Understanding modern racism in Poland

Okay before I begin, I want to categorically state that as a tourist, I experienced no racism whatsoever in Poland whilst I was there and the locals couldn't have been more friendly and helpful to me. However, the touchy issue of racism was something that Poland has a bad reputation for - black and South Asian (by which I mean the Indian sub-continent) visitors who have darker complexions have complained about racist discrimination in Poland during the Euro 2012 football championships. Perhaps it is because my complexion is rather fair and that I spoke some Polish, I was not subjected to any racism at all - but I feel this is something I still want to talk about.

Let's begin one evening in my apartment in the Nowolipie area of Warsaw. I had access to loads of TV channels. So one cold night, I was just being a couch potato, surfing through loads of Polish TV stations and I stopped at one channel which made me sit up and say, seriously, WTF?! This is so ridiculously racist!

It was a comedy programme where the Polish comedians were performing skits - now I speak a little Polish (well my Russian is a lot better than my Polish but I can understand a lot more than I can speak) but it was not the language per se that offended me, it was the portrayal of the characters. These were white Polish comedians who were doing "yellow face" to portray Chinese characters on TV. The "yellow face" involved the comedians putting on a black wig, using stick tape on the corner of their eyes to create the 'slit eye' effect, dressing up as Chinese monks and covering their faces and arms with a yellow paint. And I'm talking Homer Simpson bright yellow, not just a bad tan job. Now I am Chinese (mostly anyway, though I'm mixed), my facial features may be distinctly non-European but my complexion is actually rather fair and not that different from say most Southern Europeans. Nobody looks that yellow - not unless they fell into a pool of yellow paint. I could hardly believe what I was seeing.

This skit involved a group of "yellow face" Polish comedians portraying Chinese monks (supposedly in China) in a Chinese temple. The skit was all in Polish of course, their portrayal of Chinese culture was just painful to say the least to watch. Such a skit would never ever see the light of day in the UK or America for it would be so racially offensive on so many levels. I watched in disbelief and thought, do you Polish people actually think that this is funny and suitable material for prime time television? Are you not mortally offended by this? Can you not recognize racism for what it is? Apparently not. How do they get away with such blatant racism on Polish TV in this day and age?

Homer Simpson is yellow, I may be Chinese but I am not 'yellow'. 

What did I do next? I merely changed the channel after watching it for a few minutes. I didn't think I wanted to take on that fight - I was on holiday, I had not watched the programme from the beginning and even if I wanted to complain - I didn't know whom to complain to and if they would accept a complaint in English (my Polish is limited) or from someone who didn't reside in Poland. Besides, I don't live in Poland, it was my first time in Poland - it was just too easy to walk away from the programme as I don't live in Poland. There was a part of me that was cynical - even if I did make an official complaint, I really doubt anything would be done and in any case, the damage has been done already.

In any case, having worked in TV, I know how much production is involved when creating a TV programme and so many people: directors, producers, script advisors, actors, production managers etc would have seen the script of that skit and if nobody said, "oh we can't do that, it is offensive and come across as racist." This is not some radio DJ shocking everyone by coming up with a racist comment out of the blue - this was a scripted and edited TV programme that took a lot of time and money to produce before it could be aired on prime time TV in Poland.

Yes I have worked in TV in the UK.

Nonetheless, what I saw disturbed me because it didn't sit well with everything else I saw in Warsaw. I spent a lot of time visiting the various memorials commemorating the Jewish Ghetto where over 400,000 Jews were imprisoned by the Nazis between 1940 and 1943 - practically all of the 400,000 Jews in there were either transported to extermination camps like Auschwitz and killed there, or they simply died of illness and starvation in the Jewish Ghetto itself. Further antisemitism in the 1960s and 1970s drove any remaining Jews out of Poland and today, only about a thousand Jews live in Warsaw. (In 1939, there were about 400,000 Jews in Warsaw).

