“Racism poses a threat to German democracy” DW 01/11/2023

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“Racism is not an abstract concept, but a painful reality for many people in our society,” Reem Alabali-Radovan said on Wednesday, presenting the government’s first annual report on racism in Germany.

“It is a major threat to democracy, because it undermines people and their human dignity, which is guaranteed to them by the Basic Law,” she continued.

Alabali-Radovan, in the newly created post of federal anti-racism commissioner, stressed the need for better support for those affected and greater recognition of everyday and structural racism across the country after “years of unaware of the problem”.

Although the Federal Commission for Migration, Refugees and Integration regularly publishes reports on the situation of immigrants and their descendants in Germany, this new report aims to fill the gaps in these studies as the first “comprehensive presentation of the racism in Germany”. “

Alabali-Radovans’ office has collected representative studies conducted by other organizations such as the National Discrimination and Racism Monitor (NaDiRa), which conducted 5,000 telephone interviews on the subject of racism. NaDiRa’s study, “unlike most existing quantitative studies, not only surveyed members of the majority population, but also groups potentially facing experiences of racism were asked about their views.”

Although Germany does not yet have a standard legal definition of racism, the new report used the definition given by a 2021 government study on integration, which argues that racism is “beliefs and practices that are based on the systematic devaluation and exclusion as well as the disadvantage of certain groups of the population, to whom are attributed biologically or culturally constructed, immutable and supposedly inferior characteristics and behaviors.

New Year’s debate ‘falls back on racist stereotypes’

Some 90% of respondents said they recognized racism as a problem in Germany, while some 22% said they had been personally affected by it. In 2022, official crime statistics recorded 1,042 “politically motivated” violent crimes, around two-thirds of which were racist in nature. However, the report notes, independent counseling services said they received at least 1,391 calls about physical assaults.

Alabali-Radovan presented the report following a renewed debate on integration in the wake of New Year’s Eve street violence in ethnically diverse neighborhoods in Berlin and other cities. It had become a pretext, the commissioner said, to express prejudice about the ethnicity of people who allegedly used explosives to attack police and emergency services.

“The New Year’s Eve debate shows that even in 2023 we must learn to discuss societal issues without falling back into racist stereotypes,” she said.

German leaders debate causes of New Year’s violence

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“Racism is not just hatred and violence”

In his remarks, however, Alabali-Radovan was keen to stress that racism does not only present itself as “hate and violence”, but also for example in routine microaggressions, systemic exclusion from labor markets and real estate, lack of representation in the corridors of power, police brutality and discrimination at school or in medical offices.

The report itself emphasizes the need to separate issues that were previously lumped together to the detriment of combating them, such as the conflation of racism and xenophobia, as well as to examine only racism against , for example, Black Germans, Muslims, Asian Germans, Jews, and Sinti or Roma as one uniform phenomenon.

“It shouldn’t be that a woman with a hijab and the same qualifications as a woman with a more German-sounding name is four times less likely to be called for a job interview,” Alabali-Radovan said. about some of the damning statistics. found in the Islamophobia section of the report.

Indeed, in a survey, his office noted that “one-third of respondents said Muslim immigration to Germany should be restricted, and 27% said too many Muslims live in Germany.”

Regarding anti-Black racism, some 886 respondents to the 2020 “Afrozensus” survey said they had experienced or witnessed such attacks. 74.1% of those who reported the incidents said they were unhappy with the way their complaint was handled by the authorities. The report also notes the barriers many people face in reporting incidents, whether it’s fear of retaliation, contempt from officials, or even the fact that they don’t even know what happened to them. was a crime.

The study also raised the issue of discrimination against Asian Germans, especially since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. About half of the 700 Asian Germans surveyed said they had experienced racism directly linked to false perceptions of the pandemic. That’s not to say, the report points out, that anti-Asian racism, including violent attacks, wasn’t a major problem in Germany before 2020.

According to the report, the group facing the most open enmity were people of Sinti and Roma origin. “Some 29% of the inhabitants admitted to having antipathy towards these groups. This result is, in view of the genocide against the Sinti and Roma [during the Holocaust]more than alarming.”

What is diversity?

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“The report is overdue and urgently needed”

With these questions in mind, Alabali-Radovan announced that his office plans to implement the following measures over the coming year: strengthening community counseling services, ensuring that these services are better connected to to each other, creating a panel of experts to advise the government Anti-racism policy has included creating a legal definition of racism, strengthening legislation against hate speech on the internet, and ensuring that state-level leaders, city ​​and local communities are more committed to anti-racism.

Independent German Federal Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Ferda Ataman hailed the report as a “late and urgently needed sign”.

“This is the first time the government has made it clear that tackling racism must be a top priority,” she said. “The report shows that racism remains a problem in Germany.”

Edited by Rina Goldenberg

While You’re Here: Every Tuesday, DW editors round up what’s happening in German politics and society. You can sign up for the weekly Berlin Briefing email newsletter here.

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