I was raised in a country mostly unaware of a things such as cultural appropriation, racial discrimination, and all sorts of prejudice. Not that everywhere was unaware it existed and was applied, but mostly that people just chose to roll on with it because of how marginal it was.
In Ukraine, as in most post-Soviet countries who are yet to enter the EU, things such as cultural and racial cliches are still a thing, mostly because of the dense native population and little amount of incoming immigrants of foreign cultures and races. Now, that doesn't mean that everyone in the country is explicitly racist or ignorant of the ethical rules that apply in the modern society. However, this will be a short story on how I experienced cultural shenanigans growing up in a post-Soviety society full of people who still viewed black people as an extraordinary, out of this world occurence.
"Growing up in Ukraine" is a phrase I seem to be opening up with a bit too much this semester of college, but bear with me. The social climate in the Eastern Europe is so different from the one in the Western world, there's much to be learned from it. I said earlier how different of a perspective on the world I gained once I moved to the U.S. Both regions have their ups and downs, but for now I will tell you about the not so ups of the Eastern European world in regards to cultural values.
In Ukraine, referring to black people "chocolates" or "negros" was a normal occurence until about the mid 2000's when there internet really started to expand the boundaries of the local society and culture. In my hometown, a lot of students from South Africa moved to study at a local medical university, by whatever force is unknown to me, yet there was still a constant diaspora of black guys and girls around the centre of the city. They learned just as everyone else and maybe even better, and the tough, monolingual local surroundings weren't forgiving for them, so they had to learn Ukrainian to better assimilate. And they did! I saw more and more South African students speak great, fluent Ukrainian, more than some of the native born kids. A common question that could be heard is "Are you not afraid of being black?" which also kind of weirded me out, seeing as I understood the basis of that question but also never really understood why that had to be a question at all. Questions like these were considered normal and were asked often, and the reactions were often reminsicent of "disappointed but not surprised". Either way, the foreigners that immigrated were open to assimilating despite the passive harassment that always surrounded them.
There's more stories to tell about passive cultural ignorances of Eastern Europe, and this is just one of them which was inspired by a video we watched in class.