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mj
Just Starting
Joined: 31 Dec 2008
Posts: 3
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 Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 9:21 am Post subject: Caucasians |
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| I've heard from a couple of Russian men that there's a lot of racism in Russia towards Caucasians and that for a Russian, Caucasian cultures are unacceptable (I don't know what they meant by "unacceptable"). Is this true? Also, in general, how do Russians feel about Caucasians? |
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krasatulya
VIP
Joined: 29 May 2005
Posts: 590
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 12:24 am Post subject: |
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I'll let those who live in Russia tackle the racism part (it has been discussed quite a few times on here already), but I can clear up possible confusion with regards to the word "Caucasian". I'm assuming that since you're asking this question, you're not from the Caucasus region, but rather you are asking in reference to the way Caucasian is used in the U.S. Am I correct? In that case, Caucasian is used to describe white people.
The Russian men whom you talked to were making a reference to those people who live/are from the Caucasus region. |
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mj
Just Starting
Joined: 31 Dec 2008
Posts: 3
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 2:22 am Post subject: |
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Actually I am from the Caucasus region and I was talking about Caucasian as in people from the Caucasus region, or Kavkaz as it is in Russian. I asked because I've always wanted to see St. Petersburg, but I'm worried about racism, violence, etc..
"I'll let those who live in Russia tackle the racism part (it has been discussed quite a few times on here already)"
Sorry about that, it must get pretty tiring to get asked that all the time, it's just that I didn't read through any of the posts.
Do you by any chance know what they meant when they said that "Caucasian cultures are unacceptable"? Do Russians think that our cultures are too emotional, too macho, etc...? |
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krasatulya
VIP
Joined: 29 May 2005
Posts: 590
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| Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 6:21 am Post subject: |
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Sorry about that. I assumed that you were confused about the word Caucasian as used in the US, because my husband was shocked to learn that we use Caucasian here to describe race (he only knows the term as you know it, Kavkaz).
In that case, I'm sure someone else would be better suited to help you. |
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Toronius
Just Starting
Joined: 02 Jan 2009
Posts: 1
Location: Russia
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| Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 2:17 pm Post subject: |
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mj There are 2 types of caucasians in Russia (i'm not talking about nationalities): 1. Guestarbaiters(workers) and bandits 2. Normal people. Here in Russia people are annoyed with the first type of caucasians: there are a lot of them , they are everywhere (sometimes it seems that it's not Moscow, but Tbilisi), they have irritating manners etc....And most (not all!!) of caucasians, who live in Moscow, St. Petersburg are either bandits, who came to big city for easy money or workers (which is almost similar to bandits). And, finally, Chechen wars and terrorist acts are still echoing in the minds of russians.
As for me, I have 2 friends of mine who are caucasians(armenian and georgian). One is a doctor, the other is an artist. And they both can't stand this 1st type I wrote about above.
