anonymous

/ Race, At work, In public, Immigrant, At school/uni, Near home

As a middle eastern, I have been living in Finland, around Uusima, for about two years now. At first, I thought I was just being paranoid. After all, I hadn’t done anything wrong or illegal, so why were people staring at me? Then it escalated to them even taking pictures. I started to wonder if I was dressing inappropriately, but having lived in many countries before, I knew my style wasn’t unusual. It was only after reading stories about even Finns who “stick out” in any way and face similar treatment that I realized this wasn’t just me.
Another problem arose at work: I was being excluded and disrespected. Suddenly, my boss accused me of being hostile. These things happened simultaneously, making me question my own sanity. The only reason I knew I wasn’t losing my mind was because I found others with similar stories. If you stand out, the collective society can be hostile. This is deeply troubling.

anonymous

/ Race, At work, Immigrant, Online, Language

I work in customer service over chats. The company I am working for is not based in Finland but I was hired to do help cutomers in Finnish.
Before anyone enters the chat they provide some info about their request to the bot.
One particular customer was using English with the bot but I saw his name and recognised it as a Finnish one so I started communicating in Finnish.
He accused me of not being a real Finn and asked me who is the Finnish president so I can prove to him I am indeed a ”real Finn”.
Other times customers with impossible request accuse me of not understanding and switch to English even though the answer remains the same and I get anxious of losing my job.
I am a woman and use a very regular Finnish male’s name as my avatar.

Anonymous

/ Race, Immigrant, Language

I love this country, I do. I have a child here. I met my fiancé here. But after almost 20 years of struggle to secure job, not even talking about career towards which I have degree, I am done. Being black in Finland was always tough but as it progresses with my stay here it is getting worse. Companies to which you get into if you are “lucky” will exploit you by giving impossible times to clean places, they will cut the hours as you are staring at the schedule! They will call themselves friendly and respectful until you call them out on their own behaviors! They hardly question themselves but easy to judge and make it an immigrant issue.
I am tired, from failed healthcare system to no stability when it comes to job, through mistreatment from every corner – including fellow black people! Instead of helping each other they are making it even worse! Everyone acting hungry and thinking of how to use someone to their own benefit. I am exhausted of fighting this battle with the system. Many tried and failed many tried and moved nowhere in their lives. Finland will make sure to trap you in – if you are sane you will become insane. No pint of language will help you unless you are into coding, IT or gaming… but even with that you will always feel you are not enough.

Anonymous

/ Race, Immigrant

I was visiting a night club in Helsinki. Everything was fine, until I decided to visit the toilet.

These were gender neutral toilets, and there was a big line. I got in the line, but the lady infront of me starting pointing her palm at me, and saying nope. This is not for you. I replied, this is gender neutral. I can be here.

She kept repeating that. Then after a back and forth of 3-4 times. she was like yeah ok.

She then asked my name. I replied. But she said, no. Its Aladdin. And starting laughing. I was taken back by that. She realized she had said something racist so she acknowledged that herself. But I didn’t feel good so I left the line.

My mood was immediately down. I left the club after that. and I kept thinking about it for days.

These small day to day wounds can pile up, and really have an effect on you in the long term. Its death by a thousand cuts.

RP

/ Immigrant, Online, Language

I was in a mini-schanuzer dog group in Facebook. Been active member sharing pictures and stories of our dog occasionally. I once shared a story about a dog of same breed looking for a home- and was instantly blocked. I reached out to the 4x admins, none of them responded. Then my Finnish spouse messaged the admins and got a response. I was reprimanded for “selling” or “advertising” a dog and it was against the group rules, and also I posted in English so it looked like spam. Makes sense?

RP

/ Immigrant, Uncategorized

I was once buying an armchair on facebook marketplace. The woman selling it asked me to bring my passport with me if I wanted to pick it up from her place. Huh?

RP

/ In public, Immigrant, Near home

I used to live in Kalasatama. One day I went looking for a specific tea from the local K-market right after work and on my way to home. I quickly scanned the tea section and couldn’t spot it so I started leaving the shop. The owner of the shop briskly stopped the queue at the counter and rushed to me to frisk my handbag. This was around 2018-19 or so. I feel there were very few immigrants in that neighbourhood and feel I was stopped because of distrust in my immigrant background / looks?

anonymous

/ Race, In public, Immigrant

Actually I’m not so sure if it’s discrimination or I’m just too sensetive, maybe it’s like microdiscrimination.
One day, I went to Kontti in Lappeenranta, when I was about to pay, the casher guy suddenly put away his smile and didn’t say “moi” to me. I still said “moi” “kiitos” and “moi moi” to him but he didn’t have any response – just gave me the receipt. But he chatted in smile with the last customer 🙁

Anonymous

/ In public, Immigrant, Language

I was visiting the eye department of the Helsinki Hospital (HUS) for an eye examination.

I kindly asked the nurse if we can speak English. She immediately showed me that she was not happy with this and she said “If you cannot speak Finnish, you can go back to your country.”.

I stayed silent and calm because I had to get the eye examination done. It was a very uncomfortable 30 minutes. I tried to talk as little as possible and I was afraid that she would make other racist comments.

I felt very sad.

I reported this incidence to HUS but I did not hear back.

Anonymous

/ At work, In public, Immigrant, Uncategorized

I was recently attending an informal dinner before a seminar meant for about 30-40 people. During the dinner, a colleague that I have known for several years suddenly threw a very irrelevant question at me: “What is your socioeconomic status in your home country?”. I am the kind of person that wants to be approachable to my colleagues. So, keeping that in mind, I started explaining and even over explaining myself. Since the question from my Finnish colleague caught me off guard, l don’t know if I was able to give a satisfactory answer. Now, here’s my concern. Was this question asked just out of curiosity? Was it asked because this person thinks I am escaping my socioeconomic situation from my home country? Does this person somehow think lowly about me already?

After that day, I have been feeling very insecure in general. Of course, this incident wasn’t the only one I have faced in Finland. I’m still working out the best response to such questions in the future. Although, what worries me is that if I am too outspoken and straight with my replies, would that seem overly repulsive? Will my colleague think that I am being rude?

At this point, I am sick to my stomach trying to figure out how to process this. If my ethnicity, skin colour and pre-conceived notions about my socioeconomic status precedes me, then, will I ever feel fully accepted in this country?