Posts Tagged: white privilege

Fan or hate mail to Migrant Tales

Whenever I get fan or hate mail, I wonder why they never sign them with their names. I normally don’t publish hate mail but this will be an exception. The one below is by KKK Molly, at least it is what’s on her email address. I wonder what “KKK” stand for? Ku Klux Klan, maybe?

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A danger to democracy

If there is one matter that US President Donald Trump’s self-coup has evidenced, it is the fragility of our democracy. This is also the case in Finland with the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, a pro-Trump radical right party that openly supports Trump. Some factors unite Finland with the United States. Finns have – incorrectly – said in

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Kotoutuminen* #9: Spreading half-truths about integration

If the learn-Finnish-and-you’re-integrated promise is misleading, so are many others spread by people who should know better. “The best way to eliminate racism is to get people to know each other,” goes the affirmation. It is like the claim that traveling opens your eyes to the world. After we do all these things, will we

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: The end of white Finland’s hegemony over narrative and “truth”

“There are signs that white Finland’s hegemony over culture and society is being seriously challenged. Green League MP Ozan Yanar rightfully questioned President Sauli Niinistö’s problematic speech about migrants. We have information as well that the police and school principal may have played down what happened to a 10-year-old Muslim girl at school in Espoo in

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Camtu Suhonen: How discrimination destroys academic careers

Discrimination is a disease that plagues many organizations and often causes more damage to the organization such as profit loss, economical issues, and natural disasters. This is because discrimination destroys the people who make up the organization and causes damages irreparable by money or promotion. Career paths and patterns are things most affected by such a plague because they damage people mentally, emotionally, and socially. If a person is mentally and emotionally damaged by discrimination, this person becomes paralyzed and unable to function properly within the organization. Also, socially, victims experience role malfunction and resort to isolation for comfort rather than ask for help from colleagues.

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Maria Rittis Ikola: Imagine a world without white privilege

Maria Rittis Ikola* Imagine that white Finns like me weren’t able to speak over others in every medium available. Imagine a time when white people were not able to express their confusion and dismay over political correctness in prime spaces in Finnish newspapers, because nobody would let them. Imagine that racialised journalists didn’t have to

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Julian Abagond: nation of immigrants

Migrant Tales insight: Finland is a nation of emigrants, not of immigrants. Even so, the same structures that have kept intact the structures and systemic exploitation of minorities, slavery and Jim Crow are still alive and kicking despite the fact that we try to convince ourselves that the United States is a nation of immigrants. 

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Defining white Finnish privilege #11: Case Teuvo Hakkarainen

Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Teuvo Hakkarainen is a good example of white Finnish privilege. Here’s an MP that has issues with alcohol, racism and now dates teenagers as well as allegedly takes minors to bars. He has sent on his work phone pictures of his phallus and Image magazine claims in its latest issue that the PS MP drove

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Defining white privilege #9: Mohammad Ali’s insight

In many respects white privilege, or specifically white Finnish privilege, is a good way to understand some of the challenges that migrants and especially non-white Finns face in this country. The interview below of Mohammad Ali* says a lot about white privilege in the United States even if the interview took place 33 years ago.  What

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Espoo city council votes against racism

A proposal by the Perussuomalaiset (PS) to rewrite the City of Espoo’s multicultural programme because it stated that city residents “don’t tolerate racism” were voted down 64-10, reports Länsiväylä.  Two PS councilmen, Simon Elo (left) and Teemu Lahtinen,  loathe Muslims and cultural diversity. Read full story (in Finnish) here. If one reads closely the position of the PS, an anti-EU, anti-immigration

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Racism Review: White Sexual Violence against Enslaved Black Women

MT comment: Understanding how why there was/is slavery enables us to understand the nature of the beast of  racism and social exclusion.  _____________ By Rachel F Historians have estimated that at least 58% of all enslaved women between 15 and 30 years of age were sexually assaulted by white men during the antebellum period. In

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Are you a perpetrator or victim of white Finnish privilege?

One matter about intolerance is that it is universal. The social ill can manifest itself in different ways by speaking different languages and historical context but don’t be fooled by these deceptions: Intolerance is the same ogre.  White privilege is one of the many faces of racism and means automatic access or exclusion to the

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Red Sociology: ASSIMILATION AS ASSASSINATION

MT comment: Even if the blog entry below speaks of assimilation, or one-way integration of blacks in the United States, it’s pretty certain that these types of discussions will pick up in Finland as we become a more culturally diverse society. Who is being assimilated into Finnish society? Are blacks and visible minorities expected to

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Whiteness and white privilege speak European languages

As we hold our collective breaths and await to know the identity of the bombings in Boston Monday, too many don’t see a suspect but a whole ethnicity or religious group. Tim Wise put it very well in an opinion piece where he makes some distributing revelations about the power of whiteness. If we understand

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Julian Abagond: Spielberg’s Lincoln

By Julian Abagond “Lincoln” (2012) is a Steven Spielberg film about the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment, the one that freed the slaves. It stars Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln, Sally Field as his wife and Tommy Lee Jones as Radical Republican Congressman Thaddeus Stevens. Gloria Reuben plays Elizabeth Keckley, Mrs Lincoln’s dressmaker and friend. The

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Abagond: Is the white anti-racist an oxymoron?

Julian Abagond The White Anti-Racist is an Oxymoron” (2003) by Kil Ja Kim argues that you cannot be white and against racism at the same time. By “white” she does not mean having white skin. She means thinking of yourself as white and enjoying the benefits that come with it in America: white people need

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