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By Terrell Jermaine Starr January 2 at 8:39 AM

Terrell Jermaine Starr is a senior editor at AlterNet. He specializes in African diasporas in Europe.

Terrell Jermaine Starr discusses the 18 months he spent in Ukraine as a Fulbright scholar and what he learned about race relations. (Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)

I was already homeless unknowingly a victim of housing discrimination when my plane touched down in Kiev, Ukraine in the summer of 2009. I was traveling on a Fulbright grant to research the lives of biracial Ukrainians, and was eager to explore how the Slavic country could produce native people who looked like me, a young black man from Detroit. A local real estate agent had promised several months earlier to secure an apartment for me before my arrival. I took a taxi from the airport to meet him. Wearing a warm, wide smile, Sergei extended his hand and welcomed me. Then he explained why his apartment search had failed: Your skin color has been causing us a lot of problems.

Sergei explained that he had called numerous landlords saying that an American wanted to lease a flat. He thought emphasizing my American citizenship would expedite the leasing process. But when a landlord asked if I was black, Sergei was forced to reveal my race and the conversation would quickly end. We spent hours that day visiting flats throughout Kiev. Each time, the flatowner refused to rent to me until we finally met one agreeable landlord just as the sun was setting.

My introduction to racism in Eastern Europe had come swiftly and severely. Over my next 18 months in Ukraine, race would remain a constant obstacle to normal life and interactions with Ukrainians.

Certainly, black skin creates hurdles in the United States, as well. Here, racism systemically but usually covertly obstructs African-Americans from fully enjoying all the freedoms afforded to white people. But racism in Ukraine was much more blunt always in my face, unabashed and in plain view. I never had to guess whether a persons remarks carried racist undertones or if an officers stop was fueled by prejudice. Ukrainiansalways let me know where I stood with them, good or bad. And I appreciated it.

My acclimation to Eastern Europes brand of racism didnt come immediately. I spent my first six weeks in Ukraine simply getting used to the most extreme forms of anti-black hatred. Occasionally, Id encounter young men dressed in black shirts and Doc Martins who would throw up the Nazi salute in my direction. Other times, my skin color would attract open curiosity and such overwhelming kindness that I would wonder if I had been mistaken for a celebrity. (And sometimes I was. While visiting Georgia, some residents thought I was Allen Iverson, and I was asked to pose for 80 photos over two days.)

Of course, my arrival in Ukraine wasnt the first time the countryhad welcomeda black person. The highest number of black people arrived therethrough the former Soviet Union during the 1960s, after the decolonization of Africa. Soviet leadership granted thousands of African students generous scholarships to attend university throughout the 15republics. In some ways, the Soviet Union provided a much safer environment for black people than the United States or apartheid South Africa. But in just as many cases, black people were no better off than local, non-black Soviet citizens who were murdered during Stalins pogroms.

Racism was overt and ubiquitous. One of my most blatant encounters came when I was headed to Russian class. I was purchasing a token at the Central Train Stop, when I spotted a young cop glaring at me. As a black American, Im all too familiar with the look police officers give just before stopping you, and immediately recognized the gaze even in this foreign country. The officer walked toward me, gave a Soviet-style military salute and demanded that I present my passport. He looked it over before telling me to follow him into a mini-police unit inside the station. Once there, I asked the cop why I was being held. In Russian, he responded, Youre a nigger and I know youre bringingdrugs into our country, he said. Where are the drugs?

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PostEverything: A cop in Ukraine said he was detaining me because I was black. I appreciated it.