5 ms·

German discrimination and racism towards migrant workers and visible minorities is world class. And with Alternative für Deutschland / AfD rising rapidly, this

• olelele 3mo ago
  I moved to Germany 15 years ago from Scandinavia. Integrating here is really tough. The bureaucratic systems are very opaque and small mistakes in paperwork can cause a lot of problems...
  • rawbot 3mo ago
    And the problem is that they might not be YOUR mistakes, but mistakes from someone in the government office... ask me how I know about it...
    • wojciii 3mo ago
      How do you know about it? :) Here in DK we have a law with my family name in it .. which the fuckers spelled wrong. I asked them to correct it but they refused. This is the story about how I became a citizen.
• simianwords 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  • eloisius 3mo ago
    How many races are there? How do you draw boundaries between people who exist on a spectrum of genetic variability? What race are Kazakhs?
    • simianwords 3mo ago
      Hard boundaries are not required for categories to exist. It is really surprising that smart educated adults don't see this. Will you suggest I'm sexist because I think male and female gender exists?
      • dinkblam 3mo ago
        Colors are a a continuous spectrum, yet we put them in a bunch of categories.
        • happytoexplain 3mo ago
          It sounds like this is an analogy in support of the parent - is that the intent?
        • dofm 3mo ago
          Organising people by the colour of their skin makes exactly as much ontological sense as organising library books by the colour of their cover.
          • simianwords 3mo ago
            Can you see the fallacy you are doing here? The parent tried to suggest this: simply because a thing can be in a spectrum doesn't make it unworthy of being a category. You've twisted that analogy into this nonsensical book example.
            • dofm 3mo ago
              It’s not a fallacy, it’s a bitter, dark joke.
      • apflkx 3mo ago
        [dead]
      • eloisius 3mo ago
  • ozlikethewizard 3mo ago
    I think what its trying to say is race as a defined biological categorisation doesn't really exist, at least not to the extent its been described in past. The biological variance between humans is more of spectrum than categories. race as a cultural / social concept does exist though, and that biology certainly correlates to an extent due to geography and how human society has traditionally functioned. I.e, the cornish are a race, falling under celtic, which originate from Iberia, but is there a modern biological difference to their surrounding English people? Are they more biologically similar to the modern people inhabiting the Iberian peninsula or those in Kent? And even then, are they really all thatthat biologically different from the modern spanish anyways?
    • simianwords 3mo ago
      > I think what its trying to say is race as a defined biological categorisation Proof? What do you think the people were asked in the survey? Normal people use race in the normal way. I think white people exist. I think black people exist. Everyone knows this - I don't need any academic to prove me wrong. And I don't think it makes me racist when some one asks me "are there different human races" and I answer "yes".
      • olelele 3mo ago
        skin color does not equal race. The US is really weird to me in that regard.
        • simianwords 3mo ago
          I didn't say it did? Skin colour correlates highly with race. Skin colour is a good predictor of one's self identified race.
      • oezi 3mo ago
        Sorry, but most Europeans don't use the term anymore since the Nazis tried to impose a catastrophic societal order based on their race ideology. White people were only white if they could show bloodlines reaching back generations. One jewish great-grandfather would make you intelligible for the Arian race. They would laugh at your notion of white vs black.
