Thursday 7 April 2016

Helkama White Power

Being politically correct really isn't something that Finnish bother much with. We would say that the Finnish are neither more nor less prejudiced or ignorant than anyone else, we simple bother less to use terms that are certain to not offend anyone. That said, should you be offended by something a Finnish person has said you don't have to hesitate telling her or him so. He or she will not have said it to hurt you, will have a very pragmatic attitude towards it all, will apologise and stop using the word. This is generally speaking of course, there is sexism, racism and homophobia in Finland, just as in most, if not all, countries. (So maybe we can skip the whole discussion about prejudice in Finland here. This is, after all, a bicycle blog.)

Probably, however, it wasn't a sod it-attitude towards political correctness that caused the Finnish bicycle brand Helkama to name one of their models...

(We borrowed this picture from the album "Welcome to Finland" on imgur. Hope that's OK!)

Most likely it was a case of the marketing department not being really aware of what this term could mean. This model came in the early 1990's, a time when a negligible share of the people in Finland were foreigners and when the internet was pretty much unheard of. Still... Wow.

Ride safe!

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