Modern Poland is very keen to portray itself as a compassionate and tolerant country - all these memorials blamed the horrible Nazis and Germans for the Holocaust. When I challenged my guide on my walking tour about the blatant antisemitism in Poland in the 1960s and 1970s (and even today), he explained, "this was because of the brainwashing and political situation during the communist era. You see, during the Six Day War in 1967, America gave Israel a lot of support. America was the enemy of the Soviet Union then, so by default, the Eastern bloc countries aligned themselves with the Arab nations so that turned Israel into the enemy. The Soviets are to be blamed for the antisemitism as a result of this political alignment - the Russians were the ones who brainwashed us into being antisemitic, Polish people are not like that, we're not antisemitic. We suffered under the Soviets during the communist years because the Soviets controlled everything that was taught in Polish schools in those years - so whilst I agree with you that antisemitism is terrible, you have to understand the context of what happened and how it happened in those communist years. But please, Poland is different today, we are a modern, progressive EU country today."

I also dug deeper, did more research, spoke to many people and found out more about Poland and why racist attitudes can still exist there. A key factor is that Poland is homogeneous - 94% of the population is Polish and even the 'ethnic minorities' are mostly other white Europeans like Ukrainians, Russians, Czechs, Slovaks, Armenians, Belorussians and Lithuanians. Most of these white minorities are very much assimilated in Poland anyway and hold Polish nationality. As for black and Asian people, they exist in such tiny numbers in Poland that they are not visible to most Polish people, particularly those outside big cities. Practically everyone in Poland is white.

There are at best a few hundred black people living in Poland currently and the biggest non-white minority in Poland are the Vietnamese (there are loads of great Vietnamese restaurants in Warsaw). There may be some Chinese people residing in Poland (there are about 5,000 in neighbouring Czech Republic, here's my story of when I was working in Prague and my encounter with them) but I failed to get hold of reliable statistics beyond estimates of a few hundreds.

That's me in a street in downtown Warsaw

It is not like Polish people would stare at black or Asian people in the streets - no, it is 2013 and Polish people watch plenty of (badly dubbed) American TV programmes and are used to seeing black and Asian people on TV all the time, but this is a country where you simply don't see black or Asian people around. (I experience the same this in Croatia.) The only black and Asian people I saw were other tourists at the tourist attractions and they do stand out in a sea of white faces. This is a far cry from cities like New York, London and Paris where there are plenty of black and Asian people everywhere. So if there are virtually no black and Asian people to offend in Poland (and let's face it, most black and Asian tourists would not be watching a Polish-language comedy programme - they would be watching CNN or BBC in their hotel rooms), then perhaps the producers at the TV station knew that this racist comedy skit was not for an international audience, but pretty much a white-only local Polish audience.

Does this in any way excuse the kind of racism employed in this programme? This then that begs the question - even if you are Polish and white, surely you would still be offended by this racist portrayal of Chinese? Do you have to be Chinese to be offended by anti-Chinese racism? Here's the thing about comedy: the audience has to find the joke funny, otherwise it simply will not work. So if the Polish public would not have found such a racist skit funny, then the comedians would not have performed such a skit in the first place. You can't just say that this is the work of one or two racist comedians without acknowledging the kind of relationship a comedian has with his audience. Thus you can tell a lot about a culture by the kind of comedy that is popular there.

Comedy can tell you a lot about a country's culture.

You cannot divorce any of the issues: racism, sexism, homophobia - any kind of bigotry. These all go hand in hand - either you give in to bigotry as a society or you take a stand against it and say loud and clear: no, bigotry is not acceptable in our society.Thus it is no surprise that Poland is also quite a homophobic country and quite openly so in fact. Poland may have the trappings of a modern EU country: you can walk around the glitzy Zlote Terasy mall in Warsaw and feel like you're capitalist retail paradise, but you only have to scratch beneath the surface and see just how much needs to be done to tackle bigotry in Polish society.

A society is truly progressive when you get to the point where people will take a stand and say no to any kind of bigotry because it is morally wrong, rather than because they are personally offended or affected by it. I want to live in a society where men will say no to sexism, where straight people will say no to homophobia, where the ethnic majority will say no to racism, where everyone simply agrees that any kind of discrimination on the basis of bigotry is not acceptable and there should be legislation to enshrine this in the law of the land.