But, don't be worried about racism. Nobody will hurt you here. There are some skinhead bands on the outskirts of cities. But these teens attack everybody (russians, caucasians, kazakhs, tatars and so on). They're not racists - they are hooligans. So welcome to Russia, just try not to vists outskirts alone in dark time)) |
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mj
Just Starting
Joined: 31 Dec 2008
Posts: 3
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| Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 8:51 am Post subject: |
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| Thanks for the advice Toronius. Yea normal Caucasians don't like bandits, then again normal people don't like bandits. Most of my family's visited or lived in Russia, and they all say that St. Pete's is beautiful. Such a shame that there are Russian skinheads, after all that their grandfathers went through... |
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Ender
WayToRussified
Joined: 23 Aug 2006
Posts: 479
Location: Urals
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| Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 8:56 pm Post subject: |
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| There is third type of caucasian people. They are neither bandits nor guestarbaiters. They are very nice at home, but they are not so nice when they are to Russia. I know some of them. For example they think it is impossible to hit a woman, hell they are very proud of this. But they feel free to hit a russian woman and when they are going to be punished for this they usually scream: "Racism! Skinheads! I haven't done anything wrong! etc". |
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boysangur
Just Starting
Joined: 06 Jan 2009
Posts: 2
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| Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 2:37 am Post subject: |
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| The replies you got here should give you a good idea of the racism towards caucasians. I don't live in Russia but I've heard a good deal about the problem of racism there and the posts here only confirm it. It seems that the posters don't even realize that they are discriminating. You got one reply that categorized caucasians into annoying workers with irritating manners and bandits. You have another post that also added another group that likes to hit russian women. Not only are these remarks racist in their negativety but they are generalizing and generalization IS racism. Unfortunately, a lot of people in Russia share these opinions and this state of mind. Racism in Russia is obviously a big problem. |
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Ender
WayToRussified
Joined: 23 Aug 2006
Posts: 479
Location: Urals
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| Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 10:43 am Post subject: |
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| boysangur wrote: | | The replies you got here should give you a good idea of the racism towards caucasians. I don't live in Russia but I've heard a good deal about the problem of racism there and the posts here only confirm it. It seems that the posters don't even realize that they are discriminating. |
Unfortunately crime rate among guests from Kavkaz is way higher than among other people. Yes there is problem as we constantly hear about various crimes committed by foreigners from Kavkaz or south. Kondopoga events or Anna Beshnova are examples.
| boysangur wrote: | | You got one reply that categorized caucasians into annoying workers with irritating manners and bandits. You have another post that also added another group that likes to hit russian women. Not only are these remarks racist in their negativety but they are generalizing and generalization IS racism. Unfortunately, a lot of people in Russia share these opinions and this state of mind. Racism in Russia is obviously a big problem. |
According your logic your sentence also racist as you are generalizing towards russians. "generalizing and generalization IS racism" Therefore I can say that racism is a problem of your country and you are also racist.
The common rule - behave nicely with other people and they will behave nicely with you. Some people don't understand this. |
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Paul Holmes
Lounge Wizard
Joined: 12 Apr 2005
Posts: 1071
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| Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 7:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | [quote="Ender"] | boysangur wrote: | | The replies you got here should give you a good idea of the racism towards caucasians. I don't live in Russia but I've heard a good deal about the problem of racism there and the posts here only confirm it. It seems that the posters don't even realize that they are discriminating. |
Unfortunately crime rate among guests from Kavkaz is way higher than among other people. Yes there is problem as we constantly hear about various crimes committed by foreigners from Kavkaz or south. Kondopoga events or Anna Beshnova are examples.
| boysangur wrote: | | You got one reply that categorized caucasians into annoying workers with irritating manners and bandits. You have another post that also added another group that likes to hit russian women. Not only are these remarks racist in their negativety but they are generalizing and generalization IS racism. Unfortunately, a lot of people in Russia share these opinions and this state of mind. Racism in Russia is obviously a big problem. |
According your logic your sentence also racist as you are generalizing towards russians. "generalizing and generalization IS racism" Therefore I can say that racism is a problem of your country and you are also racist.
The common rule - behave nicely with other people and they wil |
Ender is not racist, he is a Nationalist. He does not think Caucasians are better, he believes Russians are better than anyone else. How do you write Mein Kampf in Russian?
I was speaking with some Russian in Moscow. One guy turned to another Russian and said you know nothing, you are a Tartar, not a pure Russian.
But again, look at comments Americans have about Blacks and Mexicans, so they are no different. Americans tell storues about how bad Russians were to walk the Chechyans across to Kazakhstan. What about the Americans did to American Native population? Canada committed genocide against the Beothuck Indians. |
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mister_wizzz
VIP
Joined: 27 May 2004
Posts: 580
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| Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 8:53 pm Post subject: |
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What is the definition of a racist ? A racist make a hierarchy among races, and I have never seen Ender writting in this forum that Caucasians are inferior to Russians and making references to "Mein kampf" is not fair and deeply stupid.
I can understand Ender, I guess he has the same feelings about Caucasians the French have with arabs and black africans. Ender don't like them and has probably reasons for that.
