January 10, 2009

Resurgent Racism in Russia

By Kim Zigfeld
On Friday December 5, 2008, 18-year-old African-American Stanley Robinson of Providence, Rhode Island was waiting at a bus stop in the city of Volgograd, Russia (formerly Stalingrad).  It was about six in the evening.  Robinson was three months into a special in-country linguistics immersion program sponsored by the American Field Service, living with a host family and studying at a local university.Before he knew it, with no provocation other than his skin color, Robinson had been jumped by a gang of three Russian skinheads, assaulted and stabbed twice in the chest.  Barely surviving the attack, Robinson contracted pneumonia after being hospitalized at a feeble local facility and had to be air-lifted to Finland for emergency treatment.  The boy's mother Tina stated after the attack: "If I had any inkling that there was any possibility of this happening, I would have tried to dissuade him [from going]." That the incident didn't even make it into the...(Read Full Article)