thesaker.is

White Privilege and Racism Debate: a British East European point of view

The Saker

10-13 minutes

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by Nebojša Radić for The Saker Blog

In this country^[1]I am regarded as White and therefore, privileged – it seems.

People in the streets and on television say that Whites should kneel and apologise.

Really?

How come I find myself in this bizarre situation?

How did I get here?

How did a refugee from warn-torn socialist Yugoslavia turned fisherman in the South Pacific become a privileged White male?

Did I miss anything?

Is it something I did?

Something I said?

No, it's not something I did or said. It has nothing to do with me.

Except that… it has everything to do with me and there is no-one to speak out for me!

So, there you go now, hear my voice.

I was born in Yugoslavia, the most multicultural country in Europe. Through the non-allied movement, it had many links with third-world countries and we used to call Africans: braća crnci, Black Brothers. I grew up in Belgrade listening to African American blues musicians such as BB King, Jimi Hendrix, John Lee Hooker and Blind Lemon Jefferson, playing basketball to better the likes of Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson! It was only in the late 90s that I noticed that the footballer Edson Arantes do Nascimento better known as Pele was black! And I remember watching him play for the first time in Sweden 1970! It took me thirty years or perhaps, ten years of living in an English-speaking country to think of the great football magician in terms of race.

In the early nineties, like many of my countrymen (and women, yes), I fled the war. I found myself in Nelson, New Zealand where a friend of a friend operated a fleet of fishing boats. I learnt the trade and a couple of years later, upon graduation, I could tell ALL the commercial fish species in the South Pacific. Filling the many forms of the New Zealand immigration service and later of the government, I identified as a Pakeha, the Maori term for white people and, apparently, also for a pig. Pakeha or Caucasian, that was the choice I had. At the same time, for most the Yugoslav immigrants in Aotearoa,^[2], I was naš – ours. I was just one of us, ex-Yugoslavs and we all spoke naški – our language. We never bothered (very wisely) to call it Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian or…

Locals struggled to tell us apart the same as we struggled to tell the English from the Dutch or the Maoris from the Pacific Islanders (nota bene: the great rugby player, Jonah Lomu was of Tongan origin, an Islander – not a Maori^[3]).

While in Nelson, down very South, a good friend of mine Kit Carson, a farmer, wood turner and artist taught me an important lesson. We were barbequing some meat near the Tahunanui beach when Max said that as an Irish-born immigrant, Kit wasn't a real Kiwi. The already well-aged and proud son of Joyce, Beckett, Heaney and a very long line of Celtic storytelling alchemists stood up from his chair with a drink in his mighty rugged hand and roared:

– You were born in this country, Max, but I chose to come here out my own free will. I am much more of a New Zealander than you will ever be!

Thus, spoke Kit Carson, Down Under Below, raising his glass to a thunderous – slaintè!

On the day the New York twin towers fell, I left Aotearoa^[4] and moved to Britain (this country?). I now live in Cambridge, a multi-cultural city with a peculiar town and gown historical (class, racial?) divide.

For the immigration service and the government here, I am White, the other White, mind you. The official government web page lists those options:

One of the home nations^[5] or Irish (Kit Carson!), Gypsy or Irish Traveller (Tyson Fury, the boxer) or any other White background. You can also belong to mixed ethnicities or declare yourself to be Jewish, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese or of any other Asian background. You can be African, Caribbean or of any other Black background. You could be Arab too (Dr Ali Meghji^[6])!^[7]

So, all Europeans are other Whites. Nigel Farage however, the prominent and outspoken British politician, does not complain about his French, Italian or German and not even Greek neighbours. He just does not recommend living next door to a bunch of Romanians!

At the same time, 'Go home Poles' graffiti compete with Banksy's excellent artwork, anti-Russian hyper-hysteria (you don't really want me to give you any links for this one) and the already metastatic anti-Serbian bias (uh, where shall I start with links…) that I have been exposed to over these 30 years.