It was very cold in Warsaw when I was there.

What happened next really disappointed me - it was not like I was driven by anger or offence, I was just so keen to find out just WHY Poland is racist despite her history. I further discussed this with more Polish people (both in Poland and back in London) and I encountered a wall of denial. Here's the irony, every single person I spoke to made the following points to me (at least we're off to a good start here):

1. Racism is bad, it has no place in Polish society.
2. Poland is a modern, progressive EU country today and is not racist.
3. Sure there may be a very small number of racists in Poland but they are in the minority and the vast majority of Polish people abhor racism, racism is not a part of Polish culture.

They went further and made the following points in a variety of ways:

4. I don't speak enough Polish to have understood the programme, so I couldn't have understood it properly and thus I couldn't jump to the conclusion that it was racist.
5. I didn't watch the entire programme from beginning to end, I had only watched a few minutes of it - so I could have taken that scene out of context.
6. The programme could have been in praise of Asian culture or a representation of Polish people exploring Asian culture rather than mocking it. (Yeah right, now that's complete bullshit, who are you trying to kid?)
7. I do not understand Polish comedy and Polish culture - so there is an element of 'lost in translation'.
8. A Polish radio DJ made a racist comment live on air earlier this year and he was punished for it immediately - he was removed from his job, so if that can happen, how can anything racist possibly appear on TV?
9. British, American, German (etc) people always look down on Polish people and assume the worst of Poland, so when they see something ambiguous or something they don't understand, they simply jump to the worst possible conclusion. That is a form of anti-Polish racism on my part, as a British person.
10. Other less modern non-EU Eastern European countries like Ukraine, Belarus, Serbia and Russia may be more racist, but that is not to be confused with Poland - do not treat all Eastern European countries like a monolithic entity.

That's me in Warsaw by the Palace of Culture & Science.

There was one common theme - none of them would even acknowledge that this programme could have possibly been racist or offensive. They all dismissed it as a "cultural misunderstanding" at best and if I knew more about Polish culture and the rich traditions of Polish comedy, so I could appreciate their culture better. Of course, they were all extremely polite without being apologetic - yes you can be polite without acknowledging a problem or accepting any blame. One of them in particular was more than happy to indulge me in this discussion - he was a well-educated young man who spoke English fluently. It was both enlightening and frustrating talking to him: he gave me an insight into how the modern Polish mind deals with this issue but it was also frustrating because he simply insisted that I was the one who misunderstood what I had seen ("modern Polish media today couldn't possibly be openly racist like that").

He did offer a lot of useful insight though, "back in the communist era, there was no freedom of speech. Any kind of entertainment was strictly controlled by the state and subject to a lot of censorship. Then came the fall of the Berlin Wall and the arrival of democracy and suddenly, we had freedom of speech - just like that. People could say what they want, express political opinions, criticize the government - it was wonderful. Many Polish comedians then looked at comedy that came from places like America and the UK and copied a lot of the formats used in English language entertainment and adapted it for the Polish audience. So sure, sometimes they go too far and make jokes that are offensive, but this happens as well in the UK with controversial comedians like Frankie Boyle getting into trouble for his un-PC jokes. Yes, so sometimes, comedians can get it wrong when they cross the line with a bad joke. So how is Poland any different from the UK in that aspect? Like the UK, we have freedom of speech now which allows these comedians to express themselves - is that a bad thing? Would you have rather all Polish comedians, writers and journalists were subject to very strict censorship like back in the communist days?"

There is freedom of speech in Poland today, unlike during the communist era.

