Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: How can we combat discrimination and violence against minority groups? That’s the question we explore in Room #939 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme of “Power & Violence.” Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
A very warm good morning to you. Today we continue with the topic of violence against minorities, and the heading, or the question we want to engage with, is how can we combat discrimination and violence against minority groups. And yes, I’m curious, maybe as info beforehand, there are a few technical challenges this morning. My laptop isn’t quite behaving the way I’d like. I’ve already shut it down and restarted it and so on. It might get more stable in the course of the room. But it might also crash completely. We’ll just see how it develops, also with the recording and so on. I hope everything works out and the tech holds up. No idea what exactly it’s due to right now. There are a few challenges this morning. Technology sometimes doesn’t behave the way we’d like either. So maybe that as a warning in advance, in quotation marks, and then I hope we still get through the 60 minutes reasonably well, and that we manage to shape this reflection room together with you today and open up different perspectives. As always, you’re all very warmly invited to join in and bring in different impulses, so the first thoughts you have on the topic, maybe concrete examples we can open up on the topic, so we can work our way along a bit, approach it, and see in the exchange what aspects we can pick up, what comes to your mind, and what can be derived from that, so that altogether we shape a reflection room, a dialogue, and then accordingly see how the room develops further. So feel free to join in, another quick reminder for anyone who might be joining for the first time today, the reminder that we record the room the entire time and accordingly everyone who joins automatically agrees that the whole thing gets published afterward too. We have three small room rules, a profile photo where you’re recognizable here, first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio. Anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason, or can’t speak right now, is warmly invited to use the chat too, to bring in one thing or another, which we can then pick up accordingly. And in that spirit, I’m curious who’d like to open the round with me here first this morning, and I’ll gladly mute myself to see who I can start with. I already see the first hand, the first hand-raise is already there, so let’s start directly with Marc.
A very warm good morning, dear Marc. What do you say about the topic?
Good morning to the round. Yes, I approached the topic from two sides too. I learned from Jürgen to first look at the terminology. The subtitle of the room was, or is, “violence against minorities” and what we can do about it. And so I first had to clarify for myself, really, what are minorities, what is a minority. And then via Dr. Google I came across a page in Germany, and found that the national minorities, and I actually wasn’t aware of this, the national minorities, so the recognized minorities in Germany, actually only include the Sinti and Roma, the Danish minority, the Frisian ethnic group, and the Sorbian people. And with that the topic was actually settled for me at first, I thought I don’t even need to be here today, because I have no points of contact with these ethnic groups at all. So I can’t answer what I can do to help minorities, because I simply don’t encounter this group of people at all. And after half an hour I reconsidered, okay, but which term could I add to that? And then the term discrimination came to mind, and there it looks quite different. So I split the term minorities and discrimination for myself, and when it comes to discrimination, the topic does affect it after all, and there’s a statistic on who gets discriminated against in Germany, and quite interestingly, I’d like to share that with you — there’s of course also a place you can report to, where people can report if they experience discrimination, and the most common reason, at 33 percent of discrimination, if we talk about ethnic origin, 33 percent feel discriminated against because of their ethnic origin. After that comes gender at 29 percent, then disability at 26 percent, then age discrimination at 12 percent, then religion at 7 percent, sexual identity at 4 percent, and worldview at 2 percent. And now the question is, if we talk about this topic today, are we talking about discrimination or minorities, because we’ll come to different results, because, as my research found, does a worldview or a sexual identity even count as a minority? You do find reports where they’re mentioned as minorities, but I haven’t found that they’re officially recognized. And the question is, what are we, is the topic now violence against minorities, how we can help minorities, or do we also include discrimination?
Yes, let’s gladly include discrimination too. And with minorities we can broaden the term in the sense that it’s not about what’s defined by Google or what’s officially recognized, but minority can also be understood, for example, as everything that deviates in some form, in quotation marks, from the norm, that doesn’t correspond to an overwhelming majority, in numbers too. And so something like gender, for example, wouldn’t belong to the minority in the classical sense, but would fall in via the discrimination track. And something like a physical disability or similar would maybe rather belong to the broadened concept, not the recognized one, but the broadened concept of minorities too, against the background that it is, well, because it’s a deviation from the norm on the health level, for example. And so via this track we could approach the topic here, from my point of view. What would help me a lot, dear Marc, you brought such nice numbers, if you could present these numbers again, and then a bit more slowly, so we can also follow along and possibly take notes on them too, that would be great.
Yes, gladly. And I only came across these numbers because I approached the topic of “how do I follow up.” If you ask me where I personally, as Marc, where everyone individually can do something against discrimination, I first have to get clear where does discrimination happen. And it helped me to look at that again, that the biggest point where discrimination happens is ethnic origin. And at 33 percent, you can also see right there how much populism gets used to win elections. Origin, being discriminated against due to one’s origin. That seems to concern very, very many people in Germany. So there I as Marc can start. Then gender at 29 percent. Then disability at 26 percent. Then age at 12 percent. We’ll certainly recognize this too, especially in job interviews, that with over 50 you have difficulties getting a job again. Though that might resolve itself now due to the shortage of skilled workers. Then religion at 7 percent, sexual identity at 4 percent, and worldview at 2 percent.
