Before I get into this, I’d like to state that the information in this article is a record of a conversation I recently had with a friend of mine that moved to Germany from Uganda about two years ago.
I remember a conversation I was having about racism in Germany a while back with a friend of mine that belongs to the black community of Germany, not as a native black German, but rather as a person of pure African descent and background that moved to Germany for work related issues back in 2018. We were talking about the ever so often subtle acts of racism that black people experience in Germany’s public areas such as in public means of transport, restaurants, shopping malls, garage sales and occasionally but very rarely, parks and public pools, when my friend brought up something that caught my attention. Apparently, even as a black member of the community himself, sometimes he sees black people in the community and he tends to apply stereotypes and racial biases on other fellow members of the black community in Germany. He says it’s even easier for him to apply these things to other fellow black members of the community because of their tendencies to stick out in even the most subtle of ways that draws attention to themselves. According to him, as a fellow black member of the community, he hates seeing other black members of the community act or dress or talk on the phone in public areas in a way that makes them stand out or in a way that lives up to the stereotypes about black people in Germany out of a fear of being lumped in together with these traits as a “black people thing.” He says it’s embarrassing for him to see other black people behave in a way that stands out because then he feels like the stereotypes and the racist attitudes toward the black community in Germany would be well founded.
Before then, I didn’t know that black people were also racist towards other black people in white dominated countries. However, their racism isn’t out of hate or out of disgust or any of the forms of racism that we are used to, but rather it’s out of a sense of self preservation. Not wanting to see some of the members of the black community act in a certain way out of fear of their behavior being applied to all other black people.
I also got to learn that to my friend, seeing a black homeless person on the streets of Germany makes them more angry than compassionate as opposed to seeing a white homeless person in Germany. That’s because a black person being homeless in a white dominated country is looked at as such an… ordinary thing that for my friend to actually see it happen in real life makes him angry towards the black homeless person because they are helping to grow the stereotype even further.
I do relate and understand where my friend is coming from and regardless of the conversation we had, he mentioned that Germany has been an amazing experience for him and that racism as a whole, either between two different races or within the same race is generally very very low. It’s by no means non-existent, but it is something that you don’t have to constantly worry about as a member of a different race or ethnicity that’s living in Germany.