Out of all the ethnic food that Dnipropetrovsk has to offer, there is none more prevalent than sushi. From the "Japanese Kitchen" to the "Sushi Bar" I've tried much of it, and have to say that, apart from the Atlantic salmon, sushi made by Ukrainians isn't all that different from the sushi I've had in Seattle, made by actual Japanese people. Sushi here is sushi, as well as pizza is pizza, however much it may differ in the thickness of crust and cheese. Mexican food, however, is another story. There's a fast food institution throughout Ukraine that advertises its selection of burritos, tacos and the like, but the actual product is something that even a Seattleite like myself, closer to Vancouver than Tijuana, can easily say is certainly not Mexican. Who's ever heard of a burrito filled with shredded carrots and potato, or a taco with pickled red cabbage and, again, potatoes. Potato House, of course! If the name didn't already tip you, Potato House serves *Ukrainian* and can only claim itself as a "Mexican" restaurant by the fact that its transliterated the words "burrito" and "taco" on to it's Cyrillic menu. Don't expect to find any guacamole or Corona here. No, they only serve the local brews--Obalon, Slavutich. Oh and there's nothing about Potato House. Somehow it's managed to confuse Mexicans with indigenous Americans. No, you won't find mustached, Sombrero-wearing caricatures on the walls of Potato House, but you will find the most absurd characterizations of Native Americans this side of a Cleveland Indians ball cap. Not only is there logo a silhouette of a ceremonial-garbed Sitting Bull, the interior of the place prominently features wood-carved statues of Sioux and Mohican figures smoking the good old peace pipe.

As much as the Ukrainians confusion (assimilation?) of Mexican and American Indian cultures makes for a good laugh, it's blatantly indicative of a kind of culturally ignorant assimilation and novelization of all those who are non-White that happens in Ukraine.

A frequently played commercial for a popular brand of crunchy bread snacks advertises a new variety made from dark rye. Dark brown in color, they are distinctly different from lighter colored varieties. The commercial of course plays upon this obvious distinction by depicting a scene in which two dorky white kids gain entrance to all black hip-hop club by way of showing there packages of the new "black" snack packs. The slogan uttered by the narrator at the end can be translated as "pure black."
The racial subtext here is clear and exactly what they wanted: our new dark-colored bread snacks are as new and exotic and cool, just like black people. This is the kind of underlying racism that perpetuated in American media in the '60s or '70s, now they still exist, our racial subtexts are much more sophisticated and moved beyond snack mix--at least to sneakers.

No Ukrainian would argue that Ukraine isn't a White country. They know it, and they readily admit it. The unsettling part is that ever since I've been here, just about every Ukrainian I've had this conversation with has attempted to assert to me that because their country is void of much ethnic diversity that somehow they are immune to racist inclinations. Their claim is that because they don't have a modern history of ethnic populations to oppress and marginalize (save for Jews and Gypsies, of course) their country couldn't possibly hate other people. Right. Maybe they don't *hate* other people, but they fail to see that there isn't much distinction between hatred and the ostracism that inevitably comes from such an explicit focus on the otherness of all those non-White.