Wonderful, thank you so much. That was at a speed where you could also write it down or type it, so to speak. Interesting numbers here. And the question is, how can we “combat” discrimination and violence, and the term “combat” too, which was chosen by ChatGPT, we quite deliberately left it standing, even though the term “combat” already implies a fight too, so I don’t find it particularly optimally chosen here, but maybe that makes it all the more interesting to really play with the terminology again, like you already did, and look and open up different approaches and perspectives through that. That’s why we quite deliberately left it in the formulation as it was suggested by ChatGPT.
Do you have concrete examples you brought too, that come to mind on the topic of discrimination, minority groups, in what form violence becomes recognizable, or where should we start there, Marc, this morning?
Yes, thank you so much for the question, now comes the self-reflection. If we were talking privately now and someone asked, would you tell me, Marc, do you discriminate against people? Then I’d say, from deepest conviction, no, of course not, because that really is my conviction. And now I have to make a qualification. Yes, I do. And that’s simply this learning process I went through for myself, this raising of awareness, recognizing for myself that I discriminate too. That’s the first step to being able to change something. So not this finger-pointing, but starting with myself. And dear Yasemin, I had a key experience there at your author’s breakfast. Namely Florence, I don’t know her full name right now, Florence once told how she was discriminated against not only because of her color, but also because of her speech. And I have a concrete example. I used to always think I was polite. If, say, I were out and about in Cologne today and it happened by chance that I met a Japanese or Chinese person and I talked with them, then it used to slip out of me, either “oh, you speak German so well” or “you speak very good German.” In my head I thought I was being nice. I didn’t want to give the person a malicious compliment by saying they speak really great German. And then this fiancée once said, you should just consider that we now live in a society where we also have Chinese people who were born in Germany, Japanese people who were born in Germany, Turkish people who were born in Germany, and of course they speak good German too, being. And so my sentence, which was meant politely, “but you speak such good German,” could really flip around and put me in a bad spot, because you’d say, what do you mean by that? I’m German, and why would you assume, if I’m sensitive, that I might not speak German properly? And that was the first approach for me where I had an aha moment, where I thought, okay, that’s where I’ll start. I’ll never again say to a person, or never again first compliment a person, that they speak very good German, no matter where I meet them, because I simply don’t know whether the person I’m talking to has German citizenship. And that would then, according to the learning insight I have today, be impolite of me.
Yes, thank you so much. That’s a really, really nice example. And we’d probably find many, many more like that, we could search a bit from everyday life, where there are good examples of that too, which you can illustrate with. I find that a nice example, and the author’s breakfast, that was with Florence Prokowski-Szekete. We have two author’s breakfasts with her. I don’t know now in which one she mentioned that, but that’s exactly what her books, which she’s published on the topic, sensitize us to too. So it’s quite exciting, I think, to maybe listen back into one or another author’s breakfast at this point too.
What I find especially nice is that you mentioned again that it has something to do with raising awareness. That means we often have the impression, per se, that discrimination, for example, is something that happens more externally, that I have nothing to do with. And there we’re back at this topic of unconscious bias, so to speak, and we’ll make a room on that too, I’ve already promised that, it’s also planned, where we can look at these certain aspects again in detail, from this perspective. And it’s all the more important, once we understand that, to help us get through everyday life, so to speak. We need orientation, we make labelings, we have stigmatizations that are stored and filed away in us. And those aren’t per se negative at first, but they give us support, orientation, security. That’s why we do that automatically, without noticing it. And that also creates the situation at the same time, because much of it is unconscious, that we don’t even realize within fractions of milliseconds that these processes are running, that we immediately sort certain people, groups of people, situations into corresponding drawers as soon as they encounter us and we have corresponding stimuli from outside, all the more important to look very, very concretely at ourselves here too, to be sensitized to it, and to be able to make corrections at one point or another, so in the sense of self-efficacy at this point, and not assume that it’s the others and I’m not affected by it, so to speak, but quite the opposite, every one of us belongs to this too, certainly with different degrees possibly, but none of us is exempt from it, and that’s why it makes sense to always go into self-reflection here too, and yes, maybe also to identify such situations at all, for ourselves too.
Marc, would you like to add to that too?
Yes, I drew a learning effect for myself yesterday too, namely I thought about where discrimination doesn’t happen, but we all have certain images in our heads of groups of people, and I thought, if we played a game now where we said, just describe a Frenchman, an Italian, an Englishman. That’s not discrimination, but there too we’d draw on our experiences we’ve had on vacation. An Italian, I’ll start with that, I might describe as someone who has two mistresses. And that means, with discrimination, prejudices come along too. And a Frenchman I might describe as someone who likes to drink red wine and so on. And basically that’s already where it starts, that we have certain images of groups in our heads, which can be positively or negatively charged. And what I want to be careful about for myself is simply, and this just happens far too often, that when we know five Italians, we say we’re talking about the Italians, the Turks, the Germans. But I don’t know all Italians at all. I can never speak of “the Italians,” because I don’t know 100 percent of Italians. And then the correct usage of language would be, it takes many, or some, or it can apply, or I’ve noticed. But what’s often used, also in political discussion, is that we’ve had three or four experiences, and this experience, this image, whether negative or positive, gets applied over an entire group.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Also a nice example here, I think. And above all also an example where many of us can certainly rediscover ourselves in our everyday life too. So I find that a nice example here.
