Following the shocking story of a father and son of Cuban origin who felt compelled to leave Iceland over racially motivated bullying and attacks this weekend, other stories are coming to light and the issue of racism has become a hot media topic.
A support march for the Cuban father and son is scheduled to take place in Reykjavik this Saturday with the backing of the city’s ruling Best Party. It starts at Hallgrimskirkja church at 14.00.
Akeem Cujo-Oppong, head of the Icelandic Panorama Association says he was very surprised by the news and says such overt racism is highly unusual. He has also called on the father and son to return home to Iceland.
He added however, that his association regularly deals with more minor forms of discrimination.
An Icelandic woman and her Nigerian husband have joined the debate, saying they experience discrimination regularly and are considering a possible move to a more multi-ethnic country.
Jonina Ragnarsdottir and Ebenezer Fakolate got married a year ago. They live in Hafnarfjordur and are expecting their first child together. Ragnarsdottir has two other children from a previous marriage to a man from Uganda. The couple believe prejudice persists in Iceland because of the small population size. Discrimination comes in many forms, including people staring – and recently in the form of a potential employer denying there was even a job on offer when Ebenezer walked in the door.
Jonina Ragnarsdottir says she was sad to hear her five year-old daughter say one day that nobody wanted to play with her at pre-school “because she is brown”.
The couple point out that things are slowly changing as Iceland becomes more diverse and they hope the current level of awareness will continue. If not, they may very well leave the country altogether.
There is also a glimmer of hope in new research from the University of Akureyri suggesting that children with foreign parents are doing better in Icelandic schools than ever. They remain, however, twice as likely to suffer bullying than children of Icelandic parents.
The results of the Icelandic leg of a regular survey conducted jointly in 50 countries showed that 8 percent of children with two Icelandic parents admit to being bullied; 12 percent with one foreign parent; and 16 percent with two parents of foreign origin. Changes have been made to the school system in recent years to help children of foreign origin, and results seem positive, although there is clearly still some way to go.
Most active thread here IceNews on this topic so far:
http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2010/09/13/father-and-son-flee-iceland-over-racial-abuse/
> ” A support march for the Cuban father and son ”
What ?
Many people are already jumping to conclusions about this case without being aware of any underlying facts of the case at all.
We have achieved great strides in our technological advancement. This has enabled us to land on the moon, to perform surgical oparations on the baby ‘in utero’, and to talk to, and see, each other from two separate points on either side of the globe. All this has justified the use of the name ‘Homo sapiens’.
However, when we come down to everyday life, we see ourselves doing the silliest of things, a case in point being discrimainating on the basis of race or skin colour. Do we sometimes spend our days in a dream-like state?
Icelandic a very tolerent society of individuals and if individuals integrate and learn the language as in other places integration will be accepted.
Regarding raciist attitude of individuals of course it is distastful but it is how things can be without familiarity — when the different races and creeds are more represented in Icelandic population there is less likely to be prejuduces.
Successful integraton comes from Icelandic speaking by immigrants to Iceland. Without that they will always be more apart than otherwise.
I understand that the family of Cuban origin has lived in Iceland for about a decade, are citizens of course ( speak Icelandic ) , and father is a physical therapist and son is sports man, whos relationship with a girl at college was backdrop to this thuggish behavior for which arrest was made.
Every country has its thuggish idiots holding offensive views. As long as they do not attack or threaten other people it is they right to hold those offensive views to the rest of us even as I say if those views are base and offending to intelligent people.
But as soon as thugs do attack people, or they property, it is time for arrest, as has happened in this case ( which I will point out was done by armed police unit — a rarity in Iceland but shows the record of the thug involved )
Far more worrying to me than this single isolated case is when burecrats do discrimiate in unfair ways — that should be far more worrying than individual cases like the one under the media spotlight now.
For example :
http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2009/12/17/how-much-money-is-enough-money-to-live-in-iceland/#comment-106373
( My question is why is EU citizen got such easy rights of movement even if a serious criminial, when productive people from countires outside EU are discriminated against. Horrible EU freedom of movement means lack of border control for people that obivously should be denied free movement on a case by case decision of each member state..
Known criminals from EU member state can move around freely and have right to stay within EU member state, while good productive people from outside EU who want to come to work and have jobs lined up, are refused visas. Just perverse. )
And here is example of positive actions that 2nd generation ” New Icelanders ” can take :
http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2010/08/17/icelandic-thai-girls-set-up-cultural-organisation/
after all these are ones who can do most to improve understandings and increase integration — through families.
My final post for a while — all you readers, but not posters, time for you to post..
The solution for complainers like that letter from Jon Eguiluz Montes+ is to.. learn to speak Icelandic properly and you will get the opportunites you want !
It just takes study and practice. Yes it is difficult language for many but there is now sites like this one which are specifically designed for people like that man and his girl friend situation:
http://www.icelandiconline.is/
http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2010/09/08/new-icelandic-language-learning-website-opens/
+http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2009/04/17/a-letter-from-an-icenews-reader/
The underlying racism is all too evident here in Iceland. My wife, who has an MBA, tried to register with Capacent in order to obtain a job. The answer…”Unless you’re Icelandic we can offer you no hope”. A Polish friend, with a degree in ichthyology, was given exactly the same treatment from exactly the same company.
