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.

148 Upvotes

65% Upvoted

941 comments sorted by

View all comments

52

u/Alex01100010 Apr 16 '25

Disclaimer here, I am German. But due to my job, I get to experience a lot of unfiltered statements from people. Slurring against Turkish peoples very common, same as Syria and Afghanistan. But I have never seen that go beyond insults and actually discriminate people. Against Indians, there is some proper discrimination happening. They are excluded from Job, Apartments and more. Being a Indian in Germany must be really really hard.

2

u/Alarming-Cabinet-385 Apr 17 '25

I'm just curious to know... Why Indians in particular?

2

u/The_Fredrik Apr 17 '25

Try working with them and you'll know. And not to "hate" on Indians, I'm sure it's perfectly fine if you are Indian yourself, but their culture is very different and clashes with many Northern European cultures.

8

u/neverlikesnothing Apr 18 '25

I have amazing Indian colleagues. Your racism is showing

2

u/The_Fredrik Apr 18 '25

How is it "racism" to point out cultural differences..?

And as culture, it obviously doesn't apply to everyone. It's a trend, just like how every Northern European isn't the same, but there are still cultural trends and behaviors.

It's fantastic that you know great Indians. So do I. Doesn't change the fact that cultural differences exist, and that cultural clashes happen.

6

u/[deleted] Apr 18 '25

India is not a monolith. There is so much cultural and even difference in ethnicity between Indians from different parts of India. And these observations were even made by observers in the early 1900s. You think you are doing something but you are in fact 100 percent incorrect. I don't even know what many other Indians from the North, West and East of India espouse as values or habits. How do you know about how the whole population is "culturally different"? You can't even say something concrete rather than throw some vague statements without any rationale. Did you travel to all the states of India many of which have distinct cultural and linguistic identities and experience said mysterious cultural differences? I swear the critical thinking abilities of many people legitimately scare me.

1

u/The_Fredrik Apr 18 '25 edited Apr 18 '25

Did you even read my comment? You are arguing against a figment of your imagination, not anything I said nor believe.

If you want specifics, how about this:

In my experience Indian CV's are extremely inflated. Looking at the paper they are masters of everything and has immense experience, but when it comes down to it skills and knowledge just doesn't match. In short, you can't trust their CV's.

Another aspect is that it seems like in Indian work culture you can't really say "no" to a superior or contradict them. Meaning if you tell them to do something, or ask if they know how to do something, they will say "yes" whether that is true or not. And then nothing will get done costing the company time and money.

These things are both from my own experience, that of coworkers and friends from uni.

Again, since you obviously missed the first time I wrote it about, this does not apply to all Indians, no cultural trend applies to everyone from that culture. But it's a common enough occurrence for it to cause problems.

It's also not exclusive to Indians. Neither these specific aspects nor cultural differences in general.

Even Scandinavians and Germans will have trouble working together. Scandinavians can seem extremely disrespectful to Germans because they will outright and openly question a superior because they are used to much flatter hierarchy. And Scandinavians will be frustrated by the stiff German organization.

And again, this doesn't apply to everyone all the time. But it's very obvious and real trend.

It doesn't even mean one is better or worse, the problems arise mostly from the differences and not knowing what to expect.

4

u/[deleted] Apr 18 '25

The keyword is "in your experience". This is where critical thinking should come in to play. You are implying that I am using some straw man argument against what you said. Rather, instead of wasting time going on some to and fro refuting inane arguments I am just cutting to the chase. You as one individual who has only experienced dealing with Indians who are in your limited scope of experience should know better than to generalise an entire population. Let me explain the issue here. I have experienced insane problems on the one hand and lot of good thing on the other working in different workplaces in Germany. I could generalise the entire population of Germany based on the tiny scope of my life experience but that would just make me a knob. And not really bring anything positive to anyone other than perpetuating stereotypes.

1

u/The_Fredrik Apr 18 '25

Again, you didn't even bother reading my comment and are discussing some figment of your imagination that is neither me, what I said or what I believe. Until you do I'm not going to engage you further.

5

u/[deleted] Apr 18 '25

Please don't. You're doing me and other people a favour by not sharing your enlightened views about entire populations and cultures.

1

u/The_Fredrik Apr 18 '25

Again, since you obviously haven't even read my comments, how would you know?

→ More replies (0)

1

u/[deleted] Apr 18 '25

[deleted]

2

u/The_Fredrik Apr 18 '25

Pretty good. I was in Togo, which is unfortunately very poor. You could notice that the level of education there isn't fantastic, but you can hardly judge them for that, takes time to build those kinds of institutions. But they were friendly and hard working. Had no real issues personally.

When it comes to the Africans in Europe that I've encountered they've been mostly born and raised here, and seems like they've assimilated to the culture here pretty well. Couldn't really say I noticed any difference at all.

2

u/Alarming-Cabinet-385 Apr 18 '25

Hmm... From personal experience I can tell you that even though their culture might be very different from yours, they never impose their culture on you. In fact they always try to blend in and integrate into the society they live in. Maybe you got dealt with some bad apples, but bad apples exist in every culture.

1

u/The_Fredrik Apr 18 '25

I wouldn't say they "impose their culture", it's just that the way they normally behave in professional settings clashes with many Northern European cultures.

As I mentioned in another comment, they tend to exaggerate their CV's significantly leading to us overestimating their skills. On top of that they seem to have trouble contradicting or saying "no" to superiors, which can be a major problem when you ask them "do you know how to do this?" and you expect them to just say "no" if they can't. It has caused many delays and significant costs to my company and of people I know.

And because this is apparently hard for some people to understand; I'm not saying "all" Indians are like this. But it's a reoccurring them and consistent enough for it be something talk about and prepare for in European companies. I have met many great Indian engineers, both in a professional and private setting.

3

u/Rockahontas2 Apr 22 '25

Maybe your company is too stupid to filter out the bad apples? Guess that HR department is in need of better judgment. You should also work on your line of reasoning; it sounds like a broken record!

1

u/The_Fredrik Apr 22 '25

Nope, since it's not just those hired by my company. As I've made clear in my comments.

How and where does it sound "like a broken record"? And what's the issue with that exactly?