Layla, a very warm good morning. What do you say about the topic?
A very warm good morning. Really important topic. And I think it always depends on who the minority is. Because within groups we also have certain minorities that discrimination pressure gets exerted on, right? I find that important. I found Marc’s example really nice, because it also shows that often this isn’t meant maliciously at all, and the other person doesn’t understand at all why, well, what’s wrong with you? But as often as I’ve been asked which country I come from, and when I say Germany, and then it’s said, yes, but originally though. And then I’m like, I don’t know, I come from Germany originally. I was born here and grew up here. It’s like, my father comes from Tunisia and my mother is German. But that in itself, if I hear the question once, that’s totally okay. If I hear it ten times, that’s totally okay too. But I’m 44, I’ve heard it insanely often, and with some people I didn’t know if they wanted to throw me a welcome party or buy me a plane ticket. That was also a difficulty, and it can be that you kind of raise your hands in defense a bit. Marc, small tip, try “you speak such beautiful German” instead. I thought about that too, though you have to be careful there too, because you have this problem that you’re white. And there we’re at the next thing. I can say other things than you can. And that’s actually crazy. And we’re at this point now.
I just wanted to briefly mention the definition, between discrimination… The example you mentioned already goes in the direction of racism. Racism is a specific form of discrimination, based on ethnic characteristics you can see on someone, that you assume, when you see me, okay, this woman is surely Muslim. And then images form in your head, she’s surely this and that, she can surely do this and that, there’s surely this and that. And this assignment, this attribution, can be positive, but it can also be negative, there is actually positive racism too, or rather positive discrimination. So that it gets turned around that way. I’m attributing something to you that you must absolutely have. If I have that right, I’ll check that again in a moment. But I think we have to be a bit careful of this general attribution, this generalization. Yes, that as a first impulse. Thanks for listening.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And especially this aspect you addressed too, with, your microphone is still on, dear Layla, just to apologize. Thanks. I can possibly already say different things than you can, because against the background of my origin or skin color or similar, that’s possibly already discriminatory itself at this point, isn’t it? What do you say to that?
Layla, gladly.
Yes, somehow, yes, but it makes a difference. Because, look, I’ve mentioned this here on Clubhouse before, I always avoid using this K-word, for example. Because if I say the word — oh God, I don’t even want to say it — it used to mean “person” in Hawaiian and gets used really, really often, and men all say it just means “person.” No, that’s what got shouted after me. That got shouted after me, and someone wanted to tell me with it that I don’t belong to the club, and someone wanted to devalue and insult me with it. And I avoid using such terms, and I’ve been asked about that already. Yes, but you K… someone said, and then, no, no, you can’t do that. Why not? Because you actually, because you haven’t experienced that under certain circumstances. Sure it’s discriminatory, it is discriminatory, but it’s not racism, and the response to racism can’t be discriminatory, and I don’t know, but if something can’t happen to you at all, you can’t shout that after someone. It’s actually contradictory, but yes, it’s difficult. That’s why I don’t use terms that I don’t want other people to use about me. And that also doesn’t mean that if I’m a POC, that means if I experience racism, the response to that can never be discrimination. Because calling someone “allmein” isn’t always friendly either, and it’s not always meant nicely, but if the background is that I want to say it to devalue him with it, then it’s a discriminatory statement, and it doesn’t just mean “person” in German either, just like the word doesn’t just mean “person” in Hawaiian, but it gets used pejoratively.
Yes, I find that totally fascinating, and maybe here too from my — we talked a few days ago, not weeks I think, about a message too, which I personally received here via Clubhouse afterward from a room, from someone with a migration background, and this person actually used this K-word too in the message, and I can say, here too the experience is possibly very, very different. I actually can’t consciously remember in the past that anyone has ever used this word in any interaction, whether a good or bad interaction, in my presence, directed at me, regardless of my own origin. And I find it, or found it, almost even worse, and also very interesting, that this person used this term in interaction with me, of all things, despite, or precisely against the background of, their own background. So here too the experience is certainly very, very different. That also means, here too, to prevail with, in quotation marks, following the motto, because we’re among ourselves in our circles, in quotation marks, that’s okay. Elsewhere the other might not be able to say it, because it falls into the wrong drawer then. So here too, against the background that, for example, people, I too was born and grew up here in Germany, don’t understand myself, in quotation marks, as a foreigner or something, and against this background I find it very, very suspicious to use such terms. Above all, what I believe shouldn’t be used elsewhere, or what’s not okay, I also don’t use in my own vocabulary. Regardless of whether I share that with people against the background that we have the same or similar backgrounds and so on. And against this background I find that very, very strange at this point. Maybe that shared once more from my perspective, as an experience. And that means, here too, with discrimination, what’s, for example, factually actually discriminatory, and what maybe also gets experienced as discriminatory, which the other might not have meant that way at all. And that can also be different from interaction to interaction, because here experience plays a role accordingly too. And that’s why it might really be nice here too, like the approach Marc had at the beginning, to look at what discrimination actually means. So similar to what we did with the terms violence and so on. From when is that actually discrimination? Question mark. Maybe just mentioned on the side.
Marc, I saw you wanted to add something too, and then I’ll gladly bring in Sabine, and Jürgen is raising his hand too, then we can bring the two of them in and make cross-references.
