Suffering Is for Other People

You don’t have to read much beyond the headlines from Ukraine to know how this story goes: There are bad guys, stooges of a dictator, and good guys, fighting for freedom. The good guys are the underdogs, which is great for the narrative. But the refugees are not as they should be — or, rather, they are not who they should be. And the Western world loses the plot when refugees are white.

Bulgaria’s foreign minister reassured Europeans, “These are not the refugees we are used to.” They are, he insisted, “Europeans…intelligent people, educated people.” Ukraine’s former deputy prosecutor affirmed their “blue eyes and blond hair.” These are, we like ours — “cars that look like our cars,” as a seasoned French correspondent put it; “people [who] watch Netflix and have Instagram accounts,” as a British baron wrote. This entitles them, unlike the Syrians and Afghans before them, to , to , and yes, even to — all while skipping the humiliating process of prolonged begging for one’s life, which immigration officials call “claiming asylum.”