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Kolta continues a series of publications about the protests in America by the text of the poet Irina Masha, who emigrated to the United States in 1991.

A friend of my friend, an educated and wealthy Muscovite, who came from Russia, a graduate of the Mehmat Moscow State University, and now a businessman, told me at the first meeting that he did not really like New York . “There are too many genetic garbage ,” he explained, smiling, as equal. He was completely sure that I would share his gaze. The first meeting was, of course, the last, and what should I do, but what about the huge part of what is written and is said now in Russian about events in America?

The fear of the fact that America is about to be absorbed by “color”, among which immigrants, first of all, Italians and Jews, were extremely strong at the beginning of the 20th century. A similar fear (and its justification), the fear that a huge number of people who speak Russian -both emigrants and in the metropolis-is directed, first of all, against the African Americans, and the events of the last weeks has even more warmed up even more. Understanding the difficult, but in its expression, which has simplified the situation in the United States, which has been simplified to the simplest polarization, when the left and right -wing politicians and the media become a caricature of themselves, it is very difficult to understand it, especially from the inside. Neuropsychologists will tell us that what is happening is natural, that in the moments of the crisis, emotional excitement, the cognitive functions of the brain are extinguished, that they are simplified to the reaction of Fight or Flight- “Drink or Run” and all in a person-and, therefore, in society-becomes black and white: this is an ancient emotional reflex, otherwise not to be saved. And you have to resemble itself all the time, given the analogy, the analogy with the very first days, with the year 1917, to which the sparkling of normal, feeling injustice to another person leads, the natural instant enthusiasm for a mass reaction to this copied invariability is to remind that where there is a abscess, there is a pus, and then there is an inevitably blood, and there is a new abscess and that this is a new abscess and that this The splash of fair indignation very quickly becomes like a blot and spreads in all, including very unsympathetic, directions.

But I wrote this text, trying to understand not so much the events themselves - for this I do not have sufficient knowledge and apparatus - how many “Russian” reaction to them. Understand why, after everything that happened in the 20th century with all of us, speaking in Russian , is so strong in us the temptation of Eugenics, racial, caste consciousness, up to physiognomy in the spirit of Lombroso. Because it turns out that there was no fundamental difference between the views of the followers of the American-German Eugenica and the Russian-Emigrant. And why (as a consequence?) So much the resistance to see and feel obvious non -enormity, but not at all historical myths; Not the past, but what is happening here and now injustice. I am interested in this second understanding - and misunderstanding - a person’s life by another person, generally the possibility of such an understanding.

In 1991, we arrived in America and settled on the opposite of New York, the Gudzon coast, on the outskirts of the big city of Newark, and now the restless, and then one of the first in crime of the cities of America. Its center was the wastelands that arose back in the late 1960s , when the city was smashed during the Negro excitement: like a nearby Paterson, now known for the film, Newark was destroyed in several nights. The owners of stores, whose names laid out by mosaics on the sidewalk, are still quite distinguishable, especially after the rain, were bought out of the surrounding farmers. So arose in these places described by the Philip company, rich quiet suburbs, of course, white. But by the time of our appearance in the Newark, a quarter century after these events, the city center, a few hundred meters from the streets with the names wide and market, was still gray, regardless of the time of the year, the wasteland without lights, past the shadows in the hoods. Even now, finding myself in those parts, on the outskirts of the Newark, I often go to the red light - I slow down, twist my head and pass: the situation has changed, but it is not so safe as to allow myself to stop at a traffic light at night.

In Newark, and now, as in some areas of New York , there are places where the police do not go. There is its own world, my own reality, which most of my friends and I myself represent abstractly, as in the cinema. Even physically entering this reality and crossing it into the red light, we actually go around it around the perimeter. There are its own laws, its own special hopeless cyclic poverty, which is not like the hopelessness of the white poor living in the core in the core in the core of America, its impotence and a person close to a person who was born there to get into another world. It is difficult to understand that the side of this invisible border is not enough for one thirst for knowledge and excellent intentions and will not be enough - it is very difficult to get a young man without the intervention of happy accidents: this world does not release his own. I know this from my long experience in school in America - this is generally a separate topic.