Nine in ten of my conversations that started with where are you from originally? and continued with me saying I am from Serbia, ended right there – in embarrassment and silence. A sure sign that my interlocutors were educated on the topic by alphabet soup corporations (CNN, BBC… ESPN, CIA?) rather than history or any other books. While I do not expect people to have read all the novels by the Nobel laureate Ivo Andrić or seen the films of multiple Palme d'Or winner Emir Kusturica, to have ever found themselves trapped in one of the Marina Abramović arty installations, to have understood the principles of Nikola Tesla's coil and wireless transmission of electricity or even watched Novak Đoković play tennis, it would be nice if they could make a small mental effort to move beyond the "murderous Serbs" stereotype and the likes of Milošević, Karadžić and Mladić.

So, the western political correctness pill may pretend to be covering Muslims, Blacks and Jews but it does not cover the others, with special reference to Eastern Europeans (our subject).

I can inform you, for instance, that there is no such a thing as an East European accent.^[8] Same as there is no such a thing as a Western European accent. The geographical Eastern Europe features languages that belong to different groups : Finno-Ugric, Greek, Romance, Slavic and Albanian among others. Native speakers of these language do not and cannot possibly have the same English accents. Again, is there such a thing as a Jewish, African or Muslim accent?

For instance,

• Talking to a woman wearing a burka you ask leisurely: Oh, is that a Muslim accent that I hear, darling?
• Talking to Shaquille O'Neal during a pick-up basketball game you say: Where does your accent come from? West Africa, perhaps? or,
• Talking to a rabbi who happen to be dressed as a rabbi: Interesting accent that you have – Semitic isn't it?

(Nota bene: do NOT try any of these techniques at home)

East European is not an ethnicity. East Europeans as a compact group do not exist linguistically, culturally оr religiously and they are no different from Western Europeans in that respect. East European is a prejudiced political, cold war denomination for marginalised white (other) people.

My ancestors fought the Ottoman Turks for centuries not to be enslaved or taken away by the Janissaries. As my name is not Muhammed and I am a Christian, grandad seems to have done well. Now both the descendants and victims of the British Empire slave traders tell me I should apologise. Uh, let me see…

Is racism, as we now know it, not a construct of Western European maritime imperial nations, of genocide, slave trade and slavery?

Where I come from we learnt about these sinister exploits at school. We were told about what happened to the American Indians, the Aborigines, the Mayas and the Incas, the Africans abducted from their ancestral homes, enslaved and shipped to the new brave world. We knew about the East India Company, the British concentration camps in South Africa, Churchill's racism and crimes, the utter high-tech barbarism visited upon the civilian populations of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden.

This was all common knowledge among people outside the Anglo-Saxon imperial reach.

The British Empire is racist, you now tell me? No kidding.

The American fathers of the exceptional nation were slave owners? Say no more.

The Empire committed atrocities with the 'excuse' that their victims we not really human.^[9] If they now, suddenly accepted the humanity of the colonised, exploited and murdered peoples, their minds would blow and disintegrate along with all of their cherished ethical, religious principles and civilised posturing.

But let's go back to our topic, my Eastern European predicament. I am White, remember? Other White but still – sort of, White! To be better represented, I might want to join forces with the other Asians and the other Africans perhaps? So much for an identity crisis of the Others (capitalised though, mind you)!

I don't think I am either privileged or responsible for racial tensions. I support human rights and equality and will not kneel or beg for forgiveness.

One day, when I return to the Balkans I may lay down and die of shame for what we allowed to happen to my generation and my country in those mountains. But I will not kneel. Not here, not now, not ever!

So, East Europeans are other Whites. We are not privileged and we often find ourselves at the receiving end of prejudice and intolerance. Do not paint us thus, with the old, stained, black & white brush. There are too many dirty brushes around us already… and so many wonderful colours.

