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There Actually Was A Black Guy At Chernobyl
The fascinating history of African-Americans and others in the former USSR.
A while back, the mini-series “Chernobyl” came out to rave reviews. The story revolves around a series of events following the explosion at the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union (now Ukraine). This was the biggest nuclear accident in history and caused a lot of human drama. The area surrounding the power plant was inundated with radiation, and it sometimes took superhuman effort not only to deal with the consequences of what happened, but also to prevent it from becoming worse.
Of course, as is usually the case with anything on television, there was some controversy surrounding the series. However, the uproar came from a curious direction. British screenwriter Karla Marie Sweet complained that there were no “people of color” featured in the show. The notion raised a few eyebrows, and rightly so. Wishing something to be the case, does not make it so. In history, the main actors of the tragedy that unfolded on the plains of northern Ukraine were all of the pinkish, greenish, sometimes pale variety.
