Came accross this jewel in Dan’s blog, and couldn’t help but comment on it. With cringe-worthy photography, design that even I could do better and racist references to “African medicine men” and “Greedy Ahmed” it became one of our inside jokes on Twitter.
Don’t get me wrong, I find the idea of an advertising agency focused on SMEs appealing. I find it difficult to believe that it can’t be better executed.
Well, I'm still not very happy about the police doing spot checks on people who look or sound foreign, since it assumes that we are all in some way or other breaking the law just because we don't look like the mainstream and happen to live here. Of course, the most ironic thing of it all is that this activity is financed with my taxes.
Since in the news you only hear about those foreigners who are breaking the law, I wanted to show plenty of examples of those of us who aren't and are not exactly of Caucasian origin.
I have plenty more, but I guess you get my drift.
I feel like I should be wearing a T-shirt reading "Olen ulkomaalainen. Mitä sitten?" (I'm a foreigner. So what?). Who's with me?
Finnish police is now spot-checking foreigners to find those without residence permit (myös suomeksi). Is racial profiling making its way here? This, and the fact that I have to renew my residence permit again (after 7 years altogether living in Finland) and have to tell the authorities how I met my wife for the third or fourth time shows how welcome foreigners are over here, even when we contribute to society and pay our taxes just like everybody else.
I'm sorry if I sound rude, but I find this just insane.
Eilis-illalla näin tosi hyvän Elisan mainos, jossa tummaihoiset suomalaiset olivat mukana samassa mainoksessa kuin kaikki muut, vaan osana yhteiskuntaa. Oli minun mielestä tosi kannustava ulkomaalaisena että joskus voisin nähdä ihmisiä kuin minä muussa roolissa kuin uhkana.
Sen ja mäkkärin kuuluinen mainos jossa tummaihoinen kaveri puhuu nopeasti Savon murretta toivottavasti alkaavat vaihtamaan yhteiskunnan asenteet. Minäkin maksan verot, minäkin olen kuluttaja. Minäkin puhun suomea ja olen ollut täällä kauan, ja tykkään tästä maasta.
Valitettavasti, joskus en tiedä jos maa tykkää minusta.
En mi clase de francés hoy nos pusieron un ejercicio en el que teníamos que conjugar en imperfecto y pretérito perfecto, para lo cual usaron un texto del cuento de hadas clásico de "Ricitos de Oro". No pude dejar de acordarme de la publicidad de un shampoo para niños que no sé si aún exista que así se llamaba, cuyo anuncio en televisión tenía una canción bastante pegajosa que decía:
Ricitos de oro mamá
ricitos de oro papá
un tono rubio me da
y yo no vuelvo a llorar…
Como la conjugación ya me salía, mi mente empezó a divagar, y me puse a pensar "¿qué fregados tiene que ver que el niño no llore con que el shampoo le aclare el pelo?". Alguna vez había leído algunos artículos donde los autores se quejan de que en la televisión mexicana los comerciales, las series y las telenovelas siempre tienen actores de tez clara y facciones de origen europeo, aunque la mayoría de la población sea mestiza y no corresponda con esos cánones de belleza. Por eso en México se vende tanto tinte, y hay tantas cirugías de nariz.
Lo más raro del asunto es que ni siquiera nos damos cuenta del racismo que existe en nuestra sociedad cuando la palabra "indio" puede ser usada como un insulto, aunque la mayoría de la población tenga al menos algo de eso.
If you want to see if your subsconscious is racist, sexist or somehow bigoted without you even noticing, you might want to check these Harvard tests.
I was relieved to see that I had no measurable automatic preference for people of Caucasian or African appearance. I did have a strong preference for Mexico, though, but that's kind of obvious given that I'm Mexican 😉
Via Finland for thought.
Finland is in general a very egalitarian society, where mobility is common and opportunities available, which is something I think other countries should learn from. However, I have noticed certain, if not polarization, at least divisions in society regarding how they see the outside world.
There are those that understand that Finland’s economic success is dependent on globalization and those who only see the Chinese threat; those who have travelled and seen the world and those who haven’t; the young who are used to having people with foreign backgrounds in their classroom and the old who first saw a black man in their street in the 90’s; those that welcome foreign labour and those that feel threatened by it (especially if they are already unemployed); those that speak foreign languages with confidence and those who feel they threaten the status of the Finnish language; those that want a more generous welfare state and those who want to pay less taxes; those who think racism is stupid and those who are unabashedly racist; those who have taken advantage of EU farm subsidies, Erasmus exchange programmes and the like and those who strongly dislike the EU…
Difference of opinion is of course what democracy is made of. Finnish society, however, needs to be aware that these differences exist, and that not everything is smooth and perfect.
I was talking with another person when he made a comment assuming that I was Spanish. When I mentioned I am Mexican, he apologised profusely. I defused it with a comment saying that usually people think in Europe that I’m either Arab or Turk, because it is the truth.
Although there is some people that try to take advantage of the social security system available in this country, I believe they are as hardworking as anybody. I am taking Dutch lessons with them and they’re pretty OK, and I’ve noticed that they have many businesses that even open on Sunday (something almost impossible in these parts).
Of course not all of them are perfect and culture shock for their communities and the host society is not uncommon, but I believe it has to do with people sticking to the labels of “Turk”, “Arab”,
“Flemish” or “Walloon”, instead of noticing that we’re all “Human” with a capital H, regardless of how corny it may sound.
Hablando con algunas personas, me he dado cuenta que nosotros también podemos ser racistas, aunque prefiramos quejarnos amargamente de cómo tratan a nuestros connacionales en Estados Unidos.
Nos llegamos a quejar de la mafia coreana, de los inmigrantes argentinos, centroamericanos, chinos o judíos, y aunque sabemos que somos la mezcla de la mezcla de la mezcla, he oído quejas contra los negros o los árabes.
Tod esto viene a colación porque una persona que me visitó hizo un comentario con una mezcla entre sorpresa y desdén sobre la cantidad de personas de religión musulmana que viven en Bruselas. Cuando le hice la observación que alguien podría quejarse sobre la cantidad de mexicanos viviendo en Estados Unidos, guardó silencio. Eso, francamente, es racismo.
Algunas veces me gustaría que no viéramos la paja en el ojo ajeno sino la viga en el propio. Si queremos que el mundo se abra a México, México también tiene que abrirse al mundo.
I was chatting over messenger with a good Mexican friend of mine who is now living in the UK. She told me a couple of stories that dovetail nicely with my own that I’ve also posted in this blog.
She’s rather fair-skinned, with blue eyes and blond hair, so I asked her if people believed her when she said where was she from. She answered that usually they don’t, but the worst part was with her doctor, who for half an hour analysed her facial features until declaring that “I thought that all Mexicans were short, dark Native Americans”. The funniest part was that he was Pakistani himself.
In another instance, after arriving in Barcelona for spending the holidays she was asked to answer a survey. The interviewer started going through the survey in English and as she stutterd with a word my friend ask her to switch to Spanish. The interviewer then seemed rather taken aback, as she didn’t expect my friend to be a native Spanish speaker.
So, the lesson is that in Europe people think she’s from an English-speaking country, whereas in my case people think I’m Morrocan, Turkish, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian, or even half-Thai half-Finn, but we’re both Mexican.
I think it’s time we all get rid of our stereotypes. They might be reference points, but they’re not very valid.