Ep. 578 - What I think about African immigrants being mistreated at the Ukrainian border

The Breakdown with Shaun King

The North Star

News, Society & Culture

4.8 • 12.6K Ratings

🗓️ 28 February 2022

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Over 500,000 refugees have now fled Ukraine in just the past few days alone. In a country that is 99% white, it came as a surprise to many of us to learn that tens of thousands of African immigrants were living, working, and being educated there - and were among those attempting to flee to safety.It was, then, a deep disappointment to see those African immigrants, many with infant children, in freezing cold temperatures, being mistreated and denied an opportunity to flee.Three days after those first videos emerged, I'll unpack and explain what I know, and tell you why I am hopeful that things will be much better from here on out.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Let's talk today about some of the mistreatment of African immigrants at the Ukrainian border.
0:08.0	I'll try to unpack and explain what I know.
0:11.0	I've talked to both immigrants at the border of many different backgrounds, ethnicities and nationalities.
0:18.0	This morning I spoke to officials at the United Nations and other aid organizations.
0:23.0	I spoke to other people on the ground at multiple border points to multiple countries leaving Ukraine.
0:32.0	I'll try to tell you what I know, tell you not only how I feel but how I think we should process what we've seen moving forward.
0:41.0	This is Sean King and you're listening to The Breakdown.
1:02.0	Yesterday I was on the road for almost eight hours. My family had to travel for a volleyball event that one of our children was in.
1:13.0	We traveled from New York to Boston and back.
1:17.0	I had a deep conversation with my wife and she's a doctoral student and she's not only smarter than me.
1:27.0	She's a better student than I ever was.
1:32.0	What I realized talking to her is that when you are a doctoral student, your mind is really sharp.
1:39.0	My mind no longer functions like the mind of a doctoral student.
1:46.0	We were trying to speak about the current war in Ukraine and we also talked about what that war means in relation to the apartheid that we see in Israel against Palestine.
2:02.0	One of the things that she my wife cautioned me with was just how hard it is to talk about the morality of war.
2:15.0	The integrity of war.
2:17.0	We like to simplify war into good guys and bad guys.
2:22.0	We like to simplify war into the good side and the evil side and what I realized quickly in this conversation with Ray was that that's inappropriate.
2:39.0	It's it's short-sighted and while that fits into a tweet while it fits into a simple news bite it's not really the reality war is ugly.
2:54.0	And wildly complicated and right now as you know Ukraine has been invaded by Russia.
3:03.0	Russia is dropping missiles and bombs. They have invaded the country from multiple different points all around it.
3:14.0	And today they are ahead of us by I think 10 hours from where I am right now in Ukraine.
	...

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