There has been a lot in the news lately about Swiss Xenophobia and racism due to the largest party, a nationalist party, making provocative statements about immigrant populations. Unlike a lot of opinages, I have actually been to Switzerland (St. Gallen and Zurich primarily) and I am non-white so I feel I have more of a take on racism in Switzerland. My take on this has seemed to shock a lot of people, but here it is and this is not an apology for racism:
I honestly don’t care if Swiss people are racist or not, that is not the point really. Actually I read into the issue and racism is not the primary issue, as much of the crime is coming from Bosniak and Albanian refugees…who are just white Muslims. Then the next biggest group is Turks (many of who are also “white” but some are obviously not).
They tend to be men, and they tend to be born in Switzerland (but often not citizens just resident aliens as it is hard to get Swiss citizenship if you don’t marry a Swiss person).
http://cjb.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/28/3/329
If I was Swiss, I would not joint a right wing party, but if we were bringing people into our nation as workers, refugees, whatever and they are committing a ridiculous amount of crime (including rape) I would seek to stop their immigration and also deport non citizens as well, sorry.
What ever Swiss knows is 20 years ago they hardly had much crime as compared to America, or even France or the UK. Swiss people are fairly peaceful (despite having guns in every home with an adult male contrary to what liberals here will tell you that guns make people murder people).
“The party claims that foreigners — who make up about 20% of the population — are four times more likely to commit crimes than Swiss nationals.”
If this is true, and from what I read it is…then wouldn’t you want to take action? Switzerland is NOT a land of immigrants. Swiss people have lived there since Roman times at least and our a mix of local Celts tribes (Helveti) and later Germanic tribes that came into the area as well as Franks in the east). In fact they still call their nations the Helveti Confederation. They fought many many wars to maintain their independence from France, the Holy Roman Empire, and various Italian city-states, and also the Romans back in the day.
This is their home.
Racist or not, every nation has the right to determine who enters their home and who they allow to be citizens. If they only wanted blonds or people over 6 foot that is their business.
I very much admire the Swiss for their grass roots democracy, they are very libertarian in a way, every canton, hell every town has a certain autonomy and they vote by referendum on many many issues. Hell they have no head of state, they have a cabinet, which is th e executive, but not President or PM…it is an amazing country, and if I was Swiss I would fight to preserve that.
When I was there I had no issues, but I did hear negative talk of Muslims, especially Turks…and that was in Zurich…people were more clannish there and stand offish (as in Germany) the French speaking regions are more provincial than the people in France but very “chill”…I can’t remember anyone being rude to me, in fact in Geneva people were very friendly. In Zurich I would not say “friendly” but definitely polite and civilized. I even saw skinheads at the train stations from time to time and none of them made any provocative moves or even said anything to me, nor were they trying to convert people. They pretty much were hanging out minding their own business.
Here is a question
If Kenya’s Indian minority or Nigeria’s Lebanese minority were committing close to 50% of all violent crimes in those nations and the “nationalist party” in either of those countries had something with black sheep and they were kicking out the “white or yellow” one.
And the political party said they wanted these violent minorities out of a moratorium on immigration from their nations because they want to keep Kenya (or Nigeria) safe and culturally homogeneous for the indigenous people would any of you be calling these Kenyan and Nigerian politicians racist?
I seriously doubt it.
For whatever reason black people (and others) feel that they have the right to go to and move to any historically white nation on earth and do whatever they want. If race is mentioned (even if they are acting a fool) then that is racist.
However if Arabs, blacks, East Asians, South Asians say the exact same thing…oh that is just “self defense, patriotism, fighting the “man”, their internal problem…”
Truth is if you want to see real racism…if you want to hear hate speech against minorities, go to Kenya, go to India, go to Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, Saudi, Egypt, Libya, Indonesia…I can find in each other far worse racial rhetoric, some things you could not believe…but no one cares unless a white person says it…even in a country that is historically white since prehistoric times. I have already spoken about racism and xenophobia in Japan , which has the second largest economy in the world. They rarely take in refugee population, not even in Asia, and they have a very restrictive immigration policy, even for foreign workers. Where is the international outcry. If any European leader made these type of statements, even some places with very few if any nonwhite minorities (like Poland) made these statements there would be immediately condemnation.
I find that odd.
In the end the ethnic Swiss do not owe refugees anything. The refugees owe them and repaying them by disrespecting the country that took them in outrageous. Now I understand that the majority of immigrants/refugees are not causing problems, but reality is that in any nation, a minority (especially a new one) unfortunately, is judged more harshly, so this is not shocking…that there are extremists, but I do not believe the average Swiss person is a Nazi or a potentially KKK member.
Most of these immigrant criminal populations are Muslim.
I always here Muslims talk about Islam being superior, etc. Even ones who are not “radical”…Islam is the religion of peace (actually to a Muslim peace -= submission, the latter being the real meaning of Islam), Islam is beatiful, etc. I have even had a couple of Muslims try to convert me (both foreign, not African Americans ones, I have had that too though).
Well if Islam is so great why do they come to our ugly, House of War, backward Western nations? Why don’t they stay in or go to a “Muslim Paradise” that has superior standard of living to barbaric Western nations?
