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 
\\ I was simply unprepared for the endless barrage of racist jokes, comments, news items, etc.
On Fox News or on liberal channels too?
I felt the last paragraph “When I was a little Soviet child…” was especially powerful.
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“On Fox News or on liberal channels too?”
– It wasn’t on television, which I didn’t even watch for the first few years in the US. It was the people around me.
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“I felt the last paragraph “When I was a little Soviet child…” was especially powerful.”
– I believe that my writing deserves an even wider audience. Not that I’m going to do anything about it. 🙂
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And so it goes.
A click of the mouse will bring up the rap sheet of St. Trayvon Of Skittles. Another, the autopsy reports that conclusively refute the claims of supposed eye-witnesses to the Brown ‘murder’. Or the video where, 30 minutes before his demise, of your ‘victim’ as he man handled a shop keeper half his size before he stole some cigars from him. Such is the deliberate state of wilful ignorance and stupidity of the political left these days. They would rather crucify a cop for doing his job than punishing dangerous offenders. Most of us would meet your opinion about this with suppressed snorts of derisive laughter, Clarissa; I am beginning to think you are simply too silly to be taken seriously.
Beware children. There is this charming fella that was also a great apologist for black crime:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/12/black_crime_claims_life_of_apologist_for_black_crime.html
What you don’t know – or refuse to admit – can hurt you. I personally take no real pleasure in the death of this idiot – I just see it as a fool choosing his fate with Darwin and Murphy just as Rachael Corrie did – with darkly comic results. Hey – will you academic intellectuals protest the murder of one of your own at the hands of racist blacks?
Didn’t think so.
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And here is an illustration of everything I’m saying. You will say that this is a deranged person. True but there are many sane ones who choose to believe this garbage.
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Reasonable people can disagree on the outcome of court cases, I suppose. But the *glee* that these people exhibit over the death of black people completely gives the game away.
Like, if I read about some Aryan Nation guy being killed by police fire, it would never occur to me to go to stormfront.org forums and type ‘Hahaha, your boy got killed! How about them apples!’
Remember the videos of people installing equipment in their trucks that makes them spew even more smoke? The only logic behind it is that liberals don’t like it, ergo it must be good. Talk about being emotional.
LIBERALS! FEMINAZIS! HIPPIES! PC POLICE! THE GAYS! THE COLOREDS!
No wonder they’re deranged. So many monsters to fight.
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Glenfilthie’s response perfectly showcases the deep pathology of American racism. Trayvon Martin was a) unarmed and b) a minor. Michael Brown was also unarmed and quite young. Neither of these young men committed crimes that warranted execution without trial. The spectacle of an unarmed dead (black) teenager should make us recoil in horror and question our justice system and yet many people instead feel compelled to investigate the characters, peccadillos, and flaws of the dead. This compulsion is fundamentally racist. Unarmed people don’t deserve to die. Period. It doesn’t matter if they are “thugs,” rude, thieves, or marijuana smokers. We seem to understand that unarmed people don’t deserve to die without trial when it comes to white people. James Holmes committed one of the most heinous crimes in recent American collective memory; yet somehow officers were able to resist the impulse to shoot or throttle his (white) body.
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“James Holmes committed one of the most heinous crimes in recent American collective memory; yet somehow officers were able to resist the impulse to shoot or throttle his (white) body.”
– Exactly. Serial killers like Ted Bundy and Co manage to get brought to trial without suffering any harm, stand trial, and receive punishment under the law. In the meanwhile, there is such a hue and cry about a teenager shoplifting cigarillos at a convenience store that my only conclusion is that people have lost the use of their mental faculties. I don’t know how to participate in the dialogues such as the following:
“He is a thug. He stole a cigar!”
“He is dead. Death is not a fitting punishment for that action.”
“But haven’t you heard? He is a thug. He stole a cigar!!!!!”
I don’t understand what is going on in people heads. I don’t understand why we are discussing these cigarillos like they actually matter in the story of Michael Brown’s death. I think that the need to discuss the cigarillos in this context is insane. I think that the cigarillos are as relevant to the story as the color of Michael’s shoelaces. And I don’t discount the possibility that the color of his shoelaces is actually meaningful to some people and explains the need to kill Michael.
I’m on my way to the vigil in the memory of Michael Brown.
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Same goes for the 12 year old boy who was shot to death by police in Cleveland. Police told a story contradicted by video evidence; the boy was given no first aid or medical attention for close to four minutes. And people have been trying to dig up dirt on his parents. Because if his parents are bad, it means his shooting isn’t so bad (meantime, more information has also emerged about the history of the cop who shot him… the guy shouldn’t have been a cop and had access to firearms).
Same goes for Eric Garner. Nonviolent, unarmed, taken down by a police officer in a chokehold (an illegal move according to NYPD policy) for questioning why he was getting arrested, and the police officer has a history of brutality lawsuits. Coroner rules the death a homicide. No indictment. Crime wasn’t violent, he posed no danger, but he’s portrayed as a thug for multiple infractions selling loose cigarettes, so it’s ok.