  • dbspin 3mo ago
    Physiognomic appearance does not equate with genetically discrete populations, so while we can obviously visually identify that people have broadly asian, african, european, polynesian dissent etc; this doesn't equate with other factors stereotypically associated with those 'races'. Race is a folk taxonomy. Ethnicity and genetics are complex - like most things when you make more than a cursory investigation. So while you might not be racist for thinking so, you're at best misinformed. Duello, T. M., Rivedal, S., Wickland, C., & Weller, A. (2021). Race and genetics versus ‘race’ in genetics. Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, 9(1), 232–245. https://doi.org/10.1093/emph/eoab018 https://doi.org/10.1093/emph/eoab018 Herd, P., Mills, M. C., & Dowd, J. B. (2021). Reconstructing Sociogenomics Research: Dismantling Biological Race and Genetic Essentialism Narratives. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 62(3), 419–435. https://doi.org/10.1177/00221465211018682 https://doi.org/10.1177/00221465211018682 Hunt, L. M., & Megyesi, M. S. (2008). Genes, race and research ethics: who’s minding the store? Journal of Medical Ethics, 34(7), 495–500. https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.2007.021295 https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.2007.021295 Lujan, H. L., & DiCarlo, S. E. (2024). Misunderstanding of race as biology has deep negative biological and social consequences. Experimental Physiology, 109(8), 1240–1243. https://doi.org/10.1113/ep091491 https://doi.org/10.1113/ep091491
    • llamajams 3mo ago
      Aren't haplotype groups essentially "race"? Certainly there is not white/black race, but a southern costal Indian would self differentiate from a central one, you can spot the difference visually,culturally and lingustcally and there is also well understood predispositions of different groups to specific ailments (see diabetes). Not my area of expertise so might be way off
      • dbspin 3mo ago
        I'm no expert on haplogroups either, but cursory googling seems to indicate they are far more numerous and nuanced than the late victorian, scientific-racism derived classifications used today - i.e.: black, white, asian etc. But we don't need to be specialists in population genetics to observe that human cultures interbreed. We can't reliably correlate visible biomarkers with genetic origin, especially in contemporary multicultural societies or any of the places where numerous land invasions over thousands of years have ensured continual group mixing. For example Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan, Mongolian steppe etc. My nephew is half 'Irish', half 'Indian'. But what does that mean exactly? His ancestry is likely to contain contributions from hundreds of subgroups and linguistic populations across South East India, as well as Ireland and the UK more broadly. Visibly he looks 'Indian', but what does that mean for a determinant of race? These concepts were engineered in the colonial era. Only the names have changed. In college my friends and I picked up a cut price set of colonial era British encyclopedia. They had lots to say on racial groups, with detailed descriptions of the personality types, intelligence and appearance of groups like 'negroids' and 'hibernians'. Of course none of this was based on what we'd today term scientific reasoning or measurement - and yet the conclusions and stereotypes persist in our culture. Irrespective of powerful counterexamples demonstrating that culture and economics determine an enormous amount of educational and attainment potential. e.g.: Nigerian American economic success [1], the explosive boom and continual exceptional economic performance of Ireland [2], or the absurd difference in educational outcomes of countries which are ethnically homogenous but politically divided - e.g.: North and South Korea, Haiti and Dominican Republic etc. Remember interindividual differences radically outpace intergroup differences. Which is not to suggest that highly homogenous ethnic groups (e.g.: askinazi jews, or certain West African populations) can't have significant differences in athletic ability. But such differences are on population levels much smaller than observable 'races' per say. [1] https://medium.com/@joecarleton/why-nigerian-immigrants-are-the-most-successful-ethnic-group-in-the-u-s-23a7ea5a0832 https://medium.com/@joecarleton/why-nigerian-immigrants-are-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Tiger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Tiger
  • DasIch 3mo ago
    Race != Race. Race as a social construct exists but biologically speaking there is no such thing. In the US the term "race" always refers to the social construct. The german word "Rasse" did not undergo that same change in meaning. Even the most extreme right wing in Germany, the most openly racist people you can find would not dare to use that word in this manner in public. This is far more offensive than using the n-word. So having germans agree to such statements especially so many is genuinely quite shocking.
    • fileeditview 3mo ago
      TBH I think the word is often used without much consideration. So where people should say ethnicity or ancestry e.g., they say race instead, because it is just simpler, not because they carry much meaning with it. This is true in German and English.. Also I think given the context you know how people mean these words. But all I see is wild jumping on some words without much context all the time.
    • simianwords 3mo ago
      > Race as a social construct exists but biologically speaking there is no such thing Mountains of layers of cognitive dissonance are needed to believe this. Race is absolutely biological. To think otherwise is fooling oneself. You are doing a disservice to combating racism by negating the existence of race itself. Do you really think racism will just go away by suggesting black people and white people are exactly the same internally? Get real man.
      • dofm 3mo ago
        You keep talking about white people and black people as if you think these are two separable races with internal characteristic differences. They just aren't.
    • djeastm 3mo ago
      It would really just save everyone a lot of time if we just said "branch" instead of "race". We all branched off from some shared ancestors somewhere back in the mists of time. We're all cousins from different branches of the family.
  • washadjeffmad 3mo ago
    Race theory was always pseudoscience to imply the generalized differences between people who looked differently were genetic and thus inherent traits. It's an extension of a much older, more insidious idea - blood purity. There are still people who would pretend to trace their own lineage back through every scholar, king, and prophet to Adam, while choosing to believe that everyone else is a mongrel line, inferior and subservient to them in some way.
