Everybody's a little bit racist, sometimes

BUT ESPECIALLY THE GERMANS*

Well, no, but, here's the thing... Jump to the end for the disclaimers, and just stick with me.

Race and racism or, more specifically, how different societies deal with the fact of cultural diversity and migration, have been topics I've been wrestling with a lot in my own PhD research, as well as personally as an American and a migrant myself. As I've come to better understand how German society talks about and politically deals with diversity, the more and more startlingly foreign it has begun to seem. My native society admittedly has a huge number of lingering racial issues, but the discourse (excuse the academic language) here in Deutschland is at times striking for how.. and this isn't a word I use lightly.. backwards it can seem to someone from the outside.

I finally decided to write something about this partially in response to a piece in a magazine for expats, written by Jacinta Nandi, a British woman with a South Asian heritage who has been living and raising a child in Berlin for quite a few years. Click here to read it, then come back to me. It is obvious that she was in a state of anger while writing (and for good reason) - it's a feeling that has bubbled up inside me from time to time when hearing the things people can say, or learning of policies I find racist and offensive. I'm a cis-gendered, white, American male - if this shit pisses me off, I can't imagine what it would be like to be personally targeted by the people around me based on how I look. The worst I get is, "O, yeah, I could tell you were US-American from your dialect." (you mean accent, jackass) I can't imagine how I'd feel if I were a black person and someone referred to my baby as a 'chocolate sprinkle' or if I were of Asian heritage, and suddenly people on the subway starting pulling their eyes into slits and saying konichiwa. (Check the comments section on the original article.)

Anyway, her piece brought up a bunch of really interesting insights into the 'topography of the discourse' on racism in Germany that I've been exploring academically, and want to just delve into them here. By 'topography of the discourse' I mean the way people from all 'sides' of the debate talk about the issues, rather than just the positions they take. This is, in any case, as much an exercise in working out my own thoughts as it is (hopefully) a contribution to a debate that is desperately needed.

Jacinta Nandi: "Sometimes I don't think Germans find anything racist except for Nazi demos in Hellersdorf, the actual Holocaust and Rosa Parks not being allowed to sit down on the bus."

I've had a version of this thought many times. It has seemed to me, again and again, that Germans, especially liberal/lefty types, spend lots of energy obsessing over the fringe neo-Nazi element in society, while ignoring the fact that, HELLO, everyday racism can be found right across the broad spectrum of the population. Sure, violent Nazi attacks are bad, but the way of thinking that makes them possible are not exclusive to the fringes of society. There are, as I see it, some historical and psychological reasons for this focus.

So, there was the Nazi era. That is the last time anyone speaking German talked about "races" as if they were real, actually existing things. Of course, scientifically, they're not - the human population is biologically and genetically very uniform in comparison to, for example, some other primate species. Due to history, however, 'race' as such is a very real social fact in places like the United States and denying that it plays a role in social life is delusional. Use of the word race in German, on the other hand, automatically makes you sound like you're participating in a Nazi era discourse (sort of like using the word Negroid would make you sound crazy and old-timey in America) - you can't. As a result, the only people who can be racist, in this logic, are people who actually are Nazis. In the German discourse, then, stopping racism means the same thing as stopping Nazis. It rarely means checking your privilege, or reflecting on the way using certain words might make minorities feel, or whatever. Of course, it is also understood that racism exists where there are no Nazis, but this usually means America or other foreign countries. I also think it's a lot easier to just focus on hating Nazis than it is to look at oneself and one's own friends and families for the fucked up ways of thinking that are inevitably lurking in the background.

