[mvolo]

Racism and racially-motivated policies (mostly affirmative action) definitely exist in the US ... Particularly for older, and less educated populations.

But the bottom line is, even if not everyone likes you in the US, you can still live a fully actualized life even if it takes a bit of hard work. In Russia, institutional racism created a hard ceiling that most of the time could not be broken, even with hard work. If you tried to hard, you would go to jail or worse.