Meet 15 and the strange new phenomenon, a girlfriend. Isn't he handsome? (Ok, she's nice too, but he's *my kid*)
Some random passer-by had called him, my child, a "faux-artsy young drug addict". Out of all these attributes, "young" is accurate. Not everyone is used to kids dressing in black (after all, it's been fashionable only for, um, thirty - fifty years), and bigots will be bigots.
Let me hereby announce my personal refusal to being a part of the bigoted and racist society the Western world seems to be deteriorating into. I read an article a couple of days ago by a very admirable Finnish Palestinian woman, Umayya Abu-Hanna, who is minority cultures coordinator at the Finnish Art Museum, a columnist, an author, and previously an elected Green Party representative in the Helsinki City Council, amongst other things. She has had some of her work-related email to the UK randomly filtered out - ostensibly because some instances are not allowing email from people with the syllable Abu in their name. What next? Wear a badge to show your ethnicity, at all times, so people can keep an eye on you?
Detestable.
Friday, September 15, 2006
15, with girlfriend
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3 comments:
"She has had some of her work-related email to the UK randomly filtered out - ostensibly because some instances are not allowing email from people with the syllable Abu in their name."
Firstly -- Abu is two syllables, not one :)
Secondly, you're a bit short on detail. What do you actually mean by her email to the UK being filtered out? Do you mean email she's sent to the UK hasn't reached the recipient? As you say "ostensibly" (I had to look it up -- "appearing as such but not necessarily so"), on what basis do you make this claim? I take it the intended recipient hasn't actually confirmed it's because their system is set-up to filter out emails based on the sender's name? If not, then you're surely you're jumping to conclusions, which doesn't help. (It may of course be some badly configured anti-spam software.)
Do you have a link to the article? Kiitoksia!
I see a handsome, probably arty (but certainly nothing faux) young man, I would be so proud if he were mine! I would've been outraged too at this passer-by's comment... mmm, the possibility of filtered emails because of a name does concern me . . .
Hei des, thank you for your interest. I couldn't add the link to the column in HS as they archive their material within two days of publication, after which one has to pay to read. http://www.hs.fi/haku/?kaikkiSanat=umayya+abu-hanna comes up with some related article/column, but as I don't pay, I can't read more than the opening sentence of it. My blog entry was my reaction to her piece, of which I paraphrased the central gist. Her column is only shortish, so she did not go into the details of how she found out/came strongly to suspect her email was being filtered out (yes, I mean not reaching the recipient). Umayya Abu-Hanna is a HS columnist so I suggest for a more detailed account of her experience, you might want to consider emailing her directly. I was willing to take it at face value - I have followed her career on various fronts and do not think she would invent such a claim. And finally, yes, Abu is indeed two syllables, the word I should have used was of course "prefix". Thank you for pointing this out.
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