Talk:Racism in Germany

untitled
Isn't this article a bit too subjectively? "Many say they feel more uncomfortable in Germany than any other part of Europe." Who is/are "many"? Sources?

What is the point of mentioning single cases? This can happen everywhere! What this article needs are statistics (police record etc.). Only THEN you will come to an objective answer. I do not say the is not racism in Germany but this article is not objective at all!--84.179.70.174 (talk) 14:22, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's really crummy. A showcase of a bad article as it stands currently. 72.228.189.184 (talk) 16:24, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Holocaust?
How is there no mention of the Holocaust? The Herero and Nama genocide? This is a sham of an article.--TM 01:33, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree. It's basically a coatrack. I've had it on my watchlist since it was created a few days ago; was gonna give it some time to see what happen. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 01:57, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Holocaust it self is a separate topic. I think this article talks about recism after the reunification of east and west germany. It mainly highlights recent events/attacks. (Skarmee (talk) 14:17, 24 March 2010 (UTC))
 * This article is about the specific german racist aspect, whether it mentions colonial racism, holocaust or later racist phenomena in german history. Continuity and changes must become readable (based on sources), as now in the first paragraphs, where the connection between colonial racism and racism as the nazi state ideology becomes understandable, just from the sources.--fluss (talk) 22:14, 29 November 2011 (UTC)--fluss (talk) 07:48, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Basic paragraph about the relation Holocaust-Antisemitism-Racism added.--fluss (talk) 09:17, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Bias
This article looks like a pamphlet written by the German government public relations office. Living in Germany, and seeing how racism is celebrated by the local population (see for example the Thilo Sarrazin case from 2010), and how "scientific racism" is so deeply rooted in mainstream media (hidden behind "ethnic" tolerance, celebration of Africans as exotic, etc), I think this article needs serious edit. --Rachel1984 (talk) 22:20, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Aside from bias problems, this article needs expansion, sources, and other improvements. As the article itself starts, "Racism in Germany has a long history."  And yet, this article offers very little detail. Many full books have been written on this subject, by people on many different sides of the issue. Kiwi128 (talk) 22:53, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Indented line

Agreed. This article is really lacking in objectivity. I unsuccessfully tried to remove the following statements from the introduction:

A Journalist Andrea Lutz writes "During my holidays in Sweden, Ireland or England I have walked along the street with African, Japanese and Indian people, and I have never been stared at as I have in Germany."

Now, as far as I'm concerned, there are several issues with this: 1: Andrea Lutz - seriously, who is this person and what's the relevance... 2: The quote.... It makes NO sense and is grammatically flawed.

I think the entire introduction should be removed. It bears no relevance to the article and stinks of subjectivity. This is not the first thing you want people to see upon visiting a Wikipedia page. Dctubbs (talk) 03:47, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Seconded. This article basically reads like a point-by-point example of how NOT to write a Wikipedia article.

