Stuck Inside of Ukraine with the Congo Blues Again

1,266 words

Rosa Parks had it easy. At least they let her on the bus for a little while. But these poor benighted African exchange students are “struggling to get on buses ^[2]” and hightail it out of Ukraine. As a full-blown European ground war heats up, these Prodigal Negroes are left stranded in Ukraine because all of the refugee buses and trains ^[3] already left for Poland — filled to the gills with Ukrainians.

In what may go down in history as World War III’s first man-bites-dog story, Africans are desperately trying to get out of a European country but are reportedly facing resistance. You heard me right, cowboy: The blacks are trying to leave, but the whites won’t let them. When has this ever happened? What kind of jerk would stand in their way? Is this the start of something new? Do we need to call the Guinness Book?

If, say, you and I were stuck on a refugee bus creakily navigating the pockmarked roads between Ukraine and Romania and we decided to play a word-association game to break the terrified monotony, I am quite certain that my immediate response to the proper noun “Ukraine” would not be “negritude.” Off the top of my head, I can’t recall much great soul music coming out of Kiev. I wasted quite a bit of time trying to find the total number of permanent Ukrainian citizens of African ancestry and wound up drawing blanks. Perhaps there are no certifiable Ukrainianiggas.

But until Putin embarked on his recent military escapade, there were apparently around 10-20,000 foreign exchange students in Ukraine from such staunchly non-Slavic climes as Africa, India, and the Middle East. And as some of them try to flee the conflict and escape to one of the adjoining Potato Republics, they’ve complained that ethnic Ukrainians are often rewarded the express lane out of the country while they are forced to wait and stew in disconsolate resentment, second-class citizens in a country where they, if you wanna get technical, aren’t even citizens in the first place.

When one black suffers, we all suffer. They make sure of it.

There have been numerous news ^[4] and social-media ^[5] reports that blacks — almost all of whom are African immigrants — who are attempting to flee Ukraine have been delayed longer at border crossings than ethnic Ukrainians. There has been one allegation of a border guard assaulting ^[6] a black male for no apparent reason, but in the two dozen or so stories I’ve read, that’s about as extreme as it gets. There was one tale of a pregnant black woman being forced to give up her seat on the bus. There are numerous stories of blacks being forced to wait behind at bus and train stations as ethnic Ukrainians abuse their Ukrainian privilege to be whisked out of the danger zone first. So far, though, I’ve seen no allegations of murder or rape, nor unlawful detention, nor solitary torture — nor, thankfully, even one thoughtless use of crass derogatory terms such as “shvoogie” or “obsolete farm equipment” to demean African refugees and make their experience that much more traumatic.

Neither have I seen any stories of blacks being permanently stuck in Ukraine. They may simply have to wait a few more hours or walk a few more miles. I’m sure that must suck. I’m also sure something must suck somethin’ fierce about Africa that you’d decide to eschew its coconut trees and balmy climes in favor of podiatry school amid Ukraine’s frozen radioactive wastelands.

Mind you, as I type this, there are quite likely Ukrainian babies being eaten alive and nuns being sodomized with bricks and fathers being stabbed to death in front of their sons and infants crying out for their raped mothers and shellshocked vagrants wondering where their left arm went and whole villages being silently exposed to radiation and experimental viruses, yet we have native Congolese and Nigerians who are acting like typical black customers and complaining about the swiftness of their free evacuation service.

Way to make it all about yourselves again, black people. Sure, this will all likely end in a nuclear apocalypse, but Miss Lukwukwu Falumbwebwe, cosmetology exchange student from Lagos, wants it entered upon the record at the United Nations that she suffered a microaggression at a bus stop near the Polish border.

One thing that refugees should never do, no matter how dire their situation, is bitch.

Why is it also easy, if not easier, to picture them complaining if they’d been shoved out of Ukraine much more quickly than all other groups?

By the way, has a native European ever once applied for refugee status in, say, the Democratic Republic of Congo, or are the Africans hogging the whole refugee thing for themselves? It seems a bit rude, but then again, it wouldn’t be out of character.

This is purely hypothetical, but if I were to apply for a doctorate in Primitive Cave Painting at the Nairobi School of Fine Arts and some long-simmering tribal feud between the Kikuyu and Luhya peoples erupted into a bloody conflagration throughout the fine nation of Kenya, I’d expect African border guards to give preferential treatment to black refugees, just as I’d expect Mexican guards to prefer Mexicans and the Japanese to bequeath nepotism to their ethnic cohorts in comparable times of great duress. Self-preservation is the healthiest of all instincts, so it’s entirely understandable.

Stuck inside an African country during a time of warfare, the only two things on my mind would be, first, getting the hell out of that African country; and second, vowing to aggressively hate myself for at least one uninterrupted year for ever deciding to go to that African country in the first place. If I even paused for a second to whine before news cameras that the native Africans treated me in an unacceptably racist manner, I’d feel like one weak little jerk. Actually, I’d feel like a gigantic jerk — a Jerkasaurus rex. Yet these flat-nosed ingrates accomplish the miraculous: They manage to be full of self-pity without having a droplet of shame.

And when did black people start feeling inconvenienced by a slight delay? As a breed, they are notoriously late ^[9].

As much as I’d wish for the world to be even half as racist as the anti-racists pretend it is, there sadly appear to be some completely hate-free reasons why certain border guards segregated blacks and other non-white refugees from the phenotypically Slavic; according to several accounts, Ukrainian nationals may have more legal freedoms moving from one European country to another, whereas an African citizen may need to secure certain visas. As one black female medical student who found her way from Ukraine to Poland explained it, “One of the officers came and told us it’s harder for us foreigners because they have to get in touch with our government in different countries.”

Therefore, in the midst of an already insanely chaotic and dangerous situation, it may have been expeditious to split the two groups to streamline the process. It’s perfectly natural for ethnic animosities to flare under such conditions, and the fact that this is the worst we’re hearing — two different groups being placed in two different lines for two different procedures — is nauseatingly tame compared to the horrors that are likely spreading throughout Ukraine at this second. It’s insultingly tame.

As depressing as it is, hate had nothing to do with it.

What’s even more depressing — for them, at least — is that a lot of these exchange students will eventually have to go back to Africa.

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