Racism
Racism may manifest as intentional and conscious acts between individuals and groups, for example, or as unintentional racialising behaviour based on fears and prejudices. Racism may also manifest in structures, such as discriminatory operating methods and processes in working life, education and services, in which organisations, companies, institutions and bureaus discriminate against certain groups of people either directly or indirectly.
Racism is a system, in which politics, institutional practices, culture and other norms maintain racialised social power structures. It is a part of the social, economic and political systems, in which everyone is involved.
The people targeted by racism can perceive the extent and severity of racism best. There are also many studies that tell about the prevalence of racism. Racism may manifest as hate speech, discrimination, violence or apparently neutral practices that in reality exclude a part of people. Discrimination and hate crime must not be seen only as individual cases; the structural racism and discrimination behind them must also be identified.
Racialisation
Racialisation is a process, in which the society links certain people with hierarchies, assumptions, stereotypes and prejudices in relation to, for example, their abilities, customs and ethics because of, for example, their skin colour or assumed ethnic background.
Racialisation occurs in cases such as when a person born in Finland experiences daily or weekly moments of exclusion even in everyday situations due to their appearance. It is born of the idea claiming that individuals with certain characteristics would be fundamentally different from the majority of the population. People racialised as non-white often cannot even recognise themselves in many of the stereotypes linked to their identity.
The process of racialisation leads to racist and discriminatory actions, meaning that people are treated unequally either consciously or unconsciously based on stereotypical definitions. In fact, racialisation is first and foremost a social process that produces racism as its end result.
Microaggressions
A microaggression is an intentional or unintentional act or comment that maintains and reinforces racist or otherwise discriminatory stereotypes while othering people. For example, praising the Finnish language skills of a person racialised as non-white shows that the person giving the praise believes that brown people cannot speak Finnish as their mother tongue. Even though the questions or comments seem harmless, they can be cumulative and insulting to their target.
Whiteness as a norm
Whiteness as a norm does not refer to skin colour as such; it refers to the invisible social hierarchies and power structures, in which being Western and European are seen as norms that define social structures. The normativity only becomes evident when it is made visible or when people deviate from it.
Different forms of racism
Antisemitism is a view on Jewish people that manifests as hatred and prejudice against Jewish people. The verbal and physical manifestations of antisemitism are targeted at Jewish people and/or their property as well as the institutions and religious spaces of the Jewish community.
Afrophobia is a specific form of racism, motivated by African background and targeted at people, groups and communities with African background. The fundamental aim of Afrophobia is dehumanisation. It is connected to the historical wrongs experienced by black people, such as colonialism, as well as the negative stereotypes linked to them through the process of racialisation. Afrophobia can take many forms from discrimination to violence, including racist hate speech. It may manifest as racist discrimination between groups and individuals that shows in prejudices, beliefs and fears as well as Afrophobic racism and discrimination that occurs on the structural level.
Islamophobia is a specific form of racism that means acts of violence, discrimination and racist hate speech targeted at Muslims or people, groups or communities assumed to be Muslim. Among other things, the negative stereotypes and special characteristics linked to Muslims as a group and Islam as a religion can be found in the background of Islamophobia. Islamophobia leads to the exclusion and dehumanisation of Muslims.
Structural racism means discrimination hidden in the laws, services, institutions and functioning of the society that produces ethnic and racialised inequality almost unnoticeably. Structural racism is often unconscious, and it is created as prejudices, stereotypes and social norms feed into each other. It may manifest, for example, in apparently neutral practices that in reality exclude people who are seen as non-white or deviating from the majority of the population.
Structural racism is based on power structures. They lead to categorising people seen as different and non-white into culturally, economically and socially marginal positions. This means that racism is not always conscious activity and it does not always occur between individuals; it can also be found in the structures of the society.
Structural racism can be visible, for instance, in discrimination in education and the labour and housing markets:
- In working life, structural discrimination can appear for example in wages or other benefits related to employment relationships, such as opportunities for additional training.
- In education, structural discrimination may involve guiding young people assumed to have an immigrant background towards certain fields with manual labour regardless of their own interests.
- In the housing market, a person’s ability to find a rental apartment may be affected by a name that differs from typical Finnish names, for instance.
The structural racism and discrimination in education and the labour market cumulates in many aspects of life. It may affect the education and career paths of people, which in turn undermines their income level and housing, among other things. People must learn to identify and acknowledge these discriminatory structural practices in order to dismantle them.
If you encounter racism
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If you encounter racist discrimination, you can contact the Office of the Non-Discrimination.
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If you encounter discrimination in working life, contact your employer first. If contacting your employer does not help, contact the occupational safety and health representative or shop steward of the workplace. If necessary, you can contact the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman or the occupational safety and health authorities of the Regional State Administrative Agencies (tyosuojelu.fi).
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If you have become a victim of a racist offence, contact the police. A racist offence means an offence, in which the perpetrator has a racist motive.