When the French see only arabs burning cars and making urban riots in the streets during weeks, when according to statistics more than 60% of the jail inmates are Arabs and Africans, when the TV news broadcast that a bunch of Arabs terrorized in a train travellers who were coming back from Christmas hollidays etc etc... All this don't push people to like them.
Ender is like anybody else : he makes some judgement according to his own experiences and if caucasians behave in Russia like Arabs behave in France, I can understand Ender. |
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Ender
WayToRussified
Joined: 23 Aug 2006
Posts: 479
Location: Urals
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| Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 9:00 pm Post subject: |
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| Paul Holmes wrote: | | Ender is not racist, he is a Nationalist. He does not think Caucasians are better, he believes Russians are better than anyone else. |
No. I don't think Russians are better than anyone else. I just think that those who throw shit at Russia, do something bad to Russia or behave incorrectly deserve corresponding responce.
| Paul Holmes wrote: | | How do you write Mein Kampf in Russian? |
Mein Kampf = Ěî˙ áîđüáŕ
| Paul Holmes wrote: | | I was speaking with some Russian in Moscow. One guy turned to another Russian and said you know nothing, you are a Tartar, not a pure Russian. |
You got it too seriously. Tartars and Bashkirs say same words one to other. There are plenty of Tartars, Bashkirs and Kazakhs around. It is idiom from the times of Golden Horde. The whole sense of this sentence is: "Either you don't understand/know what I (or someone else) speak(s)/know(s) or you don't want to understand/know or you pretend that you don't understand/know". It was common communication problem between Russian people and Tartar-Mongol people, but it became an idiom many years ago.
There is proverb for example: "Uninvited guest is worse than Tartar". Probably you will see another sign of racism here, while this proverb doesn't have anything against modern Tartars. This proverb also old as the Tartar yoke. |
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boysangur
Just Starting
Joined: 06 Jan 2009
Posts: 2
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| Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 8:51 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Unfortunately crime rate among guests from Kavkaz is way higher than among other people. Yes there is problem as we constantly hear about various crimes committed by foreigners from Kavkaz or south. Kondopoga events or Anna Beshnova are examples. |
Oh boy. One major cause of racism/discrimination is disinformation. There are no official statistics whatsoever proving that Caucasians commit more crimes than other people. That statement is simply bogus and highly racist in itself. Yes, they are responsible for many crimes just like others but definitely NOT the majority of them. I can dig up a lot of “events” as examples of other ethnicities committing crimes. I failed to find any official sources to support your claim though, except similar forum posts.
The only relative article I've found mentions a Moscow region police report that their region has experienced a rise in crimes by foreigners. They said that every fifth crime is committed by a foreigner, who are usually from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. We both know (I hope) that those aren't Caucasus regions.
Your confusion is understandable. In Russia, there was a move to introduce a law that would prohibit reporters to mention nationalities of crime suspects. The reason for that move and for your misinformation is that whenever a crime committed by Caucasians is reported there, the ethnicity is always mentioned. That move failed, which means that the public will continue to always be informed that it is a Caucasus native who committed a crime when that is the case. That will do wonders with people’s perception of them. I'm not making things up and I didn't personally go around Russia conducting surveys (I don't even live there), I'm just going by simple officially reported facts. The very reason I'm posting here is because I've done unbiased research that shows a big problem with racism in Russia. So NO, Caucasians don't commit more crimes than other people.
