Have to pitch in here as I disagree with most of the replies you've had so far. Sadly I find in my experience such replies typical of replies given in Finland to this issue. My apologies for the length of my reply - "If I had had more time I would have written less".
There used to be a time when West Indians would say there was no such thing as a gay black man. It's a bit like that here in Finland. Denial here is more a badge of honour than a problem. Sometimes it is excused as a byproductof "pragmatism". Often it's just an excuse. So it is that older Finns consider themselves, en masse, to be above racism, while younger Finns imagine themselves a new breed, free of such things.
But xenophobia, the fear of things seen as foreign or strange, imo describes a universal human characteristic, something quite natural but gone mad. The problem comes when this fear is exploited for political ends. As Goebbels noted, the only way to get a farmer to go to war, when the best he could hope for is to return to his farm alive, is to convince him there is some external threat. Racism, the idea that some people are inherently less human that "ourselves", serves to unify people by encouraging them to see "strangeness" itself as the threat. This provides an easy answer. It's simple and so readily understood and it obscures the real issues, granting the politician promoting it public acclaim and .... power!
In the UK, mass immigration was initiated after WW2 directly by the UK government in order to staff especially the public transport sectors. This didn't stop politicians later accusing those same immigrants of "stealing British jobs". This same process has been followed by Finnish politicians: reaching abroad for workers for the health service, for berry picking, and so on, while at the same time blaming those immigrants for Finland's economic troubles.
The stumbling block in Finland is that Finns refuse to recognise there is a problem. "We're nervous..", "We don't understand..", "We want our traditions.." etc., are accepted without further question as justification for racist behaviours. As there is no real comprehension of racism the challenge of addressing it is not faced.
The leader of PerusSuomalainen (PS), an ethno-nationalist party that keeps denying it, is now the Finnish minister for defence/foreign affairs (?!?!) and was deputy prime minister. For me that is a pretty good, and very worrying summary of the situation here. In Finland
perhaps racism has to some extent gone back into the closet as after PS success in the elections people got to see their "basic" quality in action. Support for the Soldiers of Odin has dwindled and there was some decent opposition to them, from women at least. TV5 has been broadcasting a Finnish film about the immigrant experience of Finland. It's called "Muutoksii"
http://classic.telkku.com/program/show/2016062321209. Unfortunately the film is so stark and emotionally brutal, to the point of numb carelessness, that few will have the stomach to endure watching it! Signs of hope? On the other side of the North Sea, UKIP, the British equivalent of PS, was also swept to success in the Brexit poll yesterday by racism. The outcome of that is already, proving catastrophic, as was universally forecast. Will Finland learn anything from this?
Racism is understandable not excusable, and while Finns don't find the courage to look in the mirror and accept their human frailties, it will increase. I don't know if Finland is worse than the UK but it certainly feels like it. I worked in inner city areas in the UK but never even heard of the sort of complacent "routine racism" I have in Finland. If not actually embraced, racism is tolerated here. TV advertisements show here that would not be allowed in the UK, but their racial stereotypes are considered amusing here, like the Black and White Minstrels were in 1960's Britain.
We just have to speak out hope this encourages others to also speak out. This is what has always driven humanitarian change, but doing so in the intensely private world of Finland is hard.
