Category Archives: Uncategorized

Where are all the…? HERE!

Currently, several poster campaigns, from insurance companies to ministries, are again advertising with white children in “Indian costumes”. While in North America there is at least a social and scientific discussion about cultural appropriation – even if there is not much to be seen of it in the mainstream – this has hardly arrived in Germany. With the exception of minor adbusting campaigns such as the “Leitkultur macht stark” poster, poster campaigns such as those of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research seem to be an unchallenged part of German reality.

Continue reading →

Big Brother Award for the Federal Police

The anti-privacy and data protection “Big Brother Award”, which has been awarded by the digitalcourage association for years, has this year been awarded to the German Federal Police in the Authorities & Administration category. The reason is the everyday practice of racial profiling, in which people are controlled by the police without suspicion on the basis of racist screening. Among other things, the laudation calls for mandatory anti-racism training for the police, as well as a legal ban on police checks based on external characteristics.

 

Postcolonial Studies in Development and Global Education

For all those who are interested in looking beyond the German discussion, the new blog that Prof. Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti has started might be interesting: Postcolonial Studies in Development and Global Education. It is intended to serve as an international network of scholars and practitioners working on postcolonial perspectives on development cooperation and global learning and is open to active participation.

UN Committee against Racism (CERD) reprimands the Federal Republic in the Sarrazin case

In 2009, the Turkish Federation Berlin Brandenburg filed a criminal complaint against Thilo Sarrazin for incitement of the people and insult with the Berlin public prosecutor’s office. The proceedings were discontinued. Now the Turkish Federation has filed a complaint with the UN Committee against Racism (CERD), and in its decision it has severely reprimanded the German government.

TBB spokesman Hilmi Kaya TURAN said in a press release: “This is a historic decision. The CERD Committee found that Mr. Sarrazin’s statements were based on a sense of racial superiority or hatred and contained elements of incitement to racial discrimination. The CERD Committee has determined that despite existing legal provisions, implementation of the provisions of the Convention in the Federal Republic is inadequate in practice. The Committee has called on the Federal Republic to act accordingly. In addition, the committee implicitly recommended appropriate training for prosecutors and judges. We expect the federal government, the Bundestag and the state governments to implement the CERD recommendations without delay.”

Develop-mental Turn

In April, the Berliner Entwicklungspolitische Ratschlag e.V. (BER) published “Develop-mental Turn. Neue Beiträge zu einer rassismuskritischen entwicklungspolitischen Bildungs- und Projektarbeit.”, a new edition of the brochure “Von Trommlern und Helfern” published in 2007. In addition to many new articles on current discussions on racism critique and development cooperation, the brochure contains a number of articles by glokal and glokal members, e.g. on the basics of racism-critical and postcolonial perspectives on development cooperation as well as on the fields of work weltwärts voluntary service, fundraising, development education and fair trade.

The brochure can be ordered from BER.

Response from the weltwärts-Team of Welthaus Bielefeld to our open letter about the brochure “Where please go to weltwärts?”

Bielefeld, 26.02.2013

Statement on the controversy about the brochure: “Where can I go to weltwärts? “by the weltwärts department of Welthaus Bielefeld

Dear people from glokal e.V., dear people who have worked with the above mentioned brochure so far, dear all who are involved in the preparation for weltwärts volunteers.

We are writing to you because we also want to participate as a weltwärts sector in the debate about the above mentioned brochure. Your open letter has led us to deal with the criticism internally at Welthaus Bielefeld. We decided together that we wanted to educate ourselves on racism and cultural concepts. Nevertheless, there are different opinions in Welthaus Bielefeld, so we can only speak for our area here.

We find the criticism of the brochure justified. It is a great challenge to challenge and deconstruct stereotyping images in all of our minds when preparing weltwärts volunteers. In our development education work in the weltwärts program, we try to develop an understanding of their own role with the volunteers. We contextualize with them the stay in the South so that they can be able to be open and perceive the local context in a differentiated way.

We are in a constant learning process and do not see ourselves as experts. We want to provide inspiration and give volunteers a space to explore racism, power relations, global contexts, and language and imagery. For us, these are elementary components of the pedagogical accompaniment of weltwärts volunteers – from selection to return.

In a combination of country-specific and cross-country preparation and follow-up, we seek to address, problematize, and contextualize these issues. This is, as already mentioned, not an easy task and also we as weltwärts organizers and pedagogical facilitators have to question ourselves again and again and reflect on our own images and attitudes. In doing so, we try to make it clear from which point of view we are speaking and can speak.

Within the framework of our pedagogical support, we only work with excerpts of the criticized brochure and do not recommend it to others, even though there are certainly exercises that we consider useful. In its present form, the brochure cannot be used without comment.

We thank you for the suggestions and are looking forward to continue an open and constructive discussion about non-racist educational concepts with all interested parties and with the educational support of weltwärts volunteers.

For the weltwärts team:

Barbara contactor

Veronika Kirschner

Climate change campaign

In cooperation with Naturstrom, the Eine Welt Netz NRW launched a poster campaign in February entitled “Climate change? No problem! We are all happy about warmer summers” switched NRW-wide.

In response, Informationsbüro Nicaragua e.V. formulated a detailed critique, drew attention to colonial modes of representation and called for a public dialogue with the One World Network. The network acted quickly to invite a first public discussion meeting on April 25, titled “The End of Drummers and Helpers?” Do they also want to point out that the brochure “Of drummers and helpers” is almost out of print and that BER will soon publish a new edition with the title “Develop-mental turn”?

 

Children’s Book Debate

A heated debate on children’s books has been raging in Germany for a few weeks now: By discussing what we want to read to our children, the discussion is about what image of the world and of oneself should be conveyed. Leading media like DIE ZEIT demonstrate effectively and with racist imagery: The white majority society should continue to have the power of definition over which stories are told and with which words they should be told.
The debate about the use of the N-word is a very central one, not least because it makes the mainstream’s current understanding of racism clear and, at least to some extent, open to question. Unfortunately, in most cases this happens through reproduction and thus stabilization of racism. Continue reading →

Intercultural opening of the development scene

Development policy is one of the most international fields of work. This is why it is often particularly surprising to find that most institutions and non-governmental organizations employ almost exclusively people from the dominant majority society: People from the Global South, Black people and People of Color seem to be more or less structurally excluded.

In recent years, several projects and initiatives have been found that have tried to advance the issue of so-called intercultural opening in the development policy scene, primarily in civil society. One of the projects was the “move glokal/move global” project in Hamburg, which ended prematurely. In the meantime, not only an evaluation of the EWNW project is online, but also a rebuttal by the terminated project manager Dr. Ali Fathi. Continue reading →