The article written by Sharron Todd, a Black and Korean American living in Helsinki x-rays what many of us are faced with in our everyday life in a homogeneous country. She and her sister own and operate Brooklyn Cafe and Brooklyn Baking Co. Sharron is also a writer, filmmaker and human rights advocate. Her first short film, “Dear Elijah” was released in 2020. She recently co-founded and she’s the Director of the newly formed non-profit collective, T.A.P. (The Art of Peace)
In the spring of 2014, about 3 years after my sister and I opened our café, a middle-aged white Finnish woman walked in when I was working alone. There was one other customer, a regular, sat at a corner table drinking coffee and reading a book. The woman came up to the counter smiling ear to ear and I warmly welcomed her and asked what she would like to order.
She laughed a half sinister laugh, then asked “You don’t speak Finnish?”
Photo credit: Shoot Hayley
I had just started taking Finnish classes at the University of Helsinki at night during my 6-day work week. I replied, “No, I don’t. The best service I can offer you is in English and I’m happy to do that for you, especially since you speak it.”
She immediately began a lecture (more of a rant) about how if a person lives in Finland, they should speak the language. She then continued, “It’s very easy to say the word ‘coffee’ in Finnish. Try it. Say it with me. Kah-via. Kaaah-viiii-aaa.” As she was leaning over the counter and exaggerating her mouth to slowly annunciate the word “kahvia” to me, I transformed from a café owner to a person with no titles. Our warm exchange came to a swift end.
Our regular customer looked up from her book. Billie Holiday was playing in the background, a faint smell of roasted bread seeds from the oven lingered in the air, but the room had turned cold. I retorted, “I speak Vero and Varma fluently (Finnish taxes and mandatory pension). The only two languages you should be concerned with.” I also told her she was welcome to visit the hundreds of other cafes in Helsinki where Finnish is the primary language.
She became enraged, entitlement steaming from her pores. She pointed and yelled at me with statements that began with “you people” or “you people come here and don’t speak our language..” Our regular customer intervened at this point and told the woman to leave. The woman was further enraged and threatened to call the police and then, she did.
As she was on hold for the police, she laughed, “They will kick you out of our country and you will have to go back to where you come from.”
The police finally picked up, heard her complaint, then hung up on her. This did not stop her, she continued her xenophobic tirade and refused to leave on the grounds that it was her country, not mine. This story ends with another customer walking in, physically dragging the woman out of the café and telling her to never return.
This story is not special. Though it should be. This story is not uncommon for most of the BIPOC community, especially those living in countries where the majority of people do not look like them. But, it should be uncommon. It should be a rare occasion where a stranger feels entitled to come into a private business establishment and attempt to dress down and humiliate another person based on opinion and prejudice. It begs the question, on what grounds does this person feel entitled?
Since the Black Lives Matter movement, we have gone into the streets to educate everyone on the generational and daily experiences of Black people. And through this education (and protest), many poignant and important messages have been shared and spread. We’ve adopted common semantics to describe every detail of racism and xenophobia and the nuanced side effects of these experiences. One of the terms that keep rearing its head is “privilege.”
“White privilege” makes sense. History has shown the social, political and economic advantages of being born white. However, the use of the word “privilege” when pointing out that some BIPOC people receive better treatment from the psychographic white person than others- should be questioned. Since when does the fundamental right to equal and fair treatment become privilege? Are we not perpetuating the entitlement of racists and xenophobes by establishing them as the benchmark of acceptance?
Racism and xenophobia displays a lack of evolvement and emotional intelligence. They embody moral corruptness. Why then would any of us consider it a privilege to be treated “good” by the morally corrupt and emotionally inferior? Especially when this “good” treatment further fuels the plight of the darkest among us.
We should not reward poor behavior by elevating the value of acceptance from those we do not wish to impress in the first place. There is no entitlement or privilege due to any person that would supersede the right of another to be treated with respect and dignity.
