12.17.07
Ulkomailla syntynyt ei päässyt PARItanssikurssille Porissa
A woman of foreign descent didn’t get accepted to dance class in Pori – What is this!!!??? The original piece of news in Helsingin Sanomat.
I’d like to say this is unheard of in Finland, but as shooting dramas, evil things do happen. I realize that this is not a tried case, but it is not nameless or faceless. I will, for now, assume this really happened.
This incident, in my mind, is disturbing in at least two ways. I wouldn’t like to see discrimination in any form in Finland, as our laws and also the undertone of the communal awareness is against it. Also, it makes me sad that dancers, partner dancers, of all people, have chosen to act this way. Of course, there is no hard evidence, only word against word or actually only a statement at this point, but I hope no-one seeks publicity like that without fair grounds. Originally, the incident was published in HS as a letter to the editor sent in by Anastassia Joukovskaja, the alledgedly discriminated against woman. If this proves to be true I hope it is the last one of the kind, at least of the sort where dancers are at fault. Partner dancing is a nonverbal form of communication, and we, of all people, should see the power of body language, the possibilities of communicating without a spoken or written language – and, in this case, Joukovskaja even speaks Finnish, so only her background was discriminated against. The answer she got, she reports, was that the course was intended for “natural Finnish people.” What’s more, the dance club representative had even had the nerve to tell Joukovskaja that the reason for accepting only natural born Finns was that it was in the club rules. What crap! HS, by the way, chacked the rules: Surprise, surprise – no mention of ethincity whatsoever. Luckily there is a minorities ombudsman to turn to, and Rainer Hiltunen, an officer of the ombudsman office, reports that the minorities ombudsman will take the case under investigation if Joukovskaja wants to contact them and file a report.
Luckily the standard of the discussion around the subject on HS site is slightly higher than similar discussions on sites like suomi24 and the like. Most users have not accepted this kind of behavior, and only a handful of “preservers of Finnish culture” have joined in. The best arguments include one posting where the writer asks whether it would be the best way to preserve and promote Finnish (dance) culture by teaching it to those of foreign descent and other newcomers, and not refusing Finnish culture of them. Also, luckily a qick-thinking dance school representative in Pori (the town on the Finnish west coast where this happened) welcomed all and everybody regardless of background to join their classes. And how about the writing asking the ones rigorously promoting all-Finnishness whether they also believed in following the oh-so-Finnish penal code, the law of Finland… Good, good. Well, we’ll stay on the case.
