James Baldwin (1924-87) is one of the greatest and most insightful writers, essayists, and activists of black USAmerica. With the help of his words, we are capable of seeing the beast that has oppressed and tormented the black. His Insights offer as well a glimpse at our monster. There has been a lot of debate
Read on »Posts Tagged: Afrophobia
Hall of Shame: Finland’s 2020 Islamophobic and Afrophobic network
Choosing the key figures in the Islamophobic and Afrophobic Hall of Shame wasn’t difficult even during a year ravaged by Covid-19. The task was to choose the most obvious culprits and other ones in the media that fuel and maintain such a toxic environment. In putting together this year’s Hall of Shame, I was quickly
Read on »Finland’s Hall of Shame of its Islamophobic and Afrophobic network will be published on December 30
Migrant Tales will publish on Wednesday, December 30, people, politicians, the media, and political parties that spread Islamophobia and Afrophobia during 2020. If you would like to participate in the making of this list, please send your suggestions to [email protected] We believe that social ills like Islamophobia, Afrophobia, and all forms of racism should be
Read on »The PS and its obsession with migrants
If you had the opportunity to listen inside the brain of a Perussuomalaiset (PS)* politician, you’d probably hear the following word: migrants, maahanmuuttajat, migrants, maahanmuuttajat… The head of the PS parliamentary group, Ville Tavio, regurgetates that obsessive word in countless tweets and statements. Tavio tweets: “Finnish human rights are threatened as a result of massive
Read on »Was the stabbing of an eighteen-year-old Somali Finn a hate crime?
Migrant Tales asked in April after the tragic death of an eighteen-year-old Somali Finn in Helsinki on April 26 is treated by the police as a hate crime. What is equally surprising is the total news blackout on social media by the police as if communities affected by what happened don’t have the right to
Read on »Facebook (Faith Mkwesha): My child “can’t breathe”
Migrant Tales insight: Dr. Faith Mkwesha’s child was was held and mistreated by security guards who handcuffed him and resting his knee on her child’s back. Apart from being a traumatic experience for her child and the mother, all of this happened because he did not have a valid metro ticket, which he thought incorrectly
Read on »Finnish MP who mocked George Floyd: You are not suspected of ethnic agitation, you are suspected of ethnic agitation
The news continues to roll in for MP Ano Turtiainen, who was suspended from the Perusuomalaiset (PS)* parliamentary group for a tweet that mocked George Floyd’s death. After the police carried out their investigation last week and decided not to charge Turtiainen for ethnic agitation or defamation, the police changed course Monday after Prosecutor General
Read on »Some of Ano Turtiainen’s most racist and repugnant posts
Former Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party MP Ano Turtiainen suffered some big blows last week: he was expelled from the far-right PS (quite a feat for a person who is multiculturally/interculturally challenged), two powerlifting groups in the United States and Canada terminated their business relationship with his company, Metal Sport & Ger (GoMetal). Let’s not forget all
Read on »Ano Turtiainen’s career as “a dark comedian” and politician go down in flames
THIS STORY WAS UPDATED Perussuomnalaiset (PS)* MP Ano Turtiainen [1], who was expelled from the parliamentary group Thursday, but could rejoin the group after the end of the year if he had changed his racist ways. To this offer, Turtiainen gave a redundant no. “I am not going to request joining [the parliamentary group] again,
Read on »MP Ano Turtainen gets expelled from the party until the end of the year for his racist tweet against George Floyd
The Perussuomalaiset (PS)* parliamentary group unanimously expelled Thursday MP Ano Turtiainen [1] until the end of the year for posting a racist tweet about the death of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. “The suspension is permanent,” PS parliamentary group leader Ville Tavio was quoted as saying in Yle. “We had a discussion that
Read on »Ku Klux Klan in the US, Perussuomalaiset in Finland
The editorial below by the Alabama-based Democrat-Reporter, calling on the Ku Klux Klan “to ride again” and lynch Democrats, was not published in the last century but in 2019. This editorial is a good example that the United States is a racist country and has done too little to eradicate this social ill.
Read on »Migrant Tales to launch new column to warn readers of toxic and racist content on the Internet and print media
As the parliamentary elections near in April and the EU elections in May, the Finnish print media and social media littered by politicians who are spreading Islamophobic, anti-semitic, racist, Afrophobic, anti-Roma and xenophobic content. Each story we pick from the net will get a classification and a short explanation why. The first one to make it on the
Read on »Twitter (Dr. Faith Mkwesha): The n-word costs 60 euros
Migrant Tales insight: How much do the Finnish court take seriously racist harassment and hate speech? From the case below, it appears that yelling the n-word to a woman by two young white Finns will get a light tap on the hand.
Read on »Islamophobia is the fear that white Christian Europeans will lose power and privileges to minorities. Disagree? Ask a Muslim woman
A French appeals court upheld this week a ruling that denied an Algerian woman citizenship because she refused to shake the hand of a French official, according to The Local. The woman cited “religious beliefs” for not shaking the official’s hand. The appeals court defended the decision to not grant citizenship on the grounds that the woman, who is married to a French man since 2010, had “not assimilated into the French community.”
