Oh, dissident, this is a hoot. Everyone knows there's a lot of racism in Russia:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')acism Runs Deep in Russia
Across the country, a young American visitor finds open contempt for minorities.
I’m of Mexican extraction, and the most offended I’ve ever been in my life was when an old man in Sochi told me I looked like Obama — offended not because I’m not an Obama supporter but because I look nothing like him, and the man was clearly treating all dark-pigmented people as interchangeable. Common graffiti include swastikas and slogans like Rossiya dlya russkikh. This means “Russia for Russians,” but the American equivalent would be “America for whites”; rossiyskiy refers to any national of the multiethnic Rossiya (“Russia,” as opposed to the old “Rus’”), whereas russkiy means ethnic Russian. This nuance is lost in translation. “F*** the Caucasus” also seems to be a popular slogan.
The most colorful but most sinister graffito I’ve seen said, “Yid Satanists control Russia, and Putin is their puppet.” In fact, anti-Semitism is conventional wisdom. I met a farmer in the Udmurt Republic who complained about Jews in Moscow robbing the people. I wanted to say that I had no idea Putin, who has made much of his fortune by dispossessing Jews like Khodorkovsky, was Jewish, but I held my tongue.
Several times I’ve been put on trial for my nationality and my country’s alleged sins.
One particularly rude woman on a train to Sochi spent hours haranguing me about America’s evils, which ranged from our invasion of Iraq to McDonald’s making her obese. She looked bewildered when I told her that in America it is generally considered impolite to spoil an acquaintanceship by bringing up politics and that we would never verbally attack a foreign visitor’s country. When I told her Americans don’t cringe in terror at the mention of Russia, she grew even angrier, cursing Putin for his weakness. This same woman thought Gorbachev was an American spy and shouted, “Let the Chinese eat their sushi!”
Her exciteability, sentiment, and ignorance were hardly exceptional. During a lunch break on a tourist excursion in Sochi, a vacationer half-asked me if the U.S. and Russia are enemies. “We don’t worry too much about Russia,” I said, trying to be politic. “We feel more threatened by Iran, North Korea, China . . .”
“I beg of you, how do they threaten you?” he howled before I could finish. Not up to delivering a lecture on the basics of geopolitics to a middle-aged man with a Soviet hangover, I told him that Americans typically aren’t comfortable discussing politics when they first meet people.
“Why, are you afraid of your government?” he asked, in apparent earnestness.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/370083/racism-runs-deep-russia-cody-boutilierAnd it's understandable, Russians don't see black folks, or Mexicans, too often.
I've read about France before, and signs that say something like "no Africans allowed" in the restaurant.
Really nobody has a right to call us racist, we're the most progressive country in the world, on race. In no other Western nation would it be politically possible for a black man to get elected prime minister or president.
P.S. this is hilarious:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hen I told her Americans don’t cringe in terror at the mention of Russia, she grew even angrier, cursing Putin for his weakness.