On Russians and African-Americans
For most of the day, I've been playing tour guide to a friend of one of my mom's fans. While the friend traveled a lot across Europe, this was her first time in United States - and in Chicago, no less.
I've played tour guide for my mom's friends, fans and other affiliated people many times before. I love talking about Chicago, showing tourist attractions, as well as places that weren't tourist attractions but were still interesting. And, as part of the Strannik Chicago tour package, I wanted to show her one of the iconic Chicago sandwiches - a Maxwell Polish straight from Jim's Original.
Now, Jim's Original gets people from all over Chicago. And a lot of those people are black. And as we ate our Polishes, I realized that our tourist was getting uncomfortable.
"Is this a black area?" she asked me.
"No, it's pretty white, actually. Most of the people who come here aren't from the area."
To be honest, it didn't even occur to me that being around that many black people would cause a problem. In retrospect, of course, I should have realized it. When you come from a country where black people were rare, seeing quite so many African-Americans in one place can be quite a culture shock. But it wears off once you get used it it.
Which is what I told her.
"I don't about that," she said. "I don't know if I'd ever get used to that."
And that's when I realized something.
I'm not going to pretend that I've never took stereotypes as a given. Or made assumptions that, in retrospect, were more than a bit cringe-worthy. But I've tried to learn from my mistakes, to expand my horizons.
And, once the culture shock wore off, I found the diversity fascinating. It was one of the few things I liked about America in those early days. So many different cultures. So many skins colors. It was like watching the old Soviet propaganda paintings about working people from all over the world uniting. I always thought it was a beautiful image. Seeing it come true in real life made me happy when I didn't have that many things to be happy about.
We can overcome the limitations of our biases, move beyond the initial culture shock - if we want to. But a lot of Russians, whether they live in Russia or move to United States, don't seem to want to.
And it seems like there's nothing about Russian culture right now that particularly encourages it.