Daily Discrimination Stories | category

anonymous

May 2, 2025 / 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

February 9, 2024 / Immigrant, At school/uni, Language, Government agency

I have experienced a lot of racism because I am not from Finland. but more in health matters. they don’t give me permission to have an operation for my weight and they write on the personal page a bunch of lies like that I refuse to have the operation. they have been doing this here for 3 years, mocking me, giving me hope and then nothing. in education I have experienced racism from a teacher from Russia who taught Finnish, she zeroed in on me because I didn’t like her as a person. while I’m talking flirty, not good but I’m trying. she zeroed me out. My daughter also faces the same racism at daycare when a teacher who is in charge does the same or doesn’t deal with the child at all

Anonymous

November 9, 2023 / Gender, Race, At work, Immigrant, At school/uni, Government agency

I work in Finland as a doctor since 2007. I got my right to specialize in Obstetrics & Gynecology from Helsinki University on March 2009. Imagine till now I still did not specialize…while all my Finnish colleagues, even the ones started after me became specialists and some of them became even “ylilääkäri”. I got the Finnish citizenship on 2008 and I do speak Finnish. May be I’m stupid, but is it fair to force me to leave my family and my kids in Finland and go to UK in order to finish my specialization to the end?! I can not even justify what happened to myself, there is no explanation other than DISCRIMINATION. What is shocking, is the fact that it happened in Helsinki University, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology….where people claim to be educated, professional and civilized as well.

Anonymous

October 5, 2023 / Race, Immigrant, At school/uni, Language

I was attending one of my courses at uni and the whole class got into a conversation about when it’s appropriate to speak Finnish or English to someone. One of my Finnish classmates said that if the person “looks like a foreigner, [she] will automatically speak English to them.”
I’m a first generation POC American with immigrant parents, so hearing this statement made my blood boil. I quickly responded, asking her ” Ok , but what does a foreigner looks like?”
After hearing her answer of “darker skin, dark hair, brown eyes…” I then made the example that our white Dutch classmate sitting in the room is also a foreigner and does not speak Finnish. “So how would [you] know whether to speak Finnish or English to him?”

I could see in her face that she was feeling shy and embarrassed to answer that, but I explained that foreigners have all different skin colors, hair colors, and eye colors and that even in the country I was born in, grew up in, and identify with culturally, people still assume I cannot speak my native English because I also look like a foreigner. I then suggested to her that if she speaks to someone, she should speak Finnish first because we are in Finland, regardless of what the person looks like. If the person does not understand and asks you to speak English to them, then switch to English.

Anonymous

September 26, 2023 / Gender, In public, At school/uni, Near home

There was a foreign male student who came for exchange to Aalto University. Some day we were chilling with a big group of people on a beach. He tried to multiple times touch my legs pretending he wanted to cover me with a blanket from a cold (I didn’t want him to do that). Asking him to stop didn’t help.

With time I learned that other women in that group of students and friends were scared of him for the same reasons. There was a time when a drunk group of girls wanted to go to the beach after some party, that guy heard it and made some juicy comment about how he will “follow them, stay, and watch”. Two of more sober girls of that friend group had to persuade the girls to cancel the beach plan because it felt very unsafe to go there at night after his comment. He was also referring to one of the university female tutors like “big boobs” and there were many other disgusting situations like that.

The worst part was that male Aalto students heard all of that, but no one ever did anything to anyhow help us or shut him up. They went on inviting him to the parties. They tried to downplay his words and actions by “he is just joking”. I tried to tell one of those men, who was kind of my friend, how my “don’t touch me” didn’t stop that creepy student from touching me, to what my “friend” replied: “Well, with your accent it sounds so sexy, no wonder he didn’t stop”.

That’s how it went on till the end of the exchange period. Women were feeling unsafe, were telling each other not to go alone somewhere where that guy may be, and were watching their drunk female friends, while the male students were enjoying his company, smoking weed, and playing volley with him. Aalto University men, we don’t need your startups, we need your solidarity and active fight with harassment.