But
race adds another complicating dimension.
I
only had a few reservations about moving to Munich, and most had to do with
incidents of violence or discrimination against recent immigrants and other
people of color that seemed to be based in southern Germany.
Despite
Hamburg’s reserved demeanor, it turned out to be pretty liberal. Munich, by
contrast, is more open, but also more conservative.
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| That's me in the background, my sister in the foreground, when we lived in Hanau |
When
I lived in Germany as a kid, I started school here and I spoke German, but
outside of our military base surroundings I think we were uncommon. My mother
told me of a time she took us to a city here in southern Germany, and people on
the street would approach us with some amount of awe and rub our skin(!).
These
days, in my second go-round living in Germany, I have a lifetime of experiences
that make me both sensitive to, and more dismissive of, potentially “racial”
situations.
Shortly
after we moved here, I had been running some errands and
just got back into the apartment when the main door buzzer sounded. I hit the
intercom and could barely make out what the speaker was saying, but I did hear the
word Afrikanerin (African woman) with
a question mark after it.
I said nein and hung up. Knowing that I am the only black person living in my building, there really was no best case scenario I could come up with to make me want to engage in further conversation/clarification.
As
you know from past posts I’ve done a lot of traveling around. And on only one
route—a train trip to and from Italy—did I feel profiled. On both legs of the
trip, border agents entered the car on the opposite side of where I was
sitting, so I had time to observe and play a little guessing game.
They
clearly weren’t checking all passports, so who would they choose? I guessed
correctly when, in a train car of approximately 50 people, they only checked
passports for me and a multiracial Spanish family on the trip down and me and a
large Middle Eastern family on the trip back.
There
are other things I’m quicker to dismiss, like when we first moved in and a man
in the lobby turned to stare as Larry and I walked past. I chalked it up to the
fact that we were new residents in a private building, since people down here
have little compunction about staring (definitely not a racial thing, I have
other anecdotal evidence about the staring).
And
there is our landlady’s nervous fascination with me. The few times we’ve met in
person she seems painfully eager to communicate with me, but I chalk that up to
her knowing Larry speaks no German and, as a psychologist, her desire to learn
more about her expat tenants.
On
the streets, non-German speakers seek me immediately for help in English. Yet most
of the time when I go somewhere people assume I speak German or ask if I would
prefer German or English rather than assuming.
(Most of the time. There are definitely some museums where I’m
greeted in English and they’re already pushing the English brochure or map on
me rather than asking.)
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| Although the Fasching costumes I saw were a little more homemade- looking than this one, this is the image for a costume currently for sale on Amazon.de |
On Tuesday, I went
downtown to see the dances and celebration for the last day of Fasching. As I was leaving, I happened
to glance over at a stall in the Viktualienmarkt
blaring “We Will Rock You.” I saw three or four people dancing and was so shocked
by their costumes I kept walking until I could process what I had seen.
I
felt like I had after a visit to the Museum of the Five Continents last year.
Most of the museum was not a learning tool--more a display of “oddities” and exoticism.
In the exhibit on Africa, accompanying text implied Africans might not have
created art just for arts’ sake, like other cultures did.
Unbelievable. Just
like those full-body-blackface primitives/savages stereotypes I saw out on the street.
Yesterday, in stark contrast, I saw a new Meetup for reading and discussing African literature to promote a
better recognition and understanding of African art and contributions. Probably
not a coincidence that it appeared on the day Black Panther premiered, but I
was heartened that most of the members so far are
white.
The fact that I
tick something in this column or that column and try to tally and wonder whether I’m too
sensitive or too forgiving is not new. It’s simply muddled by the fact that I’m
not on my home turf where I know the racial history and the attitudes and the rules of engagement.
On the whole, my personal experiences as a person of
color in Germany have been positive. I think there are many factors
contributing to that, one of which may, in fact, be some rose-colored glasses.
But
in my next post, I’ll take a look at incidents and experiences for other folks that
have not been as positive.
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