“So the United States has a new president!”
All my students want to discuss this, their belief being that I am close enough to American to give them perspective on the issue.
They’re right.
“Yes they do.” I say. “He’s very exciting.”
“Yes, he’s very smart. Very much better than Gay-or-gee Boosh” (their regular pronunciation, not mine). George W. is widely mocked here, so just about anyone is a better representative for your nation than Bush. Four monkeys playing Hungry-Hungry-Hippo are a better representative for your nation than Bush. Obama for Bush is like a Mercedes for a pogo stick in the international eye.
“And it is interesting--” they say with some discomfort. “He is…not white.”
Yep.
They don’t know how to phrase this observation, and I don’t blame them. See, I know that racial relations in Russian are not as…advanced one would like them to be. For the most part, I find individuals to be polite and generally open, but in a city of some fifteen million, I have seen maybe two dozen black people since I arrived four months ago. So I’m not hoping for any great examples of modern racial relations. That’s just how it is, here. It’s not racist, per say, but the issue of black vs. white is just…not there in an obvious sense. It doesn’t need to be in a vastly white and asian land.
Still, these are English lessons they need. The wrong word would only suggest racial issues where there may in fact be none. Case in point:
“I know this word from music and movies,” says one student, proud of his cultural savvy. “I know: We can say he is a “nigger president.”
Nope. Nope. You cannot say that.
I should pause to explain here that the word “nigger” sounds very much like one of the Russian words for “dark (skinned).” So much so that when I try to stress the differences in pronunciation between “nyeger“ and “nigger,” my students can’t seem to hear it. To them, it just sounds like an accent-affliction of the word “dark (skinned)” and they find my horror completely confusing, if not comical.
“So ‘nigger’ is okay, but ‘nyegger’ is bad?”
Nope. Other way around. But avoid both.
Then a good minute and a half of those sentences repeated. But finally they get it.
“So what should I say if someone is nyegger?”
“You say they are black.”
Shocked, horrified looks all around.
“No?! You call them ‘black‘?!”
“Um, yes.”
“Oh you don’t say that in Russian. Is very, very not good thing to say in Russian. You don’t call anyone ‘black’. I cannot. Is there anything else I can say?”
“African-American.”
“He is from Africa?”
“No”
“Then why ‘African’?”
And I have absolutely no acceptable answer to this question. They’re right. There is something degrading about that. An American with a qualifier. So, linguistic politics in hand, I offer the following advice:
“Just say ‘black’. Or nothing. Nothing would be good.”
“So why do I hear this word “nyegger’ all the time in music if I can’t say it?”
I give the “nigger”/”fag”/”Jew” lecture, and tell them that it is okay to say this if you are of the group, but not okay if you are outside it.
“Why do you have a word you can’t use?”
“Well--don’t you have a bad word for ‘Chechnyan’” I ask, simultaneously terrified to bring up one of the touchiest political subjects this side of NATO.
“No. Just ‘Chechnyan‘.”
I call total bullshit.
“Really?” I ask. So if no Chechnyans were around, and you wanted to talk about them badly, you call them Chechnyan?”
“Oh, I see. There are lots of words then, if you want to be rude,” and I get a list of no less than five things you can derogatively call someone from Chechnya.
I don’t offer this story in a lesson in racism: only as a lesson in the underground politics of words. While the political importance of “nigger” is perfectly apparent to us, they find the slight of word odd, if not foolish. From the outside, it all looks so silly. But to label them with an actual colour? Well that crosses a line, in their mind.
In the end, all I cam out of this with was the realisation that to hold someone hostage with a misplaced vowel, an added consonant, a change in articulation, is insane.
But we all do it, in our own forms.
All my students want to discuss this, their belief being that I am close enough to American to give them perspective on the issue.
They’re right.
“Yes they do.” I say. “He’s very exciting.”
