Word: blackly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...America, I am on the whiter side of the spectrum, and until I came to Russia, I never thought that anyone might consider me to be black. However, because my slightly dark features resemble those of a Caucasian (a euphemistic phrase for "black person"), I have been stopped by the police in Moscow six times within four months to have my passport checked. I have also regularly seen darker-complexioned men who do not have the luxury of an American passport being carted off to the local police post while their whiter brethren scurry on their...
...more established, more Russian Moscow resident will tell you that there is good reason to be skeptical of these "black people" from the South. First, they were responsible for a good deal of terrorist activity in response to the Chechnya war waged by Boris Yeltsin's government a few years ago (Chechnya is an autonomous region in the Caucasus). Also, many of them are members of the New Russian mafia, bringing violence to the streets of Moscow. Finally, Georgia is a military society, violent and capricious--its citizens are very hospitable if you are on their side; otherwise, they...
...racialism, I mean a recognition of differences in race that are not necessarily mean-spirited. I laugh when my host mother tells me as we watch the news that she always remembers Kofi Annan's name because he is black like "coffee." But then a bright young Russian student asks me, "Why are there so many niggers on MTV?" And then I talk to a man from Africa who tells me that if he doesn't make it back to his apartment before dark, he waits until the morning so that the kids who sit outside his apartment will...
...American" and "nigger," Russians sometimes make me feel as though I am a cultural imperialist. In this non-American society, it is incredibly difficult--and most of the time, futile--to explain why one must not use the "n-word." In Russian, the normal word for someone who is black is very similar, and the term "black person" is considered pejorative. To suggest that they use the term "Afro-American" elicits eye-rolling and cackles of laughter. But it stings my American ears when my Russian friend responds, "What's the difference? A nigger is a nigger." What this phrase...
While only a small number of people of African descent live in Moscow, there is a more significant minority whom the native Russians call derisively chernie liudi, or "black people." These "black people" come from the former Soviet republics in the Southern Caucasus: Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. A combination of warfare and economic disaster in these former republics since the dissolution of the Soviet empire in 1991, along with the loosening of living restrictions in post-Soviet Moscow, have led to a large influx of Caucasians into Moscow. Moscow has not been very welcoming...