Mothers of Immigrant Background Children Struggle in Educating their Children to Survive Acts of Racial Violence

This paper examines the difficulties and struggle to address systemic racism, subjugation and mis/ under/ nonrepresentation from the point of view of racialised victims. In two focus groups with mothers of children with an immigrant background in Finland, we use selected local racist rants as a starting point to provoke parents (mothers) to discuss how they would react to such racial violence and how they would educate their children to respond and react to examples of racial violence. Using critical discourse analysis (CDA) the paper identifies and discusses the strategies employed by these mothers to deal with racism. The paper also highlights how these strategies show a paradox in which there is a perception of powerlessness and helplessness that simultaneously exist side by side with an undying hope for a better future. The mothers’ united call for their children to struggle on and not to lose their self-esteem in the face of racism, at schools or out of school, underlines their hope for a better world.