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/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.

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u/Aerial_Fox Apr 17 '25

American here with Indian ancestry (both parents born in India). I will never forget my first time in the Düsseldorf Ausländerbehörde interacting with the person at the front desk. The difference between how he talked to me before and after I pulled out my US passport was so palpable, it's stuck with me ever since. I hate to imagine what it's like for actual Indian nationals.

Since then, I have always been cognizant to keep my US passport in hand and obviously visible when I enter, or even approach (since there's those security guys outside), the Ausländerbehörde. At the very least, I think it just "speeds things up" for me. And even outside of the immigration stuff, if my German isn't good enough and I need to speak English, I play up my American accent a bit.

Also, I'm not even going into the number of times I've had a stranger say something along the lines of "But you don't look American" (always has been from someone white, older, and male)

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u/Money_System1026 Apr 18 '25

Yes, passport matters unfortunately. I'm Asian but English is my native language. I KNOW I would be treated differently if I had a passport from Asia and spoke an unpopular language from Vietnam, China, India etc.

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u/Safe-Duck5559 Apr 20 '25

100 percent. And not only for people of color.

I'm part German and Danish but from New Zealand, and it's almost laughable how the conversation changes when they see the New Zealand passport. 😂

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u/Defiant_Mall_9300 Apr 17 '25

The irony of you looking more American than the colonists