“I found “Whiteness” and wanted to whiten myself with it”

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In the spring, I shared on Instagram a link to the text of Kholod about how national minorities live in Russia. After that, a friend wrote to me that "xenophobia does not exist in Russia, and disrespectful people here treat only the peoples of the North Caucasus, who allow themselves too much." I tried to convince him for a very long time: gently, without imposing my opinion, but in the end we came to nothing. I was very upset that even my friends do not understand the scale of the problem. Then I decided to write a post about what I have experienced throughout my life. It was a statement for a limited circle, my subscribers, but it quickly scattered.

Our family has always been looked down upon.

I am Uzbek and partly Kyrgyz. She was born in Kyrgyzstan and lived there until she was five years old. Then my mother took us with my sister and brother to Russia: in Kyrgyzstan we lived in a village with my father, and he constantly beat my mother. Once my mother and sister began to pray, and at that moment a drunken father came home. Something pissed him off - he came up behind and poured a bucket of ice water on them. Mom always wanted to achieve something more than life in the countryside with her father. Plus, the level of education and life in Kyrgyzstan is lower than in Russia.

In the first or second grade, I did not particularly feel special attitude towards myself. And then, when I went to the third grade, we moved to Kazan. It was hard for me to communicate with my classmates. For example, girls said they didn't hug me because I was dirty and stinky. They shouted “Allah Akbar” after me, and the Tatar guys did it. I knew that their family professed Islam, and why they did this in my direction was not clear.

One day we were standing in line at the cafeteria. A girl came up to me and, without asking anything, just started rubbing me. I thought she decided to hold hands and asked what she was doing. And she replied that she was checking whether I was dirty or not. After that, I had the feeling that I was really dirty and did not wash well. Then I could wash three or four times a day: it seemed to me that I needed to wash off this dirt from myself. Once I found Whiteness in the bathroom and wanted to whiten myself with it. But, thank God, my mother came home at that moment - and scolded me very much for it.

I remember that on the bus our family was always looked askance. Mom told me later, at my conscious age, how people almost told her to her face that they were afraid that she might steal something from them. At the same time, my mother is a very educated woman. The only thing she could do was get off the bus or sit somewhere far away so as not to feel those views. She never went into direct confrontation and understood that in Russia she was a stranger.

After all that, while still in elementary school, I decided to ask my classmates directly why they didn't communicate with me. Then I did not understand that nationality can interfere with communication. They told me that they don't communicate with me because I just look wrong, that my skin is dark and they feel like I don't wash. After that, I shut down and didn't make any friends.

At that time, my mother gave me some very strange advice. She said that I need to study well so that the guys cheat from me and they have an incentive to make friends with me. But she didn’t say anything about the fact that you can be friends with me, even despite my skin color and appearance.

If you joke about yourself, people won't talk like that anymore.

After the situation with Belizna, my mother, apparently, realized that everything was very serious, and we began to talk a lot about Uzbek culture. Then I despised everything Uzbek, I thought that if they didn’t accept me, it was something bad. Mom tried her best to explain that you need to accept your national identity and that there is nothing wrong with my being different. After talking with my mother, I became more confident. We could even walk down the street and speak Uzbek in a low voice.

In the seventh grade, I had my first girlfriends. It seems to me that around this age I learned to repel unpleasant jokes. If you joke about yourself, then people will not talk like that anymore - humor has become my defense mechanism.

But still, I continued to face hostility. For example, in Kazan, a Russian language teacher underestimated my grades: she said directly that she couldn’t give a non-Russian girl an A when the entire Russian class had a B. When I passed the OGE after the ninth grade for the maximum score, she did not believe me and asked: “Have you even passed the threshold?”

In the eighth grade, I tried to understand why I had such self-hatred: I had very low self-esteem. It concerned everything: appearance, character. As a result, I came to the conclusion that it is my national identity that annoys me the most. I tried to find an answer to why I cannot accept in myself what I was born with.

