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468 Anssi Halmesvirta Kari Drawing the Blacks The task at hand, in this chapter, is to disentangle the messages in Karis caricatures of the Blacks! to reveal how far criticism of “sovereignly democratic” political culture of Finland could go during the period under scrutiny.? Kari made Finnish authorities look ridiculous in showing the way they appeared to deal with specific groups of Blacks. One conspicuous group towards whom official Finland was supposed to be friendly was the Somalis who arrived in the country at the end of the 1980s, fleeing a continuous internal warfare that existed in Somaliland. There were at times also strong and not entirely unfounded suspicions about the rationale of so-called financial help to developing countries like Tanzania, where the money appeared to be used for other than civilian purposes.’ All such help was pure waste to Kari, who was ideologically a die-hard patriot. He defended such values, dear to the man-on-the-street Finn, as hard work, responsibility, trustworthiness, and truthfulness. He insinuated in the caricatures that asylum-seeking Blacks were insidious-and-deceiving Others, concealing their true motives, blatantly lying, or leaving much unsaid. They were no fools or simpletons for they seemed to know how to cheat the credulous and naive Finnish officials. Kari caricatured these asylum seekers in such a way that the readership could interpret the messages as true—the opposite of the official truth. What follows is a selection of the most representative caricatures. Explanation of the Figures Figure 1 Here one can see Finnish naiveté and credulousness described. The scene is from the reception office for the asylum seekers. The office lady confronts a Somali woman who is telling her story of why she left her home: “An angry wolf hunted me and I had to flee in a chariot made of pumpkin and drawn by mice.” The office lady starts crying and says: “Asylum granted.” Figure 2 Two African militiamen discuss. Another one says: “Instead of cutting aid to the developing countries, the Finns cut their defence budget—now we do not have to cut ours.” There were some educated left-leaning and green intellectuals in Finland who found Kari’s caricatures of Blacks insulting and offensive, and the chairman of ' Kari himself did not use the term Black/Blacks, he drew “Blacks” and did not have to name them. At the time his readers would often call Africans either, pejoratively, Negroes (neekeri) or, more neutrally, Blacks (mustat). The term Black is used here neutrally to resemble convention of the epoch. ? Sovereignly means here that according to the Finnish democratic form of government the president had considerable powers, e.g. he could dismiss the Parliament and order new elections. > There were widespread but uncorroborated suspicions that the money was used for corrupt purposes and for buying weapons. This kind of material was very attractive to caricaturists.
