The Purchasing Cooperative of Antiracist Resistance (Edewa) is following up on the debate earlier this year about racism in children’s books by celebrating the abolition of the N-word in solidarity with Black communities in Germany. The statement can be found here.
In recent days, both a colonial racist broadcast series and a racist commercial have been shut down. While it’s not entirely clear what prompted Pro7 to discontinue the Reality Queens of Safari broadcast series, extensive criticism from NGOs and many others certainly contributed, in addition to low ratings. The campaign against the show even managed to be mentioned on Spiegel Online. In the case of the Ferrero commercial, the matter is clearer. Media such as Neues Deutschland, taz and Stern reported on it, but above all there were many letters from readers and a storm of criticism in “social networks”. Even if insight could look different than explaining to us conceptually dumb people that “[b]y the current advertising […] it is a question of the representation of a product variation of Ferrero Küsschen with white chocolate” and that “[a]lle statements […] thus refer solely to the white chocolate [beziehen] – of course without xenophobic ulterior motives”, Ferrero has decided to revise the advertisement due to the “critical voices […]”. The video clip was withdrawn and the slogan “Germany votes white” is no longer on any advertising posters.
In Berlin-Hellersdorf, the citizens’ initiative Marzahn-Hellersdorf defends itself with T-shirt imprints such as “No to the home” and the dates of the pogrom in Rostock-Lichtenhagen against a planned home for asylum seekers in their district. In Berlin-Reinickendorf, tenants have hired a lawyer to enforce that children from the neighboring home are no longer allowed to play on the playground in front of their house. In Aarau, Switzerland, the city council prohibits asylum seekers from visiting the local swimming pool, sports facilities, library and churches.
At the same time as these racist actions, ZDF is launching the show “Auf der Flucht – Das Experiment” (On the Run – The Experiment), in which German celebrities are to set off “to the countries of origin of asylum seekers in Germany” and thus “experience first-hand [erfahren] what it means to be on the run”. Instead of letting refugees themselves have their say, German state television prefers to produce a program full of racist assessments and descriptions. Nadia Shehadeh has written an open letter to the ZDF television council. It can also be signed here .
Incidentally, RTL and Pro7 are currently broadcasting similarly problematic series: Wild Girls – Mit Highheels durch Afrika and Reality Queens of Safari. The latter has now been discontinued due to low ratings and extensive criticism from NGOs and many others. Not unreasonably, a commenter on africaisacountry wonders “What’s wrong with the Germans?”
On February 26, 2012, Neighborhood Patrol Coordinator George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, a black teenager. A few days ago, Zimmerman was acquitted of both murder and manslaughter charges by a Florida court. The ruling has sparked outrage and great incomprehension in the U.S. and around the world, reactivating a debate about racial profiling and institutional racism. The National Association of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has launched a petition to the Department of Justice that has already been signed by over half a million people in just a few days. The petition can be supported here:
bell hooks anticipates a description by Zimmermann in her 2000 book, All about love:
“White supremacy has taught him that all people of color are threats irrespective of their behavior. Capitalism has taught him that, at all costs, his property can and must be protected. Patriarchy has taught him that his masculinity has to be proven by the willingness to conquer fear through aggression; that it would be unmanly to ask questions before taking action. Mass media then brings us the news of this in a newspeak manner that sounds almost jocular and celebratory, as though no tragedy has happened, as though the sacrifice of a young life was necessary to uphold property values and white patriarchal honor. Viewers are encouraged to feel sympathy for the white male home owner who made a mistake.”
In Germany, the Initiative of Black People in Germany (ISD) and the Campaign for Victims of Racist Police Violence (KOP) have currently launched a campaign appeal “Racial Profiling Costs.” All people who experience or observe racial profiling are encouraged to raise their voices. A form for a letter to the Federal Police Headquarters in Koblenz can be found here.
In the last few months, two new, interesting publications have appeared on the subject of school partnerships. Luise Steinwachs from Berlin Postkolonial analyzes in the study “Personal Encounters in School Partnerships” which influence South-North student exchanges have on the identity development of students in Germany. In doing so, it comes to the following conclusions, among others:
1. personal encounters in the context of school partnerships can reinforce prejudices and stereotypes.
2. in a large part of the school partnerships that participated in the survey, the developmental embedding of the partnership is not sufficient to see through global contexts. Therefore, simplified explanatory patterns are resorted to.
3. the period of personal encounters of about three weeks is not sufficient to actually dare to take steps in uncertainty and incomprehension. The explanatory patterns of the young people serve primarily to reassure themselves and little irritation is allowed.
Another bilingual German-Spanish publication of KATE contains interviews with different actors of school partnerships. The brochure stands out positively due to a large number of power-critical questions. Rather than sticking to the classic tone of intercultural communication, Claudia Schilling of the ENSA program, for example, addresses issues such as privilege, unequal partnerships, and the question of defining power. In a world of school partnerships, which is often more of a world of school sponsorships, where helping and development are two common motives, this is a new language. However, it should be noted here that, especially in the ENSA program, these new perspectives have been or are accompanied by protracted discussions, exclusions, and reproductions of racism.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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