ICouldEatAPow (talk) 13:26, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I understand the view by Rachel1984: „seeing how racism is celebrated by the local population (see for example the Thilo Sarrazin case from 2010), and how "scientific racism" is so deeply rooted in mainstream media (hidden behind "ethnic" tolerance, celebration of Africans as exotic, etc).” However, the Sarrazin Case, for example, is very complex. A generally accepted source, uncovering the racist bias in his argumentation in three undoubtful sentences will be hard to find. Also „scientific racism deeply rooted in mainstream media” is hard to proove. If no better sources are named, I will jump back to the reports of the european commision and treat this point of discussion as provisionally unsolvable.--fluss (talk) 09:39, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Article style
I tried a cleanup of this article, but this can only be the first step. Like all Wikipedia articles, this one should aim to abstract and generalize, quoting scientific papers rather than newspaper articles. -- Seelefant (talk) 07:18, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Abstracting and generalizing - as long as it is not misused to hide reality.--fluss (talk) 12:52, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Do you think somebody is trying to do so? -- Seelefant (talk) 19:44, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Can't see much improvement in Seelefant's version. The Herero and Namaqua Genocide, not taking place in Germany, is irrelevant here. Subsuming the holocaust under "racism" appears to be debatable at the least. And terms like "wave" should be used only with great care, six people killed per year certainly aren't enough to warrant such a strong wording. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 10:35, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Your revert of my so-called "POV-edit" restores an article version that has no clear structure; that revels in an utmostly random collection of racist incidents; that removes certain incidents from the 1990ies, which are central to the history of racist street violence after the German reunification (you do not even mention that!); that does not talk about racism in Germany before the mid-2000 years (please explain why an attention span of 10 years is POV); it features a long, unordered blurb of external links, one of which is clearly a sub-standard, political partisan website; it opens with an embarassing tautology; and so on. To sum it up, while certain terms I introduced may be clearly debatable, and I will try to find improvements for these items, I have to state that the manner in which you proceeded here does no strike me as constructive. For another example, there clearly was a "wave" of violence in the early to mid 1990ies, with people burned to death every month or two, and that is just what I wrote. That you don't seem to know about that does not exactly convince me of your familiarity with the topic. -- Seelefant (talk) 19:34, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
 * We are on a wobbly way to NPOV. Issues are resolved just on the surface. The article is in a makeshift balance.
 * The frequent atrocities after reunification can be called a „wave”, to give the reader an image. However, it does not help, that I know the wave from personal experience: on the long run we need the citation of a trustworthy source, making clear, it had been something at least comparable to a wave.
 * I had seen people jumping on the head of a victim. Nevertheless, a source like the cited Green Left far away website from Australia, describing cruelties as if they were on site personally, in the article remains dubious (OK, „as long as we have nothing better ...”). Hard to find: generally accepted sources, describing cruelties that really happened, as well as scientifically distant sources, avoiding meaningless abstraction.
 * We need quotable sources, allowing the reader, to understand the relative dimension of the racist activities. A paragraph about Germany being ranked as one of the tolerant open societies in the world, in that case can help only, when the source is rocksolid. Other approaches to relate racism in germany to the states of the general society might be more worthwile. --fluss (talk) 19:46, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
 * As Wallraff is close to truth in trivial reality, there is a source more distanced, whose bias can be estimated easily: „Reports of the European Commision Against Racism and Intolerance” (ECRI) (english, french and german). Its country-by-country monitoring allows a more or less controlled view over a long period on most european countries (2011 accessible at . Regarding Germany exist the „First report on Germany” (March 1998) until actually the „Fourth report on Germany” (26 May 2009), accessible 2011 at . The Report on Germany is pushed into public discussion also by german state authorities (see . While the reports quite unavoidably tend to seduce in the interest of each european state, they are a better base for the view over-all than blood drinking daily newsmedia. If nobody else does, I will compare the article against these sources in a while.--fluss (talk) 02:11, 6 November 2011 (UTC) I am positively aware of the above „This article looks like a pamphlet written by the German government public relations office.”--fluss (talk) 08:50, 6 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Shure, there is no scientific definition of a "wave of racism". Nevertheless, one can find peaks and waves mentioned as a fair simplification for understanding of a process that got the attention of media and public in a certain time. Mentioning the wave of paki-bashing by teddy boys around the beginning of the sixties usually is a means of understanding, not of ideological struggle. Racist violence in many european countries is steadily more or less present, and from time to time shows up to the public in waves. In the german discussion such terms are explained in basic materials for teachers in public schools already (for example in "Methoden-Manual 'Neues Lernen': 1000 Vorschläge für die Schulpraxis. 2006, Günther Gugel, Beltz Verlag, p. 182). --fluss (talk) 20:27, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

New sources and clearly open point of view
I will make critical use of the european report, and rely on scientific standard works like Jones, J. M. (1997). Prejudice and Racism (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill, and on german scientific and non-scientific sources with international or at least national reputation, respecting the victims. Usually I work very slow, in small steps, over a very long period. Constructive feedback is as welcome as undoubtly encyclopedic changes to the article, based on good sources. The german discussion about racism in germany these days is influenced by the discovery of a neonazi terrorist group National Socialist Underground (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalsozialistischer_Untergrund), who had murdered shopkeepers in germany, eight of turkish origin, one of greek origin, in the last six years, plus bombing attack in a mostly turkish shopping street in cologne.--fluss (talk) 22:02, 13 November 2011 (UTC) Many people ignore the relation between racism and atrocities of neonazi groups. The relation is present in important ideological terms like „Überfremdung”, used to legitimate the crimes. Re-edited:--fluss (talk) 07:57, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I will continue to add to the article, point for point the discussed and announced, until it is voted to be complete. When nobody expresses further doubts in the neutrality of the article, I'd remove the npov-dispute tag. For my grammar and expressions, partly incompatible with native english, I'd appreciate someone cleaning it up occasionally, and to remove the quality standards tag.--fluss (talk) 10:01, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

more references
no proof and no value almost the whole article --Alibaba445 (talk) 02:33, 22 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Unqualified opinions are not of interest.--fluss (talk) 12:36, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

RfC
An RfC: Which descriptor, if any, can be added in front of Southern Poverty Law Center when referenced in other articles? has been posted at the Southern Poverty Law Center talk page. Your participation is welcomed. – MrX 17:12, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

This article is a catastrophe
This must be one of the worst articles in Wikipedia. This already starts with the introduction that tries to put a colonial massacre and the Holocaust at the center of racism in Germany. Whereas both of these events did include attitudes typical for racism, they are by no means good examples of racism in Germany. Of course, they should be treated in the article, but not qualified as "inextricably linked to racism" in the introduction. What happened a hundred years ago in what is today Namibia can better be understood under the label of colonialism, whereas the major event of the Holocaust, the murder of the European Jews, can better be understood under the label of antisemitism. Jewish Germans in the 1930s did not constitute a separate race that could be identified by physical appearance.