One of my first random works was in a small pharmacy. People of all ages came there, usually men; Some of them were just those or the fathers of those who were picking in our castle at night or fought in the corridor, leaving a long brown strip on the wall, in the elevator ending in the bloody print of the five. It was especially lively in the days of receiving the allowance. Monitatively raising their eyes to the ceiling, the men called me numbers: a lottery in poor areas - like figure skating in the USSR. But, unlike the latter, this passion does not permeate the whole society, but just that part that lives on a minimum salary or benefit, the poorer the area, the more the state manages to sell lottery tickets there. Sometimes they said: “Honey, you pick” - they were brushed to Fortune to me, apparently, rightly believing that my relationship with her should be better.

And indeed: after two years, we, very recent immigrants, managed to leave those places. I know: if that - I will not find myself on the street with a cart, friends will help me, mostly prosperous white people. But the main thing is my relationship with the police, with the law: after all, everything accumulated in different areas of life has now come to this point and flashed in it. They never stopped me when I drove into red, and if they had stopped, they wouldn’t shoot and would not chase, in extreme cases they would have a fine and lifted insurance, but, most likely, they would let go, as it happened more than once. And if I find myself in prison, I will not be appointed such a bail to which I will never go to court, and the court will not postpone it endlessly; By detaining, they will read to me, according to the rule of Miranda , my rights, but not put, formally without arresting, in one of those anonymous sumps, where I, as not yet arrested, will not have the right to a lawyer, even Pro Bono . My white daughter and her friends would not be detained immediately for smoking marijuana, and she would not be in one of those private prisons, which are especially many around New York , in the beautiful mountains of Adirondak.

Private prisons are a business related to state legal structures, and sometimes with specific judges, a business based on constant replenishment due to minor violations, mainly among Negro adolescents, especially from dysfunctional incomplete families, these children, for whom there is no one to intercede, and young men. And, as in any other country, it is very difficult to get out of the penitentiary system with a poorly educated young man, often it is often impossible.

I write these things that are obvious to any here in order to remind me, including for myself, which are based on bodily, racial and, as a result, the cultural and social signs of lack of freedom and inequality are still felled into the substance of this country. For “history” is not divided into “before” and “after”, and slavery lasts in us and does not fit completely in the stories of the elders, as everyone who lived in the USSR knows.

The word "slavery", which is absent for reasons that there is no way to talk about in detail, both in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, was first uttered only in the 13th amendment , canceling it. And if the first slaves in the colonies, those 20 people exchanged in 1619 with pirates for the necessary goods in the bay, could still be free, their descendants with generations are no longer. The atrocities that began in the south after official liberation are well known, after the victory in the Republican election (that is, then the progressist), Raterford B. Hais and the withdrawal of the federal troops in 1876, half a century, called the “second slavery”.

But the fact is little known that, considering the liberation of slaves, Lincoln, who doubted the possibility of the coexistence of two races, planned their export to other countries - all four million. A special adviser for emigration was appointed, a plan was prepared and financing was received from Congress. “We need to part,” he told representatives of the Negro elite. - There would be no war without you. Think, do not rush. ” They thought and refused to leave: they were born here, here we will die. It is just as difficult and as easy to understand as the refusal to emigrate from Russia after the revolution. And after the war, the neiger veterans also "boldly entered other people's capitals, but returned in fear of their own." Nothing changed, on the contrary, the military uniform made them a target for attacks.

However, the 27-year-old veteran Isaac Diades, demobilized from the front, returned in February 1946 without fear. He looked from the window of the bus at his native state Georgia. At the stop, he asked for the restroom and, despite the unwillingness of the driver and a bike with him on this basis, he took advantage of the same amenities. Further is known. He was removed by the police from the bus, beastly beaten, arrested. I woke up in the cell in military uniform, completely blinded in amnesia. He appeared before the judge and was fined $ 50. He asked the doctor - they gave the doctor only two days later. The policeman who beat him, including by his eyes, was convicted, but was justified by the jury by a whip, and calmly lived to 95 years old. There would be no vessel at all, do not intervene by Truman himself and especially Orson Wells, who read the testimony of the blow on the radio. As you know, it was this event that laid the foundation for the civil rights of not only blacks, but also women, LGBT, disabled people and led to the laws of 1964 . And it is very similar to what is so often happening now. Only today there is a shooting on the video - it seems, the same repeating film: the cruelty of a police officer in relation to the African American is the most common documentary movie genre in these weeks.