It’s definitely part of a wider diseased culture in a number of ways. There’s the racism. There’s also the militarization of police and strange reluctance to question what they do. (For instance, a recent case in Detroit that ended on a mistrial for the cop involved a no-knock, middle of the night SWAT team raid into the wrong house… in which the cops threw a flashbang through a window and almost immediately shot and killed a 7 year old girl who was sleeping on the sofa with her grandmother.)
There’s also a lack of thoughtful empathy – when police brutalize people who aren’t white, or if they go after mentally ill people, or hearing impaired people, or homeless or very poor people, there’s often an attitude of, “oh, it’s only THOSE people.” There’s a weird belief that the system works just fine and with perfect rationality, and if only the victims of brutality could be perfect in looks, demeanor, behavior and every other respect, then they wouldn’t get brutalized…
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I have had a troll attacking me about racism, which I do not have, by which I can gauge that racism is still a profound problem in the society he comes from.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoYE0ndfplo
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—-“There’s also a lack of thoughtful empathy – when police brutalize people who aren’t white, or if they go after mentally ill people, or hearing impaired people, or homeless or very poor people, there’s often an attitude of, “oh, it’s only THOSE people.” There’s a weird belief that the system works just fine and with perfect rationality, and if only the victims of brutality could be perfect in looks, demeanor, behavior and every other respect, then they wouldn’t get brutalized…”
The structure of narcissism and delusion is as follows:
http://unsanesafe.blogspot.com/2014/12/acceptance-is-first-step-to-true.html
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Thanks for sharing the link. Some of my delusions left me after a kind of break down (in which I drove myself into the ground because I couldn’t keep going with the kind of life I was living and the beliefs I had). I was targeted for abuse for years growing up, and I had embraced ideas about perfection to a great extent – particularly in terms of my own behavior, being deeply critical of myself and convinced that if only I could be more perfect things would be fine and I wouldn’t be abused. And if only other people and other things could be more perfect, everything would be fine. This was a perverse way of protecting myself and giving myself a feeling of control, though it was full of pretenses and damaging to myself.
And I sputtered along like this for years and years, until a few years ago I couldn’t take it any more, mentally and also to some extent physically, and just shut down. This was (and still is) both a terrifying experience but also a relief in some important ways and (slowly, slowly, in an unfolding way) a continuous eye-opening experience. I have a lot more uncertainty in my life now but also a greater sense of self-possession. So onwards into uncertainty, but with less pretense and also with much less guilt (that was one of the key reasons the breaking down felt like relief – because since then, the guilt that seemed like a permanent dominant part of my soul and self-regard has been diminishing).
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Very interesting. That follows the pattern of shamanic initiation, although everything is to DEGREES. 🙂
295
The genius of the heart, as that great hidden presence possesses it, the tempter-god and born pied piper of the conscience, whose voice knows how to climb down into the underworld of every soul, who does not say a word or cast a glance in which there does not lie some concern with and trace of temptation, whose mastery includes the fact that he understands how to seem – and not what he is, but what for those who follow him is one more compulsion to press themselves always closer to him, to follow him ever more inwardly and fundamentally: – that genius of the heart, who makes all noise and self-satisfaction fall silent and teaches it to listen, who smooths out the rough souls and gives them a new desire to taste, – to lie still as a mirror so that the deep heaven reflects itself in them -; the genius of the heart who teaches the foolish and over-hasty hand to hesitate and reach out more delicately; who senses the hidden and forgotten treasure, the drop of goodness and sweet spirituality under the thick cloudy ice and is a divining rod for every grain of gold which has lain buried for a long time in a dungeon crammed with mud and sand; the genius of the heart, at whose touch everyone goes forward richer, not divinely gifted and surprised, not as if delighted and oppressed with strange, fine things, but richer in his own self, newer to himself than previously, broken open, blown upon and sounded out by a thawing wind, more uncertain perhaps, more tender, more fragile, more broken, but full of hopes which as yet have no names, full of new will and flowing, full of new dissatisfactions and opposing currents . . . But what am I doing, my friends? Whom am I speaking to you about? Have I forgotten myself so much that I have not once named him to you? It could be that you have already guessed for yourself who this dubious spirit and god is who wants to be praised in such a way. For just as things go with anyone who from the time he walked on childish legs has always been on the move and through alien territory, so many strange and not un-dangerous spirits have crossed my path, too, above all the one I have just been speaking about, who has come again and again, namely, no less a spirit than the god Dionysus, that enormously ambiguous and tempter god, to whom in earlier times, as you know, I offered up my first work, in all secrecy and reverence – as the last person, so I thought, who had offered a sacrifice to him: for I found no one who understood what I was doing then.5 Meanwhile I learned a great deal, much too much, about the philosophy of this god, and, as mentioned, from mouth to mouth – I, the last disciple and initiate of the god Dionysus: and I might well at last begin to give you, my friends, a little taste of this philosophy, as much as I am permitted? In a hushed voice, as is reasonable: for this concerns a number of things which are secret, new, strange, odd, mysterious. Even the fact that Dionysus is a philosopher and that the gods also carry on philosophy seems to me a novelty which is not harmless and which perhaps might excite mistrust precisely among philosophers – among you, my friends it has less against it, although it could be that it comes too late and not at the right moment: for people have revealed to me that nowadays you are not happy to believe in god and gods. Also perhaps the fact that in my explanation I must proceed with more candour than is always pleasing to the strict habits of your ears? Certainly the god under discussion went further, very much further, in conversations like this and was always several steps ahead of me . . . in fact, if it were permitted, I would, following human practices, attach to him beautifully solemn names of splendour and virtue; I would have to provide a great deal of praise for his courage as an explorer and discoverer, for his daring honesty, truthfulness, and love of wisdom. But such a god has no idea how to begin with all this venerable rubbish and pageantry. “Keep that,” he would say, “for yourself and people like you and anyone else who needs it! I have no reason to decorate my nakedness!” – Do people sense that this type of divinity and philosopher perhaps lacks shame? He said it this way once, “In some circumstances, I love human beings” – and in saying that, he was alluding to Ariadne, who was present – “for me a human being is a pleasant, brave, inventive animal which has no equal on earth; it finds the right path even in every labyrinth. I like him: I often reflect how I could bring him further forwards and make him stronger, more evil, and more profound than he is.” – “Stronger, more evil, and more profound?” I asked shocked. “Yes,” he said once more, “stronger, more evil, and more profound, also more beautiful” – and with that the tempter god smiled with his halcyon smile, as if he had just uttered an enchanting compliment We can see here also that it is not just shame this divinity lacks -; and there are in general good reasons to suppose that in some things the gods collectively could learn from us human beings. We human beings are – more human. . .
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I cut and pasted part of this excerpt into Google to find out the author – it’s quite beautifully written, though will require more re-readings and broader readings for me to understand it with any depth. I’ve never studied Nietzsche. Is there a particular approach to him you recommend, for instance, a certain order in which to read his books as one builds on another? Or other philosophers to study before reading his books?
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“I cut and pasted part of this excerpt into Google to find out the author – it’s quite beautifully written, though will require more re-readings and broader readings for me to understand it with any depth. I’ve never studied Nietzsche. Is there a particular approach to him you recommend, for instance, a certain order in which to read his books as one builds on another? Or other philosophers to study before reading his books?”
I think the key to understanding Nietzsche is through Bataille’s statement,
“Let no one doubt for an instant! One has truly not heard a single word of
Nietzsche’s unless one has lived this signal dissolution in totality; without it,
this philosophy is a mere labyrinth of contradictions, and worse; the pretext for lying by omission (if, like the fascists, one isolates passages for purposes which negate the rest of the work).”
In other words, he is speaking of shamanic dissolution, loss of knowledge and confusion about everything as being the *starting point* for anyone embarking on a Nietzschean project. One has to be willing to be led by the nose, by the God Dionysus, which means learning lessons from one’s own experiences of destruction. Nietzschean philosophy is not an ideology but a process of self-learning, through starting from scratch.
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Dear Clarissa,
I have read and re-read your comments and would like to express dissent to your observation that the United States is “scuzzy and degraded” because of racism. I am a 66 year old white male, if that matters, and have lived here most of my life, often in the deep South, and have seen a lot. I think our country, today, has much less racism and bigotry than any other diverse country in the world that you can name. Our country, whose population is composed of only 13% blacks, chose a black president as the leader of our country, twice, by a majority, a pretty clear sign that this is not a racist country. I, by the way, did not vote for him either time, and in fact think he has been a bad president. Does that make me racist? I am thinking I may vote for Dr. Carlson–also a black–if he runs for president. Does that redeem me? Is it possible that some Americans make decisions based on things other than skin color. Our once most adored politician was black, our most popular athletes are often black, our most popular Hollywood stars are often blacks, I cannot remember a single soul who has expressed a racist comment in my presence, so my world is not filled with “scuzzy and degrading” racism that you talk about, and I have spent a lot of time in almost every state in the country. You must live in a very bad place where I have not been, but that is not the majority of America. Would you be willing to consider whether Officer Wilson would have pulled the trigger even if Michael Brown were a white man who had fought for the officer’s gun? Is it possible that the event was a matter of judgment, good or bad, that was not dictated by race? Yes, some racism exists here and everywhere, but to disparage our country as “scuzzy” shows lack of appreciation of what the vast majority of Americans stand for. I am sorry your personal experience has not been more uplifting.
Your friend,
Tom
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