“They will be beaten now”: 6 stories about racism and xenophobia in children
It often seems to us that racism - This is an exotic foreign problem, because it is their “black lynch”. We talked to six girls who live in Russia with a non-titular skin color and nationality, and found out that they had experienced abuse from their very childhood - and for many, nothing had ended.
I studied in a very simple comprehensive school in Moscow. One of the first memories is in the assembly halls, if you get up abruptly, the chair was reclining. At this point, the boys loved to cling to someone's skirt from behind, so that it crawled. Once they did this to me and immediately shouted "Black Dog". I came home and asked my parents what the word meant. They said it was an insult, that there are blacks and they have black skin. I would not explain it to children now, but then it was 1993.
In the second grade, one boy hit me several times with a desk lid on the head. The teacher saw it and said: “Calm down, sit down,” and that’s all. If she sent me home right away, the parents would know, but the management wouldn't be very good. Therefore, teachers in school had to leave everything as is. I didn't say anything at home. Maybe there was a concussion, maybe not.
I put up with it - it seemed to me that it was necessary, but I really was not like that. I tried not to stand out. Mom bought me a lot of different cool clothes, but she never remained dressed. I wore one or two things, and sometimes I even nagged them on purpose secretly from my parents.
From the fifth grade it became easier, because I understood that in order to gain power, you need to have either strength or intelligence. I took the path of intellect: I began to study very well and let those who had the power write off. By the ninth grade I became the gray cardinal of the whole school, and in the tenth grade I was already afraid of the teacher. I could demand something, and all the students would go and do it. I am very sorry now that I didn’t ruin the school.
When classmates seemed to love me, they began to say: "You're almost Russian." As I later learned, during the study of sociology, people justify their good attitude to someone by the fact that he looks like them. That is, a Zimbabwean can be "almost Russian" if you love him.
I felt a deep disgust. My classmates stopped offending me, but continued to offend those children who did not become "cool." I worked a lot with what I did: I treated my friends at home, I carried Armenian food to school. In any lesson where it was possible to tell something - geography, social studies - I talked about Armenia. By my graduation year, the whole school knew where Armenia was, that it was the first to adopt Christianity, that Ararat was not ours, but it would definitely be ours. But when you work in one direction, and in another you get the phrase “You're almost Russian,” it means that you are dealing with bad material.
For many years I believed that the problem was in children. But one cannot roll the barrel only on children for what they did not understand - there are not only Russians and this is normal, although the television was constantly on in all houses and the first Chechen war was on. The teachers were to blame.
A primary school teacher could, instead of replicas, “This cannot be done, because girls should not be offended,” and other crap, say: “Let's list all the nationalities that live with us in Russia,” for example. The children would understand that there are many other people besides Russians, and they are also Russians. This did not happen.
I became a conflict person and lived with it for a long time. In 26-27 years, there was an understanding that this is not very correct. Although the conflict is a healthy reaction to being hurt. I wish I understood it too late. If she did it on time, they wouldn't beat me. On the other hand, in the end I coped with bullying through authority. At the same time, my very beginning to develop xenophobia towards Russians, and this is very bad. I had to work on this at the university, which is impermissible: I had to go through it before.
Recently there was an interesting case in the subway. There was a plump girl and she was dragging a huge suitcase. She was conditionally Tajik in appearance. I ran to her, took the suitcase in my hands, took it down, set it and was going to go further. And some guy was walking towards. He says: "Here is a chukche helps Chukchi." The day I did not ask. I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and gave it in the face. He was going to answer me, but other men ran up and stood between us. Not a very nice story.
I am a Buryat, born and lived in Novosibirsk. Around 1985-1986, I was brought to kindergarten for the first time. The teacher did not find it necessary to explain to the children why I am different from them. They immediately began to say: “Why do you have black hair? You must be dirty, you do not wash,” “She must be contagious, I don’t want to sit with her”. I was beaten on a walk - it didn't hurt, but it was a shame: they rolled in the snow like a log, although there were no bruises due to winter clothes. It was a great shock, until this moment I had not suspected that I was somehow different from other children, and had no idea what to answer such questions. My parents didn't explain anything to me either. The kindergarten story was quite traumatic, I learned that I was bad, something was wrong with me, and I don’t know what it was.
In school, during perestroika times, they called me "narrow-eyed" all the time, and at the same time they could push or spray me with water. In 1992, we went back to Buryatia. Parents feared that after the collapse of the USSR, chaos would begin, national pogroms, and considered it better to go to their native republic.
In my youth, I was a classic representative of "self-hating minority", because I learned the notion that my people and other Siberian aborigines are unwashed unwashed savages, and their affiliation should be ashamed. It seemed to me that it was imperative to demonstrate that you are “not such” in order to be accepted in a decent society. This, of course, does not paint me, but I really thought so. It is quite difficult to get rid of imposed submissions. I suspect I'm not the only one: I heard a lot from my mother too.
