From Russia With Even More Racism

About a month ago, I wrote an article titled 'From Russia With Racism' which you can check out here: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/5095217-from-russia-with-racism. Russia's ice dancing pair Oksanna Domnina and Maxim Shalabin won the European Skating Championships with a horrible dance interpretation of the Aborigines, the native people of Australia. People were incensed and offended at the time. People were hoping that they would choose to do a different type of dance for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

Well, the pair's brains must be frozen after living in Russia for their entire lives because they did the same dance again at the Olympics yesterday. The only change that the ice dancing couple made was that they did not wear face paint. The offensive routine was exactly the same as the one they did to win the European Championships in January. Instead of being more sensitive to other cultures, they came to Vancouver from Russia with even more racism.

Aboriginal leaders are incensed again. Bev Manton, chairwoman of the New South Wales Land Council stated, "I am offended by the performance and so are our other councillors. Aboriginal people for very good reason are sensitive about their cultrual objects and icons being co-opted by non-Aboriginal people - whether they are from Australia or Russia. It's important for people to tread carefully and respectfully when they are depicting somebody else's culture, and I don't think this performance does."

Fortunately, the judges were paying attention this time. The Russian couple moved from first to third place after this ridiculous dance. Keep your racism in Russia. Here is the link to the pictures of their horrible outfits. http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/vancouver/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/Aboriginal-leaders-Russian-ice-dancers-routine?urn=oly,221290.