Torsello, Davide - Pappová, Melinda: Social Networks in Movement. Time, interaction and interethnic spaces in Central Eastern Europe - Nostra Tempora 8. (Somorja-Dunaszerdahely, 2003)
Interaction, migration and change
262 Melissa L Caldwell merchants with darker skin coloring or attacking dark-skinned customers.10 In addition, observers have criticized local police officials who conduct raids on marketplaces in order to flush out criminals and other individuals who lack proper legal regulation papers for unfairly targeting dark-skinned persons (Filipov 1999). Africans who live in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia report similar experiences. Within the CCM soup kitchen community, most African volunteers have personal stories of being refused employment or service in shops because of their skin color, or of being subjected to unwarranted raids of their dormitory rooms or apartments by members of the local police. Even more distressing is the frequency with which Africans in Moscow have been violently assaulted. The director of one soup kitchen was picked up and detained by policemen who refused to recognize his official documents from the United Nations Committee on Refugees that indicated his official status as a refugee in Russia and guaranteed him protection. Another soup kitchen director suffered a beating that required several stitches in his head, while yet another director missed several weeks of work at the soup kitchen after he and his wife were stabbed. 11 Race and the Other in the CCM soup kitchens Within the CCM soup kitchens such overt violence is missing, although participants acknowledge that other, more subtle, discriminatory practices have periodically occurred in the dayto-day operations of the program. CCM staff and volunteers report that when the soup kitchens first opened in the early 1990s, many Muscovite recipients approached African volunteers with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion. Recipients claimed that they had never before met or even seen a black person until they attended the soup kitchen. More recently, at the opening of another branch of the soup kitchen, I watched as two recipients stared for several minutes at the two directors and then debated between themselves whether the two men were in fact “blacks.” Volunteers and recipients alike