In overcoming this problem, a great role was played by the experience of living abroad: the opportunity arose to look at the situation from the outside, I realized that the way people in Russia treat people of a different nationality is not quite normal and happens differently. True, problems remain with compatriots: unfortunately, having arrived abroad, people often bring with them household racism and even here they make me feel it.
Children's experiences influenced my character and habits. I am a rather reserved and distrustful person, in communication with people I have, on the one hand, suspiciousness and uncertainty, on the other - constant readiness to fight back. Probably to some extent this is the result of discrimination. Although, of course, there were other reasons.
This year I was at an event dedicated to Russian culture, it was conducted by the local Russian language students. When I entered there and saw a crowd of young people in Russian national costumes, the first and completely involuntary reaction was to shrink, put their heads in their shoulders and quickly hide somewhere, because the thought immediately flashed: "Help, I will be beaten." Then, of course, it became ridiculous, but the fright in the first moments was real. I do not know whether this is directly connected with the experience from childhood or with the events of the last 10-15 years, when the fashion for Slavic traditions began to be associated with nationalists and aggression on the basis of national intolerance.
In 10-12 years I encountered in the yard with the neighbors' girls. They began to bully and eventually throw stones. I ran away from them, told my mother. Together we began to think why this could happen - I did not give them a reason to conflict with me. Parents explained that this may have happened due to nationality.
The peak of persecution came in the eighth and ninth grade. I was then sent to a private school in Podolsk. They did not beat me alone (I was of the wrong color) - they beat weaker girls and boys. Several times I ran away from the lessons in tears, went to complain to the director. The trial began with the boy who poisoned me, his parents came, they put a bribe on the table, and he studied further. The class teacher made sluggish attempts to protect me. Teachers said to those who scoffed at me: “She knows Russian better than you, why do you poison her?” It made children really mad, it only got worse. I even tried to fight, but my position in the class did not improve.
Any dissimilarity is a strong vulnerability. When I was five or seven years old, there was still no open harassment, but I was already crying in the bathroom and said that I wanted to be a blonde, blue-eyed girl named Anya. When I began to explain: "You should be proud of your appearance, you have such beautiful hair and skin color" - it made me angry. How can I be proud of being persecuted? Do it first so that it is not my problem, and then I will think about whether to be proud of it. Somewhere before the age of nineteen, I did not accept my African part at all. When they told me that my skin color was beautiful, that is, they were trying to make a compliment, I was very offended.
All this lasted until I traveled to my little homeland, to Ethiopia. After the trip, I simply accepted the fact that this part of me exists. Previously, it has always been associated with some kind of negative. And then I saw that Ethiopia is a beautiful ancient country, and this is not only the name calling "fu, black", but also culture. And for the Ethiopians, I was white. They even my father, and he is quite an appropriate color, just lived for twenty years in Russia, called the "fat white foreigner."
Now it is easier for me when this topic does not come up at all. One day, familiar men when I started discussing my amorous adventures with girls of other nationalities, and I got mad. Not because it was about adventures, but because there were phrases like "I've met this exotic girl here." And they could not understand what makes me angry, asked: "What is it, I admire her?" Sometimes I think: maybe I perceive it too emotionally? Try to explain to the average white man what objectification is.
I lived in a typical residential area of Moscow. The older I got, the more I felt my detachment from my peers. It seemed to me that something was wrong with me, but due to the fact that I am of a different nationality, they do not pay attention to me, they consider that I am a hypocrite, I cannot understand their joke. The boys often teased me: “hairy hands”, “mustache not shaved” - looked out as if under a microscope. Because of this, I wore long sleeves, crying. I thought I was just a freak.
If someone allowed intolerant comments to me - conditionally, someone said “chock” - I perceived it as an insult to me personally. At first I was simply offended and kept in myself, then the insult resulted in aggression. I fiercely argued with such people, tried to convince them. That, of course, was stupid. I marked myself, and they marked me as "not my" girl. For example, I had an Azerbaijani friend, like me, whom everyone in the class adored, because she initially put herself that way. Nationality was even her chip: they could make a joke on her account, she picked it up, and the guys took her for their own.
Then I moved to a good school, and it was there that everything changed. There it was necessary to take exams, that is, the children were aimed at developing. There have never been any quarrels related to nationality; in general, this topic has not been raised. And I began to gradually recover, to feel that in fact everything is fine, that the girls with whom I am friends love me. I was still not friends with the boys, it seemed to me that they did not perceive me as a girl with whom I could stir up. People because of my nationality thought out that I adhere to strict, traditional views. It always annoyed me, but then I did not understand myself who I was.
