Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 7 – Russians often
insist that there is no racism in Russia because Russians do not discriminate
against Blacks, but in many ways, St. Petersburg ethnographer Sergy Abashin
says, there exists in Russia “widespread racism toward other, more numerous groups
who are defined as ‘alien’” or “non-Slav.
The European University professor
says that becomes obvious if one considers the frequent declaration by
apartment owners that they will rent “only to Slavs.” “How is this to be interpreted?” he asks. “Is
this racism or not? Perhaps it is ‘just’ xenophobia” although it isn’t clear
that that is better than racism (liberal.ru/migration/7604).
Russians who insert such
restrictions in advertising apartments to let say that what they are doing is “rational”
because “’non-Slavs’ with high probability according to real statistics or
invented ones create a mass of problems” in how they maintain where they live.
That might sound OK to some, but in fact it reduces all “non-Slavs” to the
ranks of “bearers of dirt and disorder.”
“The very word ‘Slav’ indicates, of
course, indicates not that the individual speaks one or another Slavic language.
It points to above all someone’s looks, ‘an individual who is like a Slav,’
that is, ‘a white man.’” And one knows that is the case for most who rent
apartments because they would willingness rent them to an English or French
citizen living in Russia.
It turns out, the ethnographer says,
that “in this case, behind the word ‘Slav’ is conealed not only a certain
imagined race but an image of being cultured as well,” about how those being
excluded are somehow inherently different than those who are treated as “our
own” because of how they look – and that is, at its base, racism.
This approach isn’t restricted to
real estate transactions, Abashin continues. Those who look “non-Slav” are more
likely to be singled out by police checking for tickets on a bus or train and
by those involved with immigrants in general. Those who look like “Slavs” will
pass; those who don’t, wont. And these things too are a manifestation of
racism.
“Of course,” he continues, “to
designate all social conflicts, asymmetries, and hierarchies where there is an ‘us-them’
division as racism would be incorrect;
there exist many ways of assembling the image of ‘the alien’ and ‘the incorrect’
via class, ethnic, tribal, regional and religious characteristics.”
But all these are varieties of
xenophobia, and many of them have become so widespread and accepted that few
Russians see them as problems or as racist.
But when it becomes clear as it often is that people are treated
differently only because of how they look and what their looks are supposed to
indicate, then racism exists.
“’We are not racists but …’ is the
typical formula of such racist denial of racism,” Abashin says. More that that,
it sometimes happens that those who are victims of racism do not recognize it
as such or even practice the same thing in relation to others. Each group can identify others as “alien” by
their looks.
According to the St. Petersburg
scholar, “the reluctance to recognize racism in Russia, the reluctance to
recognize any practices as racist, and the reluctance to see in this racism a
problem are the most important symptom of the abnormal state of our society,
its fractured quality, and its decay.”
Racism is no longer a personal problem
of a few Russians then; it is an institutional one. And it can only be addressed
successfully if Russian recognize rather than deny that there is racism in
Russia and that it is something that must be fought rather than swept under the
rug, Abashin concludes.
Abashin does not address one reason why the amount of racism in Russia may in fact be increasing. The Putin regime, in seeking to promote a single identity, has played down nationality as an identifier, preferring instead to boost the broader Slavic identity. That has the effect in many cases of making racist assessments more likely not less.
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