I started reading some studies on the topic of differences between nationalities. For example, whether it can be reflected in the intellect. Obviously not, but I wanted to make sure. I found articles about how hard life is for national minorities in Russia, and I began to feel that I was not alone. For me it was very important. Also, I could not accept increased body hairiness in myself, but I realized that this does not need to be treated or removed, you can just live with it. As if it made me feel better that there is someone who also faced the same. From that moment on, I finally stopped giving people the opportunity to laugh at me.

In the 11th grade, a teacher of world art culture told me when I cut my hair very short: “Milan, you must be very hot here? You are from the mountains, you have a different temperature there.” And at the lesson, which was devoted to Islam, she looked at me the whole lesson and constantly asked if everything was written correctly, if everything was correct. Toward the end of the class, she begged me for a very long time to read a prayer in Arabic. I do not speak it, but some Arabic prayers were taught to me in the family. I figured that nothing bad would happen if I read one, but when I did, the teacher said, “Muslims are trying to recruit everyone into their religion,” and also that I am a prime example of this. True, most of my classmates came up to me after class and said that the teacher's behavior was disgusting.

Such questions are not asked to teachers with Russian names

In my first year at the university - I study at the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University - I had to give documents for the hostel. There are a lot of students from China at Moscow State University, and in order to avoid queues, separate rooms were made for them, where they accept documents. When I approached the office I needed, the guard told me: “Students from China, go the other way.” I replied that I was not a student from China and I needed another office. Then he said that until he saw the passport of a Russian citizen, he would not let me go anywhere.

Last year, one of the teachers at the university, I think, deliberately did not want to remember my name and constantly called me Madina. Every time I corrected him, but it did not help. This happens all the time.

But in general, the situation at the university has become much better: I have very good friends and a young man - all Russians - who support me. They respect my experience and are interested in my culture. It also influenced the fact that at the end of the 10th grade I got into a modeling agency and on the set I stopped feeling like I was somehow wrong in terms of appearance.

Now I work as a teacher of mathematics in an online school. Before the start of training, I conduct trial classes, and parents can see me and my name. There were times when they talked to me very distrustfully, asked where I was from, where I studied, how long I had been in Russia. It seems to me that such questions are not asked to teachers with Russian names. I try to respond very gently to this, explaining that I have a good education and a good teacher, but if there is any doubt, they can choose another.

Russian people are beginning to understand what xenophobia is

I want to believe that I have accepted my national identity to the end. I'm not 100 percent sure, because in Russian culture, hostility towards other peoples seems to be absorbed with milk in the mother, and I was raised in this culture. Whether I like it or not, I probably still have an inner xenophobia that I'm trying to eradicate.

For 15 years, I have not been able to feel at home either in Russia or in Uzbekistan. Recently I flew to Moscow from Tashkent. At some point, I realized that I was uncomfortable because most of the passengers were Uzbeks. The whole flight I tried to understand what it was connected with, and came to the conclusion that a person who grew up in Russia, national minorities cause fear and some kind of contempt. Even if you look at the news: when a crime is committed by a Russian person, his nationality is not indicated, and when a crime is committed by a person of a different nationality, this is necessarily mentioned.

Of course, all situations from childhood affected me. I can see a comment with some kind of xenophobic tint not even on myself, but on another person on the page and immediately apply it to myself, because I'm used to it. These triggers send me back to my childhood. All this resulted in the fact that I have very low self-esteem: I feel insecure in all areas. As if I need to prove that I am a person, not just by the fact of existence, but to confirm this with intelligence, education or something else.

In recent months, there has been more talk about Russophobia. It seems to me that it does not exist, but Russians perceive this phenomenon very keenly. When such conversations begin, I have a strong desire to draw a parallel and say: what they are facing is nothing compared to what national minorities in Russia are facing. Obviously, experience cannot be compared and it cannot be devalued either, but it is one thing when you are infringed on the territory where you live, another thing is when it comes from some other country and the statements do not directly concern you. I think Russian people are now gradually beginning to understand what xenophobia is. Hopefully this will help them become more empathetic.

In the fight against xenophobia, the representation in the cinema and in the media of people of different appearances plays a huge role. It is very important to explain to children that people are different. If a child understands that it is normal to be different, then I doubt that he will allow himself such statements in adulthood.