My Random Thoughts on the Relationship between Boston and Chechnya

I am rather unimpressed with the US media coverage of the events in Boston. The level of ignorance about Chechnya, Kyrgyzstan, and Islam they have in general displayed is almost as great as their lack of knowledge about Africa. There does not seem to be any connection with the terrorist attacks in Boston with Chechens, Central Asia, or Islam other than the fact they were committed by two people of Chechen descent from Kyrgyzstan. Why they committed these crimes may or may not have been motivated by factors pertaining to their ethnic and religious background. But, at this point it is impossible to know anything other than the crimes were the responsibility of two individuals and not of an entire nationality.

On the other hand I am glad to see that many bloggers seem to recognize that contrary to the claims by Francine Hirsch that racial categories can only be based upon biology and genetics that ethnicity and religion work just as well. In fact the Chechens were one of the groups racialized and subjected to genocide by Stalin. A fact vigorously denied by Francine Hirsch, a tenured professor at University of Wisconsin who has set the orthodox party line for Soviet nationality studies. I am still at a loss as to why it is only regarding the history of the USSR that there is a militant refusal to acknowledge that racial discrimination can be based upon ethnicity, nationality, and religion as well as biology.