Opinion: Recognizing racism in Western Europe

As I watched the Olympics during the end of July and beginning of August, I was impressed by the diversity of the European teams. But that diversity doesn’t mean that all is well.

Writing “Plantation Memories: Episodes of Everyday Racism” in 2008, G. Kilomba stated, “And if I answer and say that I am German, they look confused, you know? They stop for a moment, like thinking: ‘German…?’ Or they just start laughing, as if I misunderstood the question or gave the wrong answer, you know? And they go: ‘Oh! No, no! But you cannot be German. You don’t look German (pointing to the skin). Where are you from?”

Power and race

In the journal, Frontiers in Psychology, Elena Ball, Melanie C. Steffens, and Claudia Niedich come to a conclusion, “In this situation, the person asking where one is from takes the power of defining what nationality one has. It implies that whether one is ‘German’ or not is defined by one’s skin color. The statement suggests the understanding of Germany as racially homogenous.”