racism and intolerance
May. 1st, 2007 02:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dream_labyrinthI've been discussing and reading about prejucices, racism and intolerance in several people's journals, and thought I'd add some of my two cents to the mix.
This is not about statistics or great ideas, just stuff I experience and see from time to time.
I have to say I grew up in an all-white (and rather sheltered, as I had only few contacts outside of my family and the Christian Kindergarten I went to) environment. There were immigrants into the German Democratic Republic, but I don't think I saw any non-German until after reunification. In what my parents taught me, race never mattere, but then the point never really came up.
The first people of a different colour that I saw where Vietnamese selling cheap clothes from a roadside stall. About the same time, Vietnamese children started going to my school. I don't know whether they had to deal with racist comments from other kids. I don't think anybody in my year bothered them. I met two Vietnamese girls in an after-school activity group a few years later and we got on quite well, though the constant smile of one of them sometimes made me feel like she was laughing about me. Even though I knew she was just being polite, as she didn't consider showing emotions openly polite, it was difficult for me because I wasn't used to it.
Of course, I read about racism in its more violent forms in the newspapers. I was shocked and stunned when a young black man died after he had jumped through a glass door into a house to escape from a bunch of nazi teens chasing him. He was badly cut and bled to death. I think the police said it took more than an hour until he even lost consciousness, and all the time he lay there bleeding and crying for help, and all it would have taken was if anybody living in that house had at least bothered to call an ambulance, even if they didn't dare or didn't want to help him directly.
I learnt about Slavery and how many people profited from it, I learnt about how Cortez raided the people of Central America, about the Civil Rights Movement, about Martin Luther King, about the so-called reservations for Native Americans and how many died before they could even get there, how the US government took Indian children from their families to raise them as whites. I learnt about Apartheid and about the Nazis and about the camps into which Americans of Japanese origin were put during Second World War.
All of it just made me wish that people would stop having idiotic notions about what the colour of your skin or the shape of your nose meant about your personality. But it was all far away. It wasn't me, or people I knew, who were affected by it or did it.
Then I learnt that one of my great-uncles died in a Nazi work camp because he had a Jewish girlfriend.
Then a friend of mine said as if it was the most normal thing in the world "I don't like Jews".
I couldn't believe it. That a thing like that happened in the Third Reich was bad enough, but that a girl my age could say something like that and consider it perfectly alright completely baffled me. I asked her for a reason, and she said she'd had made bad experiences.
And I said okay and mentally changed her statement into "I did not like the Jews I've met so far," and thought I could live with that. I couldn't really. We were never close friends after that. But I still don't know why I let it lie, why I didn't talk with her about it.
That, I believe, was the first time I saw racism first-hand.
Now, as a white European, it isn't likely for me to actually experience racism. However, I do get my share of prejudices, and that is mostly because of the country I was born in.
The next time I hear somebody say "Why did they tear down the Wall, a door would have been enough," I'm quite sure I'm going to slap his arrogant face.
East Germans have lived in a dictatorship for fourty years longer than Western Germany, and the fact that the political party that governed wasn't on the right but the left wing of the political spectrum doesn't change that.
Yes, we are different. We have different experiences, different backgrounds, different situations. And different incomes, by the way, as you are paid less for the same work in East Germany than in West Germany, because supposedly the cost of living is lower, which is rubbish.
Trampling all over us because people think they know more about the GDR than we do is prejudiced.
We have the same skin colour and the same passport, but we're not the same.
Working where I do, I can't really be prejudiced against people based on their skin colour or origin. Yes, I do think people living in Germany should learn German. I do think children attending a German school should speak German. I think people living in this country should abide our rules, which means beating your wife is not okay, no matter what you claim your Prophet says. (IIRC, there is no such thing as a suggestion to beat your wife in the Quran. Mohammed's wife would definitely have given him a piece of her mind had he dared to put it in. Must have been a pretty strong woman.)
I wouldn't get nervous if I go to a hospital and the doctor treating me has a different colour of skin. As long as we can communicate and he knows what he's doing, who cares?