Now that we got that out of the way, why does that even matter? I live in New York, and there are many different ethnic groups, including Russians, who commit various violent crimes. I’m not about to go around and hate on those groups because they share nationalities with criminals. In fact, there are more Armenians (who are Caucasians, in fact) in US than Russians and yet we rarely hear about Armenian mafia; we keep hearing all about Russian mafia all the time. Does that mean that Russians are more prone to commit crimes and are bandits? To an intelligent person it doesn’t; to a racist it certainly does.
| Quote: | | According your logic your sentence also racist as you are generalizing towards russians. "generalizing and generalization IS racism" Therefore I can say that racism is a problem of your country and you are also racist. |
You obviously don’t know what a generalization is. I did not assign a negative trait to a group of people based on their race or ethnicity. That is precisely what you and Toronius did. If I were to do that, I would say “Russians” or “people from Russia” instead of “a lot of people IN Russia”. This way I took care not to imply anything about an ethnicity or nationality. Also, I came to this assumption after reading what the majority of forum posts say about Caucasians on Russian sites, not out of my own personal bias towards their culture. The worst of it all is that you don’t even realize how racist you are or whar discrimination even is. There are things I don't like about the way some blacks behave, but I will never say "blacks behave that way" because they don't; it has nothing to do with their skin. There are black people who would punch a white woman in the face and have their way with her but there is also a US president who is black. It has nothing to do with race; it has everything to do with them as individuals. I hope that you understand this some day and think about what you're doing when you type things like that. |
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Ender
WayToRussified
Joined: 23 Aug 2006
Posts: 479
Location: Urals
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| Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2009 12:00 pm Post subject: |
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| boysangur wrote: | | Oh boy. One major cause of racism/discrimination is disinformation. There are no official statistics whatsoever proving that Caucasians commit more crimes than other people. |
There is statistic about ethnical crime groups. At least I was able to find it very quickly. Various sources estimate their contribution from 45 to 65% of crimes. When a very small group of people responsible for significant amount of crimes it becomes very disturbing.
| boysangur wrote: | | That statement is simply bogus and highly racist in itself. Yes, they are responsible for many crimes just like others but definitely NOT the majority of them. I can dig up a lot of “events” as examples of other ethnicities committing crimes. I failed to find any official sources to support your claim though, except similar forum posts. The only relative article I've found mentions a Moscow region police report that their region has experienced a rise in crimes by foreigners. They said that every fifth crime is committed by a foreigner, who are usually from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. We both know (I hope) that those aren't Caucasus regions. |
Just search in Russian. I've done it easily. And I said about people from Kavkaz and from south. Check map of Russia and find where is the South.
Now simple arithmetic example for you. By various estimates there are about 300000 or so of foreigners in Moscow. Moscow population is about 12 million people. 300 / 12000 = 2.5% So, according your unbiased research 2.5% of population commit 20% of crimes. A foreigner in Moscow roughly ten times more likely to commit the crime than average Moscow citizen. Holy sh*t! I haven't expected that things are so bad.
| boysangur wrote: | | Your confusion is understandable. In Russia, there was a move to introduce a law that would prohibit reporters to mention nationalities of crime suspects. The reason for that move and for your misinformation is that whenever a crime committed by Caucasians is reported there, the ethnicity is always mentioned. That move failed, which means that the public will continue to always be informed that it is a Caucasus native who committed a crime when that is the case. |
So you suggest to introduce some kind of nationality-related censure on media? Funny. BTW, do you know that when nationality isn't specified and names of people aren't specified it perceived as Russian?
| boysangur wrote: | | That will do wonders with people’s perception of them. I'm not making things up and I didn't personally go around Russia conducting surveys (I don't even live there), I'm just going by simple officially reported facts. |
It is difficult to hide nationality when a Caucasian person kills or injures someone with the screams: "Allah akbar". BTW, officially reported facts downplay nationality of criminal often. When a Russian commit crime against a foreigner (especially against a guest from Kavkaz or Asia) all kinds of HRW scum start scream that it is a crime based on nationality of a victim, but when Russian is a victim it is simply crime without nationality and HR organizations is usually silent.
| boysangur wrote: | | The very reason I'm posting here is because I've done unbiased research that shows a big problem with racism in Russia. So NO, Caucasians don't commit more crimes than other people. |
Very quick check shows that your research is very lame.
