F. is 31 years old, white, male, European with a successful career ahead. Allegedly he ticks all the boxes of privilege, yet he was discriminated several time in his life and hate was used against him both verbally and physically, within his personal circle and beyond. Here there are just two of these experiences which underpinned F. life and shaped his way to connect with the world.
The first one is related to hate speech for 'nationality reasons' as he points out. F. is Spanish, from Madrid and he spent one year in Finland as part of an Erasmus exchange when he was younger. He was in Helsinki with his Finnish partner. It was weekend and they wanted to go and have a drink, his partner proposed to meet up with some friends in the city centre. F. did not know them, yet was willing to make new friends and mingle. Upon arrival, F.'s partner introduced him, and the fact that he was Spanish came up. One of the guys remarked "ah, so you are Spanish'' and all of a sudden they all started talking in Finnish not knowing that F. was taking evening language classes and could understand a bit. They were making negative commentaries about Spain. F. asked, in English. They answered, remarking that all the economic crisis which was taking place in Europe was because of Spain, that Spain was an awful place, questioning what he was doing there and pointing out that Spanish people were just good to steal 'richness' from Nordic countries. The situation got tense and very uncomfortable. F. felt they were just using hate speech because they could because they were comfortable in their country, in a position of power and he clearly saw it as a discrimination on the basis of country of origin. At that moment, he did not react, he just tried to defend himself quietly, yet he felt very badly and a biased opinion towards this country started to get shaped in his find.
When asked if it was possible to turn the tables around in this situation or in similar ones, he seemed very pessimistic in this regard, pointing out that it is a very polarised, closed society influenced by far-right movements and not highly exposed to difference. On the other hand, F. before that experience really liked Finland and still does for several reasons, and he has many Finnish friends who I met personally last Christmas. His resentment turned into a subtly hateful generalisation towards the country he was discriminated in.
After hearing his story, I started thinking about the ways discrimination has a negative spiral effect, yet while I was making these connections, F. went on telling me his second experience.
This time it happened in Spain, he was with R. his Finnish boyfriend, aforementioned as ´his partner´ in the previous story. Why did not I mention it before? Because apart from being Spanish, F. is also gay. And this other element of his identity marked another discrimination leverage.
They were sitting in the metro, heading towards the city centre, not explicitly acting as a couple, yet it was evident that something more than friendship was going on by the way they looked at each other and interacted. In front of them, there was a married couple in their 50s and their two teenager boys next to them.
Since F. was talking to his boyfriend in English they perhaps thought neither of them understood Spanish and they started gossips and making hateful comments about being gay. F. sat paralysed and felt very badly.
Intersectionality is a complex and powerful term coined by American civil rights activist Kimberly Williams Crenshaw. She devised it as a theory to explain how multiple social identities intersect and overlap, thus creating a hybrid of “minority” or disadvantageous elements. The theory also suggests that forms of discrimination and prejudice are all shaped by one another. The list of identities includes and is not limited to; social class, ethnicity, gender, skin colour, sexuality, nationality, age, language, heritage, geographic location and occupation as shown below.
What happens when F. apart from being Spanish, not speaking Finnish very well is also gay? What if he had a low socioeconomic status and a physical impairment? He’s no longer viewed as an individual. He is a hybrid of disadvantageous groups. Marks of his identities have been determining how he can be discriminated, meaning that hate speech can come from different channels at once.
Crenshaw simply puts it:
Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by cars travelling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them.
We have historically addressed diversity by putting a zoom lens on single-axis attributes of minorities, yet a new movement started to include a broader view of the richness of human experience. The boxing of individuals into traditional diversity categories is increasingly being rejected.
As we saw in F. case, Thus, identities within an individual come, go, or converge, depending on time or place. What can we do about it?
I asked this as a final question to F. and he said:
I think we need to sensibilise people since a very early age, so that children are aware of the multiple ways of life that can exist and they are educated to respect them. I think it is important that young people are taught acceptance and not rejection and hate, and in this way, they will be open people, able to respect.
As a matter of fact - he continues - the individuals I told you about, clearly did not receive this type of education, and because of their social development context and perhaps other factors, never learnt it nor put in practice.
F. 's story is sadly similar to many, and more often than not, young people are educated to hate, disrespect and reject. Our duty is to prove to them that another way is possible.