This rigidity, so often unjustified and applied to unarmed and not dangerous to a person who often does not violate the law at all - a lover of birds with binoculars or a run, is not due to the quality of the police as such, because there are a variety of people, but by an unspoken resolution of society for preventive and disproportionate violence, to profiling. And the BLM slogan, now disfigured by the actions of so many that use it in primitive-brown, including selfish-political, goals, is initially full of meaning and in itself is surprisingly unfortunate. It does not mean at all that only “black lives matter” - such understanding seduces passively to answer: But how, all lives! In fact, the linguistic and human meaning of its - the life of blacks also matter. This is also a person’s life. And this meaning is irremovable by any subsequent actions of people (and nonhumans).

Relations with the police that I said about is only one of many aspects of the non -human inequality. Let me remind you only about one health care.

In 1931, a Negro with very bright skin enters the car accident, it is mistaken for white and placed in the White Hospital in Atlanta, tested and begin to be treated. An error is found when the family comes. The patient is literally pulling from the table and placed in the hospital for blacks, where he quickly dies.

When at the end of the civil war four million slaves were liberated, this often happened - a man came to the plantation and said: "You are free." Naturally, these people had nowhere to go, they crowded in abandoned prisons, churches, huts; The epidemics began. Most of the medicine was homemade. In few charitable hospitals for whites did not allow. Then it arose - and became widespread (it sounded even in the Congress) - the theory: blacks die because they are biologically less capable of survival , this is a natural course of nature, and to spend resources on the rudiments of state medicine is stupid.

Even the 1964 civilian act, which declared segregation by violation of the Constitution, did not lead to a decegio of hospitals. This happens only in the late 1960s -only half a century ago, and only as a compromise: otherwise it was not to get money for the Medicare insurance program. Let us recall what is half a century - we celebrate 40 and 50 years of graduation, we exchange photographs of those years on Facebook and exclaim: it was recently!

50 years ago, experience was completed to study the natural progression of syphilis in the absence of treatment. For 40 years, from 1932 to 1972, African American men who promised free treatment were recruited to this program. The development of the disease was studied: damage to the lymphatic system, hair loss, insanity, blindness, death - at a time when all this could already be stopped by a penicillin injection.

Today, the probability for a black woman to die from the causes associated with pregnancy is three times higher than that of white. According to the results of a recent study, even treated by the same doctor, a patient with diabetes is in the worst state than white. Mortality from cancer is higher, because it is later diagnosed. And the probability of dying during childbirth in New York in 2020 in a black woman is 12 times higher than in white.

The beginnings of racism in one form or another - scrape, and you will find - is in any white person and in any black, because it is based on fear of another, and this fear is primitive, it is much deeper than any ideology and all ideal knowledge. But why there are almost a majority - people who speak my native language, including those who know in their own skin, the popular truth about this very “skin” refuse to understand this and are sure - or assure themselves - that there is no systematic, state racial problem in America and no injustice, and even vice versa?

The children's program “Street Sesam” is trying to explain what “protest” is: it is when people are upset by injustice - and they go out into the street to express this. And the children trust this knowledge of inequality, about resentment, but how deep it is and how to go through the years of fear of the stranger to get through the image of another, for which there is such a good term: Otherizing ? Apparently, only mixing, complete merging, when people depend on each other emotionally and humanly, can allow it to understand this, but this is impossible to build it on purpose. And even then this does not stop from instant immersion in such depths of the rejection of another , which you yourself did not know.

Born there and there, and I can’t know that it is a child in a Negro family in a hopeless quarter. No official programs and principles of advantages to minorities, which are not always embodied even where they are declared, do not cancel this. It is like explaining an apiturist as a Jewish schoolgirl in the Soviet Union that we did not have systematic state anti-Semitism. Tell her how many Jews we have - famous violinists and heroes of the Soviet Union.

It is also impossible to explain to the parents of the African American teenager that he has no more than his white peers, the probability of being stopped by the police, because they and their sons know: any careless gesture can lead to escalation, arrest, and who knows how this will end. It is easy to forget, as recently, in essence, the ban on mixed marriages was canceled - but it was possible to get into prison.

In conclusion, I will briefly dwell on a huge topic that deserves a separate conversation: the theory of Eugenics and its consequences in the United States.

