A great question from Evelina Anville:
This is about the USSR specifically– but more about your experience living in multiple countries. Is the racism in the United States particularly bad? I have travelled quite a bit but only lived in this country and it seems to me that –while other countries certainly have their problems when it comes to race relations– there is something particularly violent and institutionalized about American racism. For instance, I don’t read or hear about police officers in other (developed) countries who shoot or choke unarmed citizens. But perhaps it’s because I’m ill informed. But this is a long way of saying: what’s your experience of racism living in other countries?
This is a very good, important question.
When I first moved to the US from Canada in 2003, I experienced a huge culture shock that was enormously higher than the shock I experienced when moving to Canada from Ukraine. I had major depression for a long time, it was just bad. Racism was one of the main reasons for this shock. I had been laboring under the mistaken belief that Canada* and the US were very similar, so I was simply unprepared for the endless barrage of racist jokes, comments, news items, etc. I just didn’t know how to inscribe myself into all this. I have this insistent feeling that when the white people around me see a black person, they don’t see who I’m seeing. I have a feeling they see something – not even somebody, but something – else.
I never feel like such a total and absolute alien as I do after events like the murders of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. I don’t understand other people, I don’t get the tone of the discussion. It’s like they speak a language I don’t understand! And please don’t roll out the “not everybody” argument. No, not everybody but in the country of the US’s history and demography, way too many. Racism is like a poison that seeps into everything and makes everything scuzzy and degraded. And I see barely any awareness of that.
Ukrainian people are very racist. But this is a country with a mono-racial population where everybody looks like me. Their racism is about people and things they see on TV. It’s still racism, it’s still bad but it isn’t about denying your own history, your own past, present and future. It isn’t about killing your neighbor. It isn’t about cheering the killing of your neighbor.
When I was a little Soviet child, I would pray to God every night, thanking him for sparing me the horrible fate of being born in the USA where racists lynched black kids. When I got older, I decided that was all stupid Soviet propaganda and laughed at my childish beliefs. I was thinking about this today, as I stood at the vigil in memory of Michael Brown.
* The only part of Canada I knew was Quebec.
P.S. What I dig about this blog is that any discussion leads to a variety of interesting and often unexpected places. Thank you, my friends, for asking questions and reading the answers.
Clarissa's Blog 
Leave a comment