Obviously there are not only the fringe Nazis and then everyone else in Germany, free of any racist/xenophobic thoughts. Racism, or ethnicism, or whatever you want to call it, is pervasive in society. Sure, you can't say 'the Jews' without someone spitting out their drink, but call a black kid a chocolate sprinkle or call mallowmars Nigger-kisses, and that's just fine, because you don't mean them in a negative way. Consider this recent (sadly, real) conversation I had with a new acquaintance (a young, hipstery type, not a grandpa from Brandenburg):

Dude: Oh, wow, you haven't been here that long but your German is really good. (disbelief! cuz, German must be the hardest language, like, ever!)
Me: Oh, well, you know, I had three years of it at university in the US first. Plus, its not like.. Chinese, it's not the hardest language for a native English speaker to learn.
Dude: Tell that to the Turk* (dem Türken) who was born here and has lived here for twenty years and still can't speak German properly.
Me: OMG THAT'S SO RACIST.
Dude: It's not racist if it's true. (!!!!!!) You can hear them on the U-bahn and at work, it's ridiculous.
Me: ::Vomits on his shoe::
*emphasis added

See what he did there? The "Turk" was born here and has lived here his whole life.. but, he's somehow still not German. Of course, many people don't see it that way, but this way of thinking has roots in the ethnic notion of citizenship that was law in Germany right up until just about 10 years ago. Also, no one has lived here for their whole lives without being able to speak German. I just don't believe that. He may have a different accent and use some different slang because of the community he's from, but so do lots of white kids from those areas nowadays. And that's not a failure, or a degradation of society. That's called diversity!

Accents shift, new immigrant groups change the societies they come into (why do you think Boston and NYC have different accents? Different mixes of immigrant groups historically and today!). This, however, is unacceptable to lots of people. If it is not viewed as a failing of the minorities, then (and this is often the lefty view) it is a failing of the state to integrate them properly. The "foreigners", in this view, need to be helped to be more like the majority, and that's somehow not a racist way of approaching the issue, because helping them is a positive thing. It can be, only, it's not, not when you approach it that way. Banning kids in kindergartens and primary schools from speaking Turkish to each other is NOT OK even if you're just trying to help them learn German. If schools are majority 'migration background', then bring in white kids from other parts of the city, don't ban the 'brown ones' from speaking their second native language to each other on the playground. If kids in majority-minority schools bully the few white kids, that isn't equivalent to the structural and individual racism people with Turkish backgrounds face throughout their lives. I'm sorry, it's just not. That's bullying, not racism. That the term Deutschfeindlichkeit (hostility to Germans) exists, as if it were some equivalent to Ausländerfeindlichkeit (hostility to foreigners), boggles my fucking mind.

The way the discourse plays out here can sound really naive, and even offensive, to some people coming from the outside. Sometimes it feels like no one here has heard of structural racism, intersectionality, examining one's own privilege, etc.  Even a lot of the people who mean well just seem hopeless sometimes, because they are sort of stuck, stuck in the discourse this society can offer. Like when the Carnival of Cultures in Berlin, instead of being like the Notting Hill Carnival in London, ends up feeling a lot like one of those human-zoo World's Fair exhibitions from the 1890s. Or the Marxist party campaign posters with little black kids in 'traditional garb' shaking maracas, with some bullshit slogan about solidarity underneath. All that gets really frustrating. So frustrating that at times you need to write a piece like this one, or the one Jacinta wrote, because you just can't even take one more minute of it. This isn't to say that the US or British ways of approaching these issues are 100% right, or that they're racism-free (ha!), but I do think they have more experience of confronting these issues than German society does. It's not only the minorities who need to adjust to be successful in Germany, it's Germany that needs to adjust to be successful as a modern, diverse society.

*I use 'the Germans' here broadly, knowing full well that it is really generalizing - but sometimes you need to generalize. German society DOES have a different discourse on race and minorities than the US, even if individuals within the society might not always fit into this generalization. But, societal and political discourses aren't individual so I don't care, in this instance, about speaking in broad terms. Sorry in advance if you feel offended by that - go and check your privilege.

Now if you made it this far and you're really pissed off at me, or racism, or whatever, watch the video.

A very boring un-election, for us!

With the German federal elections just around the corner, I thought it might be a good time to resurrect ye olde blogge! And what an inspiring election it is..! Oh, hm, well, no, actually not. In fact, commentators in the German media have begun calling it a Nichtwahlkampf, or non-election campaign. I like the ring of un-election better, though, as it syncs pretty well with the idea of an unbirthday from Alice in Wonderland (and gives me an excuse to include youtube link). Watch, enjoy, return to text.