Madison Grant was released in 1916. The Nordic race and "Great America" ​​were already declared under the threat of capture by "non -Hordic" immigrants and residents of the United States. Grant with a shudder writes that, walking along the streets of New York , he sees dirty Polish Jews in their Polish-Jewish ugly clothing-these people are about to enter our society and take our women. Известно, что Гитлер заимствовал идею трудовых лагерей в Советской России, но меры осуществления нацистских принципов были взяты им из американской евгеники 1920-х . Одним из прямых последствий этого движения был Акт об иммиграции 1924 года, определивший приоритет в предоставлении въездных виз: квоты пропорционально соответствовали демографическому составу США на 1890 год, то есть на время, когда большинство составляли «нордические» народы. Закон был направлен, в первую очередь, против итальянцев и евреев, считавшихся mentally deficient — умственно отсталыми, что и определило массовый отказ в выдаче виз в 1930-х . В 1990-х годах были найдены документы, из которых стало известно о многократных просьбах о предоставлении визы Отто Франку, отцу Анны Франк, и его семье. Но Франки просто не вошли в небольшую квоту, выделенную для европейских евреев. Таким образом, получается, что погибшая в концлагере Анна считалась неполноценной не только нацистами, но и американским законодательством.

К 1920-м годам в Америке сложилось массовое представление о том, что страна тонет в слабоумии (feeblemindedness) , что «слабоумные» возобладают и это будет конец Америки «как мы ее знаем». Указывалось на высокую рождаемость в среде малообразованной белой бедноты, а также людей с небелой кожей — негров, азиатов, евреев из Европы, тоже относившихся к разряду «слабоумных» (по одному из источников того времени, «слабоумны» от 40 до 50 процентов из прибывших на Эллис-Айленд восточноевропейских евреев). Понятие «слабоумие» вообще было достаточно общим. Доказать обратное, особенно необразованному человеку, было очень сложно.

В 1927 году Верховным судом США большинством 8–1 было принято решение по делу «Бак против Белла» [1] , узаконившее насильственную стерилизацию «слабоумных» на федеральном уровне и приведшее к стерилизации 70 тысяч граждан США, как правило, белых жителей южной части Аппалачей. По определению тех, кто принимал эти решения, — «имбецилов», то есть социальных неудачников.

Верховный судья Холмс, тот самый, что ввел термин «бостонский брамин» (для американской нордической элиты, к которой относил и себя), написал заключение судебного большинства. Обосновывая решение, он сказал ставшую знаменитой фразу: «Три поколения имбецилов — достаточно». Под тремя поколениями понимались Кэрри Бак, избранная для этого показательного дела жительница колонии для «эпилептиков и слабоумных» (прекрасно учившаяся в школе, пока приемная семья не забрала ее оттуда, а в старости читавшая газеты и увлеченно решавшая кроссворды), ее мать-одиночка , нищенка, и ее дочь, родившаяся вне брака в результате изнасилования Кэрри членом эксплуатировавшей ее приемной семьи. Заключение было всего в пять параграфов. «Три поколения имбецилов — достаточно» — короткая и бьющая наотмашь фраза — как «Сделаем Америку снова великой».

Так случилось, что именно в эти дни я впервые читала «Московский дневник» Вальтера Беньямина. В предисловии Шолема приводится фрагмент письма, написанного Беньямином Мартину Буберу по возвращении, в начале 1927 года, то есть незадолго до «года великого перелома» в России и тогда же, когда в Америке становилась законом насильственная стерилизация обездоленных. Беньямин пишет, что в Москве «“все фактическое уже стало теорией”, и потому она недоступна какой бы то ни было дедуктивной абстракции, всякой прогностике, в какой-то мере вообще всякой оценке <…> Москва, какой она предстает в этот момент, позволяет угадать в себе в схематическом, редуцированном виде все возможности. <...> …Возникнет нечто непредвиденное, образ которого будет сильно отличаться от всех проектов будущего, контуры этого образа проступают в наши дни в людях и их окружении резко и ясно» [2] .

Эта, казалось бы, далекая аналогия поразила меня. По причинам, о которых я сказала вначале, я не могу проанализировать ее, но не отпускает интуитивное ощущение, что Америка стоит сейчас, вот так же покачиваясь на ребре.

[1] Adam Cohen. Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck. — New York : Penguin Books , 2016.

[2] Вальтер Беньямин. Московский дневник (пер. с нем. — Сергей Ромашко). — М.: ООО «Ад Маргинем Пресс», 2012.