He continued, "If you have an open and free society where people have the freedom of speech, then you must accept that a side effect of that is that people will say things and express opinions that you may not like or agree with. Such is the nature of democracy - so you may not like what I say, but you cannot silence or censor me just because you don't agree with me or if you feel offended by my opinion. You have the right to express yourself and respond to whatever I say then we have a debate where both sides of the stories are heard, both parties have their say and there may be no clear conclusion about who is in the right or wrong but that is the messy nature of democracy. Poland is a democratic country today and this is the process we go through all the time - so you cannot just protest about a TV programme being racist and offensive and demand that it has to be removed because you are offended by it, you have to deal with it through the democratic process because you have to respect the rights of the performers to express themselves and the rights of others who may wish to watch that programme."

"In any case, this is comedy. You have to understand, the context is different. If it was someone who shouted racist abuse at you when you were walking down the street, I would be the first person to call the police and get that racist arrested because that is not acceptable in Polish society and is downright illegal. This was a group of comedians trying to amuse and entertain - this is not a group of right wing skinheads trying to attack Asian or black people on the streets of Warsaw. Comedians and those in the arts are generally quite liberal and more left wing so even if they made a bad joke that didn't come across well, you shouldn't condemn them for being racist because there was no malicious intent to make an Asian person like you feel unwelcome or uncomfortable in Poland. You are reading too much into the comedy skit - there was no malice involved and this is simply a misunderstanding that has been blown out of proportion."

How much censorship should be apply to artistic expression?

Right, so just because the Polish comedians were not motivated by a hatred of Chinese people, this somehow excuses anything and everything they have done in the name of comedy? I didn't accept that - because with freedom of speech comes responsibility. Freedom of speech doesn't mean it is a free for all, where anyone can say anything in a consequence-free environment - but this young man seemed to conveniently ignore that part of the equation. He was very eloquent and had every excuse to put the blame on me for having jumped to the wrong conclusion about the skit, that it was all a "cultural misunderstanding" at the end of the day rather than an example of racism.

This disappointed me because if all you do is sweep the problem under the carpet and dismiss every complaint of racism as a "cultural misunderstanding", then that shows a complete unwillingness to even deal with the issue. The Polish people I spoke to were deeply embarrassed by even the suggestion that some Polish people could be racist and enjoy racist jokes on TV - yet their response seems to be complete and total denial. How is the situation in Poland supposed to ever improve then if this is their default response?

Was it all a cultural misunderstanding on my part?

This reminded me of an incident in my primary school days back in Singapore. There was a boy in my class - let's call him TJ and he was a very disruptive pupil. Whenever anyone disagreed with him or if he didn't get his way, he would physical strike out at the other person by hitting, slapping or pushing the other person. He would often make the girls in the class cry by pulling their long hair and the teacher was totally exasperated. In hindsight, I think TJ had been physically abused at home from a young age and that is why he was conditioned to respond to others like that.

One day after school, the form teacher waited for TJ's mother to come and pick him up. The teacher took TJ's mother aside to have a word with her - I was waiting for my mother to turn up so I witnessed the exchange between the teacher and TJ's mother. The teacher told TJ's mother about how TJ had been physically violent with other students and how other parents have been complaining about TJ's behaviour. What did TJ's mother do? She went into complete denial in the most polite and sweet manner. (Yes you can disagree with someone and still be totally polite about it.)

The form teacher didn't know what to do about TJ - he was so badly behaved.

"I totally understand how important it is for children to behave well! I have four children, TJ is the youngest and he has been brought up in a lively environment with three older siblings. My neighbour also has a big family and TJ gets along with his siblings and the neighbours' children just fine! They are playing together all the time and yes I know, boys will be boys and sometimes he can get a bit carried away, but that's just the way they play you know? It's not like he is trying to bully anyone or deliberately trying to make another child cry - but when he gets excited, sometimes he forgets how he should communicate with his peers, but he's just playing - there is no malice involved, he is just misunderstood.by some of his peers. I know that as a teacher, you have so many students to take care of in the class - but if you would just take the time to get to know TJ a bit better, I promise you that you will change your opinion about him and sometimes, all he needs is a bit more of your attention, do you understand?"

