Xenophobia 2

Faith: Irina, that is interesting. I had not thought very much about that myself. You know, I have such embedded assumptions and such lack of knowledge about Russia from living in the US so long. I�ve seen quite a few Russian films but none that had racism as its theme. I had only met a few Russians in my life before I met you and most of them were Jewish refugees and they all seemed very �European� and white to me. When we were in Moscow in 2002 I really realized so strongly how xenophobic and how racist Muscovites and Russians seemed to be.
I noticed it of course mainly because of their reactions to Guna (your Singaporean Indian husband) and to Margaret Tan (a Singaporean Chinese artist) with whom we were traveling. But then I noticed it too in the restaurants and bars where dark �gypsy� people came to perform, or on the street where small children came begging for money from us and they and their mothers all were definitely not northern European looking at all. And then I began to see that really most of the people on the street were not blond, and that there were many different racial and ethnic types. And I noticed quite a bit of hostility to the English language and a refusal to want to speak anything but Russian.

I think racism goes so deep. We do not admit to ourselves that we may feel relief when we visit a foreign country and our hosts there turn out to be white and even speak some of our language.