By Enrique Tessieri
For me, racism, like indifference, is the worst social ill that inflicts our societies. Because racism has to survive and because racism is astute, it has found many ingenious ways of hiding its sinister self and motives.
Even so, racism is the same ogre that has appeared throughout time and it is the same culprit that still robs humanity from realizing its full potential.
If racism and nationalism did not exist in the same quantity as today, imagine how many resources would be freed to eradicate poverty and social injustice? Imagine how much we’d accomplish if peace reigned as much as war does at present?
Racism means lost opportunities, impoverishment, postponing hopes, accepting evil as good, justifying war and arming ourselves to the teeth, even justification one day to censor these words.
Racism paralyzes societies by injecting them, as a junkie uses heroine, with fear. It serves greedy politicians, short-sighted public servants and other subcontractors of this social malice.
Racists have no scruples. They insult whole groups on the basis of their ethnic and religious background. Even so, they are not the most dangerous but those that quietly maintain the present social status quo.
If racism gets the best of us in Finland, it means forfeiting our promising future, giving as a present to open societies our greatest minds, replacing innovation with protectionism and, most importantly, our courage to explore the New. We will charge to its questionable clarion call against imagined enemies, die and be forgotten in future wars planned today behind closed doors.
Racism is astute because as you read these warnings about its devastating force, you may push them aside and conclude that I am only exaggerating.