Once I liked one boy. At the prom he approached me, met. We were completely different: he was with Ponte, had read Bukowski. And at that moment I never even went to the bar - I thought that everyone was boozing, but I wouldn’t thump, they all slept with each other, and I wouldn’t sleep with everyone just because I had to. We talked with this boy, flirted, but we did not succeed. After that, at first I was driven into depression, but then I began to open up to the world, to perceive myself not as a slaughtered girl, but as a normal, independent person, to think who I really am.
I entered the university, got into the student organization. I started to communicate more with people, tried to feel and understand in different situations, it was mine or not mine: I went to the bar, put on a shorter skirt, put on red lips, flirted more actively. Such small steps that opened me like a girl. I also started to work with my appearance: pluck my eyebrows, go for hair removal.
But most of all I was influenced by the fact that at some point by the reaction of others, I realized how beautiful I was and began to behave more actively. People also began to see me more beautiful, simply because I began to love myself.
If I get into the environment of Gopnik and they start saying to me that something is wrong with me, I do not know how to react to it. But in my environment now there are no such people at all. Eastern appearance greatly affects my personal life, because they are afraid of me, they think: it is not known what to expect from me. Many do not even risk knowing who I really am. Well, these are their problems, which means that they are not brave enough. Why do I need such people?
Surrounding people are surprised when I say that I live alone, I work, I provide for myself. They are not surprised that I am still a virgin, but they are surprised when I start flirting. When I drink or smoke, people around almost faint, they say: “You don’t walk,” that is, everyone else goes, but I don’t. I'm not sure that I need it, but I began to behave this way in order to show that I am not the same as everyone thinks.
Now, when they say, for example, the word “chock,” with me, I simply do not take it into my account. Of course, I also make notes in my head that this person is a fool, but I continue to communicate with him. If this does not go beyond two comments, then I forget about it. Before, I would have a strong quarrel with such a person and would have turned the conversation to the fact that he does not respect me.
Oriental appearance - my uniqueness. I compare myself with other girls and understand that this is exactly what attracts people in me. When I communicate well with a person, suspicions creep in: did he fall in love with me or with my “exoticism”? But in general, at the level of flirting, I like it. After all, it's true me, why should I hesitate? On the contrary, this is my trick. Someone uses blond hair, someone has long legs and so on.
My mother is Korean, my father is Russian. I lived in Tashkent for up to 11 years. Once I come to the playground, and there appears a crowd of Uzbek children. They start to kick me out. I was six years old, I did not understand their language, because I went to a Russian school, but I understood that they were dissatisfied with me. And for the first time I realized that I was somehow different, which means that people are not all the same: someone has privileges, someone does not.
The media specifically emphasizes everything related to nationalities. Suppose they do not say that a Russian man blew something up there. But when a representative of another nation did it, they will surely say, and if he is Russian, they will emphasize that he comes from the Caucasus or from Asia. That is, they turn people against "alien" already on a subconscious level. The grandmother is sitting, watching the news, saying out loud: "Chock" - and next to her a six-year-old child who absorbs it all, and then comes to the kindergarten, to the school and starts chmorit the little boy who is learning with him.
The brightest events began already in Russia. I had the only method to fight obzyvatelstvami: I fought. From childhood I went to wushu, taekwondo, field hockey, athletics. Metal core, shook hands. Therefore, if someone touched me at school - he called, say, "chinas", "narrow-eyed" - I just approached and beat. They were crying.
About ten years ago, my mother encountered skinheads in an electric train. It was eight o'clock in the evening. She traveled along the path Mytishchi - Moscow, and there were fans from a football match: skinheads, with closed scarves on their faces, in grinders, leather jackets. They entered the car and stared blankly at the black heads - they were looking for a victim. Another Uzbek boy was driving there with a girlfriend. And they all crowd approach this kid, grab him by the shkiryak and begin to take him to the vestibule. One of them noticed my mother and said: "Oh, the chinas are sitting. What are we going to pass by?" Mom at this moment already mentally all said goodbye. I thought: okay, they will rape - the main thing is to leave them alive. The leader turns, looks at his mother, says: "Well, not before her," and passes. And this horde goes by, realizes that they gave a refusal, but everyone said something obscenely to my mother's side. And that boy was first beaten, and then thrown out of the train. In the news they said nothing: he died, he did not die, it is not known.
Once, at nineteen, I sat with a young man in a supermarket, we drank coffee and kissed. A woman came up, put a white napkin on the table and left. Я начала смотреть салфетку, а там написано: "Из-за таких, как ты, вымирает русская нация". Каково девчонке в девятнадцать лет, когда она сидит с парнем и уже придумала, как будет проходить свадьба, как она назовёт детей и тому подобное, такое получить? Для меня это был, наверное, самый большой шок и самый больной момент на тему национальности и отношений с русскими.
