A young Black woman who was subjected to racist abuse after being selected to lead celebrations of a Swedish festival of light in Helsinki has received an apology from the Finnish prime minister.
According to the Swedish tradition, each year a young woman or girl is chosen to represent Saint Lucia by dressing in a costume of a white gown, red waistband and crown of candles as part of the official annual festivities in Finland at the Lutheran Cathedral on 13 December to mark the shortest day according to the Julian calendar.
About 5% of people in Finland, which until 1809 was part of Sweden, speak Swedish as their native language, which is one of two national languages in the Nordic country.
Daniela Owusu, 20, who is Finnish Ghanaian, received thousands of hate messages after on Friday becoming Finland’s first Black Lucia. The organisers have reported the abuse to police and the discrimination ombudsman and are considering taking legal action.
She did get to play her part!
It’s sad that she had to go through that. I hope this doesn’t put them off other POC participants in the future.
They should just have black women in the role from now on. Maybe have black men do it too for fun.
A few decades of black people in the role exclusively should cause all the racists to stroke out and die.
I think everyone would just stop paying attention to the thing
Ehh, doubt it.
I mean if they really did that it would take away a lot of why it is followed by some beyond the Fennoswede community
Yeah, you gotta make sure a genuine fair-skinned and blonde Swedish girl plays that Sicilian saint.
I keep saying this: the only nations that aren’t racist are the ones that don’t have to deal with actual diversity.
I don’t understand, isn’t it the other way around? Places with actual diversity are less racist. The places where everyone looks the same, are breeding grounds for racism. They think they’re being overrun when there’s one black or gay family in their street.
What about Japan?
Japan is very racist.
I’m not saying every nation that doesn’t have to deal with diversity isn’t racist. I’m saying the only nations that “aren’t racist” are the ones who don’t have to deal with diversity.
try being black in literally ANY Asian country.
Racist parties get most votes where there’s no diversity. Other people aren’t the reason racists do what they do
I remember when Lola Odusoga was Finland’s first black Miss Finland in 1996 and there were some* racism back then (*but internet wasnt still huge). I think it calmed a bit when Lola did well in Miss Universe competition. She was 3rd. Since then Miss Finland has been won by Sara Chafak (half moroccan), Shirly Karvinen (half chinese) and Alina Voronkova (Russian and Ingrian Finn). Alina got lot of heat in the internet because many didnt like her Russian name. Last year St. Lucia maiden Finland was a Finn with Italian roots and with Italian name. No criticism. But somehow black skin and russian name activates these idiot rednecks.
The only thing I think when I see black people is how awesome the hair of most them looks.
Racism is very high ranked in the list of dumb things.
love the stupid racist who saw this and said “oh that’s a downvote”
Lucia being thought of as blonde haired actually plays into this debacle
Finland was Sweden, damn. Didn’t know that.
Part of Sweden for hundreds of years but Finns were always lower class citizens to them. Sweden also used lot of Finns in their wars. For example the legendary cavalry unit ”Hakkapeliitta”.
“Sweden will fight to their last Finn” is a joke I’ve heard a bunch of times
It feels weird that they’re talking about Swedish people when they mean Fennoswedes. It makes it sound like they’ve recent immigrants hah
Helsingin sanomat
That poor kid.
Dafuq is wrong with people?
They are stupid. Racism is just so dumb. Literally, bigots are just unintelligent.
I have seen that in our society it’s acceptable to treat people as if their race is inferior. Threaten them. Scare them.
Because… No one says anything to these people. No one holds them accountable, and there’s no consequences for their actions.
Until there is a consequence for racism and threatening others… This will be norm and will only get worse.
At least this is what I see here in a red state. (USA)
I had no idea that Finland was a racist place. But I suppose there are racists everywhere…
How racist a place is perceived as is directly proportional to how many minorities actually live there. It’s easy for racists to be in denial about their bigotry when there are so few minorities that they’re treated as a curiosity rather than a demographic.
For example, you probably think Oregon is less racist than Georgia, right? Well, guess which one was founded as a whites-only ethnostate.
Similarly, Finns considering black people in the abstract probably think they aren’t racist, but when confronted with being concretely affecting by one, well, you see the result.
Georgia was also founded as a white supremacist ethnostate. All of them in the contiguous 48 states were.
The entire USA was founded as a white supremacist state. Whites were supreme by at least 2/5ths…
Oregon took it to a whole new level though, to the point of banning PoC entirely.
Finnish guy here, as well. I went to school in the 90s and the subtext was always that the local Lucia would be a blonde girl. We’d have one for our school, the town, and the country.
The mythical Lucia was burned at a stake, and I guess those flames both translated to the crown of candles that she wears as well as blonde hair. The mythical Lucia most likely looked pretty Hispanic.
I think the current Lucia wears the crown well, and the response has been that the charity organising it has received several times the donations it usually gets. I think we’ll need to wait another generation to get rid of the racist pushback.
I’ve got bad news about every country on Earth.
Finnish guy here. The whole nation has been thrown in the middle of racist debate in the past year. One of the ruling political parties is a far right populist party who have strifed to normalize racism while they’re in power. There are actual nazi affiliated people there. It’s a fucking shitshow where they lie to coax normal people into rage against immigrants and it seems to be working with those poor suckers. It hasn’t been a good year, far from it, but at least common everyday racism has been outed and is condemned by the majority.
Honestly, Finland has had a weird relationship with immigration for at least a decade. I think all the countries with large sovereign wealth funds are in a pretty weird place when it comes to immigration… and if immigration gets demonized racism flourishes.
Northern Europe is super racist again black people and Asians….
Racism?
In Europe?
Youre telling me the continent founded along xenophobic lines is racist?!?!
Nationalism did bring freedom from oppression to some peoples and caused horrific stuff in other cases.
If you think racism is Europe exclusive I have some bad news for you buddy
Is that what i said?
That’s not what they said. C’mon lil’ champ, use your reading comprehension — you can do it!
You’ll experience racism if you are considered a minority in the country you’re in; it’s how it is. However, you should continue to live your life. Live where you want to live.
Are you speaking from personal experience? Because this is really easy to say from the outside.
