International Blog Against Racism Week: Central European perspective

[winter]

ibarw is on again, and after the recent kerfuffle (or does anyone remember it in the wake of the Boldthrough?), I've been thinking along the same lines.

One issue I often see in racism discussions is the Europe/America divide. Racism in America is something special, yes, but I think it's mostly because of how much it's been fought against and for, there. I wonder if it wasn't for the better: if Americans aren't perfect, at least they have the instinct to respond to an accusation of racism with "No, I'm not." Too often in Poland, the response is "So what?"

And I'm not talking about the usual angle, the black/white divide, though that one makes the news on the football field. Not even about Asians, though there was a recent stellar example of a big bazaar being shut down, then given an extension - "But only for the white merchants, because the Asians are all illegal immigrants". And no, the guy didn't lose his - ministerial - post over it.

The thing is, in Europe it's hard to say "white", and our racism problems aren't the ones that make big fandom debates. When did you last read a post railing against discimination of the Roma? Or Romanians even - in Poland, those two are often lumped together and passed off as thieves and beggars. Or the Ukrainian affair, which goes back centuries before there were either blacks or whites in what is now the US of A. And that's not even touching on the big bogeyman.

To apply standard American measures of political correctness to Poland would be to have a heart attack over every fridge magnet of a Jew counting money. It's a financial good-luck thing, on the lines of the Irish leprechauns with their beer and pots of gold (and somehow, the Irish sell them themselves), but put it next to the tele-evangelist who promises not sulphur, but the Jews coming to take everything away if people don't pray hard and give him money, and it starts being frightening. This is the country where accusations of Jewish blood are thrown in political debate as the highest insult.

This is the country that used to have three million Jewish citizens, once. Once.

So forgive me if I don't overlook these issues, if I don't close off my creativity in a garden where I pretend race doesn't matter at all, just because "it's an American issue". I'm too hot-blooded for that, too prone to overthinking to ignore the fact that if something conforms to the usual tropes because it's easier, it reinforces them in the reader, the watcher.

Mixing Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish blood probably wasn't one of my ancestors' brightest ideas.


(As an aside, I've also been thinking about the issue of writing about race or other discrimination from the point of view of a character with a cultural background and ideas different from my own. Would anybody be interested in reading something like that?)

Comments

[a-blue-moon-cat.livejournal.com]

Having read every one else's replies, I find all this sadly fascinating. As far back as high school, I realised that even if there were only "white" people, those same people would find some way to discriminate against others. And I see that this is true in Europe. :( Just read an article on CNN.com about how the English hate ginger-headed people. It's true in the US as well. As a redheaded descendant of Irish (and Scots), I find this upsetting, but totally believable, as my whole family on both sides has had to deal with this same prejudice all our lives. It's why I dye my hair blonde, and my brother is glad that his hair is now more brown.

As far as racism goes, at times I really think that it is more a matter of classism. There's a myth in America that everyone is part of the great middle-class, but that's a false perception. There are many homeless people and there are many rich people who could help, but most choose not to. Many studies have indicated over the years that the vast majority of donations to charity come from the middle and even the lower class! And these studies were looking at per capita, as well as total amounts given. There was a study of the metro Atlanta counties done back in the spring which showed that most charitable donations did not come from the richer portions of the 15 county area. That's sad.

[cleverthylacine]

Is THAT why there are all those people in the HP fandom who are convinced that some people like the Malfoys better than the Weasleys because the Weasleys are redheads and the Malfoys are blonds? This has ALWAYS confused me, because I am definitely in the group that's fonder of the Malfoys, but I used to be a Darkover fan, and all the coolest characters in the Darkover series were redheads, and I couldn't imagine that being a reason for preferring the Malfoys--my reasons for liking the Malfoys (and my reasons for disliking most of the Weasleys) have nothing to do with hair colour and I could never imagine why anyone would think this.