I’m from Ukraine and I was forced to move to Austria. I speak German at a B1 level, which I learned in about six months (I also had some basics from school).
What I keep noticing, quite often, is a kind of “white racism” toward Eastern Europeans, especially Ukrainians. Online and in the news there is a lot of sympathy for Ukrainians. In real life, however, we are often treated as if we were mentally backward natives. In one conversation, an Austrian seriously asked me whether we even have the internet in Ukraine. A friend of mine, who already has a child, told me that her child gets bullied at school because of their background, sometimes even indirectly by teachers. Situations like this are not rare.
I’m not here just to complain. I’m genuinely trying to understand why this happens. Why are we treated this way? Is it because Eastern Europe is seen as less economically developed? Yes, salaries are higher here, but not everyone here is a millionaire. I also see many homeless people on the streets who clearly look European, most likely Austrians.
Another friend once told me a story about an Austrian guy she dated. He seemed to come from a wealthy family, with parents working in a big bank. He openly talked about Ukrainian women as prostitutes and Ukrainians in general as homeless people, and his friends supported these views. I’ve also lived in Germany for some time and saw similar attitudes there.
For example, Ukrainians are very often pushed toward jobs like elderly care, as if that’s all we are fit for. Meanwhile, most Ukrainians I know who are now doing hard physical work here actually have higher education. Back in Ukraine they were lawyers, business owners, doctors.
I’m really interested in hearing thoughts on why this perception exists and where it comes from.
There is a cultural meme in Western Europe, that dates back to antiquity: West = Good, East = Bad. The West aka "us" - originally the Roman Empire, later through the ages the Franks, the French, the Germanic Tribes after their integration into the Western culture - are the good guys, of course. In the East are the bad guys - the Germanic Tribes before they were integrated, the Sassanid Empire, the Huns, the Awares, the Magyars, the Mongols, the Turks, the Soviets. Western Europe was invaded by people from "The East" basically every couple of generations for almost two millenia. This meme is still pretty alive - just look at the moral geography of Tolkien (who adds South = Bad and North = Used to be Good from an Anglo-Saxon perspective).
Another meme, or rather deeply rooted prejudice is that Slavs are uncivilized. This one is not as old, but dates back to the Middle Ages. When Germanic and Slavic cultures started to clash in the Middle Ages, the Germanic people had absorbed and revived a lot of the antique Roman culture. This lead to a complete Germanification of all Western Slavic tribes between Elbe and Odra. Later Poland was subdued by Prussia (and Russia and Austria) for centuries. In the south, Bohemians and Moravians were partially Germanized, too (Prague has been the capital of the German Empire for quite al long time, and the oldest German university is in Prague). For centuries, German was the language of culture, commerce and administration in almost the entire region inhabited by Western Slavs. When Germans encountered Slavs identifyable as Slavs by their accent or their language, most of them would be be peasants or poor people. Hence Slavic = poor and uncivilized. It was only in 1918 that the Western Slavic people got their freedom from Germanic (i.e. Prussian and Austrian) dominance. During the 20^th century, Fascism and the Iron Curtain did not help to mend these old deep-rooted prejudice, though.
I'm sorry we have not been able to break this prejudices, and ashamed that they are on the rise since a couple of years