Marc.
Yes, two things. It just occurred to me, what actually distinguishes us from animals? And currently, I’m actually really, really proud at this point, I want to say, of my girlfriend, who also works as a teacher at school. And discrimination starts really, really early. And she welcomed nine, sorry, students in fifth grade, and then a boy raised his finger and said, well, she said we want to treat each other with respect and so on and so forth. And a little boy raised his hand and said, well, people have already called me fat. And that hurt this little boy. And I found it really great, the explanation, that she said nature simply intended it that way. There are big beings and there are thin beings, but we’re all worth the same. None of us is worth more or less. And in this context it just occurred to me now, what actually distinguishes us from animals? We sometimes don’t even know why we hurt others. So people can hurt others too, simply because they feel uncomfortable, because they’re dissatisfied, because they want to attack, but not because they want to defend themselves. That’s the biggest difference for me from animals, that it’s not necessarily fun for some people. So either they don’t think about why they’re hurting someone, then it would be unconscious, still bad. Or they use this technique consciously. And why I’m telling this is that with discrimination, that starts much, much earlier. First with education, first so we understand why people do that. And then, that we manage to give students and people and the following generation a toolkit, so that it doesn’t escalate, but how we deal with it, how we evaluate it. With this little boy, it hurt a lot that he’s fat. But it occurred to me, children are honest too. And when children see someone they might consider fat from their world, then this child doesn’t think about it either and says, you’re fat, you’re black, you’re short, you’re tall, without an evaluation. So we express ourselves once with the intention of hurting someone and discriminating against someone. And sometimes we just see things and say that and haven’t made ourselves aware that this can hurt the other person, who’s in a completely different world. And to counter that, it needs education and also what you always explain, dear Yasemin, that we understand how our brain functions and that we call the unconscious into consciousness.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And the topic with weight is also a nice everyday example, I think. Above all, we may also observe here, from when children even start formulating such questions. And how far there’s already an imprint, in quotation marks, from the parental home, circle of friends, or whatever, already there, because this differentiation thin-fat isn’t actually inherent to us originally at first, but that’s something that happens only later, so to speak, and gets adopted within a learning process, I’ll say, where cultural, societal aspects also get learned in the course of socialization, and so it’s exciting here too to look at from when it actually starts, and you’ll find that it starts relatively early already and gets copied, in quotation marks, from others.
Then I’d like to bring in Sabine and Erdal first. Sabine, a very warm good morning.
A very warm good morning to the round. Yes, I feel a bit torn. What Marc said earlier, there’s nothing wrong with that, or what you said with the K-word. I think it’s always a question of how you use what, in which context. And I mean, if it’s this K-word, then probably no one can tell me that anyone says that nicely. That’s not it. But the other examples you partly have, well, I have very many foreign customers. And if I say “the Indians,” then that’s surely not a swear word but a nationality. But I often get told by my children, mom, you can’t say that like that. That’s discriminatory. So I mean, we also have to watch out that we don’t move onto terrain where we just keep slipping. You understand what I mean? I mean, and likewise, if I have to speak three words of German with my customers, normally I speak English with them, but the banks often want the documents signed in German, and then I just have to test it out, and I make a bit of small talk, and then I say to them, hey, you speak great German. Would I now actually have to go so far as to say, oh, am I already being discriminatory here? And I find that point a bit difficult. So that you can only, I mean, we’re back at words like this Mega-Kuss, we’re renaming that now too, and so on, how can we actually still feel comfortable with language? Maybe just throwing that into the round.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Interesting aspect, and we can look at that in a moment too. I’d like to continue directly with Erdal and Jürgen first, and then we can gladly make the cross-references.
Erdal.
Hello, good morning. I think that fits quite well with what Sabine says, because we’re right now in a transitional phase, we’re in a developmental phase, where, let’s say, things are legally regulated so that theoretically things like racism and discrimination and violence based on ancestry and other characteristics shouldn’t exist. And language is of course a tremendous instrument, which as such can’t be caught so easily, if you don’t grossly violate laws, and that’s the transition Sabine perceives, where, admittedly, I’m also partly annoyed myself always having in mind what am I allowed to say now, what am I not allowed to say, how am I allowed to address them and so on. I’d like to give a small example of what shows this whole discrimination topic in a really proper approach. And interestingly, that’s Hollywood. Because all well-meaning reacting is, just like negative reacting, a reacting and an engaging with this circumstance. And against a background like yours, Yasemin, and mine, where I say, I don’t want to discuss this at all. I don’t feel like this is worth discussing at all, why I’m here or what I can do. For me it’s a completely natural development, someone who grew up here, that of course I move and articulate myself and think just the same way as the others who grew up here. So I don’t even want to make it a topic at all. And in Hollywood there’s an interesting development. Chronologically, they supposedly correctly held to the idea that overarching constellations like Russians, Black people, Asians all come together in a shared state union, in a shared spaceship. That was reserved for the future. And something really, really interesting is happening right now. Chronologically completely incorrectly, they’re not sticking to that anymore, and now making medieval series and films where Black people show up in the background as part of society. So it’s not addressed as a topic at all. That’s not a discussion point at all in the whole play. Is it then that you say, wait a minute, in 1600-whatever, 1700-whatever, there were no Black people received at a ball in England. That’s not possible. But they simply establish that and paint a world that’s actually desirable, because you say, why should we even discuss it at all, if we all agree that everyone has the same right to be wherever they like anyway. So why should we then make something special out of it in any form, and that’s what they’ve achieved fictionally there, and that would be a state I’d also strive for here, where I’d say it would be totally desirable if, based purely on appearance, I wouldn’t first assume that someone is different, because our reality by now is a different one, where you’d say, no, you actually have to assume the opposite, that everyone who somehow supposedly looks different is now part of reality, and as such you can much more often assume that they speak just as good German and are just as integrated here as those who aren’t. Thank you.
