Sunday, March 2, 2014

What are the Racial and Ethnic Politics of the Ukraine-Russia Crisis?


Is Niall Ferguson correct? Are the 20th and 21st centuries really a story of unending ethnic conflict?

Hutus and Tutsis. They all look alike to me. Apparently, the various black and brown people of the Caribbean are also different from one another. Again, they all more or less look alike to me. There are also different ethnic groups in China. Again, they all more or less look "Chinese" to me.

The developing crisis between Russia and Ukraine over the Crimean region has introduced all sorts of "strange" and "alien" "white" people to the American vocabulary. Apparently, those white people over there are not all the same: there are Tatars, "ethnic Russians", Russians, Cossacks, Turkmen, and others.


For example, the Atlantic offered up this observation of the Tatar people in Ukraine:
As the Soviet Union collapsed, they began returning. Now they make up some 12 percent of the population. But they have had to claw their way back among a Russian population that largely denies they suffered particularly under the Soviet government and that still believes in the Stalin-created myth that the entire Tatar nation collaborated with the Nazis in World War II.
Analyst Semivolos says the Crimean Tatars, as a nation, have a "post-genocidal mentality." "Crimean Tatars in many ways are still living through the experience of genocide to the present day. For them, in many ways, it isn't over, the process of returning, in many ways it is continuing," he explains. "That is why there is this perception of threats, of existential threats, threats to their lives, their physical existence. And they view all sorts of actions, even ones that Russians themselves consider defensive, but for Crimean Tatars, they are attacks."
Officials in the Russian-dominated local administrations have resisted the returning Tatars ever since they began coming back. Tatars have had to fight to get land and build homes, to open schools, and to build mosques.
Perhaps the most eloquent symbol of official resistance is an open field on the outskirts of Simferopol. It is surrounded by a high wall of rough blocks—the same blocks the Tatar squatter huts are made of. The land will be the site of Simferopol's future central mosque, the biggest one in Crimea, that will serve the 60,000 Muslims in the surrounding area. Although under Ukrainian law, the government is supposed to provide free land for houses of worship, the Tatar community struggled for about a decade before securing this site in 2011.
As race provincial Americans were forced to learn about "Caucasians" in the aftermath of the Boston Shooting Massacre, there are in fact multitudes of ethnic Eastern European and Slavic white people...and many of them do not get along with one another very well.

But that is the genius of whiteness and racial formation in the United States. Those ethnic Europeans can come to the United States and magically become "white" through two moves. First, discriminate against black people. Second, learn the word "nigger".

As an American, I have socialized by a society built upon the black-white binary and the "one drop rule". Like most Americans, this has left me poorly trained and situated as I try to understand how the racial hierarchy in the United States is different--while in many important ways being fundamentally the same--from that of other societies.

Racism and white supremacy are based on an understanding that some racial groups are situated "higher" than others. Race as a social and historical system is also a way of describing the world while naturalizing and advocating how some groups should have access to more and superior resources than those held by other groups. Ultimately, in group and out group distinctions are really ways of justifying "who gets what, when, how, and why?"

Based on some preliminary, and by my own admission very superficial reading, the narrative for mass public consumption which is being spun by the mainstream American media is that the Ukraine crisis is about access to resources, a generational split regarding Westernization and "liberalization" of the economy and Ukrainian society at large, and Russia proper reasserting itself over its former territories.

Do teach me something if would. What is the deeper game between Russia and Ukraine? And how are ethnic and racial politics part of (or not) what is unfolding there?

19 comments:

The Sanity Inspector said...

Can't shed any light on the deep game, although it may have something to do with Russia's perception of their own national prestige. But one detail those maps leave out is that western Ukraine is more Catholic & western looking, whereas in the east they are more Orthodox and Moscow looking. Also, Stalin exiled entire nationalities hither and yon, and the repercussions of that scrambling of nations will play out for a long time to come.

Here are some photos of Russian special forces who rolled up to a Ukrainian military base in the Crimea and bottled up the Ukrainians soldiers for a while. This could get very ugly... http://www.aif.ua/society/social/1116472#id=3276211

George Smith said...

