouraged mutual acceptance, respect and good relations between different ethnic groups in the United States and elsewhere, would we spend less of our energies supporting our simplistic views of the world through war and more on building a more just and democratic society?

The situation in the United States as well as in other parts of the developed world like Europe are equally worrying these days. Some openly confess wanting to return to a fantasy world that was only possible through racism and forced or encouraged segregation of different ethnic groups.

Even in countries like Finland, where an anti-immigration populist party like the Perussuomalaiset won 19.1% of the votes from 4.05% in the previous election, are doing everything possible to portray their society as white as possible at the cost of excluding others.

Greater cultural diversity representation in our society and democratic system are the best way of avoiding the perilous mistakes of our war- and violence-ridden past.

* Thank you Mixed American Life for the heads-up! 

    

Colorlines: How to Be a Racial Justice Hero, on MLK Day and All Year Long

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Comment: Today is Martin Luther King Day in the United States. Like many who lived in the 1960s, MLK and the Civil Rights Movement he led in the 1950s and 1960s continues to inspire many like me today. 

I still remember the day when in junior high school in Hollywood we were told that Martin Luther King Jr. was killed.  It was in the afternoon in California since King Jr. was killed at 6:01 pm at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.  Of that day I remember two things: a sense of despair since, like the John F. Kennedy assassination, another great man had been killed; a white man on the radio said that he was happy that King Jr. had been killed. 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eD_joYaasM&feature=youtu.be]

What can we learn in Finland about MLK and others that fought for social justice at the time like Malcolm X?

The most important lesson is that we can change and make history. 

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by Hatty Lee, Terry Keleher

As we celebrate a new year and another Martin Luther King holiday, it’s a good time to reflect on how you can be part of some positive change in the year ahead. Rather than the typical resolutions, which can get a bit self-absorbed, why not resolve to step up your game in making social change? The good news is that you already have everything you need, just as you are, to become a powerful force for racial justice. You can be a Racial Transformer. 

What’s that, you ask?

Read whole story.