Thank you so much. And maybe an addition to what you just said. We could also flip that around, and not say to assume that the other is different based on XYZ, but we could basically assume, or make ourselves aware once more, that every one of us is different, quite regardless of XYZ, because every one of us is, after all, an individual. And every one of us is quite different in our personality too, quite regardless of what background and so on. So even these groupings we make, like “the other seems the same to me” against the background that XYZ, is possibly just as wrong, in quotation marks, as the other way around. So maybe even to approach it with this sensitization that every one of us is an individual. I may be mindful in my encounters with everyone and just look at what awaits me, and not try to make groupings in any form, in whatever direction. Maybe we could take that in as a perspective too.
Jürgen, a very warm good morning to you too. What’s your contribution to the topic?
Good morning, dear ones. I’ll keep it relatively brief, because I agree with what Sabine and Erdal presented. I agree with that content-wise completely, would like to say one thing, or two points more, about the terminology, I think in this delicate area we should really pay attention to what’s meant, or rather meant incorrectly, by racism and by discrimination, what’s defined and how it’s defined. And both proceed from a conscious, willful disadvantaging of other people. And if today, in my language usage, or if I ask someone today, even if they have a different skin color, where they’re from, then every piece of information, please look at Yasemin Media, the four levels of communication, every type of communication has a factual level. A factual level, simply with this, I ask because I’m simply interested in where this person comes from. And not because they have a different color, and that’s why I ask where they’re from. No, I’m interested in the person, what background they have, for whatever reasons. And from my point of view, this topic, and this example from Erdal with Hollywood is quite apt, has as its counterpart that we, and this is what Sabine already addressed too, that we basically increasingly come into the situation of reflecting before we say something, whether there could somewhere be a stumbling block, a verbal stumbling block, which I wouldn’t want to define or articulate as such, but which the other might want to understand as such. And there we’re at the last point. If someone feels discriminated against by a statement, by my question, tell me where you’re from, then every person among us, that’s what characterizes us, has the possibility to talk to me and ask why I’m asking. Thank you for listening.
Yes, thank you so much. I’m curious now what the others say to that. Marc, Layla, Sabine, Erdal wanted to make cross-references too. Layla, was that your hand-raise just now? I didn’t see it just now.
Yes, gladly. Yes, I notice this is a difficult topic, because it’s sometimes a bit hard to explain too. And yes, it’s true that people are often simply interested. And that’s okay, that they ask that. I don’t try to take that maliciously either. But as soon as I have this difficulty that something gets attributed to me, whether that’s discriminatory or racist, which doesn’t correspond to the facts, which is only based on outward appearance or only because I belong to a certain group. I’m a woman, I’m a certain age, I have a certain appearance. Then it can get difficult. That’s like when I was a size 42, 44, and then someone said to me, well, but you really have a pretty face. And then I thought, wait a minute, but, pretty face and what does that translate to now? I think it’s really important that this question can be totally nicely meant. But if someone hands me back a homework assignment and says, you have two mistakes in there, but you do have a migration background, then it gets difficult. If I’m the only Muslim person in the lecture, and this is really a case that happened, and I wasn’t there the session before, and we’d just had the topic of Islam, and then I get asked by my lecturer, and we can gladly take that apart now, I can only say that wasn’t a nice situation for me, then it was about what awaits the martyrs. Yes, we’d thought about what awaits the martyrs, because so and so many virgins await the men, what awaits the women? I sat in this lecture, I was a young woman, and honestly I didn’t feel that comfortable. Because then I said, I know, unfortunately I’m not an Islamic scholar, I can’t tell you what awaits me there. I hope my husband is waiting for me. And that’s why, that’s, I understand that, I understand that, and I also think it’s often not meant maliciously. But that’s like when young people use the word “disabled.” Then I say in my class, I’m the only one in the class who’s disabled. So if that’s the case, because we also have students with disabilities, so they handle that carefully. If a department head tells me, if I want to fill a position, well, we have very many young female colleagues, we don’t know how it’s going to continue there. It’s nice to know that we have them. Then she’s speaking to something about me, and not the function of my womb, but that I might still use it in the future. That’s age discrimination. That’s not so nice either. And that’s why it’s such a thing. This point is simply, well, you should still be able to say that. And of course I shouldn’t have to walk on eggshells the whole time. But I should pay attention. And maybe the example with disability is a really good example, because young people use that, and I’ve certainly used it as an insult as a young woman too. But you shouldn’t do it, because I don’t know. I don’t know what the case is. I don’t know if there’s someone in the family who’s disabled. Even if it’s not obvious whether someone has something. As soon as I start categorizing him because of it and negatively judging him, or giving him a label he can’t defend himself against. And that’s actually the same with “but you speak good German.” Then it sometimes gets a bit difficult, because if that’s meant kindly, I understand that. But as soon as sentences like “you all shouldn’t make such a fuss about that” come up too, then we’re at “you” and “we,” and then I ask myself, okay, where do we start now and where do we stop now, and where should I start explaining, because I’ve already been explaining for quite a while.
