White
reporters are really in their feelings over the sight of white
refugees.
Some
of the news media have done an atrocious job of covering the
unfolding refugee crisis in Ukraine, as thousands of people flee the
Russian invasion of the country. Openly displaying their racial bias,
reporters said the silent part out loud as they regard white
Ukrainian refugees as “civilized” and dismissed
non-European refugees as poor, dirty savages.
Whether
in U.S. or foreign media, a glimpse of the
news coverage
tells the story.
“This
isn’t Iraq or Afghanistan…This is a relatively
civilized, relatively European city,” CBS foreign correspondent
Charlie
D’Agata
said of Kyiv. While D’Agata apologized for his comments, the
damage was done and we got the message.
“What’s
compelling is looking at them, the way they are dressed. These are
prosperous, middle-class people,” said Al-Jazeera anchor
Peter
Dobbie,
speaking on the Qatari news network. “These are not obviously
refugees trying to get away from the Middle East…or North
Africa. They look like any European family that you’d live next
door to.”
“This
time, war is wrong because the people look like us and have Instagram
and Netflix accounts. It’s not in a poor, remote country
anymore,” said
Daniel
Hannan
in the Telegraph.
“It’s
very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes
and blonde hair being killed,” said Ukraine’s deputy
chief prosecutor,
David
Sakvarelidze,
on BBC.
We
cannot downplay the
more than 600,000 people
who have fled so far, and as many as
4 million
could escape the country in the end. After all, war is hell, and
refugees go through circumstances we cannot imagine. Ask the people
in Somalia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Yemen, Syria, Palestine, Iraq,
Afghanistan and elsewhere who have been displaced and left homeless,
threatened with torture, starvation and death. These are the victims
of war and economic devastation, climate change and political
persecution.
According
to the UNHCR,
at least 84 million people around the world have been forced to flee
their homes because of conflict and persecution. Of these, 35 million
are children. And millions more are stateless and lack basic rights
and necessities.
Rather
than acknowledge the pain Ukrainian refugees are experiencing and
speak of all refugees worldwide with the humanity they deserve,
reporters have decided to pick and choose those who are worthy of
media attention. Calling Ukrainian refugees “civilized”
assumes they are immune from the suffering normally reserved for
darker-hued throwaway folks. Acting as if Europeans are unfamiliar
with war, these reporters failed to do their research, which would
have revealed that as many as
65 million
people have died from war and genocide in Europe since 1801. We won’t
even get into the genocide Europeans have committed against
indigenous people in Africa, Asia, the Americas, Oceania and other
parts of the global south.
Meanwhile,
the media ignored the plight of
tens of thousands of students
from Africa, Asia and the Arab world who live in Ukraine and are
desperate to leave. At least two students from Algeria and India were
killed, amid reports of poor treatment of
African students and migrants fleeing Ukraine,
including Ukrainian border guards beating Africans and blocking them
from
boarding buses
and leaving the country. Around
20 percent of foreign students
in Ukraine are from Africa, including 4,000 from Nigeria. Members of
the
U.N. Security Council
from Gabon, Ghana and Kenya condemned the racial abuse these African
refugees have faced.
Even
when crossing the border and fleeing from violence, these people
cannot catch a break. - Sadly, the harsh treatment of non-European
refugees in Ukraine mirrors the attitude of white nationalist
governments and politicians in Europe, the United States and
elsewhere who view nonwhite immigration as a disease and refugees of
color as a threat to the integrity and security of their country.
The
prevailing media narrative erases the diversity of Europe and the
presence of Black people on the continent - who date back to the
first Europeans
thousands of years ago - and oppressed minority groups such as the
Roma and Sinti
- who are of Indian descent - and the indigenous
Sámi
people. And let us not forget the Russians who were arrested in
Moscow’s
Pushkin Square
while protesting against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That square
is named for Alexander Pushkin, the greatest Russian poet of all
time, who was of African ancestry.
This
is why diversity and inclusion in journalism matter. More than
three-quarters of newsroom employees
in the U.S. and
94 percent of British journalists
are white. When journalists lack sensitivity, training and
understanding on issues of race, and there are few reporters on staff
in the mold of
Terrell Starr,
this is what happens. When the reporters do not reflect the breadth
and scope of the world they cover, this is what you get - folks
reporting with a color-coded, separate-and-unequal attitude that
values refugees with white skin and treats refugees in various shades
of brown and black with disrespect. This journalistic apartheid is
shameful but also very predictable.
This
commentary was also posted on The
Grio