So, I don't think I'm racist or very much prejudiced myself. Probably also because I travel a lot. Getting an inside view of a foreign country changes your perception, at least if you see more than the hotel pool.
But I see and hear people say prejudiced and racist things all the time.
A girl in my class stated the best thing about their vacation to Egypt was that the Egyptians were only allowed to come near the hotel if they were taxi drivers or worked there.
People here suggested I shouldn't even bother to look at flats in a certain area, because all the Russians live there. Now, I could have accepted that if they had added: They party a lot and it tends to be loud. Because that simply is true. But to leave it like this is just stupid.
I hear those things and I decide for myself I don't want to believe them. But I don't do anything against them. Even though it makes me angry to hear people's prejudices directed against me and I don't hesitate to speak out about that, I don't do it for other people.
It is rather funny, when you think about it. We have groups fighting for the rights of cows to live a happy cow life, but how many of the members of these groups don't bother fighting for the rights of other human beings?
Sure, it's easy for me to point fingers. I don't do anything myself. If I don't like being judged like that, I should speak out for others. Then maybe others will speak out for me if I'm not there to do it myself.
This is not about statistics or great ideas, just stuff I experience and see from time to time.
I have to say I grew up in an all-white (and rather sheltered, as I had only few contacts outside of my family and the Christian Kindergarten I went to) environment. There were immigrants into the German Democratic Republic, but I don't think I saw any non-German until after reunification. In what my parents taught me, race never mattere, but then the point never really came up.
The first people of a different colour that I saw where Vietnamese selling cheap clothes from a roadside stall. About the same time, Vietnamese children started going to my school. I don't know whether they had to deal with racist comments from other kids. I don't think anybody in my year bothered them. I met two Vietnamese girls in an after-school activity group a few years later and we got on quite well, though the constant smile of one of them sometimes made me feel like she was laughing about me. Even though I knew she was just being polite, as she didn't consider showing emotions openly polite, it was difficult for me because I wasn't used to it.
Of course, I read about racism in its more violent forms in the newspapers. I was shocked and stunned when a young black man died after he had jumped through a glass door into a house to escape from a bunch of nazi teens chasing him. He was badly cut and bled to death. I think the police said it took more than an hour until he even lost consciousness, and all the time he lay there bleeding and crying for help, and all it would have taken was if anybody living in that house had at least bothered to call an ambulance, even if they didn't dare or didn't want to help him directly.
I learnt about Slavery and how many people profited from it, I learnt about how Cortez raided the people of Central America, about the Civil Rights Movement, about Martin Luther King, about the so-called reservations for Native Americans and how many died before they could even get there, how the US government took Indian children from their families to raise them as whites. I learnt about Apartheid and about the Nazis and about the camps into which Americans of Japanese origin were put during Second World War.
All of it just made me wish that people would stop having idiotic notions about what the colour of your skin or the shape of your nose meant about your personality. But it was all far away. It wasn't me, or people I knew, who were affected by it or did it.
Then I learnt that one of my great-uncles died in a Nazi work camp because he had a Jewish girlfriend.
Then a friend of mine said as if it was the most normal thing in the world "I don't like Jews".
I couldn't believe it. That a thing like that happened in the Third Reich was bad enough, but that a girl my age could say something like that and consider it perfectly alright completely baffled me. I asked her for a reason, and she said she'd had made bad experiences.
And I said okay and mentally changed her statement into "I did not like the Jews I've met so far," and thought I could live with that. I couldn't really. We were never close friends after that. But I still don't know why I let it lie, why I didn't talk with her about it.
That, I believe, was the first time I saw racism first-hand.
Now, as a white European, it isn't likely for me to actually experience racism. However, I do get my share of prejudices, and that is mostly because of the country I was born in.
The next time I hear somebody say "Why did they tear down the Wall, a door would have been enough," I'm quite sure I'm going to slap his arrogant face.
East Germans have lived in a dictatorship for fourty years longer than Western Germany, and the fact that the political party that governed wasn't on the right but the left wing of the political spectrum doesn't change that.
