Prelim Thoughts on: Being a Minority in Berlin

What's it mean to be a minority in Germany? Not sure I can readily answer that one. However, I have some preliminary thoughts on the matter. As a cautionary note, keep in mind that I've not spent significant time outside of Berlin. So, this is really about what's it like to be a minority in Berlin, not in the rest of Germany (with which I am wholly unfamiliar).

I've randomly accosted people of color everywhere to ask them one question. "What's it like being a minority in Germany?" Of those I've so accosted, and perhaps frightened a little, the variety of answers has been interesting and unpredictable. First, I had this discussions with my local Turkish corner store guys in Neu Köln. The Turkish minority in Berlin shares some similarities to the AA population in the U.S. They are the largest minority by far in Germany. In some respects, they are the FIRST minority. They're more likely to be involved in criminal activities and they're often styled in urban outfits. They feel like black people. At least the men do. So many of the women wear headscarves and exclusively look after children, it's hard to compare their lives with the average African American female. As for their integration into the greater German society, there are Turkish-Germans who remain rather isolated in their own enclave while others have integrated a bit better. On the whole, I might describe Turks in Berlin as being similar to AA persons in the deep South. Though an integral part of the general Berlin community, they remain largely within their own sub-communities.

Although I've said their experience most closely parallels that of AA persons in the U.S., AA persons in the U.S. clearly are far more integrated into the American fabric than are persons of Turkish origin here. We are a most critical component of the American experience, what America means as a country and, indeed, as a symbol. We were written into the Constitution (though only as 3/5 of a person, but who's counting? Apparently white southern slaveowners at the time lol.). Since blacks in America generally arrived at the same time as whites (mid 17th C.), there's a much longer history of co-existence (though on enduringly unequal terms) than experienced by the Turkish minority here. We inter-marry at rates that dwarf that experienced between Turks and Germans. In fact, it's almost unheard of for a Turkish woman to marry a German man, and almost as rare for a Turkish man. And the weird thing is, this includes "Turkish" persons who have been born and raised in Germany and know no other culture. These aren't people who arrived on a metaphorical boat (like Gov. Schwarzenegger of California). This last point really highlights the extent to which these countries, the U.S. and Germany, have different attitudes towards immigrants and what it means to emerge from that boat.

Along this last line, there is no sense of persons of Turkish origin being, for example, trend-setters, culturally, here as is the case for AA persons in the U.S. It's clear from discussing this issue with white Germans, that they have no sense of Turkish people as trend-setters in almost any regard and, certainly, nowhere near the magnitude of the influence that blacks have in the U.S. That said, I've seen similar levels of misunderstanding, stigmatization, stereotyping, etc. against Turkish persons that one might experience with respect to AA persons in the U.S. Many Germans, with whom I have discussed Turkish people, clearly harbor quite negative stereotypes about persons of Turkish origin that just barely manage to remain beneath the surface. In these regards, the Turkish experience feels quite similar to that of blacks in the U.S.

And now, the brothers. I've had (or created) a few opportunities to discuss this issue with some Afro-Germans. Naturally, I have been highly interested in their experiences. One black dentist, born in Leipzig (former east Germany) articulated his frustration at not really having a place that feels like home (other than New York City). Born of a Ghanaian father and German mother, he's lived here his entire life. However, at almost 40, he grew up in the former East Germany. Needless to say, no other black people near him. He's only every experienced himself as a person of "Migrationshintergrund" or migratory background as they say here. Almost sounds like a bird thing. Worse yet, when he returns to his father's homeland, Ghana, he feels no more at home and is treated similarly as an outsider, if additionally one who has the means to give money/loans to all of his distant cousins.

I also accosted a young man, 19, of African descent who is German. Though he said he felt German, he did express the outsiderness that he feels even as one who's born and raised here. He wonders, when people won't sit next to him on the train, whether it's his color, which is beautiful, or whether he smells on that day. On the one hand, he's German, it's all he knows and his language ability marks him immediately as a native speaker. However, he's different. He's a person of migratory background, someone of impermanence, someone who won't be here too long, hopefully. And finally, I spoke with a guy I went on a date with. He's African, Ghanaian and has been here for 18 years. He married a white German woman and has two beautiful children. She knew he was gay when she married him, for love. What are women thinking of sometimes? After 18 years of being here (since he was 18-19), he continues to feel like an outsider. He only dates black men and feels objectified within the white gay community. For me, of course, a little objectification during sex is not a bad thing. But it apparently pisses him off. Oh well, more objectification for me (see my last blog entry, the one in German, for more on this objectification question). That's roughly my sense of the black experience here.

Finally, as usual, there's the Asian experience. I've recently met several persons of Asian origin. These have all been young persons (under 24) and all born/raised in various parts of Germany. Although each of these persons mentioned being harassed a little as children, they each also stated that, since that time, they've only ever felt completely German. They feel completely integrated into the general society and have no concept of themselves as being "other". My immediate thought was that they must be similar to Asian Americans in the U.S. Their families have come to Germany for similar reasons (war, poverty, political upheaval, economic opportunity) as their U.S. counterparts. I cannot say, however, that from the conversations I've had with Germans of Asian origin, that they are either considered the model minority or have this kind of self-concept. In America, this title denotes so many things. It contrasts Asian Americans with African Americans and Latinos that are self-evidently NOT model minorities. It bespeaks the various stats that show Asian Americans at the highest end of test scores and scholastic achievement in the U.S. It represents a little golden badge for, generally, having not complained all that much about the inequities they have faced. It's not clear that Germans of Asian origin have either performed at such levels, comparatively speaking.

What is clear is that, at least amongst the younger generations, they have integrated to a degree far greater than the other two groups. That said, I've seen far more black/white interracial couples (almost exclusively amongst heteros) than I have Asian/German couples. Big contrast from the U.S. in which one sees tons of Asian/white couples (especially white men/asian females). Not really sure what this is about. On the one hand, from my little anecdotal sample, the Asian-Germans have the highest degree of integration, or at least the highest personal sense of being integrated into the culture. But, they seem to have the lowest degree, even lower than that of Turkish Germans, of cross-cultural dating. Is this a result of sheer numbers; there just aren't enough Asian-Germans for this to be noticeable at all? Are Asian-Germans different from their American counterparts regarding their tendency to date white people (that's hard to imagine)? Do Germans simply not have the same erotic ideals about Asian women (since that's probably really what we're talking about here) as their white American counterparts? No way to know.

That's all I can say at this point about being a minority in Berlin. And remember, Berlin is by far and away the most multi-cultural city in Germany. The experiences of these minorities likely only gets worse in direct proportion to the distance away from Berlin (or a couple other major cities).