a comment from our volunteer and teamer Katharina Bergmann
I can't breathe. A phrase that has been shouted around the world in recent weeks. I can't breathe.
It quickly became clear that the protests were not just about George Floyd's death and police violence in the United States. Rather, this much-cited phrase sparked a global debate on racism. Although violence against black people is nothing new, the scale of the protests has reached a new level. But why is that?
In the first few weeks after the restrictions along with the Covid-19 pandemic, we often heard sentences like: Corona hits everyone the same, whether poor or rich. Yes, the virus does not actually look for a specific origin, skin color or income class.But even so, the crisis certainly does not affect everyone equally. In almost all countries we can see that minorities have less access to medical care. How can that stil be a reality in 2020? And how come origin and skin color still play such a big role in our society?
The racism debate we are currently having is very complex and has many layers. Many migrants use the current attention to place different topics. This combination of issues does not always fit together for the general population.
I, too, am bothered by the slogan Black Lives Matter. Really!? After so many years of anti-racism work and in-depth critical whiteness analysis, I have to take to the streets now and say that black people want to live too?
Yes, that's exactly what it's about. Racism and inequality are rooted so deep that we have to start all over again. To revisit the entire colonial history in this comment would be a bit too much. But for a quick exercise, I will give you a few examples now and you think about which image you have in mind.
- An employer who employs over a million people in his company.
- A mother who works in the field with a baby in her arms.
- A young man sitting and working in front of his laptop.
- A scientist visiting a group of children in an African village.
So... what did you think of? When were the people you imagined white? When did they come from Western countries and when from former colonies? The largest employer in the world is the Indian railway. I'm sure a German worker on a strawberry field has brought her child to the strawberry field and there is probably no part of the world where there are no laptops. And the scientist, was he white? Actually, it would be more probable that he is a former resident of the village, who is a scientist, visiting his village.
The example is too simplistic for you? You think that to call it racism is wrong, everyone and everyone can have their own ideas?
But that's exactly what this is about. I don't want to dismiss any way of thinking as wrong, but we often only think of Western countries when it comes to prosperity, work and education. As a result, when we travel, we are sometimes looking for a supposedly 'traditional' picture that actually doesn't exist anymore.
Why these long explanations for workcamp volunteers who travel open-minded and full of curiosity to different countries and are looking for intercultural exchange?
I don't want to annoy or criticise you, I want to encourage you to go out into the world and gain new experiences! Getting to know other countries and getting to know people and cultures is always an asset.
But people in Western countries who have the privilege of traveling a lot shape the image that we have of one country. So think about: What do you tell others, what do you post on social media? Did you have a specific picture of a country in mind before going there and really want to bring back this picture now? Is a simpler lifestyle really automatically a worse one? Is the standard of all things what we have learned ourselves?
Do we automatically end racism through all these questions? No, but it's a start.
People are currently taking to the streets because they do not feel that they are seen and heard. Be there, listen and even if it sounds platitudinous now: Black Lives Matter!
Katharina Bergmann