While it had been long ago established that both racist behavior and speech are unacceptable, still racism continues to be rampant in international media and politics with fluctuating degrees, as well high and low points of exposition. The Russian war against Ukraine and its subsequent outflow of migrants from Ukraine started a new high point. The media discourse on the issue has pronounced underlying racist sentiments against, unsurprisingly, non-white migrants. Moreso, on the ground, racist incidents against non-white migrants fleeing Ukraine have been reported. It is a truly distressing situation for non-white individuals having to flee a war zone in Europe.
In the past week, with the onset of the Russian- Ukrainian war, several media pundits reporting in globally recognized news stations, such as the BBC (link) and CBS News (link), displayed strong sentiments of shock and horror for the white Europeans who are having to flee their country. It has even been expressed that white Europeans do not deserve this kind of war as they are “Relatively Civilized, relatively European”,” European people with blonde hair and blue eyes”, “these are prosperous middle-class people, these are not obviously refugees trying to get away from areas in the Middle East that are in a big state of war”, and “this is not developing, third-world nation, this is Europe”. These are just a few of many racists blurt on international news stations. These kinds of expressions have caused widespread resentment over social media, as it implies that migrants from non-European descent are uncivilized swaths that do not deserve the world’s sympathy and to flee war to pursue a decent life.
Causing further fury, is viral footage showing Ukrainian guards barring and threatening to shoot non-white migrants from crossing borders or even going on trains leaving Ukraine. Prioritizing the safety and freedom of white European migrants while leaving non-white migrants to fend for themselves in a war zone clearly shows the prevalence of systemic racism in Europe. Infringing on the right of movement for individuals because of the color of their skin is akin to pre-civil rights movement era in the United States. Moreso, Ukrainian officials are even dismissing reports of racial discrimination as Russian propaganda.
Systemic racism in Europe could also be seen in the stark difference in responses of countries dealing with migrants in the 2015 migrant crisis and the expected Ukrainian migrant crisis. Whereas in the current crisis Europe came to Ukraine’s aid steadfastly, for instance the Czech Republic offered to deploy its police forces to Slovakia’s border in an effort to manage the influx of migrants and Polish authorities have reassured Ukrainian citizens admission to Poland, in the 2015 migrant crisis where millions of Syrians were scrambling to flee the Syrian civil war, systemic racism was rampant in dealing with the crisis. For example, Poland decided to construct a wall to fend off Muslim asylum seekers and Hungary passed laws against asylum-seekers that are in breach of international human rights conventions.
Western media portrayal of most crises around the world plays a role in allowing for such racist grievances to be publicly addressed with no shame. Tragedy is normalized in African, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries, whereas European countries it is out of the ordinary to witness war and tragedy. War in Europe has become an unimaginable situation, although it is only natural for African, Middle Eastern and Asian countries to be in war, conflict, or humanitarian crisis. Western media has long been propagating the idea of a civilized, modern, and developed Global North and the idea of uncivilized, underdeveloped, and dangerous Global South.
It is clear that European institutions and the international media are to this day rife with racism. The current media discourse on the Russian- Ukrainian war humanizes Ukrainian migrants by just being white Europeans, whereas it dehumanizes Middle Eastern and African migrants as being a terrorist threat, enticing islamophobia and the subsequent rise of the far-right populist movement in Europe.
Takeaway message from all this scandalously discriminatory words and deeds is that in the 21st century, with laws in place criminalizing racist speech and behavior, it is still displayed publicly. It is up to the media to change this narrative and to policymakers to start operationalizing these laws.