You see, you have unbirthdays 364 days a year, and birthdays only once. Just as you don't get any older on your unbirthday (not officially, anyway) you also don't get anything new out of an un-election. Angela Merkel, she with the mouth drooping rhetorical finesse, seems pretty well destined to remain Chancellor even after all the votes have been counted and any necessary coalition building deals have been agreed. But why? From the outside, it might be hard to understand - people in the southern European countries like drawing unflattering historical comparisons, her austerity measures have driven nearly as hysterical photo editing reactions from even respected publications, and she leaves many Germans stupefied and asking "Why?" (among other questions related to braindeath..). But among a large share of the voters, she remains well-liked, well, because she's just so well-liked! Kidding aside, her personal approval ratings are high even though, when polled, voters strongly disapprove of many of her government's policies and handling of such issues as the NSA/domestic spying affair. Love the sinner, hate the sin, functioning well in German politics!

In fairness, the other parties haven't mounted the most inspiring offence. The social-democratic SPD decided, in a national assembly (mind, they don't actually let the whole party vote on the candidate...!!), to choose Peer Steinbrück - probably the richest member of the Bundestag, or parliament - as their man to stick up for the common people. Ha! In the past, he was a big supporter of the neo-liberal reforms introduced by former Chancellor Schröder (also SPD..), which many blame for the creation of a new class of working poor - a novel development in post-war German history. This leaves local politicians battling not only other parties, but also working against the tarnished image of a wealthy Chancellor candidate who supported the very policies many of their constituents are struggling as a result of. For those who can't read German, that link is to an article about my local direct candidate to the Bundestag from the SPD, who even lets sly jabs at Steinbrück fly, ostensibly to increase her own chances of electoral success. Sigh.

The other parties don't have a chance of getting a large enough share of the vote to lead a coalition, and with the SPD having already ruled out a coalition involving the far left Linkspartei, well.. Merkel it is! Because, for most Germans, times are pretty good. With many average voters still stuck with the mindset of the Euro crisis as the fault of "the lazy Spaniards/Greeks/Italians who are just ungrateful to the hardworking, generous Germans", that issue is a non-starter. Meanwhile, the SPD is rhetorically hamstrung by their own leadership, preventing them from speaking credibly at the federal level about the said development of the working poor, and the increasing costs of living even as wages remain stagnant. And why no one sees the same ingredients for a housing bubble developing here, the way they did in the US/UK in the 2000's, I just can't understand. It's a bit like watching history repeating. As it is, the biggest issues in this Nichtwahlkampf remain rather.. tame.. by American standards. Disagreements on how best to fund universal childcare provision, the rising cost of energy in the face of a remarkable transition towards renewable sources of power, train service disruptions in Mainz and too-expensive airports and railway projects in Berlin and Stuttgart - the Germans are complaining at a high level, while ignoring or downplaying bigger issues.

And perhaps this tameness is the hardest thing for me to understand. Having come of age as a lefty during the Bush II era, I'm very used to pretty much hating the political opposition, or at least being dumbfounded by the backwardness and often the mean-spiritedness of their views. German politics just doesn't have anything like the anti-government tea party to moan about! Merkel has moved her party so far to the center that she's not all that distinguishable from Steinbrück. Everyone agrees the state should do lots of things to help people live their lives more comfortably, most people don't see any reason for the German military getting involved in other peoples' affairs, most people want their privacy protected from snooping even at the cost of "extra security". Granted, the current government isn't my cup of tea..but still, I can't really hate Merkel, because I still think she is a thinking, reasonable person with basically alright intentions though slightly misguided views of modern society. The right wing of her party is less pleasant, but marginalized, and the election posters of the far-right parties are so silly that they could appear in the Onion. Combine this with a voting system that gives everyone two votes, one for a direct constituency candidate, and the other to be used freely to "top up" the proportionally distributed seats in Parliament with any party you like... and German democracy seems to be running enviously well from an American viewpoint.

