Our project coordinator Simone
The new project coordinator of our KAAMOS -project, Simone Brown-Francis, who has already settled into RASMUS ry´ team, is by her other professions a skilled youth worker and a talented singer-songwriter. As a musician born in Jamaica, and having recorded for Warner, she has experienced a lot of racism in Finland, e.g. while performing on stages throughout Finland with the Jyrki electric circus, in Mikkeli the audience expressed physical violence. The white-skinned population regrettably downplays these situations and power structures, and usually does not even acknowledge the concrete things that have happened.
Even though the incident crossed the national news threshold at the time, white-skinned people still did not want to talk about it afterwards. This is very common when it comes to the manifestation of racism more broadly. We want to avoid the topic, which has a silencing effect, that also increases the traumatic nature of the phenomenon. That is why it has not been easy to intervene in any phenomenon related to racism.
People do not want to talk about the phenomena related to racism almost anywhere (in Finnish institutions, workplaces, schools or healthcare facilities), as if the subject was so feared among white-skinned Finns that just mentioning the subject would cause a major collapse of their worldview and identity. In recent years Brown-Francis has observed indications that some kind of progress is taking place in this matter, but in reality the adult generation of Finland should also wake up to the matter on a much larger scale immediately, in order to prevent marginalization, radicalization and mental health problems of the internationalized youth of Finland.
Even the white-skinned young people in Finland do not see racism as a good thing and many of them have a very diverse and circle of friends. So when the racism that so often occurs in Youth centers drives away the diverse youth, then even the white-skinned young people will no longer come to those youth centers. The phenomenon is also extremely common in almost all sectors in Finland, and the latest statistics confirm this.
Rarely, however, is the knowledge on anti-racism even recognized as real expertise, and people might still imagine that, for example, anonymous recruiting brings in diversity, when in practice this almost never reduces racism nor brings diversity in recruitment. Diversity quotas in recruitment, commonly in Finland, even today, are not believed to bring a solution to the lack of anti-racism skills and global competence, even though quotas are, according to research statistics, the most effective way to tackle racism in the institution and to get diverse skills and international networks available to the organization.
In her work as a musician, Brown-Francis has recent years taken a stand on toxic human relationships, empathy as an approach, isolation in the corona era, and themes of respect and dignity. Through e.g. KAAMOS -project, she wants to see a positive change in the Finnish atmosphere and structures. Without racism, Finland would be so much better, this is a wonderful, international country. All the great things that Finland is and has are wasted because of racism. All the know-how and talent that Finland´s diverse population would have, has not been utilized because of racism. In Finland all too common envy of, for example the talent of the dark-skinned musicians and racism sabotaging their careers causes setbacks in the Finnish music business, even though Finland could succeed internationally by encouraging these young talents.