Nebojša Radić is a native of Belgrade, Serbia. He has published fiction, essays and academic work in English (nom de guerre Sam Caxton), Serbian and Italian. He is Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge in the UK. Nebojša has two PhDs, one in Creative Writing from the UEA in Norwich and one in fish chucking form Talley's Fisheries in Nelson, New Zealand.

Cambridge, UK

1. No-one ever says in Britain, England, the UK… ↑
2. New Zealand is officially bilingual and this is the Maori name. Aotearoa translates as The Land of the Long White Cloud) ↑
3. Advice based on personal experience acquired on the deck of a 15 metre-long fishing trawler at high sea during a storm: never call a Maori an Islander – BIG difference! ↑
4. Maori for New Zealand – The Land of the Long White Cloud. ↑
5. English, Northern Irish, Scottish or Welsh. ↑
6. ↑
7. https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/ethnic-groups ↑
8. My enunciations have been accused many times over of possessing such a dubious quality. ↑
9. "Churchill was a 'racist' and comparable to Hitler, says academic."↑

 

foreignpolicy.com

Collapse of Kosovo Talks Amid Leader's War Crimes Charges Are Rebuff for Trump

Amy Mackinnon

9-11 minutes

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Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic is having a good week. 

Last weekend, his party won a landslide victory in elections boycotted by opposition parties in protest of his strongman tactics. This coming Saturday, he was due to appear at the White House for peace talks with President Hashim Thaci of Kosovo, but the summit collapsed before it had even begun after an international tribunal announced on Wednesday that Thaci had been charged with war crimes. The prime minister of Kosovo, Avdullah Hoti, was due to take his place, but on Thursday he announced that he was canceling his trip too. 

Observers on both sides of the Atlantic are likely relieved at the collapse of the U.S.-led talks, which many feared could do more harm than good. U.S. President Donald Trump has been keen to bolster his deal-maker image by brokering a hasty agreement between the quarreling countries at any cost, taking a heavy-handed approach with U.S. ally Kosovo while asking little of Serbia. 

Trump's envoy for the peace talks, Richard Grenell, initially heralded Saturday's summit as "historic," but he later downplayed it, saying that the leaders would focus on economic issues to create jobs and "bring capitalism" to improve ties between the two countries while thorny political talks over Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia would be left to the European Union.

With the U.S.-led talks now on pause for the foreseeable future, Vucic can now "kick the can down the road" for a little while longer, said Dimitar Bechev, a research fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

"Vucic was never interested in a solution. He was interested in talking about it, because that's what he's offering basically, really," said Florian Bieber, a professor of Southeast European history and politics at the University of Graz in Austria. 

The United States played a decisive role in the collapse of the government of Kosovo in March, as Grenell had grown increasingly frustrated with headstrong then-Prime Minister Albin Kurti, who had resisted U.S. pressure. 

Kosovo has often been described as the most pro-American country on earth after a 1999 NATO bombing campaign intended to halt ethnic cleansing enabled Kosovo to break away from Serbia and later declare its independence in 2008. Serbia has refused to recognize the sovereignty of its former province. 

Kosovo's politics will likely be plunged into chaos by the charges announced against the president, who was one of the top commanders in the Kosovo Liberation Army. A mainstay of Kosovar politics since independence, Thaci has seen his future as president thrown into doubt because of the new charges brought by a special tribunal based in The Hague, Netherlands, which accused him and nine others of being responsible for the murder of nearly 100 Kosovar Albanians, Serbs, and Romani people. While the charges are still to be confirmed by a pretrial judge, the court took the unusual step of announcing them on Wednesday because of Thaci's efforts to "obstruct and undermine" the work of the Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor's Office. 

Thaci is a key backer of Hoti, who has served as prime minister for only three weeks, so the president's departure could lead to new elections. "I am doubtful that the Hoti government will survive for long in such circumstances," Bieber said.

