Imported racism

Twitter users tried to defend the driver Yandex.Taxi, who refused to carry a black student

On Twitter over the past days there is a campaign in defense of the taxi driver, who refused to bring the passenger from the Congo. After Yandex.Taxi disconnected the driver from the service for "rudeness and racism", Twitter outraged by these launched the hashtag #Yandekskukok. Other users, on the contrary, began to criticize the hashtag and blame the organizers of the campaign for racism.

On June 8, the public VKontakte “Overhand Bryansk” published a video in which the unknown driver “Yandex.Taxi” refuses to carry a dark -skinned student named Roy and the China. Roy directly asks the driver: “You are a racist, right?”, To which the driver answers “Of course, yes.” The video became the Bryansk media outlet, after which the Mediazona drew attention to the news. On June 9, Yandex.Taxi said that “they contacted the swarm, found out the details of the incident, apologized” and turned off the driver from the service.

The hashtag with criticism Yandex.Taxi launched on Twitter the right activist Kirill Kaminets (under the nickname @fatalist_rus), the editor -in -chief of the nationalist resource "Vandei". He stated that Yandex.Taxi "infringes on the rights of Russian drivers and refuses them to choose customers." "Why do some internal American chips such as" racism "determine your behavior?" - wrote the fireplace.

The hashtag #Yandekskukok was supported by other users. Some explained their indignation at the fact that the student, in their opinion, was “without a mask”, smoked, behaved defiantly and “provoked” the driver, so the driver refused his trip reasonably. The user under the nickname @rolocaust called on users to put Yandex.Taxi minimal grades in the App Store (rating 4.9) and Google Play (rating 4.4).

Several users pointed out a “frank threat to the driver” from the student’s friends and the students who “threaten to burn the car of the dismissed taxi driver” (we are talking about commenting on Roy's account on Instagram). Separate posts were accompanied by a hashtag #russianlivesmatter and sharply criticized the mining drivers. A petition appeared on the Change.org website demanding to return the driver to work (in the evening of June 11, it was removed due to violations of the principles of the community).

The hashtag also had critics, much less numerous. Some users called the hashtag "bacchanalia", and the users who launched it - "closed in their density." Stepan Balmond, journalist Forbes.live, so commented on the situation in his Twitter:

"Our fellow citizens with the flags of Russia saw the next extermination of white and Russians."

We tried to take comments from the defenders of the dismissed driver . Kirill Kaminets, like the creators of the petition, refused to answer the questions of the "new". They explained that “they prefer not to communicate with journalists” and asked all questions on the topic “To redirect Andrei Afanasyev from the Channel Channel”. After several attempts to get a comment from different persons on the user's page @cudipodcast, promoting the hashtag, a warning tweet appeared, advising readers not to communicate with journalists.

Human rights activist Alexander Verkhovsky notes that in Russia there has always been a certain intolerance or suspicion of black. However, criticism of Yandex.Taxi is associated not so much with intolerance itself, but with the reaction to the #blacklivesmatter movement in America. “There is a lot of negative reaction to this movement, and [Russians] there is nowhere to address this negative reaction. If this happened, according to the coincidence, that at that time our native Yandex fired a person for a racist replica, then Yandex gets out of indignation. The Twitter movement does not mean that the population of Russia is struck by mass intolerance to black - on them many Russians, as numerous sociological polls show, still. But the reaction to excessive tolerance and political correctness is a very popular topic in Russia.

It would seem that we do not suffer from excessive political correctness, but for some reason many people accept this close to heart-perhaps, disproportionate to the real state of affairs. ”

The cultural scientist Oksana Moroz believes that the appearance of a hashtag should not be considered a demonstration of the participation of Russian citizens in the battle for or against modern tolerance to racism, which is associated with the confrontation between the slogans #blacklivesmatter and #allivesmatter. “Rather, this is evidence that we all live in the filters bubbles and among the information noise, which has recently updated the problems of racism. Despite the fact that in Russia there is no daily problematization of racism (and xenophobia is so generally very common in the form of household stereotypes), all this discussion is rather just voices in information noise, an unconscious “assent” of the agenda. And, of course, a clicked attitude towards the “strangers” imposes a common nervousness and anxiety associated with both coronacials and economic difficulties. ”

At the time of publication, Yandex.Taxi did not respond to criticism in any way. The New Gazeta appealed to the press service of Yandex.Taxi with a request to comment on the situation, but did not receive an answer.

According to Alexander Verkhovensky, it is easy to explain. “They fired [Yandex.Taxi] employee because he grossly violated the rules. No one forbids a taxi driver to be a racist, this is his personal matter, but he should not show it at work. Dismissal for violation of the rules is a simple, almost mechanical reaction. And to comment at least a relatively mass campaign of dissatisfaction with the service itself is to harm yourself. No big service company wants to massively conflict with customers. It is much easier to shut up and wait until all this is settled. ” Oksana Moroz believes that the silence of Yandex.Taxi is associated with the privileged position of the company in relation to the audience: “They are monopolists, even the mass indignation of the audience does not affect their position. So the audience may think that public statements are of some meaning, but for Yandex the public, customers are not subjects, due to the loyalty of which the company exists. ”

The most interesting thing in this situation is how part of Russian society is adopted by American racism in relation to black, historically, it would seem, Russia is not inherent. The advancing hashtag users themselves indicate that racism is “the historical fault of the Anglo -Saxons in front of the Negro”, and “Slavic countries have never had African colonies, black slavery and segregation”, therefore, racism to “Russian people is not applicable”.

“Interiorized racism, apparently, is not considered evidence of an excuse for a crime against humanity,” comments Oksana Moroz. - Both the audience of the case and the taxi driver are ready to come up with any excuses for their intolerance, including agreeing to the status of racists.

By the way, both internalized racism and household xenophobia are largely the lack of empathy, the habits of attempts to understand another ”

Varvara Pikuleva,
Especially for "new"