It's not worth bringing back even a smaller version of the Cold War, that's for certain. Russia has a naval presence in Sevastopol in the Crimea. In late 1941 it was heavily fortified and resisted the Wehrmacht's first efforts to capture it, the only place in the Crimea that lasted. It came under siege and fell to a renewed assault about half a year later. I would think some of the Russian nationalism now on display easily plays upon WWII attitudes and the Russian Army's recapture of the Ukraine after years of a brutal Nazi occupation. A number of very large battles were fought in the Ukraine and that remains part of Russian history in their Great Patriotic War. I would think that still figures highly in Russian imaginations, clashing very harshly with the apparent aim in the non-Russian Ukraine to proceed into NATO and closer alignment with the West. The Ukraine military cannot overcome the Russian Army, no matter how dilapidated it may be. So if shooting starts, Ukraine will eventually lose but will become a region of civil conflict. How important is it to this country to support "democracy" there and risk an escalation that turns the region into a war-damaged failed state under Russian control?

Myshkin the Idiot said...

I wish I could teach you something, tomorrow morning I will try to digest more information for breakfast.

This morning I read about half of this piece from Alternet, Is the US backing Neo-Nazi in the Ukraine?

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/us-backing-neo-nazis-ukraine



I've seen that assertion bandied about on our own conservative and white supremacist sites. Imperialism in America annihilated the multitude of languages and ethnic divisions of the American Indians. Linguistic diversity was on par with linguistic diversity you can see in Europe and elsewhere. There is no doubt that ethnic and racial politics play a very large role in the politics and economies of European states.

chauncey devega said...

Now the blacks should stop complaining about racism. They got reparations...insert snark.

chauncey devega said...

Interesting thesis. Neo-nazi...hmmmm

chauncey devega said...

Russia wants Eastern Ukraine as a satellite proxy state. They would beat the Ukrainian military after a fierce fight but would then have to deal with a guerrilla action that Putin does not want. I want to see the new IMAX Stalingrad movie. Have you seen it?

chauncey devega said...

"Also, Stalin exiled entire nationalities hither and yon, and the repercussions of that scrambling of nations will play out for a long time to come."


There are some new books out about Stalin's ethnic cleansing and genocide(s) that I want to read. The Iron Man who is still popular in Russia, I "get" the appeal, I am also sickened by it.

kokanee said...

Here's hoping more people will go see the movie and learn something.

kokanee said...

See the anonymous Ukraine statement:
http://revolution-news.com/anonymous-ukraine-defaces-polish-websites-nazi-alert/

And this:
http://mosquitocloud.net/before-our-eyes-moscow-inverses-roles-in-kiev-by-thierry-meyssan

The US getting involved in Ukraine is like Russia overthrowing the government in Canada. Of course, the Monroe Doctrine would not allow that...

j.ottopohl said...

I have quite a bit on the Crimean Tatars on my blog. This is the most recent post which links to some longer pieces of mine on the issue.

http://jpohl.blogspot.com/2014/03/some-links-to-articles-on-crimean.html

George Smith said...

No, but it's on my list too. How long until the cries of "Neville Chamberlain!" start. Not long at all, already here: http://www.summitdaily.com/opinion/columns/10345244-113/president-ukraine-liddick-state

"[Obama] responds to crises with words everyone now recognizes as empty; flights of rhetorical fancy worthy of Neville Chamberlain.

"But his dreams of a 'new international order” are thwarted by men like Vladimir Putin, who has proven himself far more capable — because he lives in the real world of conflict, national interest and discrete and measured application of force. He and those like him know to whom attention must be paid, and who they can safely ignore. We are the latter, and that is not a safe thing to be ...

"We need to remind ourselves that we are the world’s best bulwark of liberty ..."

Myshkin the Idiot said...

what is up with conservatives lionizing Putin?

Could you imagine them being silent if someone like Chavez was doing that to president Bush? They would want to sponsor a military coup or something ;)


I think part of it is race related. They like seeing a strong white man standing up to our black president. Chavez standing up to Bush...

j@xb34r said...

Methink lionizing of Putin is putdown of Obama. Dissent at any cost.

OldPolarBear said...

I have also seen stuff to the effect that there are neo-Nazis, extreme nationalists, etc., if not all the opposition, then a large contingent of them. These have not been on sites that I would consider conservative or white supremacist, but some rather left-leaning ones. I have to admit I'm pretty much at sea here. Our MSM has been painting a picture of the Ukraine government being brutal tyrants and the opposition as peaceful flower children carrying baskets of fluffy kittens, and now I am hearing that may not be the case. The MSM may be distorting things? What a surprise!

