Dear Fellow White People: It’s Time to Work
It’s time to take responsibility for our complicity.
Where I grew up, in Finland, we didn’t talk much about racism.
It doesn’t mean it didn’t exist, obviously. But in a small town in Finland in the nineties, there simply weren’t that many people of color.
And the few there were, like the African American basketball players in my town’s team or that one guy organizing hip hop parties, were seriously cool. (I still remember that guy’s name, he was like a celebrity.)
The people of color who suffered from racism, such as Kurdish refugees fleeing oppression in their homes only to experience it in Finland, well, we decided not to see them or their suffering.
Racism was something I only learned about thanks to Hollywood, books and music. Hip hop artists were probably the first to teach me about it. Toni Morrison was the second.
It all seemed far away from us, and I guess it still does to many small-town Finns. Many people still don’t think it’s a problem in Finland. I know better now, because I left my home country and that bubble 18 years ago.
I’ve woken up. It would be impossible not to, with racists taking over every country in Europe and Latin America and now, the US.