Even as a young child, I was not convinced by TJ's mother's performance - she was deeply embarrassed by the allegation that her child was disruptive and thus by that token, that she had been a bad parent who has not brought up her child properly. So instead, she turns the issue around by alleging that poor TJ is a child who was misunderstood by his peers and that the teacher had not been giving TJ enough attention. She tried hard to convince the teacher that it was not her failings as a mother that resulted in TJ's behavioral problems and it was all a misunderstanding. She tried her very best to sweep the issue under the carpet and given the way TJ's behaviour remained a big problem for the rest of the time he was in that school, his mother clearly was not prepared to solve the issue.

TJ's mother turned a blind eye to her son's behavioural problems.

Such is the power of denial - both TJ's mother and the young Polish man I spoke to were very embarrassed by the allegation that there was a problem that had to be dealt with. What is the point of TJ's mother acknowledging the importance of good behaviour in children or the young Polish man acknowledging how evil racism is, when neither of them are willing to do anything about the situation at hand and prefer to go into complete denial instead?

This is the face of modern racism in Europe. People like my parents believed that racism in Europe would take the form of blatant racist abuse, like Asian people being denied service in a hotel or restaurant or even verbal abuse being shouted at black people walking down the street. This may have happened back in the 1960s and 1970s but that kind of blatant abuse is almost unheard of these days - but the new kind of racism that has replaced it is this denial that it is happening and sweeping any evidence of racism under the carpet, dismissing it as no more than innocent "cultural misunderstandings". This new form of racism is clearly not motivated by malice, rather than an acute embarrassment and shame to have one's country/society associated with such a grave social taboo. Regardless of the absence of malice, this still means that seemingly sensible people who abhor racism (like this well educated young Polish man I spoke to) are totally unwilling to even acknowledge the problem, never mind do anything about it.

Many seemingly sensible Polish people are in denial about the issue of racism in Poland.

I would like to finish by telling you about a conversation I had with my friend Gareth - now Gareth is an Englishman with a Polish wife and they have been married for over 20 years. Gareth lives in London with his wife and children, he speaks Polish fluently now and visits Poland regularly with his family. I told him about the racist Polish TV programme, the attitudes I had encountered and he offered me the following explanation.

"It is not as bad as you think. If a Polish person were to point out that this programme in question was racist, then other Polish people would probably agree with him. However, you are a foreigner, you are British. Many Polish people are paranoid about people from the West looking down on them - it is a huge chip on their shoulders that they have had for a long time. They are so desperate to appear to be a modern European country like Germany, Sweden, Belgium and the UK - they are very afraid of British people like us associating Poland with the bad old days of communism."

That's me in a snowy street in Warsaw.

"That is why they went on the defensive when you bought up the issue of racism and went into total denial - it is something I have encountered many, many times whenever I mentioned anything vaguely critical about Poland. Polish people still default to treating me as if I know absolutely nothing about Poland despite the fact that my wife is Polish and I speak Polish fluently; they are so desperate to sell me this image of how everything in Poland is great and fantastic, that Poland is perfect and wonderful. You have to understand that this 'denial' is motivated by insecurity at the end of the day, rather than dishonesty. Sure they are aware of problems like racism in Poland - they just prefer not to discuss it with someone like you. I'm not at all surprised you encountered something like that on Polish TV - the amount of homophobic, sexist and racist instances I've encountered over the years in Poland is just unreal."

Warsaw may have been a great destination for a long weekend break (and yes, I will probably go back one day and visit Krakow and Zakapone in Southern Poland), but I wouldn't like to live there given their attitudes on the issues of racism and homophobia. I am disappointed to say there least, but please, let me assure you that as a tourist, you're extremely unlikely to encounter any kind of racism whilst you're in Poland - it was only me digging so deep that has led me to uncover this frustrating situation and that is why I am sharing my experiences on my blog.

That's me in Wilanow, south of Warsaw/

So there you go. That's it from me on this issue - what do you think of the situation? Do you also have problems with racism where you live? Are people in your country in denial about racism? How can we as a society respond to this in a more constructive way? Please leave a comment below, thank you for reading.