    • simianwords 3mo ago
      Way to mix completely different things. Its like saying: Gender exists hence men are better. No one suggests this kinda thing. Race is not pseudo science. Race is real. White people are meaningfully different from Black people. Its not bad to be different. It doesn't mean one is different from the other. You can't beat racism by claiming race itself is not real!
      • dofm 3mo ago
        In what ways are white people meaningfully different from black people?
        • AnimalMuppet 3mo ago
          Probability of inheriting sickle cell anemia, for one.
          • dofm 3mo ago
            All black people? Or just those from some regions or ethnicities? The point I am making is that “white” and “black” simply aren’t races on any biological basis. It’s nothing more than a social distinction. The level of scientific ignorance on display here is weird.
            • simianwords 3mo ago
              You seem to keep suggesting that boundaries have to be perfect for categories to exist. This is not the case. White colour and dark colour exist as categories yet are blurry. Yet no sane person suggests colours don’t exist. There’s no sharp boundary between a hill and a mountain. There’s no sharp boundary between dark and white colours. There’s no sharp boundary between male and female either at the edge cases when you consider intersex. Language has its limitations and it’s obvious to most of us and we don’t have to play semantic juggling each time. Does the way people use race as a word have biological basis? Absolutely yes. For example you take people who self identify as black and white and try to find whether their DNA can predict their self identified race. You would agree that it can predict to a good extent I hope. On a side note: I think you have fallen into this popular rabbit hole where you expect sharp boundaries for commonly used words/categories. Such sharp boundaries never exist and every normal person from a child to an adult knows and works around this. This kind of rhetoric is popular with some extremist academic types to signal their in group presence. Tip: if you want to solve racism, don’t get into debates on esoteric definitions of race and pretend race itself doesn’t exist. Normal people aren’t convinced.
  • dofm 3mo ago
    Races don't exist on any biological level. Racists evidently do. Believing in the false construct of biological race doesn't necessarily make you a racist; it doesn't really even seem to be a precondition anymore. But it was the foundation for sociopolitical racism, so if the concept of race guides your thinking about people's characteristics, especially their non-physical characteristics, you are at least somewhat in danger of racist thinking.
    • simianwords 3mo ago
      > Races don't exist on any biological level Races exist at the biological level. I'm surprised this is even contested. IDK what makes you think white person is different from a black person? Is it vibes? Even a kid knows that a white person has different DNA.
      • dofm 3mo ago
        Black and white are not races. They are racial discrimination categories. People with black skin are not one identifiable group except "black skin". Which is a heritable trait that affects pigmentation used to create a social discrimination category. It does not make a single meaningfully identifiable group in any other sense. (It's not even consistently the same trait, on a biological level) You are talking about sociopolitical race discrimination and suggesting it has absolute, immutable biological mappings. It does not. This actually is quite close to real racism.
        • simianwords 3mo ago
          Black and white are not races? Here’s an excerpt from BLM > Additionally, Black Americans are among the top two racial groups who are most at risk of fatal encounters with police https://blacklivesmatter.com/blm-day/ https://blacklivesmatter.com/blm-day/ Stop trying to make normal people use academic definitions.
    • xienze 3mo ago
      > Races don't exist on any biological level. You sure about that? https://www.nmdp.org/get-involved/join-the-registry/ethnicity-and-diversity-matter https://www.nmdp.org/get-involved/join-the-registry/ethnicit... > Finding the right donor for a patient isn’t simple. Donors and patients are matched largely based on genes called human leukocyte antigens (HLAs). These genes code for proteins—or markers—found on most of the cells in your body. When it comes to matching HLA types, a patient’s ethnic background is important in predicting the likelihood of finding a match. That’s because HLA is inherited. Some ethnic groups have more complex tissue types than others, which makes finding a close match more difficult.
• expedition32 3mo ago
  Germany is a remarkably rural and insular country compared to the Netherlands whose foundational myth comes from bankers and merchants.
