Racializing Politics: We don’t say “Slav” Democracy troubled in Ukraine, why Talk about “Arab” Fail

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2014/02/racializing-democracy-failures.html

Racializing Politics: We don’t say “Slav” Democracy troubled in Ukraine, why Talk about “Arab” Failures?
By Juan Cole | Feb. 20, 2014

The troubles that Ukraine is having (and that Russia and the former Yugoslavia also had) in its post-Soviet politics, with a struggle between authoritarianism and democracy and between a Moscow orientation versus a Brussels one, are very similar to the difficulties that have beset many countries of the Arab world in the past few years.

It is striking to me that we typically don’t speak of these difficulties as those of “Slavs” or of the “Slavic world.” In English we now tend to speak of eastern Europe, using a geographical term. Russians, Ukrainians and Serbs, Bosnians and Croats, all speak “Slavic” languages and in past decades it was in fact not uncommon to speak of them as Slavs. (This is still done in the Russian press to some extent). Robert Vitalis at the University of Pennsylvania argues that racial categories were key, not incidental, to most political science analysis in the US in the first half of the twentieth century.

But nowadays most journalism on eastern Europe is more sophisticated than that. This Euronews article analyzes Ukraine’s divisions as generational and regional. Thus, youth under 30 overwhelmingly favor joining the European Union whereas their elders who can still remember the Soviet Union often still look toward Moscow. Those in the west of the country favor Europe, those in the east favor Russia.

Some journalists take a third tack, looking at the economy. This IBT piece identifies key problems in the Ukrainian economy — including low foreign direct investment rates, high unemployment, especially for college graduates, a bloated service sector, dependence on imported fuel, etc. (Since Ukraine gets its natural gas from Russia, that gives Putin leverage over Kyiv.)

[MADem]

1. I think he's picking at a tired old scab, here.

Eastern may refer to a location (and it's also a synonym for "slav" which does not roll off the tongue), but so does ARABIA...as in "Lawrence of..."

That's the genesis of the whole "Arab" business--not so much Arab peoples (who are not a "race"--most, not all, are caucasian semites, some are of African ancestry, others are a mix), but a region, full of people who speak Arabic -- and even some who don't. Hell, a good chunk of the "Arab" street is in .... NORTH AFRICA. Some people like to slide it over to southwest Asia, where the people aren't Arabs, and don't speak Arabic, either. Also, before a bunch of Brits and French guys sat down and drew lines on a map and doled out chunks to "deserving" sheikhs and called them Kings, that region was much more fluid than it is today.

I think he's pushing too hard to try to make that point.