Yes, we are different. We have different experiences, different backgrounds, different situations. And different incomes, by the way, as you are paid less for the same work in East Germany than in West Germany, because supposedly the cost of living is lower, which is rubbish.
Trampling all over us because people think they know more about the GDR than we do is prejudiced.
We have the same skin colour and the same passport, but we're not the same.
Working where I do, I can't really be prejudiced against people based on their skin colour or origin. Yes, I do think people living in Germany should learn German. I do think children attending a German school should speak German. I think people living in this country should abide our rules, which means beating your wife is not okay, no matter what you claim your Prophet says. (IIRC, there is no such thing as a suggestion to beat your wife in the Quran. Mohammed's wife would definitely have given him a piece of her mind had he dared to put it in. Must have been a pretty strong woman.)
I wouldn't get nervous if I go to a hospital and the doctor treating me has a different colour of skin. As long as we can communicate and he knows what he's doing, who cares?
So, I don't think I'm racist or very much prejudiced myself. Probably also because I travel a lot. Getting an inside view of a foreign country changes your perception, at least if you see more than the hotel pool.
But I see and hear people say prejudiced and racist things all the time.
A girl in my class stated the best thing about their vacation to Egypt was that the Egyptians were only allowed to come near the hotel if they were taxi drivers or worked there.
People here suggested I shouldn't even bother to look at flats in a certain area, because all the Russians live there. Now, I could have accepted that if they had added: They party a lot and it tends to be loud. Because that simply is true. But to leave it like this is just stupid.
I hear those things and I decide for myself I don't want to believe them. But I don't do anything against them. Even though it makes me angry to hear people's prejudices directed against me and I don't hesitate to speak out about that, I don't do it for other people.
It is rather funny, when you think about it. We have groups fighting for the rights of cows to live a happy cow life, but how many of the members of these groups don't bother fighting for the rights of other human beings?
Sure, it's easy for me to point fingers. I don't do anything myself. If I don't like being judged like that, I should speak out for others. Then maybe others will speak out for me if I'm not there to do it myself.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-01 01:15 pm (UTC)I am 51 and my High School German teacher was in the Hitler Youth. He said it was great, like the Boy Scouts and very subtle. When he emmigrated to Australia as a young man he was working for Jews. He had this feeling that he didn't like them, but he didnt know why. THEN he remembered comic books he had read as a small child where the "ugly Jew man" was always the villain. As soon as he recognised the source of his feelings and used the evidence of his own experience ( his boss and family were really nice people), my teacher was able to accept them. He said it took him a long time to get over how his mind had been manipulated by the Nazi's, as he thought his youth had saved him from suffering in the war.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-01 01:27 pm (UTC)My grandmother still tells stories of her time with the "Bund Deutscher Mädchen", how much fun it was with them.
Well, Hitler intended to get them young. It works.
Actually, similar things were done in GDR with the "Pionier" organisation. I was a member myself. Sure it was nice, learning stuff and afternoon activities and all that. But it also would have been a subtle brainwashing if I didn't have my parents to counteract it and had been a member for more than the two years until it was dissolved.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-01 01:22 pm (UTC)That said, we also have to generalize people because unfortunately we can't tell at face value who outside our comfort zone is bad, and who is good. If I line up 20 bearded, devout Muslims who all have legitimate reasons to not like the Western world, can you pick out the one out of 20 that is a terrorist and will kill you? Nope. So we play it safe. Do you know which Russians are gang members, members of the Russian mob, or who legitimately will rob you because you are non-Russian? Nope. So to play it safe, you reside outside those areas.
Human beings are really funny animals, when you think about it.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-01 01:29 pm (UTC)If I travel, I make sure I keep my money close at hand and not give pickpockets a chance, but that is only logical. What would be bad is if I considered every - Italian, for example, a pickpocket and wouldn't even approach them.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-01 07:46 pm (UTC);D
no subject
Date: 2007-05-02 05:42 am (UTC)At least you're giving a fair warning.
:-D
no subject
Date: 2007-05-01 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-01 06:11 pm (UTC)Seeing our own prejudices is even harder.