Even in the grip of an international pandemic and a European war, racism and xenophobia are emerging as dire threats to people of color: not only those attempting to flee Ukraine, but also those all over the world who are once again marginalized by racist and Eurocentric media coverage of the war; at risk in the crisis in Ukraine is the idea that we are all — in times of war and in times of peace — worthy of the same amity and security regardless of our origin and the color of our skin. This is nothing new.
People in Ukraine (not just Ukrainians) are making desperate flights to the country’s borders. Many of them are Black from elsewhere in Europe or elsewhere in the world; many of them are Africans working or studying in Ukraine. They are being denied entry onto trains, denied entry into Poland. While white Ukrainians are passing into Poland, Romania, Estonia, and Moldova, Africans in Ukraine are in many cases choosing a more perilous and arduous destination: Hungary, Bulgaria.
That disparity is not only on the ground. It’s being made clear and manifest — practically codified — by much of the media coverage of the war. A correspondent for CBS News this week lamented the stark comparison between other recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, and Iraq, and this one, which features people and a country that are “relatively civilized, relatively European.” The BBC seemed to concur with this statement made during a recent broadcast by David Sakvarelidze, a former official in Ukraine:
“It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blonde hair and blue eyes being killed every day with Putin’s missiles and his helicopters and his rockets.”
Of course, we’re all a great deal more used to finding those blue eyes and that blond hair in the cockpits of the aircraft firing those missiles at people with dark hair and dark eyes and dark skin. Even the more reliable Al Jazeera said the quiet part out loud last week, sharing the western world’s apparent sympathy for
“…Prosperous, middle class people…not obviously refugees trying to get away from areas in the Middle East. …They look like any European family that you would live next door to.”
The same sentiment of shock was shared by British newspaper The Telegraph. “They seem so like us,” said Daniel Hannan, who doesn’t look like many of us.
One can only guess at what will change for people during and after a war. What is clear here is what hasn’t changed: fleeing war is for people whose peacetime lives are, as far as white people with European origins are concerned, practically indistinguishable from their wartime lives; and the mortal terror of war is something the media has long been very comfortable considering “for other people;” and safety/security continues to be a luxury for the “us” that most Ukrainians “look like.” Yet another example of Eurocentric culture perpetually forgetting and in some cases denying non-Europeans humanity and safety.