Moreover. 5 years ago I worked as subcontractor for MVD. Our company was busy in the conversion of paper documents into an electronic format. We done many various analyzes of content in order to reduce amount of errors in the data entered by operators. The interesting fact is that of over 25 million of people whose data is tracked (it means they committed crime, jailed or related to some criminal activity) by MVD almost half of them have non slavic looking families (non Russian, non Ukrainian, non Belarussian). It is also interesting that slavic people consists more than 80% of population. IOW, about 20% of population contributes around 50% of crime related activity. Isn't that strange? You'll never see that kind of information in the media because it'll do more harm that good.
Moreover. I was personally involved in the 5 crime cases, twice I was a victim of thievery (both in Moscow) and three times I was witness. (here, at home). It is coincidence or not but 4 of 5 crimes were committed by people from Kavkaz or from Central Asia. For some reason my personal expirience doesn't contradict to the common perception of situation from the media.
| boysangur wrote: | | Now that we got that out of the way, why does that even matter? I live in New York, and there are many different ethnic groups, including Russians, who commit various violent crimes. I’m not about to go around and hate on those groups because they share nationalities with criminals. In fact, there are more Armenians (who are Caucasians, in fact) in US than Russians and yet we rarely hear about Armenian mafia; we keep hearing all about Russian mafia all the time. Does that mean that Russians are more prone to commit crimes and are bandits? To an intelligent person it doesn’t; to a racist it certainly does. |
So probably very large amount of your population is racists. Just remember August 2008 and a stream of hysterical articles about Russia in your "free" press. When I read comments to those articles I wondered - so much hate and lack of will to understand the truth. It looks like readers are very comfortable with a version of events offered by various BBC, CNN, NBC, Guardian, LA Times, Times etc.
| boysangur wrote: | | You obviously don’t know what a generalization is. I did not assign a negative trait to a group of people based on their race or ethnicity. That is precisely what you and Toronius did. If I were to do that, I would say “Russians” or “people from Russia” instead of “a lot of people IN Russia”. This way I took care not to imply anything about an ethnicity or nationality. |
Is it a kind of PC language? It is politically correct and enough blurry to give you path to escape but it makes reader to think in a required way. "A lot people IN Russia" means "Russians" as well because Russians are 80% of population or so. Despite your carefull attempt not to look like racist you have just shown that you are perferct example of racist.
Yes Russians (please notice I use "Russians") do not care to say anything about an ethnicity or nationality. We say what we think, what we feel and what we do. If there are ethnical criminal group we won't hide their nationality, if we think that gomosexuality is perversion we'll say this, negros are negros not "american-africans", fat is fat and ugly is ugly.
| boysangur wrote: | | Also, I came to this assumption after reading what the majority of forum posts say about Caucasians on Russian sites, not out of my own personal bias towards their culture. The worst of it all is that you don’t even realize how racist you are or whar discrimination even is. There are things I don't like about the way some blacks behave, but I will never say "blacks behave that way" because they don't; it has nothing to do with their skin. |
It has nothing to do with their skin, It has something to do with their community which is usually formed by their skin, nationality or ethnicity.
| boysangur wrote: | | There are black people who would punch a white woman in the face and have their way with her but there is also a US president who is black. It has nothing to do with race; it has everything to do with them as individuals. I hope that you understand this some day and think about what you're doing when you type things like that. |
To put simply, I do not care. Heck, who are you to lecture me? Your country had official legal racial segregation up to 60-th or so. It is so disgusting. You have half-black president only in the XXI century, while Russia has leaders of different ethnicities and nationalities from the times of Rurik. For example Stailn was Georgian, Khruchev was Ukrainian. And now you are trying to teach us how to deal with ethnic related problems. It is laughable. |
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bunker6
Frequent Guest
Joined: 31 Jul 2008
Posts: 37
Location: Princeton, NJ / St. Petes, Russia
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| Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2009 11:28 am Post subject: |
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There is no racism in Russia and almost anywhere in post-USSR.
Big cities are still big cities with all kinds of lunatics.
An idiot can always find a place to get in trouble. But it takes to be a real talented idiot first of all. |
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