There was a time when a slide into authoritarianism came with a cost, but in an increasingly multipolar and transactional world, Vucic has effortlessly played major powers off against one another while shoring up his grip on power at home. "Twenty years ago, there was basically no alternative to the EU. There was no one competing for influence or authority in the region, so they all had to orient themselves to the EU. And that's no longer the case, at least not economically," said Eric Gordy, a professor of political and cultural sociology at University College London. 

While Serbia seeks to join the European Union, attacks on the media and opposition there have increased under Vucic, prompting Freedom House to downgrade its assessment of the country from free to partly free in 2019. The EU's ability to check this has been hamstrung by flourishing authoritarianism within its member states. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was one of the first international leaders to congratulate Vucic after his faction and their junior coalition partners won a dizzying 230 of the 250 seats in the Serbian parliament on Sunday. "The European Union and the United States have not done enough to hold Serbian government accountable and enact political consequences on Serbian government for its blatant disregard of democratic rules," said Majda Ruge, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. 

"Certainly the West is more circumspect when it comes to criticizing him because in some European capitals at least there's a perception that if you're too harsh on Serbia they may look elsewhere," said Bechev, the author of Rival Power: Russia in Southeast Europe.

Candidates for EU membership are expected to align their foreign policy with that of the bloc, but Serbia has instead steadily drifted in the opposite direction. An analysis by the International and Security Affairs Centre, a think tank based in Belgrade, Serbia, found that in 2019 Serbia aligned with 57 percent of the foreign-policy declarations made by the EU, down from 99 percent in 2012. 

"The EU should be clear that Serbia has to choose its direction," said Molly Montgomery, a former special advisor to U.S. Vice President Mike Pence for Europe and Eurasia. "I think there's an argument that the EU should focus less on wooing countries like Serbia that are trying to play powers off of each other, and more on supporting countries that are dedicated to moving full speed ahead on membership." 

Vucic has spoken publicly about this desire to continue balancing Russia and China with the West. While the European Union is by far Serbia's most significant business partner, accounting for more than two-thirds of the country's trade, the EU's leaders have failed to translate this into political clout. Asked in opinion polls who they think is Belgrade's most significant trade partner, almost three-quarters of Serbs said China and Russia. "This clearly suggests to me that there's misunderstanding, deliberately fostered by leaders like Vucic," said Bieber of the University of Graz. 

Russia's ties with Belgrade run long and deep, and Moscow has proved to be an invaluable ally in international institutions when it comes to blocking Kosovo's attempts to gain recognition. This week, Vucic met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow after attending a World War II victory parade previously postponed by the pandemic. 

Beijing's footprint in the region is new, but it has expanded significantly over the past decade, with China making billions of dollars of loans and investments in Serbia. In March, as the coronavirus was picking up speed in Europe, China sent a shipment of medical aid to Serbia. In a press conference, Vucic said, "European solidarity does not exist. That was a fairy tale on paper," and he sent a letter of thanks to Chinese President Xi Jinping in which he said he addressed the Chinese leader "not only as a dear friend, but as a brother."

"China is seen as the big piggy bank arriving. Of course, this perception is flawed because the money is recycled into Chinese companies and local contractors won't get much from it," said Bechev. While Chinese investments in Serbia are expected to reach $10 billion, of the total $2.2 billion that has entered Serbia so far, almost two-thirds were loans. 

While Vucic's balancing act may have paid off for him so far, he may end up painting himself into a corner, experts warn. The EU has typically led talks between Serbia and Kosovo, but under Trump the United States had sought to forge a parallel process. With the U.S.-led process likely now on pause, Europe may once again take the lead, and Brussels is less likely to be as accommodating of Vucic as Washington has been. 

With an overwhelming majority of the parliament now under his control, Vucic may face increased pressure from the European Union to make concessions with a view to striking a deal with Kosovo. For decades, Serbian leaders have used their fear of their political opponents as a reason for dragging their heels on peace talks. "He no longer has an excuse for doing things that he won't want to do. Any failure to deliver is all on him," said Gordy of University College London.