Here’s Why It’s Understandable That Some Black People Don’t Care About Ukraine

Peace Corps warns some Ukrainians are rabid racists who spew anti-Black slurs at volunteers

There may be no atheists in foxholes, but racists seem to hold fast to hatred until the bitter end. The Peace Corps, an organization which trains volunteers for service in communities in dire need of assistance, has published information on their website for those who’d like to volunteer to help people trapped by war in Ukraine. Included in the information offered is a warning that some volunteers may be faced with Ukrainians who’ve never seen a Black person before, which may cause all sorts of reactions, including calling Black people monkeys or even that word we’ve repeatedly asked White people not to use. Yes, that one.

As time permits, you can read the entire page of advice for volunteers who may be met with discrimination of various types and, in particular, for being Black, but for now consider this snippet quoted directly from their website:

“‘People of color’ face many challenges living in Ukraine, as a Peace Corps Volunteer. However, African-Americans will confront far more complicated issues… It is not uncommon for Ukrainians to refer to African-Americans as “[N-Word]”. Volunteers of color may be called ‘a monkey’ or may see children’s games with Blackface.”

An identification with Whiteness really does destroy the soul, doesn’t it? What is wrong with people? War is raging all around them, but some backwards Ukrainians want to name call some of the very people volunteering to help them. In what world does this make sense?

You Don’t Like Me? Cool, We Don’t Like Each Other

I’ll never understand such ignorance, but I do understand it when Black people profess to not care about the war in Ukraine. While my own heart goes out to the people there and I regularly pray for the war to end and for people, especially children, to be granted safety, I still get why some Black people flat out refuse to care. Such is not reverse racism, but it is a reaction to racism and a human one at that. It’s the philosophy of, “Oh, you don’t like me? Cool, we don’t like each other.”

We are tired of turning the other cheek, of loving those who don’t love us and of being expected to bear the brunt of other people’s ignorance towards us with a smile. Black people have proven over and over again that we are of morally superior character just in the fact that we haven’t gone stark raving mad on White people despite how we’ve been treated for centuries under White supremacy's systems of tyranny and devastation. We haven’t even come close to returning the energy we’ve been given. We are allowed to draw the line somewhere, though. And if that line happens to be Ukraine when they need people to care the most, then so be it.

I get concerned about our hearts hardening like those of the racists who come for us day after day, year after year, century after century. Systemically and individually, there has never been a time when we haven’t had to deal with racism. Such nonstop aggression wears even the best people down. Sometimes I wonder if that’s the goal of the evil that is White supremacy. Is it trying to bring all of us who aren’t classified as White down to the grimiest and most small-minded levels of existence? Does it want us to be as obscene, uncaring and violent as them? I don’t want to see us lose our humanity, our compassion and our empathy, but I’m not going to be upset with anyone for sitting this one out. I just won’t do it. I can’t.

Russia Isn’t Ukraine’s Only Problem

There’s a video I watched a week or two ago, which I was reminded of today. In it, a journalist is talking about how the U.S. is providing military assistance to a Neo-Nazi militia within the Ukrainian national guard and military. The video was published four years ago in 2018.

So coupling this with what we’ve seen in the news about discrimination towards Africans in the Ukraine and reading what the Peace Corps has had to advise their own Black volunteers heading to Ukraine, you begin to get the idea that Ukraine has a serious issue with racism. Now, America also has a serious issue with racism and so this doesn’t surprise me (nor does it surprise me the U.S. may be supporting Neo-Nazism in Eastern Europe), but it does make me wonder if Black volunteers and other volunteers of color are fully aware what they may be walking into?

For a while after watching the video above, I was of the belief that it was largely Ukraine’s security forces who were ejecting Black people from trains. I believed this maybe because I wanted to, but definitely because I’d seen Africans on television and on the web say that the Ukrainian people had been kind to them, but that the security forces were the ones exhibiting racist behaviors. Now I know, however, at least according to the Peace Corps, there are some rabid racists even among Ukraine’s citizenry.

The Mind Games Racism Plays

There’s no way to know by just looking at a person who does or who doesn’t hate you. It’s very likely some of the very people I’ve felt heartbreak for and have even prayed for while watching the news would just as easily spit on me for being Black. When I tell you that’s a mind trip, I’m not kidding in the slightest.

So, no, I won’t reason with any Black person who doesn’t care about what’s happening in Ukraine. Some of us have reached our limits with Whiteness and that does not make anyone who feels that way racist. What it makes them is tired and smart enough to learn valuable lessons from the past that may protect them today and in the future.