The myopic focus on racism at the Polish-Ukrainian border

There are already a hell of a lot of foreign correspondents and human-rights workers at the Ukrainian-Polish border – an immigration problem all by themselves, perhaps.

Quite a few of these reporters seem to be desperately seeking ‘racism’ stories, since that is increasingly the only news which the English-speaking media seems able to process. The heart-warming scenes of Ukrainian women and children being given shelter isn’t the story. Because those refugees are white.

At the border at Medyka on Thursday the Poles put out barbecued sausages, fruit juice and water for the incoming women and children. There were boxes of toys to cheer the traumatised little ones. At the train station in Przemyśl, the scene was busy but orderly. 

This was indeed a radical contrast to the grim scene going into Ukraine through Medyka on Monday, where we saw thousands of black and brown men trying to get into Poland.