Oh wait that has not existed since the peek of the last Caliphate, Ottoman Empire, which started declining after they got their butt kicks at the gates of Vienna in the mid-1500’s, way before any European colonization of anything…
In any case, if Swiss people were truly racist and hateful 20% of their population would not be allowed to be non-ethnic Swiss to begin with or import refugees from various racial and ethnic groups. As much as I like Japan, there xenophobia is well known, and they would never tolerate a situation like what is in Switzerland, crime or no crime.
I will leave this with a German language R&B songstress I was hipped to in Zurich:
Geh Jetzt (GET OUT), by Joy Denalane hehe.. .
Most Muslim countries are run by robber barons whose autocratic ways of ruling can be easily criticized using the Qur’an as a base. Arguments could be made that much of the higher standard of living in the West comes to the detriment of these people (citizens of these countries), so wanting to be on the other end of that stick isn’t an irrational decision by any stretch.
At the end of the day, religion is secondary to survival, and in lesser-actualized cultures is really only useful to whatever extent it enables survival - or at least the hope of it.
On your main point though, I’m so past the labels of racist and xenophobe. A person’s personality is too complex for one “negative” trait to somehow invalidate the rest. In my view, the real struggle of blacks is to provide enough value to the world where racism (which, in reality, serves the aforementioned purpose of religion) becomes secondary - for other groups - to benefiting from that value.
Also, Rashunda Tramble, a black blogger that currently lives in Switzerland has some words on this.
http://www.rashundatramble.com/2007/09/08/speaking-out-in-switzerland-a-foreign-concept/
I’m from the BBC World Service, radio, and we would like to have a debate on racism in Switzerland today. We’d like to hear immigrants as well as Swiss nationals. Send me an email if you’d like to take part.
Hope I can hear from you soon. Leonardo
phone number: + 44 20 85761720.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/europe/6992670.stm
A article on the strictness of Swiss Nationalization laws.
I have no issue with it and think it is quite fair.
Racism, once again has nothing to do with it. It is there home, and if they don’t want someone to be a citizen for whatever reason it is their right.
Looks like you linked to the wrong article:
Deleted because it was to a known hate group…which I do not promote or allow, sorry about that, thanks for the warning. Moderator
I don’t know if I would call it fair - success in many cases would seem to depend on using social and political acumen that most people don’t have - but being fair isn’t a requirement in my book. I agree, it’s their country, and they can set whatever requirements they want.
Many non-European countries have regulations governing citizenship much more stringent than many European countries. Many East African countries booted out their South Asian populations in the 70s. Most people who reside in Kuwait are not citizens of that country and can’t be, even though their families have resided there for generations. There are other examples. Rarely though do we call such behavior from these societies racist or even xenophobic.
g-man:
UAE is the same, most of the people there are not citizens and never will be. This is why I say that there is a double standard, and I believe it is due to Europe’s wealth everyone wants to come to the West because it is rich and they do all kinds of mental gymnastics to explain why they should be able to settle there and do what they want (even countries that had no colonies like Switzerland) however this does not work the other way around.
Swiss people are perfectly entitled to kick out whoever they so choose from their country! They must however realise that goes for other countries also! The double standard I realise about swiss people is that they can’t understand why other nations don’t want them around and feel peaved and rejected.
Whenthey are needy they’re must have some of yours immediately and urgently but when you’re needy they refuse!
I am Swiss, and I don’t agree with you and with most comments. In fact, Swiss society is like all western societies regarding crime rate, it is not related to foreigners, but life becomes more and more difficult for all, poverty and the solitude are the main reasons, for foreigners or citizens. Swiss people are not racist but they are manipulated by ” Asshole Stupid Selfish Politicians ”, yes the Swiss Politiciants are the main problem. Before 2004, crime rate was not high, why ? in 2004 Switzerland made agreements with EU regarding the employment market, the agreement allowed the EU citizens to work in Switzerland without any restrictions and the same for Swiss citizens enabeled them to work in EU countries. After the agreement many sectors as banks don’t employ anyone who is not Swiss or Eu citizen. Thus, the non-EU foreigners became in bad situations, so poorer. Many Swiss became more aware that these agreements were not in their interests, for example a French citizen comes to work in Switzerland, he accepts a low salary because life in France is not expensive like Switzerland, so even Swiss people are losing their jobs and their high salaries because of the large amount of EU citizens workers in Switzerland. Why the hell I will work in France ??? French like to work in Switzerland because they get higher salaries, but for me as Swiss I wont accept working for lower salaries, what I wanna say ” these agreements with EU are bullshit ” !!! the situation became worse and those fucking shit politicians are manipulating people, they talk about foreigners and refugees who are not ” the main problem ” , for example an Egyptian citizen will not compete a Swiss citizen for a job, because the Egyptian is not qualified as he received his education in Egypt ( which is a different country with a different education system ).
Swiss people have the right to be racist if they choose to be , but at the sametime , they don’t deserve anymore to be called a democratic tolerent nation, and should be classified with the retarded rich countries like Saudi Arabia , Qatar ..etc because they would not be very different . Moreover, they don’t deserve to keep all those international organisations like the UN in their country because it will be contradictory and paradoxical.
I suggest to relocate all the international organisations in Switzerland, they must be in a tolerent democratic country, like my country Canada, Canada will never be racist and we welcome foreigners from all ethnicities
Hey Sofia, I wanna just tell you ” you’re really retarded ” !!!