The section on racism against Poles during the times of the partitions (around 1800) is ridiculous. The policy of national assimilation in Prussia started much later than the partitions (in the second half of the 19th century), and even then, it was not based on racism, but on the promotion of the German language at the detriment of the Polish language. In many respects, this is the opposite of racism, as its aim is to integrate people into the mainstream population. The aim of a racist attitude would be to separate and to exclude, not to integrate and assimilate.

And whereas it is important to cite recent examples of racism in Germany, there should be a distinction between, or at least a discussion of, racist, xenophobic, and anti-Muslim motives. I also doubt that the presentation of the murder of Marwa El-Sherbini is a good example. Is an anti-Muslim attitude of a deranged Russian immigrant typical for racism in Germany? The murderer was born in Russia in 1980, exempt from military service due to schizophrenia in 2000, and emigrated to Germany only in 2003, where he, never having gained a foothold, committed the murder in 2009. If the murder is to be included in the article, these facts should also be mentioned. Levimanthys (talk) 14:29, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

It's very nice that you refer to the fact that the murderer of Marwa El-Sherbini was a white immigrant. But the bigger racist aspects of the story are that the policemen who saw him attaching her in court, decided to kill the husband and not the murderer because they automatically assume that the middle-eastern is the murderer and not the white person. And, in addition, the German media has ignored the case for over a week, until there were demonstrations about it in Egypt. And that fact that you don't refer to these aspects of the story are showing how you are willing to bend the facts in order to keep portraying Germany is a "newborn" country where people simply changed their opinions after 1945 like doing a U-Turn.

--108.255.40.216 (talk) 06:33, 7 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Like almost every country, Germany is of course a racist country in many respects, but this article does a very poor job of explaining the situation. Instead, it gives the impression of trying to prove that Germany is more racist than other countries that have a more openly racist culture. Maybe it is, or maybe it isn't. But the article certainly shouldn't look as if it is trying too hard to prove something.
 * Any good explanation of racism in Germany would have to distinguish between neo-nazis and their supporters on one hand, and the much less obvious forms of racism present in the majority population on the other hand. And it would also have to describe the substantial regional variations in racism between former East Germany and former West Germany.
 * I should say a lot more, but explaining everything here wouldn't be much easier than rewriting the article properly. I don't really feel qualified for this task, nor do I have the time. Hans Adler 09:23, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

Ask any non-white person who lived in Germany and he will explain to you how German society is openly and exceptionally racist still today, unlike many other places. In Germany "Black Face" is still being done in theaters and pictures of non-white persons on billboard will usually have a racist tone (ridiculed characters mostly). The problem is that the German government is spending huge amounts of money on PR efforts to white wash its present and past atrocities. 2602:30A:2E8C:8740:88E0:5DE6:DA2E:6E6B (talk) 00:41, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Mr. Levimanthy's answer is actually a good example how Germans can be ignorant of their own racism. The genocide (not "massacre") the Germans conducted in Africa is of course an example of racism, since they would never had dared do it unless they thought these humans were as humans they are (I don't remember any case of German genocides against Christian White North Europeans). The killing of Marwa Al Sherbini by a GERMAN (a German ethnic from Russia moving to Germany thanks to German blood-centered nationality laws) - is of course also an example of racism : Go learn the story. When the German stabbed Ms Sherbini in court, the police shot her husband and not the actual perpetrator since her husband, a scientist, had brown skin and the German Russian was white.

What awful people, unaware of their endless prejudices. They really think that in 1945 they simply stopped out of the sudden to be racists. Check yourself Mr. Levimanthy's. Open your eyes.

221.147.20.48 (talk) 00:40, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

The article is no catastrophe. Some comments here are biased. The sentence about the polish partitions mentions the area, not - as Levimanthys claims - the time. And the Nazi way of "assimilation" (against the will of the population) aimed at using the poles as slaves. Slavery is racism. No matter how whitewashed it is in Nazi terminology. It is nazi practice until today, to whitewash, when it comes to their inhumanity, to their crimes and to their criminal ideology: People sent to concentration camps to be murdered there, were told to be sent to a "workcamp".--fluss (talk) 08:54, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

This article definitely needs work, especially the far-too-short sections on racism in modern Germany. Racism is more than violent Neo-Nazis. Some relevant topics that could be discussed: racism in the police / armed forces (a current topic of debate), everyday racism (e.g. othering), works of art/literature/film discussing racism in Germany. Could also use a lot more numbers, e.g. on discrimination in the housing and job markets. I will start adding to this article bit by bit, would welcome some help :) --Tserton (talk) 11:11, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

External links modified
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It should be stressed that Germany
has a poor colonial tradition (just 30 years). And Antisemitism ist more than racism ... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:CB:2F1D:9716:8400:A593:6028:6C97 (talk) 16:12, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

History
Racism in nazi Germany 41.13.100.251 (talk) 16:01, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Execution of Racism in Germany
Ideas of Race 105.245.122.182 (talk) 18:18, 13 May 2023 (UTC)