commentary to student safety in St Petersburg

[Dustin Hosseini]

And there you have it:  a typical view that if a person doesn't accept the
evidence that is presented, that means that that person is completely wrong.
 You say that it is an extremely dangerous place based on your silly stats,
while I am saying that is simply not the case.  Statistics can be skewed,
and you yourself know and understand that.  

Amarilis Lugo de Fabritz's hilarious anecdote is a wonderful example that
things can and do go right.  And it should definitely be included in an
info-packet for students.

Sorry, Mrs. or Ms. Berdy, but you yourself have misread some of the postings.  

Some people have implied that they would not send students of color to
Russia or have stated openly that they would not go to Russia if they were
students of color.  

A good friend of mine, who is Korean spent nearly 10 years of her life in
Russia studying, living, and working.  She experienced, in her own words, no
racism.  However, because she did not become a statistic, I suppose her
'good experience' is irrelevant.  Again, we often overlook the positive
things that happen, and focus only on the negative bits.

All studies have a bias, you must admit that.  Who's ever done a study that
focused on the good?  Especially when it comes to racism and LGBT rights in
Russia?   

I refute one the evidence of the one Moscow study on race by calling for
more broader ones be done.  What is more, the study done on the LGBT
community, in my own view, did not appear to ask the right questions of
those studied, nor did it give an adequate context of those surveyed. 

I believe that in any one group of people, even within the Slavist group,
there will always be a group who are anti-X, where X is what they are
studying.  

Some people learn because they appreciate Russia and its culture, etc.,
while others learn about Russia because it was/is 'an enemy' to their own
culture.  Some here are bound to be Russophobes.  

If there can exist a self-loathing gay who is against gay rights, then there
certainly can exist a scholar who devotes their life to learning about
Russia, but at the same time is a Russophobe, and anti-Russia. 

Perhaps we should query some of the students who are studying Arabic at the
moment why they decided to pursue their studies?  I don't think that the
majority of those have started learning Arabic within the last 5 years
because they were truly interested in Arab or Muslim culture and/or
literaturenn.


On Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:10:14 +0300, Michele A. Berdy <maberdy at GMAIL.COM> wrote:

>Mr Hosseini writes:
>
>> Why is it your place to tell them that they, students of color, should
>> fear
>> Russia?  Perhaps you have some other agenda against Russia itself?
>
>If Mr Hosseini would actually read the information on the many links, he'd
>see evidence of violence against people of color, Asians, and dark-skinned
>people. If he read the postings, he'd see that no one is telling students to
>fear Russia. So all that is left is our "agenda against Russia itself." Does
>it seem likely to a group of Slavists who have dedicated their life's work
>to Russia would have an agenda against Russia?
>
>That's it for me. No point discussing this with Mr Hosseini. On the other
>hand, I've learned a tremendous amount from the other posters. Excellent
>links and information. If all this information was pooled, it would make a
>very useful guidebook for students and other travelers.
>
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