Morgan Henson is a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Sociology department. He researches and teaches about social hierarchies around the world, specifically in Central and Eastern Europe. Prior to his doctoral studies, he lived in Russia and Ukraine and speaks English, Russian, Ukrainian, German, and French.
Various governments, journalists, corporations, and organizations have declared their support for Ukraine’s defense of its national sovereignty. However, these international demonstrations of support and the evacuation policy within Ukraine are being racialized in a way that emphasizes the importance of most Ukrainian citizens’ whiteness and the inferiority of people of color within Ukraine. We’re witnessing racialization and racism dominate a situation in which nationalism should be- and rhetorically is- the matter at hand. This relationship between racism and nationalism is neither necessary nor inevitable, but racism has become the main avenue through which nationalism is expressed, particularly in Europe.
This trend of using nationalist rhetoric in racialized hierarchies is not new to Eastern Europe. Neither the Russian Empire nor the USSR used formal race language to categorize their societies along a phenotypic (skin tone) hierarchy. However, though they did not use the formal category of race, they did categorize their populations according to “nationality.” Where the U.S. and Western Europe had “racial and ethnic minorities,” the USSR had “national minorities.” These national minorities were categorized hierarchically: white, ethnic Russians were at the top, national minorities of Slavic origin- specifically, Ukrainians and Byelorussians- were directly beneath them, and everyone else was scattered lower depending on their proximity to the national ideal (ethnic Russian language, culture, customs, and physical appearance). So, even though formal racial classification systems were not introduced into Soviet society, there was not an absence of phenotypic hierarchies.
Similarly, to criticize the U.S. throughout the twentieth century, especially during the Civil Rights era, the Soviet leadership introduced formal “anti-racist” concepts and ideals of racial equality into society. Despite this, the African students who travelled behind the Iron Curtain were not widely accepted among native citizens in the USSR. For example, African men with Soviet girlfriends were attacked and sometimes murdered by Soviet men who felt that the African men did not belong.
Today, the official policy of evacuation from Ukraine is 1) Ukrainian women and children, 2) Ukrainian elderly, 3) Ukrainian disabled persons, and 4) everyone else (foreign students are calling this the “Ukrainians First” policy). However, we see that this is not how the evacuation is taking place. The “Ukrainians First” policy has transformed into a “whites first” reality. Related to the use of race during and after the USSR, Ukraine is using the rhetoric of nationalism to assert racialized hierarchies that place all white people- Ukrainian citizens or not- above everyone else, even if the people of color have the correct paperwork.
This racism that people of color are facing as they evacuate Ukraine, and that various international journalists are pushing, is not necessary. One can feel sympathy for Ukraine and anger toward Russia without being racist; however, upholding a sense of white purity and protecting white victims is the main way that the former colonial powers know to galvanize their white populations against injustice. Therefore, though racism is neither necessary nor inevitable, its relationship with and proximity to nationalism in the West has become almost inseparable.