Myshkin the Idiot said...

I think the fringe conservative sites picked up on it to mock the administration, I don't put much stock in their honesty, they rely on rumor and half truths as facts.


The left would definitely be talking about neo Nazi's, the organization is Svoboda that uses neo-nazi symbolism and hails former Nazi's. They're basically anti-Communist, which the Nazi's were heavily opposed to communism. They say the Communist regimes propagandized politicians they like as Nazi when they were not. They are, however, restricted to ethnic Ukrainians and there are a lot of anti-Semitic elements to their rallies. They support the state if Israel because Israel is essentially a Jewish only militarist state, kind of what they want except without Jewish people (especially Muslims).


Svoboda supports integration with the European Union because it gets them away from Russia which they view as domination. A friend of mine ties all of these foreign political interventions to the Rothschild's and Rockefeller's. She says Iraq was invaded to install a central banking system, backed by the rothschild family. Libya was bombed by NATO for the same purpose. Syria is the only middle eastern state without a central bank and that is why the US and UK support the rebel army in Syria (her thoughts not mine).

DanF said...

"As an American, I have socialized by a society built upon the black-white binary and the "one drop rule"."

As bad as the US is with how we deal with race, in my opinion we are actually far better at race relations than the most countries. We have white people, black people, Hispanic/brown people and Asians (Native Americans? And people from India? What? Go with it for the moment...). Four-ish groups for a very expansive nation. Within those groups, there is granularity: Indonesian-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Korean-Americans, etc., but the other groups generally only see "Asian". One big brush for the whole group. And within each of those four-ish main food groups you have people that run the gamut of no issues with race to people who have a passel of issues with at least one or more of the other groups.

Why I say we are doing better when it's patently obvious that we are not an equal society? Everywhere I traveled in Sub-Saharan Africa people were divided by their ethnic groups, and each ethnic group had a ranking for the other ethnic groups in their area as to who was the most educated, the cleanest, respectful, etc. And, of course, they never failed to list their group at the top of the positive trait list and at or near the bottom of the negative trait list. Consequently, a small country with 50 different ethnic identities is a difficult country to keep together. Where you have a democratic vote, it is not seen in your interest to vote against the person who comes from your ethnic group whether you agree with their politics or not does not factor into it (Ghana has done a stellar job in breaking with this pattern BTW. Their first president made it a priority to forge a national identity. Ethnicity still plays out in regional politics but is less pronounced at the national level). Where we see color as the dividing line, much of the world sees ethnicity as the divide. Sadly, too many are perfectly happy to hate on differences in language, dress and variance in customs and cuisine - just as we are to quick to hate on melanin concentrations. These differences are as jarring to them as Capt. Kirk kissing Lt. Uhura was to Alabama in 1968. Try and tell someone from Quebec that they are no better than someone from Vancouver and then try telling someone from New Jersey they are no better than someone from California. Likely to get two very different answers.

Yes, old white guys still dominate American politics and power, but we have a black president which crosses our divide. It is absolutely unthinkable for a Japanese person of Chinese descent to become prime minister in Japan. It would be absurd - and even offensive - to propose such an idea.

I had a very moving conversation with a friend of a Peace Corp volunteer who was black and visiting Guinea when I lived there. He had come hoping to find a deeper connection with Africa and be somewhere where he was not "black" - only to find that the people he met saw him as an American and people treated him the same as they treated me or his friend. It was disconcerting for him as he didn't really feel a part of the US in the sense of having ownership of the "American Dream," and he didn't find the acceptance he was hoping to find in Guinea on the terms he was hoping for. It affected me deeply and I certainly had no answers. I certainly never would have dreamed of saying, "Just wait, in less than fifteen years, we'll have a black president. And maybe then it will feel a little more like home."

kokanee said...

Russia, like China, is a country too big for the US to bully. The "West" was hoping to crack open Ukraine to the "international" market. Putin put his foot down on Syria and now Ukraine. I don't think that the US will be willing to go to war over Ukraine but it looks like the "US" has a new foil.

Aja Messay said...

Complete lies,,,

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