Is it still a curiosity? Or is it already racism? German with roots abroad are constantly asked about their origin. On the world day against racism, the DW takes a look at the debate around exclusion and identity.
“Munich,” he says, and the slight Bavarian accent is unmistakable. If Tahir Della is asked where he comes from, then he called the city he was born in 1962. For some years he lives in Berlin. But Munich is the city that has shaped him.
Well, Munich. And originally? So, the parents now? Or their parents? “The are always the first questions I get asked when I meet people,” says Della. “If white German meet, then these questions will either not come on at all, or if at all, then maybe sometime at a later date.”
Black, English, from here
Annoying, says Della, and also racist. “It is behind it. It is basically my existence in question. According to the Motto: how can you claim a black Person to have here their centre of life, without explaining, why, why, why? My history as a black Person is called into question.” Even if it was curiosity, even if it was well – intentioned, it is crucial for Della, what’s with all the questioning caused him and other parties Concerned.
Annoyed by the many questions: Tahir Della
Tahir Della, is committed to for more than 30 years in the “Initiative of Black people in Germany”. He is one of the many Germans are not blonde and white and have enough from the question of the how. #Fromhere you reports for a few weeks on Twitter about their experiences. The journalist Ferda Ataman had described as the first under the Hashtag of “home detectives”. The title of your book on the subject: “I’m from here. Stop asking!”.
Planks drilled
Rolling the discussion on the net had brought the end of February, the Bavarian Journalist Malcolm Ohanwe. He had shared a video clip in which the musician Dieter Bohlen asks as a judge of a talent show, the five-year-old Melissa is, where she comes from. Bohlen is not satisfied with the response, “Herne”, a city in the Ruhr area. He pierced: “and mom And dad, come on, where are you? Philippines?” No, Herne, Germany, says the girl. “A native? From which country? Grandma and grandpa, or something?” Finally, the mother of your daughter comes to the rescue and solves the family has Thai roots. Relief for Planks.
Dieter Bohlen questions was “a beautiful example of how people nachhakten still, even in the case of a child,” says the activist Tahir Della. “He can’t just leave it not be good, because he gets it in his head clearly. And so that is negated, for German society to an immigration society is now of the many different experiences and backgrounds.”
“This is to me wine”
Racism in the minds of so, the breaks in everyday life, in the question of the where from? “Exaggerated” is the journalist Düzen Tekkal. “The simple question, how do You, all of a sudden a violation to represent that wants to come and can’t make sense of. I’ve seen it so often and never as the racism felt,” she says. You have no Problem with this, to be because of their Name or their appearance to their roots in demand. The Kurdish-jesidisch, their parents came from Turkey to Germany. “In #fromhere to many like yourself in the victim role, which is to me the wine.”
“No Problem,” says the journalist Düzen Tekkal
Only if the person Concerned due to his origin, a disadvantage arises, one could speak of racism, Tekkal. Instead, in discussions of hurt feelings ground to tackle better problems in the real world. “About the systematic discrimination in housing. It is a fact that it takes place in people with a visible migration history, or a foreign last name.”
Germany on the way to the present
The activist Tahir Della believes that a brief suspension with the other. Finally, a landlord refuse a tenant from the same reason he gives it to him after his origin of the question: “Because racial resentment. Because it is the idea that these people belong here, not really part of society.” You have to fight against both discrimination about the housing market as well as everyday racism.
Who talks about everyday racism, often hostility. Thus, migration researcher, Aylin looked Karabulut, according to a TV Interview in the framework of the international week against racism a Shitstorm on Twitter suspended.
Journalist Düzen Tekkal hopes that the interaction between Germans with and without roots relaxes in the foreign country. Maybe one or the other is to use the International day against racism on 21. March, to come into conversation with each other – over the question of whence.