[lbo-talk] Re: " Race " in Russia

[" Chris Doss "]

Art:

I agree 100% with everything you said in the article about
Russia. I wasn't disputing any of that. It was a great
article and very insightful.

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Me: Thanks.

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What I was arguing is the case *against* American
exceptionalism. I don't believe that the United States is
really that much different from the rest of the world in
terms of how hatred and conflict arises. The only difference
in the U.S. is that certain types of conflicts get labeled
as being "racial" when in fact they are not, or rather,
that the conflict over "race" is really an ideological,
political, cultural, and economic struggle, just like it
is in Russia. 

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I agree with you, though I think there are pecularities to American/Western development that make its way of categorizing people singular (the bizarro obsession with skin color, for instance).

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The only difference is that in Russia, they
have until recently NOT made the MISTAKE of using the term
"race."

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Unfortunately the Western color fixation has rooted itself in modern Russian culture. The use of the term "black" as a derogatory term for people from the Caucasus is very recent, in fact mostly post-Soviet, and appears to be an attempt to copy the West. Caucasians aren't actually physically usually much darker than Italians. (The derogatory term "person of Caucasian nationality" is also post-Soviet.) "Rasa" (race) is a loan word from English that was imported during the Soviet era to describe ethnic relations in the United States and South Africa, and is almost never used -- it sounds bookish. The Russian word for African, "negr," has historically had no negative connotation whatsoever, but it is starting to acquire one. Why? Because it sounds like a certain other word that Russians hear when they watch dubbed-over movies from the United States.