Prejudiced minorities

When you immigrate to a new country religious and ethnic minorities of our native land are left behind and one flight the later the positions have been dramatically reversed. You arrive as a minority, endure countless culture shocks and face the same discrimination the media back home often mentioned. It comes as a slap in the face for the unprepared, but a darker problem lays in wait from somewhere quite unexpected.

Prejudice and discrimination between fellow minority groups is a sad and cruel irony that the participants fail to see. Instead of supporting one another in a shared situation, they continue their shameless bigotry against minorities from their homeland. Racism between minority groups is micro racism and is the nastiest element of immigration, due to its hypocritical and unexpected appearance.

Nationalities from around the world have chosen to live in Finland and, when the issue of racism is raised, you naturally expect to hear their horror stories about intolerant Finns, but instead you listen gravely about their treatment at the hands of other foreigners. Their anecdotes reveal that they were given a job and treated like a slave, physically attacked or verbally abused by a fellow immigrant, which stuns everybody, especially if any Finns are present.

Generalising that the majority of a population are racist is lazy and only serves to further the myth. The term 'racist' is frightening governments and people into proving they are not before being accused because once the accusation has been thrown it is virtually impossible to dispel it. Financial support is given to fund race awareness programmes, educate the public and aid integration, but this is outrageous when some minorities make no effort to integrate.

Sanctuary is found within their Diaspora. Many socialise within their own cultural group, ghettos create a small slice of their homeland, they build their own place of worship, their own shops and businesses; they can live their whole life without interacting with the host country. Nothing has changed, which means that their own inner dialogue concerning their own prejudices also remains the same.

Escaping to a new country is supposed to allow a fresh start from the tyranny of a government, shadow of a civil war, personal reputation or many other reasons, so why not re-evaluate your approach to cultures and nationalities that you hate? Recreating your homeland is provides comfort and practicing your religion strengthens your faith, so why not integrate among the general population and the other minorities and alter your perception of them?

Every country has different political, historical and cultural bonds with one another and this has shaped stereotypes and relationships. For example, when a Greek assumes a Finn in a Greek market in the centre of Athens is Russian they are being complimentary because human nature does not usually tend to insult complete strangers and the Greek is oblivious of the tensions between the two nationalities.

Back in our native lands, Canadians are aggravated by the Americans, the Australians have the New Zealanders, India has Pakistan, England has Scotland, Greece has Turkey, Finland has Russia, and the list goes on, but mainly the rivalry is playful and we are friendly to each other outside of our homelands.

Fearful of losing your own sense of nationalism forces you to adopt a caricature of your identity. As a minority, you begin to fear that the dominant Finnish culture will override your own and you will lose that unknown quality that makes you French, Taiwanese or Bolivian. Criticism of your country's foreign policy or lack of sporting achievements breeds your own disparaging remarks about Finland with which to do battle.

Here lies the danger. Excessive nationalism mutates from patriotism into feeling contempt for other nationalities, including the host country. One extreme example is the Iranians who bitterly complain about racism across the world, yet in their own country there are people joining dozens of online communities, including the "Adolf Hitler SS Army Fan Club" and an "anti-Jew" community, which advocates death to all black people.

When it comes to Iranians living in Finland, many prefer to describe themselves as Fars and totally dispute the Ahwazians, who claim to be of 'perfect' Persian origin. You will never see an Ahwazian shake hands with an Arab, especially Saudi Arabians. Once again, you have two minority groups in a foreign country divided by the prejudices they felt back in their homeland.

Finland has organisations, such as Caisa Cultural Center, and online communities, such as the International English Speakers Association, which aim to unify foreigners living in Finland and organise gatherings in which they can meet one another. During the get-togethers, the multi-cultural groups try to stick to light-hearted subjects, such as the weather, but you can occasionally see the friction between nationalities.

For example, a Serbian student casually chats to a Greek entrepreneur about holidays to the former Yugoslavia, but the Serb becomes alarmed when a Croatian becomes offensive in Slavic and they are then joined by a Turk, who alarms the Greek. However, the night ends with a small group consisting of an Englishman, Irish woman, a Finn, a Russian, a Kurd full of 'appreciation' for the Turks, an Armenian, a Jew and an American genially talking about the Finnish weather.

Due to the Kurdistan Workers Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan or PKK), a controversial organization that fights for Kurdish independence, Turks in Finland severely dislike the Kurds. There is also the case of the Sudanese civil war, where the Muslim north fights with the Christian south, that has now moved from within its borders to communities in other countries because being an immigrant does not mean that you choose were to go without facing the other side.

The majority of foreigners form cordial relationships and attempt to place their prejudices behind them, yet the stubborn actions of the minority of the minority that damages everybody's reputation. Facing racism from a native is one thing, but being treated like shit by another foreigner may cut deeply in some and arouse dangerous emotions of radical nationalism in others.

The aspect that many often ignore and fail to realise is that should all the immigrants put aside all their differences and join together then we could effect real change in Finland. There are over 120,000 immigrants living in Finland, all of them have a vote in the elections, many are eligible to run as a candidate and one day it is possible that a second or third generation immigrant will become Prime Minister.