Yes, thank you so much. I saw, Marc, you raised your hand too. I’ll hand over to you in a moment. I’d especially like to bring in one more question, as an impulse too, maybe to think about together. Jürgen said racism and discrimination with an intent, so to speak, so with an intentional act behind it, or attitude behind it. With racism I would actually go along a bit and say, yes, so racism, there’s really something there that connotes this intent, so to speak, at this point. With discrimination, I’m not quite so sure I’d go along with that. I think discrimination doesn’t have to happen intentionally. Discrimination also happens unintentionally, so also, for example, against the background that something gets done or said or behaved unreflectively. And I wouldn’t say that the “crux” of discrimination only starts where it happens intentionally. And there are, for example, very, very many examples of this in selection processes too, in corporate recruiting, and so on and so forth. I wouldn’t say that what happens there is any less discriminatory just because it’s not done intentionally.
Marc, you wanted to add something too, and then gladly Erdal.
Yes, I have one really important point still. In Germany we currently have an incredible discussion, and it’s about ethnic origin and about “overforeignization.” And it just occurred to me again, I myself once lived in London for a year. And when I’m in London, I have to say, that’s the city where I feel incredibly comfortable. I don’t know that many big cities, but I feel so comfortable in London, because I never have the feeling there that ethnic origin is being discussed. About that, if you get into conversation with people and address the people who work there, then one thing connects all the people, they can’t afford to live in such a big city anymore, housing is too expensive, it’s about pay, so it’s about wages, it’s about pay. But no one has ever told me on the Tube, oh, there are too many Japanese for me here, or too many Chinese, or too many Brazilians and so on. And this discussion, which keeps increasingly happening in Germany, that Germany is probably still such a small place where we talk about overforeignization, and this feeling comfortable, as I said, this feeling comfortable, these different cultures with the different restaurants, with the different music, my heart opens up. I already have a smile on my face when I’m at the airport in London, and that just went through my mind, that when I observe the discussion in Germany, where I sometimes have the feeling we’re stuck, stuck in time, that we’re still talking about overforeignization and not about opportunities.
And the second point, so I’ll finish, what I also noticed about myself, if we now take the topic of discrimination and application, to what extent is it even possible for us humans, for each and every one of us, to not discriminate at all? And I’d say that starts with language, that starts with dialect. There are simply dialects I find so great, I could listen for hours and say, tell me anything, read to me from the book, you have such a great dialect. Then there are dialects that are hard for me to bear, to still seem attentive and likeable despite that. But there are dialects I just don’t like. And in a job interview I also can’t manage not to discriminate. If I only go by a voice, and I once had a test, I just looked through the audience, who’s here. If we all look at this room now with the people, then maybe within a second we’ll encounter people where we say, oh, they seem likeable, without having spoken with them. And there’ll be people where we say, no, that’s not my type, without being able to articulate it. We don’t find them likeable. And in a job interview, when I see the person, I really have to concentrate on looking at the abilities. What can the person do? What do they say? Can they really do the job? Because however you show up, that’s how you’ll be received. And I find that, because right now, no matter what we discuss, we always have this finger-pointing, for me the biggest task this year is to look at myself. Where does discrimination start with me? Why does it start there with me? And what can I, not we, what can I individually, what can I do, when I notice this process, to steer against it and then set new learning processes in motion for myself again.
Yes, thank you so much. Erdal.
I just wanted, I hope the connection holds up for this, to say that a question like “how come you speak so well?” or “where are you from?” in most cases isn’t actually meant maliciously. But if the person then doesn’t react so positively to it, consider that they might have heard this somehow 100,000 times since age 6, and at some point get tired, and might just not be able to react quite positively to this form of otherizing negotiation in the form of a positive question. That stems from simply getting tired, if you don’t consider yourself different. Or, as Yasemin put it so nicely, that we’re all a bit different in some way. That’s where it comes from. And to Jürgen I just wanted to say, what I’ve also learned here, is that even terms like racism aren’t clear in their usage. I was totally surprised. For me it’s still clear. But there was, or still is, a strong community that occupies this word in a completely own interpretation, and to some extent excludes all others from it, that has to be learned too. So language doesn’t have to develop on its own, thanks.