Read on »Facebook Imran Adan: Whiten your skin, it will help you find work in Finland
Migrant Tales insight: There is no racism in Finland, right? A black person gets stopped in Tampere by a white 50-year-old who thinks he has so much privilege that he can insult a black man, Imran Adan, in a racist way.
Read on »Wouter Van Bellingen: Black Pete is an aberration that will become history
Wouter Van Bellingen, 45, is a Flemish human rights’ activist who has fought for racial justice in Belgium. One of the issues that he has challenged is the racist legacy of Black Pete (or Zwarte Piet). Apart from issues like cultural appropriation and disrespect for minorities like blacks, the United Nations declared in 2015 that Black Pete was a “vestige of slavery.”
Read on »Seven months and no justice yet after a Kenyan woman was racially insulted and splashed by a bucket of water
Remember when a Kenyan woman was sitting outside her home in the Helsinki neighborhood of Helsinki one Sunday afternoon on May 22 and a white Finnish woman splashed a bucket of water on her, her children and their friends after shouting racist insults? Well, nothing has happened since then even if Ruth Waweru-Folabit pressed charges against the woman and complained to the non-discrimination ombudsman seven months ago.
Read on »Initiative Black People in Germany (ISD): Enriching the Public Discourse by highlighting Colonial Continuities
The Initiative of Black People in Germany (ISD)* has been actively working on the empowerment of people of African descent and Black people in Germany for almost 30 years. Its aim is to raise their voices and also to generate visibility for their perspectives and realities in the German society. The ISD is dedicated to challenging the discourse that does not want to see nor acknowledge Black presence in Germany. For more than three hundred years, people of African descent have been born and raised in Germany, have made Germany their place of home, but narratives about the Black experience in Germany often remain silenced in the public discourse. While their stories do not exist in the dominant historiography, stereotypical clichés dominate the images of the Black Diaspora. Racist pictures and beliefs need to be understood as a historically developed relationship of power – blurring past and present depictions of Black people’s realities.
Read on »Fact Sheet Briefing – Afrophobia in Finland
Kenyan insulted by racist Finnish woman: “You’re a f***ing African woman…”
How would you feel if a total stranger starts to insult you in public? Has it ever happened to you? When something like that happens you feel that you’ve been violated and torn to little shreds.
Read on »PS Ville Moisanen of Finland shows us the surreal yet ugly side of anti-Semitism and racism
Can you believe this type of reasoning from Perussuomalaiset (PS)* councilman for Sysmä, Ville Moisanen, who posted and removed two pictures on Facebook that insulted Jews, the millions of victims of the Holocaust and lynching of blacks by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Read on »Marshall Niles: Everyday racism can break a person’s heart
Migrant Tales insight: Our newest associate editor, Marhsall Niles, is very outspoken about migrant rights. We are happy that we have a person like Marshall on board since it makes sailing in Finland’s sometimes turbulent waters easier. Marshall is a good example that one can make a difference with his example. What he wrote a
Read on »UPDATED Helsingin Sanomat: PS Helsinki substitute councilman wants forced sterilization of new African refugees in Finland
Helsinki substitute councilman Olli Sademies of the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party stated on Facebook that Finland should carry out forced sterilization of new African refugees that move to the country, reports Helsingin Sanomat. Such a racist statement by a member of the PS is nothing new. A PS politician wrote in 2013 that groups like African
Read on »ENAR: Racist crime continues to be a significant problem in all European countries
There were in the European Union in 2013 a total of 47,210 racist crimes, according to a first-ever report that doesn’t use official sources but those provided by NGOs, according to the European Network Against Racism (ENAR). The anti-racism Brussels-based NGO states that the amount of officially recorded racist crimes is only the tip of the
Read on »A young black woman in a small Finnish city
Finns are adamant that there is no racial discrimination in their society. Josephy Wandera Owindi* For some white people it’s difficult to comprehend how a black woman could be treated in a small city like Mikkeli, located 230km northeast of Helsinki. Is she a victim of microaggressions and/or of outright sexism and racism? The aim of a
Read on »Jallow Momodou: Invisible ‘visible’ minority on the European political agenda
Jallow Momodou* ‘Numbers count’ is a statement we often hear, especially when speaking of democratic weight and power as a means to influence a group’s socio-economic conditions. So far, however, people of African descent and Black European are the most invisible ‘visible’ minority on the European political agenda. This despite the fact that there are
Read on »Why does YLE air a racist movie like Pekka ja Pätkä neekereinä?
A tweet by @Mastersson alerted me Tuesday about a comedy called Pekka ja Pätkä neekereinä (Pekka and Pätkä as n-words), were the duo blackface themselves. While this may have been “normal” in 1960 when the film was made, one wonders why the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) aired this movie Monday afternoon? Pekka and Pätkä as
Read on »Migrant Tales (May 26, 2011): Racist propaganda during Finland’s Winter War (1939-40)
Consequently, racial prejudice and discrimination are nonexistent (in Finland).
Read on »ENAR condemns racism against blacks in Europe
MT comment: The statement by the European Network Against Racism (ENAR) was published five days before the fiftieth anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream” speech, and the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and of its Abolition. Millions of black Europeans are still victims of racism and discrimination
Read on »Finland also locks up asylum seeker children
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- A child in the Joutseno Immigration Removal Center.
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