Однажды за мной ухаживал мужчина, ему было 35 лет. Как-то раз он встретил меня около работы и пригласил в кино. Я согласилась. После кино мы зашли в кафешку выпить кофе, и он мне рассказывает: "Я вчера ехал за город, зашёл в Burger King, а там таких, как ты, штуки четыре". Это был последний мой разговор с тем мужиком.
In my childhood it was, that since I am of a different nationality, it means that it is ugly. For me, it was absolutely equivalent. The former young man with whom I had been dating for eight years and my current husband helped me partly to overcome this. It was thanks to their efforts, their attention, their careful approach that I managed to calm down. They told me a lot of compliments. Suppose you get in the morning "good morning, beauty" - that's all, you are already a goddess.
But in general, my character has become much tougher. I realized that not everyone can love me. Since then, I have always tried to make my position higher than those of the people who called me names.
From the age of six I live in Dolgoprudny. I was called “chinetic” every time I walked past some sports field, shop or any place where a suitable company was going to. I knew this word and not that I was even offended (it seemed to me that I had no right to it) - I was just afraid. I even walked a little bent, hoping that I would be lucky and this time they would not notice me.
At school, they called me too. I remember very well how I stand alone in the corridor during the break, while the boys from some parallel class look at me and say: "I want to go home in Tokyo, in Tokyo I want to go home." It seemed to me that I really should have been born on the other side of the world, and here I have no place. That I deserved all this because it was initially worse than other people because of my nationality. I felt that every peer with whom I communicate makes me a huge favor, that I should be grateful that someone in general pays attention to me.
In childhood, any little thing can knock out and grow into a problem of enormous proportions. From the fifth grade I found myself in a very hostile environment. Although I do not remember any of my classmates teasing me for my nationality. I was teased mostly for wearing glasses. When I was in the high school there was the series “Don't be born beautiful,” I was compared to the main character.
In such an environment, all the memories and fears associated with child abuse, burst out, and I began to think more often that it was worse than others. If in the lower grades I could get into a fight in the event of an insult, then by the fifth grade I had just resigned myself and tried to pretend that I could not hear anything - it looked rather stupid, especially when I directly addressed me.
I told my mother about what is happening only once, and then often regretted it. Once I was out of school, and the boys showered me with snowballs. I got a piece of ice in the area under the eye so that the blood went. After that, I could not stand it and told my mother about this incident and about all the others. The next day, she came to school in the middle of a lesson, led these boys out into the corridor, yelled at them, it seemed, even hit one, and had a fight with teachers. After that, everyone in the class stopped talking to me, and that was even worse. I began to feel invisible, as if I did not exist at all.
If I had friends then, I probably would have read less and in the end would not have entered the Moscow State University, and then my whole life would have been different. If I had not been bullied in my childhood because of my appearance, I would now rely on her more and not work so hard on myself. In any company I always try to communicate with the most quiet people who are here for the first time or feel uncomfortable. I want them to open up and be more confident. If someone says or writes something offensive about the appearance of others, this is a true signal to me that we are not on the path with such a person.
The only trait that I have acquired since then and of which I regret is the terrible conflict, turning into uncontrolled aggression. Most often this happens at work when someone doubts my mental abilities. Apparently, I still think that people can somehow love me only for professional qualities, and if you take them away, I won't need anyone at all.
I often think that it is initially worse than my friends, so I am very afraid of losing them. Sometimes it turns into a strong dependence on someone else's opinion. Now I ask myself in every situation: have I acted as I myself have decided, or do I simply fulfill someone else’s will, so that a person does not leave my life?
Friends still joke with me. In some cases, trying to hurt people who simply do not like me or fear. Sometimes people try to make a compliment - they begin to drag in everything they know about, say, Japan, although I have nothing to do with it. It hurts me a little - I rather laugh at how people who consider themselves to be tolerant, in fact, are not at all.
It is always harder to perceive yourself as a girl when you see that almost the only thing that attracts people in you is your nationality. For example, a man with whom I didn’t meet for long, when asked what he found in me, honestly replied: "Yes, I just like girls of Asian appearance." At that moment I did not understand myself, because of what I was so upset. Blondes do not take offense when they are told the same thing about blonde hair. When I was on vacation, some rather unpleasant man shouted after me in broken Russian: "Hey, why don't you meet me? I love the Chinese." In general, I realized that in many countries, unlike in Russia, it is dangerous for me to even walk alone - there are almost no girls with Asian appearance. It is also impossible to walk down the street for five minutes so that no one tries to meet you. Sometimes it is even pleasant, but still there is a deposit from the fact that you are not paying attention because of the beauty.
Photo: moji1980 - stock.adobe.com, Jakub Krechowicz - stock.adobe.com, pioneer111 - stock.adobe.com