Wednesday, August 24, 2016
About racial profiling.
The first graders' first parents evening is hardly the place where I expected to feel my blood pressure rise. And especially not due to racial profiling, given that my child is going to an international school.
The homeroom teacher said to mention if anything is not quite right. I suppose she meant in the kids' lives, but I wrote her a note nonetheless. I wouldn't want the teacher to remain so silent in front of the children if something like this were to occur again on her watch (I suppose this was the afternoon club when this happened, so she's off the hook for that - although I do wish she'd said something to the angry dad.)
I didn't say anything in the meeting this evening. I am angry at myself for being too bewildered to open my mouth. If he speaks like that again, though, I certainly won't remain quiet. What I would have liked to have done is ask the father who brought up the matter of the 'Chinese gentleman' whether he would have found the ethnicity worth pointing out had the photographer looked white.
So what happened? Well, he reported that his child had reported a Chinese gentleman outside taking pictures of the blond ladies. And that there were drones. Fine, reporting what his daughter said is objective enough, although naturally, the kid hasn't learned all by herself to draw ethnic lines or call some vaguely Asian looking guy Chinese. He continued, however, to talk about 'the Chinese man', and that's where he crossed over to the realm of racial profiling and my blood pressure shot to the ceiling. He went on to say stuff like 'these kinds of visitors cannot be allowed at school.' 'There must be absolute control.' He also went on to suggest that all devices must be confiscated from all visitors. Adult visitors.
First of all, I wonder what trauma he's experienced to think that somehow outsiders cannot be trusted at all. For the sake of experimentation, I should send the most 'Chinese looking' friend of mine to get Monn from school one day and tell him to take a picture of Monn so that everyone sees it happening. My kid may not be a lady, but he is blond. And he is Thai. I am sure there are some adopted kids in the school who would 'look Chinese' (whatever that means in today's non-homogenous world!) but are Finnish, or American, or Italian, etc. from head to toe.
I might have totally agreed with him about control of privacy had he not pointed out the perceived ethnicity. After all, now we are specifically talking about Chinese visitors. Not just men with cameras in general. And only about photographing blond ladies, now.
I do respect his need for privacy, even though I don't understand why he needed to shout at all of us about it. I definitely don't think the school needs to operate like some high-security prison though. Surely, we can trust adult educators from around the world not to take photos and post them on social media if we tell them it's not allowed. My gut feeling is that had they been Finnish-looking visitors he would not have been so up in arms about it. But that's just my opinion.
I do hope to see some improvement from the school on this front. Racial profiling is hurtful and discriminatory, and it's something that many so-called 'kantasuomalaiset' ('ethnic Finns') fail to see, no matter how 'non-racist' they claim to be. Not only Finns, of course. I was once called into the principal's office at an international school in Kazakhstan. A kid who had been home-schooled til the age of ten and was exposed to the real world for the first time came up to me (age 12) and shouted 'Hahaaaa! You're CHINESE and I'm AMERICAN!' etc. Then he taunted my best friend, 'YOU'RE AN INDIAN!!'. ... Then I punched him. The principal told me 'What he said wasn't nice, but hitting is absolutely not allowed.' I agree, hitting isn't allowed. BUT NEITHER IS RACISM!!!! It's not just 'not nice'. It is simply wrong.
It's simply not enough just to say that you don't think less of someone because of their appearance. It's also important to revise one's own language to reflect that attitude. If you are constantly mentioning negative actions with an ethnicity attached to it, you are in fact re-enforcing negative stereotypes about ethnic groups, even without directly saying negative things about that particular group. So, seriously. If the dudes skin colour, appearance or gender for that matter, had ABSOLUTELY ZILCH to do with the actions that you disapprove of, don't keep bringing them up. You make yourself look like the ultimate stereotype of the 'privileged white man'.
Here is a good blog on the topic from a victim of ethnic profiling in Finland:
https://raster.fi/2016/06/21/the-reality-of-ethnic-and-racial-profiling-in-finland/
And here is the EU's report on the matter, in case you are saying 'Oh, there's that member of a minority who wants to whine about imagined racism': https://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/ecri/Country-by-country/Finland/FIN-CbC-IV-2013-019-ENG.pdf
'nuff said. I need a drink - Oh wait, Thai ladies don't drink. We totally just sit around and let our white hubbies beat us into submission.
Labels: bullying, discrimination, nationalism, racial profiling, racism, xenophobia
fon @ 1:48 AM link to post * *
Friday, July 15, 2016
My first hero: The knight on a bike
My first experience of racial violence that I can remember was also accompanied by my first experience of justice and heroism. I want to tell you that story.
Just to give you some background, I grew up in a multinational bubble. I've moved around the world from pretty much day one of my life. My first kindergarten was international, even though we lived in Finland at that time. After that, I went to first grade at an international school in Ethiopia, and then one in Zambia, and so on and so forth.
At some stage - I was between 7 - 9 years old at the time - my family came to spend a few months in Finland. My dad stuck me in a local school for a while. We either lived in Zambia at the time, or were about to move there, and my skin was nut brown from the sun. When I am darker, people can't see the European half in me.
I was bullied a lot. But that's not the main focus here.
At some stage when the school closed for the summer, or maybe just the weekend, a few boys from my class came to ask me to go biking with them. When we got to the school yard, they pushed me off my bike, to the ground, and pulled out water guns and shot water at me, taunting me and calling me a refugee (as if that were an insult!).
And that's when something happened, something that has really shaped who I am. A bigger boy swooped in, told them off, helped me to my feet, and lifted my bike off the ground. He asked if I was OK.
The incident taught me something important. It doesn't matter if it's not 'your battle'. That's not an excuse. I wasn't a refugee, so it wasn't technically my battle. But it still affected me, and thus turned it into my fight, whether I wanted it or not. It wasn't my hero's battle either. He had the position of privilege that comes from belonging to the powerful majority. He could have ignored it. He had a choice, and he chose to make it his battle. That's what made him a hero.
And that's the kind of society we should be building. One where people like that little boy step in and stop bullies, because what we are fighting for isn't about us or them: it is about human dignity.
After all these years, I want to find him, and I want to thank him. He was last seen between 1991-93 on the yard of Kirstin Koulu, Suvela, in Espoon Keskus. I guess he was around 10 - 13, so he would be around 34 - 37 now. So please, share this, and help me find my knight on a bike!
Labels: bullying, Finland, hero, justice, rasicm, reward, TCK, thanks
fon @ 5:41 PM link to post * *