commentary to student safety in St Petersburg

[Olga Meerson]

Dearest Leigh Burns,
Thank you for your letter to our whole list: it sounds encouraging to me as a teacher and adviser to my own students of color. It is, however, important to remember that Russian racism has a different nature from American, because of the relative differences in their histories. Oddly, it is closer to blacks' prejudices against the whites than the other way. American Suprematists hate those they have exploited. Russians feel wronged and exploited themselves, and it is always by the Other, not by themselves. In our, Russian minds, alas, there is always someone else to blame for the ordeals of the long-suffering Russian people! As a rule, any visually recognizable minority risks being that external oppressor or "corrupter". For very long stretches of Russian history, these were the Jews (another stretch may come any time soon); intermittently, Poles (not different racially but differing in their speech and behavior), foreigners of one origin or another, peoples conquered by the!
  e!
mpire (e.g., anyone from the Caucasus or Crimea, with an added tint of historical-political vengeance towards the Tatars), etc. In the Soviet period, Russian racism towards people of color was added or at times prompted by the fact that the Soviet authorities so often capitalized on their "brotherly aid for the countries of the Third World" (never mind that that was a pretext for colonization!), at the expense of the subhuman conditions of their own citizens. 
Yes, you have known all sorts of racism expressions in your own country, but it is important to be culture-specific here. There is a special danger in the aggression of those who want to scape-goat, and sincerely believe they have a right to do so. Apart from the racism of the oppressors, there is also the racism of the oppressed. In America, by the way, this spiritual plague may affect people of all skin colors -- let us not delude ourselves about that point. I often encountered prejudice against myself in the African American community here because of my own skin color, as someone EXPECTED to be prejudiced against anyone black, or brown. I am not racist at all, but what can I do if people treat me as if I were? I am not blaming them for this prejudice--there is fear and painful experience behind it. All I am doing is drawing a parallel between this experience and that of Russians, in their own xenophobia. They do believe there is some external oppressor behind all their im!
 me!
nse sorrows. Oddly enough, the cultural context for their racism is similar to, say, colored people's prejudices against anyone white, not the other way around. They EXPECT to be disliked or humiliated themselves, because inwardly, they don't believe in their own worth and dignity. This expectation is one of the most powerful forms of prejudice still plaguing our world, not merely in Russia. It is common to people (or even peoples) who feel they are not free but slaves, and it takes love and a lot of personal interaction, not merely fights for basic human rights, to uproot it.  This is just by the way of a cultural briefing of sorts, not as a justification for any of that. But this explanation may show you why I felt inspired by your decision to still go among Russians. Thank you.
Olga Meerson    

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