It's a small world after all! (white women in peril)
From a rural Bulgarian town to Jackson, Mississippi, white people think non-white people will rape and murder "their" women.
A few months ago, I went to Jackson, Mississippi for a story about how the majority white state legislature is trying to take over the predominantly Black city. The state legislature introduced a whole new police force to fight crime in the city, against the objections of the progressive Black mayor.
On the way to my hotel, the white Uber driver dispensed unsolicited advice about how to make it out of Jackson alive. “Don’t go out, by yourself, ever. Always with an escort.” Shoot, I should have invited a spinster Aunt to warily eye men with ill-intent. “And don’t go out at night at all.”
He added, “Just a few months ago, a white woman was raped and murdered in a hotel.” Mhhmmm. Because when a white woman is murdered, no one hears about it, ever. This had not happened—he’d made it up. Anyway, this guy was a racist idiot. I went to predominantly Black spaces alone day and night and not only was I not murdered, but the waiters and the other patrons were so, so friendly that I had to recalibrate my demeanor around strangers back in New York, lest they put me in a mental hospital for being too friendly.
A few weeks ago, my friend Julie and I went to Harmanli, Bulgaria, a small, dusty village with a refugee intake center and camp. It’s a sight to behold. Elderly Bulgarian people go about their business (there are no jobs for young people so they leave) while hundreds of 20-something Syrian men mill about town.
“They scare me. I hear they have knives,” a coffee shop clerk whispered to me. I looked out the window at the kids swilling espressos and bobbing around to Tok-Tok videos. “Bitch they are your only customers,” I thought. The second Julie and I walked by, the guys committed some kind of mysterious Arabic magic trick—before we knew what was happening we were seated at their table with espressos and piles of cigarettes in front of us. “Yalla yalla!” they yelled, and demanded Julie and I take a million pictures with them.
After we hung out with those guys, we made our way to the camp. Progressive Americans, in all their self-loathing, have no idea how much people in/from poor countries love America. We were mobbed like rock stars. “I love you!!!” A 16-year-old Syrian kid, who’d taken the journey alone, exuberantly shouted. The Bulgarian cops at the camp too were quite taken with us and so spoke freely.
“They have knives,” a cop told us. “Every day an ambulance comes with another stabbing.”
This is false. An ambulance came one time over the course of three months.
“And you know, they rape women in Germany and also here. But the governments cover it up,” he added. Mhhhm. Yes. Checks out. Western European governments don’t want to process asylum claims from Syrians, and so they arm-twist Bulgarian authorities to keep them within Bulgaria’s borders. It’s been made clear that Bulgaria’s bid to join Schengen Area is contingent upon the country shutting its borders to refugees and if they make it in, to ensure they don’t make it to a Western border, because then Western European countries have to meet their commitment to non-refoulement. So yes, it’s clearly in everyone’s interest to cover up refugee rape sprees.
This is trite, but still: it never ceases to amaze me how quickly the human brain gallops over all logic and reason when we really want to be racist and xenophobic. These guys have been through Hell. They are desperate to do everything right to get asylum and join their families. But, yeah, after a 6 days journey through the Bulgarian forest with no food or water, they’re definitely going to throw all that away to rape someone.
Also, the guys who are in this camp right now? Who just undertook their journey? The war started when they were children. And their families didn’t have the money to send them to safety, so they suffered through the whole goddammned thing. Many of them are from Raqqa. That means that as kids, in 2013, they lived through Assad security forces creating a military dictatorship; then the rebels taking over after much fighting; then ISIS invading and making Raqqa its short-lived Caliphate.
Only now have they been able to escape to search for a better life.
Everyone knows that Ukrainian refugees are treated better than Syrians because of racism. But I see fewer discussions of class. Back in 2015, I made friends with a bunch of Syrian asylum seekers in Brooklyn. They didn’t have it easy. They were plopped down in the middle of a Trump administration and the asylum process is Hell. They’d had friends and family killed. But, also, they were clearly rich. All the signs were there: perfect teeth, perfect English. They were sophisticated and well-traveled, and they easily made themselves at home in the Brooklyn hipster scene, where American hipsters who'd grown up in the suburbs slobbered over their dramatic and exotic life stories.
These guys though, now: again, they lived through the whole war. One kid we talked to had a glass eye, from when a missile hit him home, killing his pregnant sister-in-law and his little nephew. The 16-year-old who professed his love for me and Julie? He had burn parks all over his body—not from the war, but because at age 14 he got a job laying down electrical wires on roofs, and he’d gotten electrocuted.
These are the people we deem to be a “flood” and an “invasion” and an electoral liability. Fuck us.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/crime-sweden-rape-capital-europe/
LOL!
I was in the midst of Eastern St. Louis the night of MLK"s assassination. Blacks were tearing down their city and they were angry and some threw stones at me. I thanked them for their anger and proceeded on my way. In years of working with mostly black co-workers and in largely black neighborhoods I came to the conclusion the only danger black citizens pose to whites are in defense from white attack. On the other hand I've discovered white people, like myself, needed to be treated with wariness and very liable to be aggressive. It makes me sometimes wonder when I hear about black men raping white women. I suppose it might happen, but how many more white men assume forcing a black woman to have sex with him is not rape? Are white men really afraid of black men raping white women, or are they guilty for centuries of raping black women. I believe that was first said by Stokley Carmichael.