Iceland is a beautiful country, spoiled only by the superiority complex of some Icelandic people. Just keep your heads down, say nothing, do the jobs that are beneath Icelander’s and you’ll be fine.
Well Iceland, you really need to get over it. Because you won’t get out of the mess you’re in, without help from people who are in no way related to the people with self serving agenda’s.
Fisy
Going away…. Before answering my point, as Bromley86 noted!
http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2010/09/08/ibm-cancels-iceland-investment-due-to-procrastination/#comment-270114
Also you say:
”The solution for complainers like that letter from Jon Eguiluz Montes+ is to.. learn to speak Icelandic properly and you will get the opportunites you want !”
I had wanted to debate your comment, and its relevance to the following link : )
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11304255
Hope you don’t miss too much.
oh my god!there is always oppurtunities in iceland if icelanders are willing to accept the nature of foriegners by understanding them,then that would work good, and not all people are good in languages so icelanders should know whats the differents between growing up here and coming in to the country,the icelandic langauge is not an easy words to say so you icelandic people have to realize about it,it would be good if it is english words that you can just easyly understand it,icelandic have different prounounciation,it makes the foreigners hard to say
no wonder even most icelanders didnt like to go abroud and live there because of different nature of living, so that is how the foriegner felt too….the bottom line is to accept the foreigner for who they cant easyly understand like the language…remember dont compared all people coz everyone are not the same as long as they show respect thats more enough to have………
“Icelandic a very tolerent society of individuals and if individuals integrate and learn the language as in other places integration will be accepted.”
LOL!
I think you live in an Iceland very different to many people. Just listen to your use of words and tone. Maybe you should try some African Nation or Asian and maybe once you feel discriminated there you will understand.
This is pure propaganda… using one sob story after another to hijack the better natures of the readers involved. This is not about some poor discriminated-against individuals, it is about using those individuals to destroy a whole nation… this time, it’s Iceland. They’ve already done a great job on the UK.
There is no racism in a homogeneous society. All the more reason to keep it that way. There are those whose goal is to destroy all Western nations through redefining what their very identities are supposed to mean. Why? They see unique nationalities and cultures as a danger to their twisted goal of a universal marxist “utopia.” The problem is, people who have never known other races of people have no idea how horrible multiculturalism is to live with, so they believe all the crap the cultural marxists tell them, and invite every form of human to come there to supposedly live as their equals. People and Peoples are not equal, they are unique and special, and to attempt to destroy their unique identities is a crime against nature.
icelandic are racist because, they are all relatives, from the govt.to the employer.they are all related to each other, so they dont care about foreiner like us. iam glad that someone put there foot on this topic. they are very racist.
i just hope that someone can help us, whe we need anybody.union dont care about us. they are all related.
family first .before an outsider!
The guy who scared the Cubans all the way to Cuba was “Big” Jon,
he got involved in this argument because of some relative who felt threatened by someone who supported the Cubans in a argument over a girl.
Big Jon making some adjustments
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs037.ash2/35189_412381232126_694357126_4992087_5916614_n.jpg
Notice the tan, he owns his own tanning parlor, he seems to like brown people :)
Why the Cubans were scared of Big Jon is hard to see.
http://www.pressan.is/Frettir/Lesafrett/segir-jon-stora-blessunarlega-lausan-vid-fordoma-i-gard-utlendinga-var-sattasemjari
that’s awful! poor people…i hope those cubans dont plan on coming to britain…despite how enlightened the british think they are they are equally if not more racist.
At least the Icelandic people and their government acknowledge that there IS racism in Iceland. In Norway, the situation is just the opposite: Norwegians DENY that racism exists in their country. I’ve lived in both Norway and Sweden as a non-white American. I’ve traveled extensively throughout Scandinavia, including Iceland. I have to say that Norway was the worst, with Sweden just a tad-bit better, in regard to racism. Ever since WW II, and with the NATO military presence in Iceland, as well as decades of low-cost travel on Icelandair between North American and Europe, Icelandic people have been far more exposed to persons of other races than backwoods Norwegians and Swedes. Iceland has had the advantage of being more exposed to Americans and Canadians, too, because many Icelanders immigrated to North America, especially Canada. Don’t be so hard on Icelanders, they are at least trying; besides, they are an island people with a lot of fiery volcanism going on, just like my Native Hawaiian people.
Fisy did say: “Icelandic a very tolerent society of individuals and if individuals integrate and learn the language as in other places integration will be accepted.”
Well said Fisy! I am with you 100,000%!
If lazy stupid immigrants cannot master our Icelandic language they’re obviously not our equals. We have every right to expel them. That is not racism. Anyone who fails to see Fisy’s point should be sterilized.
Gummi
Keep Iceland for icelandic people. Multiculturalism is the decay of western society, just a warning from the USA