While it seems he hadn’t actually made the statement it was “normal to see war and bloodshed in Africa and Asia” that caused controversy on social media, essentially his words “Everyone is horrified by what they are seeing. It’s really horrifying. The news every day, it’s just, it’s almost unfathomable. For our generation, it’s very alien to see this in Europe” very much connote that elsewhere, war and conflict aren’t as horrifying or ‘alien.’
This is on the back of a range of Euro-centric, white-washed news coverage from Global North since the start of the conflict. You’d think the multi-million pound PR machine at the service of Kensington Palace would have briefed the Duke of Cambridge on erring on the side of caution with his comments that could easily be taken out of context at worst, or connote the same one-dimensional narrative at best.
First was the CBS News senior foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata who stated last week that Ukraine “isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European – I have to choose those words carefully, too – city, one where you wouldn’t expect that or hope that it’s going to happen”. Imagine if he hadn’t chosen his words carefully?
Then came the BBC interview with a former deputy prosecutor general of Ukraine, who told the network: “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blond hair … being killed every day.” Instead of challenging the comment, the BBC host replied, “I understand and respect the emotion.” On France’s BFM TV, journalist Phillipe Corbé said, “We’re not talking here about Syrians fleeing the bombing of the Syrian regime backed by Putin. We’re talking about Europeans leaving in cars that look like ours to save their lives.”
Then there was the ITV journalist reporting from Poland: “Now the unthinkable has happened to them. And this is not a developing, third-world nation. This is Europe!” An Al Jazeera anchor chimed in with this: “Looking at them, the way they are dressed, these are prosperous … I’m loath to use the expression … middle-class people. These are not obviously refugees looking to get away from areas in the Middle East that are still in a big state of war. These are not people trying to get away from areas in North Africa.”
In the Telegraph, Daniel Hannan wrote: “They seem so like us. That is what makes it so shocking. Ukraine is a European country. Its people watch Netflix and have Instagram accounts, vote in free elections and read uncensored newspapers. War is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations.”
Unpicking through this unimaginably tone-deaf reporting by mainly western media, a couple of questions come to mind, even before we question Prince William’s ill-informed statement. These are in no particular order:
Are Iraqis and Afghans deserve less worthy of our compassion because conflict’s been raging in their countries much longer?
Would it not be as emotional seeing black-haired, brown-eyed people getting killed every day?
Should we feel less empathy with someone who’s fleeing a conflict zone in a car that doesn’t look like ours?
Are we conditioned to expect war and conflict in the ‘developing world’? Do we feel less attuned to the miseries of fellow humans because they are in a far-flung destination?
Should we feel less for a North African battling the waters of the Mediterranean because they don’t fit into our image of someone “middle-class”, and by association, “European”?
Is someone’s lifeless valuable, or their plight for freedom and protection any less legitimate because they don’t Neflix and chill or share the highlight reel of their lives on Instagram?
I have desperately wanted to believe, not only as a person who’s grown up at the crossroads of Europe and Asia for the first part of her life, and as a “legal alien” in the UK for the second, at our default, as humans we are not tribalists. The UK has certified just how tribalist 52 per cent of our nation is with the Brexit vote at the 2016 referendum.
As for the rest of Europe, Ukraine’s war coverage has magnified all European tribalist misconceptions on what it means to be “developed”, “civilised”, “middle-class” – mainly to look more Aryan. Above, this western attitude to blonde and blue-eyed as the superior race has also been obvious in the treatment of black and brown people, including many Nigerians, trying to flee Ukraine at the borders to neighbouring countries. Your passport may be that of a “developed” nation, as the ordeal of black British citizens fleeing Ukraine widely shared on social media showed, but if your face (read: colour) doesn’t fit, you’re left out in the cold as the less ‘alien’ humans are whisked off to the safety they deserve.
In a range of such racist commentary coming out of what is ironically the developing world, where someone’s right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness or the price of their life shouldn’t be estimated the colour of their, the make of their car or whether they have a Netflix subscription, coming from ‘blue blood’ and a history based on genetic superiority, Prince William’s remarks don’t even come as a shock.