And so we'll slog along, through the unelection, and on to the status quo that comes after. And I'll sit here, mildly bemused by it all, secretly hoping for a German Michelle Bachmann to come along and get me more fired up.

Homo-Marriage & What Comes After

I feel compelled to resurrect this blog (after a lengthy respite) by the course of current events in both Germany and the USA. This week, as almost everyone by now knows, the US Supreme Court will be hearing arguments on two cases concerning marriage equality for same-sex couples. Depending on how the justices rule, this can result in anything from nothing, to the overturning of the anti-gay Prop 8 in California all the way to the full federal recognition of marriage equality and the simultaneous striking down of all state-level laws and constitutional provisions against it. Big time stuff. If the best-case-scenario indeed came to pass, the USA would have full marriage equality even before Germany.

Germany has something commonly referred to in the press and popular parlance as the "Homo-Ehe", or "Homo-Marriage" (they don't mince words, the Germans..!). Despite the misleading name, it is not actually marriage, but a form of civil union that includes nearly all the legal benefits of marriage except for a peculiar structure of income tax benefit and the right to jointly adopt children, as a couple, from the start of the adoption process. The German Constitutional Court has recently chipped away at rules against gay couple's adopting, such that they can now do so, but "through the back door" (ha ha) and only after one of the partners is already the legal parent of the child(ren).

Court cases aside, opinion polls in both countries, as well as ever stronger commitments from the left/liberal parties in both countries, seem to suggest that full marriage equality for same-sex couples is only a matter of time. My question, and concern, is thus: what happens after that battle is won?

Of course, marriage equality is not the be all and end all of the LGBT movement. Sure, for many bourgeois types who insist we are JUST LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, that may be enough. But for those of us who see "just like everyone else" as merely code for "the current order of sex, gender, and familial norms and structures is just fine and dandy", this remains problematic. Even "everyone else" aren't actually like everyone else - straight, cis-gendered white men also suffer and need liberating from this system. And, even if they were, why would anyone want to fit into a system of power relations and cultural hegemony in which rape culture is justified and normalized, in which signs of gender non-conformity even in young children are all too often greeted with horror and disgust, in which our trans* brothers, sisters, and somewhere-in-betweeners continue to face discrimination and violence, and on and on and on?

I see, on the horizon, a rupture in "the movement" rearing its head. This rupture, between the "we are/want to be just like everyone else", and the more radical forces who seek to question and subvert the current order of sex and gender relations has, of course, always been there. The marriage equality issue has simply made it less apparent, as even those who find marriage to be an institution mired in a history of sexual domination based on the ownership of women by men agree that, in our day and age, it should be an equal opportunity "oppressor". Perhaps the movement as such will more obviously splinter, and probably have less money at its disposal from the bourgeois HRC-type conforming gays. Then again, a leaner, meaner, more culturally aggressive movement, unafraid to offend certain sensibilities, couldn't be all bad.

How my homeland and adopted country compare is, overall, a wash. In some ways, gender and sex relations in Germany are more progressive (from my point of view). Women hardly ever wear heels, childcare burdens seem more evenly shared, the law provides for paternity leave in addition to maternity leave (the US provides for neither..), and so on. More broadly, the general German willingness to engage with ideological commitments and personal convictions as matters of a shared social life, rather than as personal consumption-oriented lifestyle choices, seems to me to enable social transformation of gender and family life more in the long-run than it does in the US. On the other hand, radical voices are also present in great numbers in the US, and often institutionalized in settings like the university in a way they are not here in Germany. For example, Queer/Gender Studies is nearly non-represented in degree and course offerings in the German university landscape.

Of course, I can't cover the entire landscape of the German and American LGBT rights movements and the cultures of gender etc in each country in one blog post. I simply wanted to ask the question, what comes next for the movement after this battle is won? I'm not sure what it will look like, but I am sure that, 10 years post-marriage equality, it will be an entirely different beast.