Migrating while Black (in Europe)
On the Ukrainian-Polish Border
“Racism, I maintain, was not simply a convention for ordering the relations of European to non-European peoples but has its genesis in the “internal” relations of European peoples.”
― Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition
Yesterday, in Berlin more than 100,000 people marched near the Brandenburger Tor–under the banner of “Stoppt den Krieg” (Stop the War)–to show their solidarity with the Ukrainian people. As Johanna Bussemer, Fabian Wisotzky, Boris Kanzleiter noted in the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation noted, “Russia's invasion of large parts of Ukraine is not only the sad climax of the end of all peace-political efforts in Eastern Europe since 1990 but also severely tests the positioning of left-wing forces around the world.” Beyond that, the world watches yet another group of people manage to navigate life under military occupation, war, and displacement. During the weekend, various public intellectuals have had another way of looking at the crisis, not solely through the lens of what it means for Ukrainians, but many have asked relevant questions about how Western Europe engages with Eastern European migrants, how other migrants are treated, and the role that race has played in moments of conflict.
But more than that, migrants may face ongoing prejudice even in times of peace. Well before the Russian invasion of Ukraine last Thursday, Eastern Europeans living in Germany were significantly underpaid. Solidarity should not just come in times of war, but they should metabolize in every sphere of life—including the workplace.
But war changes everything: disabling people’s lives or causing mental agony for people who never agreed to—but have lived and survived—a military operation. Heba Gowayed, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boston University, asserted in her latest article in The New Humanitarian:
“Like Ukrainians are seeing now, Syrians saw the places they knew buried in rubble. Their children – like Ukrainian children now – learned to distinguish the whirs of bombs, and to hide when the sirens signalled an impending siege.”
But Gowayed doesn’t stop there, rather, she points out knotty contradictions between migrants coming from Syria and Afghanistan and those coming from Ukraine, noting that “the racist realities of borders and systems that make it easier or more difficult for people to seek refuge depending on the colour of their skin.”
The underlying message is that migration–and by extension, migrant labor–is not racially neutral. This was made clear, during the weekend when African and Caribbean people attempting to leave Ukraine were prevented from crossing the border into Poland, not only by soldiers but also civilians. (I choose not to recirculate the videos and photographs of anti-Black violence at the border so as not to contribute to the economy of Black suffering, but a simple internet search will confirm my claim.) Since then, the Nigerian government has admonished Poland for denying Black people entry. Echoing a similar tone to Gowayed, the Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari, said on Monday: “All who flee a conflict situation have the same right to safe passage under UN convention and the colour of their passport or their skin should make no difference.”
What they are both pointing to is that the conflict in Ukraine is not just a single story about Ukraine and Russia (or the sanctions imposed but Europe), but the conflict has also created a ripple effect on non-white and non-European migrants who are fleeing. Alongside that, we are witnessing life’s cruelties, and seeing another iteration of anti-Black racism in Europe. What does it mean for a Black person to cross a border and how does the way they get treated relate to history? In my opinion, an honest conversation about racism’s connection to capitalism is relevant here. The influential Black Panther Party leader, Fred Hampton once exclaimed that racism is an excuse used by capitalists. Hampton, even in his short life, was a prodigious force, able to inspire a new generation of freedom fighters in Chicago.
But more than that, he articulated the ways that racism was tethered to capitalism, and capitalism was dependent on racism. As the late Black historian Cedric Robinson–author of Black Marxism and person who coined the term “racial capitalism, remarked that race was one of the modalities that class lived, meaning that racism was an inherent feature of capitalism, creating the myth that some people could be deemed less.
Racism is not just a chimera, but it’s a mechanism that allows several things to simultaneously occur: the extraction of greater surplus by capitalists, the violence against subjugated people who are not considered fully human, and the creation of structures that go beyond exploitation (think voter suppression and housing discrimination). What we see happening to Black migrants attempting to leave Ukraine is not an isolated incident but also global anti-Black racism being tethered to xenophobia in Europe. And yet, it is also more than that. But I will stop there because this is also a time to learn and read from the scholars, artists, and activists who are challenging us to think, reflect, and act with an expansive liberation politics that is grounded on clarity.
Reading has often given me insight into political uncertainty, and for information about Black Experience in the USSR, I highly suggest that you read Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, who is an expert on Blackness in the USSR. In addition, I highly recommend connecting with the scholars who have been doing excellent work through the Black Central Europe initiative which mostly focuses on Black experiences in German-speaking lands over the past 1000 centuries (this is not a typo–1000 years). For those seeking to learn more about Ukrainian literature, check out Ilya Kaminsky's poetry collection Deaf Republic. Kaminsky — who is originally from Odessa, Ukraine — is a hard-of-hearing poet whose book is about an occupied territory where everyone loses their hearing after a deaf boy is shot and killed by police during a protest. Finally, for those who are able to provide assistance to African and Caribbean people, Barzani (an anti-colonial group based in Berlin) pointed out the groups and organizations that are helping in Berlin which you can find more about here.
There is virtue in knowing, but there is also integrity in admitting ignorance. I am not an expert on Ukraine—though I briefly lived in Belarus, one of its neighbors in high school—as a Black migrant living in Europe, I do know that racism is alive and well in Europe. What I do hope is that we can not only spell out racism, for its hardships and hurdles, but to provide some radical compassion and care to every migrant in times of war.