Yes, thank you so much. And I think here too, actually to distinguish again, whether, well, I’d tend to assume it’s more curiosity, more interest at this point, and not at all necessarily in the direction, so not at all in the direction of discrimination, this question at first, of where you’re from. Nevertheless, exactly what you just said, Erdal, that because we’ve heard that so often already, the reaction is probably impulsively, from the gut, already this “oh, not this question again.” And it’s not only in the German-speaking world that we might transfer this to the country of origin of the parents too. So you surely know this too, those who maybe have a different background originally, in the second, third generation. When I’m in Germany, I get asked the question, and I get it just as often, if not more often, every time again, when I’m in Turkey, for example. So that means it really accumulates upward in number too, with every new acquaintance you somehow make. And on one hand it’s of course curiosity and simply interest. At the same time I ask myself the question, and here I can maybe open up a comparison point, with this example, and you can proceed similarly with many other examples, if I have a new encounter, in quotation marks, with a person who outwardly looks German, do I also ask the question, “where are you from then?” So I could ask the question, for example, in Turkey this question also gets asked among Turkish people, because people are actually interested, also here again in the sense of categorizing, to be able to classify it, where are you from then? And that doesn’t mean from which other country, but so you can classify which region of Turkey, because that too helps again to give orientation and understand where I can place this person, so to speak. And now the question arises, if we’re in the German-speaking world right now, if I make an acquaintance with someone who doesn’t actually visibly carry a foreign name, or a name from another country, so to speak, or the skin color or whatever, do I ask this question too? Where are you from then? Or do I only ask that with certain people? And here we can just sensitize ourselves and also go into self-observation, how we sometimes proceed differently in our behavior too. And there’ll certainly be some, in quotation marks, few, who ask this question with every new acquaintance per se, and others who only do that with certain groupings. And there, I think, you’re allowed to look at that too. And I can transfer the same thing, it’s not just about ethnic aspects or migration backgrounds or something. It’s similar with other things too. We recently had this book “Cyberfakt” by Dr. Mario Herger. That was about sexualized aspects, for example in this online-digital context. We often experience that as women too. Yes, I’ve experienced that too, that someone says something, which is said professionally against the background of expertise, suddenly gets called “that’s so cute.” No one would say that in the context of a man making a statement against the background of his expertise. To make such a statement, “that’s so cute, what you’re saying there,” that goes completely in the wrong direction, and there I can’t say, they’re unreflective and that’s not discriminatory or something, but here we really may handle it sensitively, and it doesn’t make it any less bad, in quotation marks, just because someone does it unreflectively, but here we may also point that out, I think, and it’s also important that we point out that it’s basically not okay. Or we had examples from an acquaintance of mine whom I accompanied on trips, where I was really shocked, because she’s a person with a disability, how many boundary violations happen at many, many points, starting with stroking the head, the person sits in a wheelchair, to, I’ll just drive the person through the red light, because I assume they don’t want help and support now, but need it, are dependent on me or have to be grateful that I do that. And I think we can open up really, really many examples here where we can just say, hey, we may really handle that mindfully. And Sabine, with the example you opened up, I mean, you classically work with people, especially with experts. And I find that’s a different context again there. And I think we may also look context-related again. So where do I encounter people, in what setting do I encounter these people, and I’m absolutely with you too when you say we mustn’t “overdo it” either, in quotation marks, and nevertheless we may also sensitize ourselves in many places, and I’m with Jürgen too, who then says, well, the four sides of a message, of course that all plays a role too, and nevertheless we may still handle it sensitively, and in many places where it might, and if we become aware of it, then we can also consciously make the decision to say, at this point I find it’s okay, and at another point it’s not okay, there I might pay stronger attention to it. And that’s why we need rooms like this one today too, to just talk about it, to sensitize ourselves to it too. Because for those who do that, in quotation marks, and I don’t want to exempt us from that, Layla, Erdal too, it definitely affects us in other contexts too. For those who do that, it’s always important to also get educated about these experiences that happen, so that the others in turn also get the chance to handle it differently or reflect on it too, and against this background make decisions for themselves.
With that I’d like to move into the closing round for today. Yes, gladly Sabine, you haven’t spoken in a while. Let’s start with Sabine, then you can add to that first and then gladly say your closing word for today, and then in order Marc, Layla, Erdal.
Sabine.
Yes, I have two, three more points I wanted to add. First, what Marc said about London being all different. But I have to say too, of course, I myself only lived in Chicago for three years, and that was also very, very different, but it’s also a city with many suburbs, and there people went back to their suburbs in the end, where they had a Pakistani neighborhood and also a German neighborhood. So whether everything always goes so friendly with each other there, I don’t really believe that. People are just already used to it for much, much longer, and I have to say Germany is maybe also a bit tight. In Germany you meet and encounter each other very quickly. And what you said earlier, Yasemin, with my customers, yes, yes, my customers don’t have that problem. Only if I say “the Indians” at home, for example, I run into my children then, who say. And that also led me to what you said earlier about “cute.” Yes, I also don’t find it okay if someone said that they’d made something cute. Only what I also notice, the children’s language by now is a completely different language again than ours, and if I sometimes think about what my son says, then I think, oops, maybe that was meant this way now. One more point I had, discrimination and racism. You said earlier that discrimination often happens a bit unintentionally. Isn’t that also a bit of a German thing again? We often don’t know anything. We nail down data protection everywhere, so that we often don’t know anything about the others, and then we unconsciously stumble into something. But we also couldn’t have done it any other way, because we simply don’t know anything. That happens to me, for example, with first names. I often google a first name, because in the end, when you get an email, it doesn’t say Mr. or Mrs. But if I’m supposed to fill out something, then I’m supposed to write Mrs. or Mr. next to it. I mean, I unconsciously stumble into something there. But I do think about it. In an emergency I have to ask the person — I mean, if I hear them on the phone, I’ll probably hear from the voice whether they’re a he or she — but otherwise I also have to ask directly, which might also not land so well again. A great room, very controversial. I haven’t found my direction yet either. But the direction will definitely be, I’ll pay attention. And I certainly won’t do it intentionally, but I also don’t want to, I don’t want to say it doesn’t happen to me. Have a nice day.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Marc.