“Yes, he’s very smart. Very much better than Gay-or-gee Boosh” (their regular pronunciation, not mine). George W. is widely mocked here, so just about anyone is a better representative for your nation than Bush. Four monkeys playing Hungry-Hungry-Hippo are a better representative for your nation than Bush. Obama for Bush is like a Mercedes for a pogo stick in the international eye.
“And it is interesting--” they say with some discomfort. “He is…not white.”
Yep.
They don’t know how to phrase this observation, and I don’t blame them. See, I know that racial relations in Russian are not as…advanced one would like them to be. For the most part, I find individuals to be polite and generally open, but in a city of some fifteen million, I have seen maybe two dozen black people since I arrived four months ago. So I’m not hoping for any great examples of modern racial relations. That’s just how it is, here. It’s not racist, per say, but the issue of black vs. white is just…not there in an obvious sense. It doesn’t need to be in a vastly white and asian land.
Still, these are English lessons they need. The wrong word would only suggest racial issues where there may in fact be none. Case in point:
“I know this word from music and movies,” says one student, proud of his cultural savvy. “I know: We can say he is a “nigger president.”
Nope. Nope. You cannot say that.
I should pause to explain here that the word “nigger” sounds very much like one of the Russian words for “dark (skinned).” So much so that when I try to stress the differences in pronunciation between “nyeger“ and “nigger,” my students can’t seem to hear it. To them, it just sounds like an accent-affliction of the word “dark (skinned)” and they find my horror completely confusing, if not comical.
“So ‘nigger’ is okay, but ‘nyegger’ is bad?”
Nope. Other way around. But avoid both.
Then a good minute and a half of those sentences repeated. But finally they get it.
“So what should I say if someone is nyegger?”
“You say they are black.”
Shocked, horrified looks all around.
“No?! You call them ‘black‘?!”
“Um, yes.”
“Oh you don’t say that in Russian. Is very, very not good thing to say in Russian. You don’t call anyone ‘black’. I cannot. Is there anything else I can say?”
“African-American.”
“He is from Africa?”
“No”
“Then why ‘African’?”
And I have absolutely no acceptable answer to this question. They’re right. There is something degrading about that. An American with a qualifier. So, linguistic politics in hand, I offer the following advice:
“Just say ‘black’. Or nothing. Nothing would be good.”
“So why do I hear this word “nyegger’ all the time in music if I can’t say it?”
I give the “nigger”/”fag”/”Jew” lecture, and tell them that it is okay to say this if you are of the group, but not okay if you are outside it.
“Why do you have a word you can’t use?”
“Well--don’t you have a bad word for ‘Chechnyan’” I ask, simultaneously terrified to bring up one of the touchiest political subjects this side of NATO.
“No. Just ‘Chechnyan‘.”
I call total bullshit.
“Really?” I ask. So if no Chechnyans were around, and you wanted to talk about them badly, you call them Chechnyan?”
“Oh, I see. There are lots of words then, if you want to be rude,” and I get a list of no less than five things you can derogatively call someone from Chechnya.
I don’t offer this story in a lesson in racism: only as a lesson in the underground politics of words. While the political importance of “nigger” is perfectly apparent to us, they find the slight of word odd, if not foolish. From the outside, it all looks so silly. But to label them with an actual colour? Well that crosses a line, in their mind.
In the end, all I cam out of this with was the realisation that to hold someone hostage with a misplaced vowel, an added consonant, a change in articulation, is insane.
But we all do it, in our own forms.
1 comment:
I always find it so interesting- and even catch myself stumbling over it. I even see newscasters stumble over it (What is Barack Obama? Black? Mixed? American born of African descent? Ehhhh?)
And then when you get into the "indian" thing. In SD where I'm from, indian is thrown around like it's no big deal- it means Native Americans. It's not "PC", but it's used. Anywhere else, "indian" almost always means east indian. It makes my head want to asplode.
I think the fact that you're over in Russia is so neat. I'm gonna live vicariously through you. :)
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