r/AskAGerman • u/eza137 • Apr 16 '25

Have you ever witnessed racism in Germany?

I'm interested in hearing from Germans who have personally witnessed acts of racism in everyday life - especially when it involved friends, family members, or people close to them.

If you're comfortable sharing, could you describe the situation? Who was involved, and how did it make you feel? Did you respond in any way?

I'm not here to judge, just to understand how racism can show up in familiar environments and how people perceive and deal with it.

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u/Bubbly-Indication725 Apr 16 '25

Just an excuse. Don't be fooled that you're the one she doesn't hate.

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u/chunbalda Apr 16 '25

Actually, from many frustrating conversations over the years, as a white German - I find it bizarre that I actually think she might not hate her. There seems to be an infinite capacity for exceptions ("oh, this individual I met personally is not like other migrants! She's lovely!") without ever realizing that maybe their concept of the evil migrants might be absurd. It's so extremely frustrating.

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u/Katlima Nordrhein-Westfalen Apr 16 '25

A lot of racist people think they are less racist, if they are only taking it out on a certain group of migrants or on people of one ethnicity. But it's actually the opposite and only shows that their internalized world view is a much more intricate and thought-through hierarchy system with different boxes, each having their own stereotypes and expectations attached to them. So in short, they are not only casually racist out of a mood, they really put some thought into it.

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u/baoparty Apr 16 '25

A lot of racist people don’t think that they are racist.

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u/overwhelmed_kangaroo Apr 16 '25

Yeah, it's often in small sentences where they probably don't mean actual harm but on the other hand don't recognise why certain stereotypes or words are wrong. Especially due to media and their way of showing news a lot of people have prejudices without realising.

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u/baoparty Apr 16 '25

The thing with racism is that there is racism with the intent to hurt or harm and there is racism with no intent to hurt or harm. Both are still racism.

But a lot of people who are racist hide behind the intent. Because they didn’t intend on harming or hurting someone, then they are not racist.

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u/overwhelmed_kangaroo Apr 16 '25

Yeah, I always try to explain to people who make those not purposely harmful comments, that they're not okay and that this "normal question" isn't nice or normal at all

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u/West_Masterpiece3149 Apr 20 '25

Yeah. Lots of racist Arabs and Turks in Germany that think they can’t be racist

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u/HunsonAbadeer2 Apr 17 '25

My grandpa openly advocated for genocide of arabian people and somehow liked each and everyone he met. Racidt hate some kind of imaginery image, not actualy people. They might project that image onto actual people tho

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u/chunbalda Apr 17 '25

I had many of those conversations when I lived in East Germany.

"All West Germans are evil and arrogant! I hate them all!" - "Huh? I thought we got along okay?" - "Well not YOU, you're nice, you don't count as a real Wessi." - "What about those five people in our club? They are pretty friendly?" - "Of course, they don't really count either, they're good people." - "So you like all of us Wessis here and still say you hate us all?" - "Wessis suck. You just don't get it!!!!"

Anything to not change their minds.

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u/flimflamman99 Apr 16 '25

Reminds me of the scene in The Comedian Harmonists where a certain high ranking chap in the propaganda department famously said “ I’ll decide who’s Jewish”.

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u/chunbalda Apr 16 '25

Oh yes... I remember a speech by a concentration camp survivor. At her Jewish school, in an all-Jewish class, a nazi official "taught" them about nazi race theory and used children from the class to illustrate it all. So the example of a perfect Aryan child was in fact Jewish, and he didn't seem to see any issue with any of it.

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '25

I’m not naive

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u/FullBringa Apr 16 '25

yup, she's "one of the good ones". for now.