by Leonard Greene
Racism knows no boundaries.
If you think bigotry would take a break amid a brutal war with a bully, think again.
Because with as much worldwide sympathy as has been generated by Ukrainians in their battle against the Russian Goliath, there’s no escaping the simple fact that they’re wrong too.
Not all of them. Just the ones keeping Africans from leaving the country.
Women and children means women and children. It doesn’t mean Ukrainian women and children. It doesn’t mean white women and children.
Yet there are reports of African women and children, Black women and children, being stopped at the border, sometimes at gunpoint, forced to stay longer in a country under siege, so that white women and children can flee to safety and escape the deadly rain of missiles and rockets.
“I was begging. The official literally looked me in my eye and said, ‘Only Ukrainians, that’s all,’ ” Jessica Orakpo, a Nigerian medical student, said of her attempt to flee Ukraine by bus last week for the Polish border. “That ‘If you’re Black, you should walk.’ ”
Over the last 20 years, Ukraine has emerged as a choice destination for African students, especially in medicine-related fields, which are less expensive than classes offered at universities in the United States and Europe.
Orakpo, 22, is one of more than 1.4 million refugees who have fled Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion, according to the U.N.’s refugee agency. Refugees have fled to Poland, Slovakia, Romania and Belarus.
Orakpo managed to get out on a train to Hungary. But she told the BBC that the ordeal and the racism she experienced at the border made her feel ashamed.
“The Ukrainians are only prioritizing their citizens,” Orakpo said. “They don’t care. They will push you, they will beat you. If you can make it, you make it. If you don’t, you don’t.
“This place is not safe,” she said. “If your skin is dark you’re at a disadvantage.”
Videos posted on social media under the hashtag #AfricansinUkraine show Black people getting pushed off trains and dragged off buses in favor of white Ukrainians.
Nigerian student Alexander Somto Orah told Democracy Now that border officials pointed guns at him and other African students when they tried to push their way onto a train in Kyiv that was heading to Poland.
“We started protesting and telling them they have to let us go, that this is rubbish,” Orah said. “They take in like a hundred Ukrainians and then take in like two Africans. It doesn’t make sense, because there are more Africans there than Ukrainians at the border.
“So we started pushing, and the police cocked their guns and pointed at us and told us that they’re going to shoot us.”
Ukrainian border authorities have denied the allegations.
Orah eventually made his way to Warsaw and is now helping other students to cross.
I hear the arguments. If I were on a sinking ship and the lifeboat only had room for my family, wouldn’t I try to keep everyone else off?
Probably. And, that might be wrong, too. But it’s different. How?
I wouldn’t be kicking people off the boat because of the color or their skin.
