<p>Hello All,</p>
<p>I am applying to 4 year colleges next year and I am interested in both humanities and engineering and I found a great program at Columbia that accomodates my interests. The problem is that I have my humanities options narrowed down to French and Francophone Studies and Russian Language and Culture. I intend on gaining fluency in both these languages in the long run, but I want to focus on one in my college years. I really REALLY would love to learn Russian. I started exploring Russian culture mainly because I had this unexplainable fear of Slavic people for some reason. Upon digging deeper into Russian history I find that it is much like my own country and I enjoy their culture. HOWEVER, I have come across many people telling me how badly black people are treated in Russia, not just over-exaggeration by Western media" as many defensive Slavics would put it, but from family I have that actually live in Russia. They tell me everything I hear is true and though not every Russian is racist, many of them are, and it's nothing like American racism but they are very quick to act out on their racism, violently. Also, apparently law enforcement is not much help, and if they were'nt police officers many of them would probably do the same. I think this reflects the side of Slavic culture that arouses my fear; that there'll be a group of people who just want to kill me because they saw me. This wouldn't be much of a problem if I was just studying the language all 4 years in school, but I intend on studying abroad for at least a year, no matter which language I choose, and I don't want to die or get mamed just to learn a language. I guess the question is, do you think I should still go through with Russian or should I just go with French, which I love just as equally(My mother is Cameroonian) and is a lot safer to do an immersion program. My concern is that if I put off Russian and focus on French, I might never get back to learning Russian, which is not the case if I put off learning French because I feel I can pick it up whenever I like. Which do you think is the better time investment taking into consideration the number of countries each language is spoken and access to those countries, the literature from both languages, the culture and people, and maybe public perception of both languages AND the issue of safety in France and Russia respectively. My ultimate goal is to systematically broker peace around the world and I feel Russian will help me bridge the divide between the former Soviets and the rest of the West and French will help me provide help to those that need it back home in Africa (I already speak English and Portuguese so French would be the capstone as far as communication in Africa). I'm not a naive hippie so please no pessimism about this</p>
<p>Any input is greatly appreciated
Thank you :)
<em>And to be clear, I don't think all Slavs are racist, I've some Slavic friends who are perfectly fine with me being black and don't think anything of the sort. But it can't be denied that racism isn't exactly taboo in Russia</em></p>