Dienraštis pažymi, jog dauguma lenkų moksleivių stengiasi pabrėžti, jog būdami baltieji, jie yra geresni už kitus mokinius ir mokytojus. Jie nenori sėdėti viename suole su pakistaniečiu ar kitu tamsiaodžiu emigrantu ar net rūbinėje greta kabinti savo paltą.

Why is Lietuvos rytas publishing this article? Is it to reinforce differences between Poles and Lithuanians or to soften them? Is this a veiled criticism of racist/nationalist projects, or an opportunity for readers to collectively sigh, “at least it's not our people acting like jerks”?

But the language of the article suggests a structural level to the racism. It speaks of events that happen “vos ne kasdien” and about attitudes shared by a “dauguma” of the Polish students, whose parents ask whether schools will have “juodukai” when enrolling their own children, further normativizing the racist attitudes of the students (as in, they're not just being cruel children afraid of difference).

The final paragraph suggests the problem is merely one of isolation. If Poles had more contact with dark-skinned people, then the racist attitudes above might not persist. That, of course, makes no sense. In the absence of racial difference (like the centuries of conflict on Polish soil that predate any meaningful interaction between the inhabitants of that soil and "dark-skinned" people), you make up other reasons to hate others: they speak a different language, have land you want, eat their god, whatever. This racial superiority displayed by the children is not just fear of an unknown other, though, it is evidence of a systematic belief in a hierarchy of difference, with whites on top and “juodukai” below. I imagine these Poles have forgotten what the Nazis thought about their own position on the racial superiority totem pole.

It's almost impossible to keep writing this post, actually, because the reading of the story keeps spinning around to the total indecipherability of the story’s appearing in Lietuvos rytas in the first place. The paper has not, in my experience, been a standard bearer for any anti-racist crusades (the above mentioned links I've been collecting largely come, in fact, from the BBC). And if the paper is using the incident to make difference between Lithuanians and Poles, then it is engaging in its own act of prejudiced differentiation.

Furthermore, if the article is right in suggesting that the students learned their racism from their parents, from where did the parents learn their racism? Can it be that, after propagandized nationalist histories, Poles (and Lithuanians...) are more susceptible to racism and white power attitudes?

To (again) quote from a t-shirt I saw this month:

The good news is, I'm Lithuanian. The bad news is, you're not.

I'm off to vomit again.

Comments (1)

Jessika : ... hi im jessika im a media studies pupil and we're researching the representation of poles in the media. i read your blog i was wondering if you could explain some of it to me? Thanks x 1 2008.04.10

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