It became clear to me again that discrimination happens on so many different levels, and my task for 2023 is, with all topics, less finger-pointing and more self-reflection, and often with many topics you hear the standard answer, well I can’t change anything, and especially with the topic of discrimination that might be seen differently.
Yes, thank you so much. Layla.
Oh Yasemin, I’ve just been thinking to myself, this is definitely a very multifaceted topic. I think it’s important that you talk about it, so it becomes noticeable to you. What matters to me is, there’s something funny about it. I also get asked additionally, because I’m German-Tunisian, what I identify with, where I belong then, so what do I feel, where I then think, sorry, what? No, I can only feel like one thing. No, folks, quite officially, I feel like both, and that’s totally okay, and above all I feel like a human being. And when I turn on the TV and hear people talking about “little pashas,” and there’s a lot of talk about swimming pools and what belongs to Germany and what doesn’t belong to Germany, and children are feral, I don’t know. I think these are all sentences we shouldn’t say, and a woman shouldn’t have to say about herself, if she’s emotional, that she’s on her period, because otherwise she’s being discriminatory against herself. Thanks for listening.
Yes, thank you so much. Erdal.
Yes, I’ve been called into meetings already, but I’d like to just, I’ll definitely take away that your perspective gave me food for thought. And I think that’s the right one too, to say, I insist on equality, but your mentioned equality in inequality is actually the perfect key to how you should approach others. Thank you for that, and thanks for the round.
Yes, thank you so much to all of you too. I found that really, really enriching. Quite a few different aspects opened up today. And it shows that it’s a huge topic. I think you could really keep talking about it for hours more. And I’m happy if everyone took away one impulse or another for themselves to some extent. And not meant as an accusation in many places, but really on one hand to sensitize. It still remains a challenge for all of us too. And there we’re back at this aspect. It doesn’t concern the others, and I found that so nicely put by Marc again, it concerns all of us, and we can all make our contribution by starting with ourselves, and not following the motto that discrimination happens somewhere out there. I think it’s really important to start with yourself first, and then depending on position, depending on where we’re active, we can of course also achieve something on top externally too. That’s then the second and third step. But the first step, from my point of view here at this point, is really to always go into self-reflection again, and to work on yourself first to some extent, and against the background of what we, for example, had in exchange today, to check one thing or another, to possibly be able to make corrections, and at one point or another maybe say, no, I see it differently, then you can keep it that way too. Ultimately, and I think that’s a really, really important aspect, our brain does that automatically, that we think in structures, think in drawers. It gives us orientation. It helps us secure our survival, to make clusterings relatively quickly. All of that is useful for everyday life. We need that to find our way well. And nevertheless we may always keep looking at it skeptically, against the background that we know that’s how it is, to always try to break that open a bit again, to check it, to also give people, and ultimately it’s always about people, that was also said so nicely, always the chance too, from — I think, who was it again, Leo Martin I think, at one of the author’s breakfasts, where he said it’s important to leave this drawer open a crack, so people also have the chance to get out of one and slide into another. And I found that a really, really nice image, that’s roughly how he put it. And I think we may sensitize ourselves accordingly here too, that we have this drawer-thinking everywhere too. Every one of us is affected, myself included, none of us is exempt, even if we might hope or wish for that. And that against this background we always try to keep this crack open on one hand, and then not proceed from equality and inequality, in the sense of “we” and “the others,” but basically maybe approach it with the attitude that every person, no matter who I encounter, is different, completely individually different, regardless. So we might have overlapping points, but nevertheless every single person is a completely individual human being. I could almost say, sometimes I’m culturally insensitive, but at some point I found out that it’s not so wrong after all. I don’t pay any attention at all to where someone comes from or similar. I’ve often had situations in the past where people asked, where does he actually come from, where I said, I don’t know. And the person then said to me, don’t you notice that he has a different skin color or something? So it obviously wasn’t so evident to me, right. But for the other person that was relatively evident. For me it wasn’t at all, I hadn’t noticed it at all and hadn’t thought about it at all either. And in the meantime there were moments where I wondered if I’m somehow interculturally insensitive, that something like that doesn’t catch my attention. And at the same time I found out at some point that it’s maybe not so wrong after all, because I actually pay more attention in this encounter to the person and their behavior and what’s said, and less to this “where can I classify them now?” which contributes, in a positive sense, especially for these contexts we’re talking about right now, to me encountering them as a person, as an individual. On the other hand, it can of course be disadvantageous in another context. So when it’s about things like different countries, different customs and so on, it might also be really helpful to then quite consciously even take all these cultural backgrounds into account. But in this case, I think, that’s actually even an advantage, in quotation marks, in the interaction, to largely blank out certain things. And you can play along with that too. Let’s see, train a bit, and see what experiences you make with it and how you’d like to handle that for yourself in the future too. So I hope everyone was able to take a few impulses for themselves today. Thank you so much for the stimulating exchange. Tomorrow we continue with “the power of technology.” How does technology change power structures and dynamics? That’s what we want to look at tomorrow. So you’re all very warmly invited to join again tomorrow morning at 8 o’clock. Until then! Ciao!
