Tuesday, October 19, 2010

"Unsere Schule ist bunt"

This is one of the many slogans on the many posters around my school proclaiming Ehrenbürg Gymnasium to be against racism.

Oh racism in Germany. Where do I start? To begin with, we must remember that this is not quite the overly race-sensitive and politically correct country that the USA tries to be. However, to one raised in the aforementioned environment, the "non-racist" racist comments heard around Germany can often be quite shocking. They would almost be endearing ("aw, those cute little Germans sure do hate the Turks!"), if they didn't make such blatantly offensive remarks. But I also can't only point the finger of racism at Germany - I hear equally as offensive things in the US, just usually on a more private level. Here it just comes out whenever the speaker sees fit (and as loud as they see fit, for that matter).

For example, in class today we were doing an exercise where students had to pick a few names from a list of 20 that they would kick out of a hot air balloon. The names ranged anywhere from Leonardo Da Vinci to Britney Spears, covering influential people throughout history as well as famous names in pop culture. I was working with one group when a student suggested, "We should keep Einstein because he is German!" to which another student answered, "Yeah... but he's JEWISH! And we should also get rid of Özil (a player for the German national soccer team) because he's half Turkish." Now in this case, I'm not entirely sure how serious he was being because he definitely had the class-clown thing going for him. But outbursts like this (especially about the Turks) are not uncommon here. I've had teachers complain about bad classes just because "well, it's mostly Turkish students..."

Like I said before, I can't point my finger at Germany alone, and as Avenue Q so eloquently puts it, "everyone's a little bit racist sometimes," but I do think there is a line somewhere.

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