  • ButlerianJihad 3mo ago
    Interesting story about Europe's medieval history, is that the bankers and loan officers and financial professionals were all drawn from a certain ethnoreligious community. And this intrinsic nature of being the foremost, and usually the only, bankers and financial professionals, who were essentially authorized to commit usury and extract interest from the populace... probably had a lot to do with their public perception, their lack of assimilation or integration into the prevailing local faith/religion/cultures, and their relentless persecutions, expulsions, and genocide. Nevertheless, all that ugly history doesn't seem like it's put a damper on their ambitions or status through the 21st century.
    • torton 3mo ago
      That's the nice part about having your own country -- no more systemic discrimination or prohibition on owning land, or joining professional guilds, or having some king being upset about his debts and organizing a small confiscation of wealth. The ambition of keeping that country, however, is something that many people would rather deny that specific etnoreligious community.
      • hunterpayne 3mo ago
        In this case, the GP is talking about the Huguenots who are/were French Calvinists.
        • yostrovs 3mo ago
          From Wikipedia: "Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to late 15th centuries" The Huguenots really became a thing at the end of 15th century. They were named after Besançon Hugues (1487 – 1532).
• Tade0 3mo ago
  > Foreigners and native Germans 'unite' in discriminatory attitudes I don't think it's just the Germans and there's definitely an additional factor at play.
• sdsdssweew213 3mo ago
  I would hardly call it "world class". Most of the world is much harsher place to migrants than any EU member country. Privileged, well paid expats may be treated nicely in most of the world, but that does not apply to refugees and people who move for low-paid manual labor.
  • uludag 3mo ago
    Well paid expats wearing a hijab, who definitely aren't refugees, will not be treated nicely in Germany. Lived and worked in Germany and saw it a lot. It's a low bar indeed to treat skilled labor coming to your country nicely that sadly Germany can't even pass.
    • cineticdaffodil 3mo ago
      [flagged]
    • trinix912 3mo ago
      You are kind of expected to adjust yourself to the culture of the country you’re immigrating to. If you fail (or refuse) to do so in the most obvious/visible ways possible (like clothing), I think you shouldn’t be surprised when people look at you weird because you look out of place.
      • bcye 3mo ago
        Someone wearing a hijab looks out of place in the land of the Döner?
        • aleph_minus_one 3mo ago
          > Someone wearing a hijab looks out of place in the land of the Döner? The history with the Turkish gastarbeiters is a complicated one. Please don't twist the knife in the wound.
          • 3mo ago
• prolly97 3mo ago
  I mean... yes discrimination doesn't feel nice... but it's not as if people who come to Germany where forced to do so by the germans. I'm not from Germany, but the vibes in some of the high-muslim density parts of Germany I've been to have likewise felt unwelcome, unsafe and hostile (towards me as a scandinavian). So it feel a bit more complicated than "germans are racist, BAD". Anecdotally I've heard that it's hard for any other nationality to do business in germany, simply because they prefer to do business with other germans. It's their country, we just need to accept those cultural differences, and their right to do as they please in their own country. There's plenty of countries whose laws or attitudes I don't agree with, and that I just don't visit or have any ambition of staying in. China, Burkina Faso, Somalia and Chad are a few examples.
  • talon8635 3mo ago
    Not to mention the fact that all of those home countries are equally if not more openly racist and restrictive of immigrants from the other direction The question is, is any country “perfect” in this regard, showing zero degree of self-selecting and internal favoritism? I suspect not, because it’s not really possible to have a country without focusing on, well, itself, first and foremost. Of course integrated immigrants ARE part of “the country”. But if immigrations swells too fast and/or immigrants are not well integrated, then of course that can present obvious non-racism-based problems for the county’s finances, infrastructure, economy, and culture. Is anyone outside the west throwing the word “racist” around so liberally? It seems to west thinks it’s somehow evolved beyond the natural constraints of state/tribe. But, of course, it can’t.
    • mongol 3mo ago
      No country is "perfect" in this regard, just as no human is perfect. It often strikes me as ironic how people label an entire country or a people as racist, immediately showing their own level of generalization and ability to apply prejudice.
• heyheyhouhou 3mo ago
  I'm from a "southern" country and I lived in Germany for 10 years. My kids were born there. Last year we decided to move to my home country because of "too many things" but also fed up of feeling an immigrant. Few months ago I met a German family living around here in a coastal area. I asked them why they moved here and they answered me straight to my face "Because in Germany there are too many immigrants". I think the joke tells itself.
  • talon8635 3mo ago
    I’d be various curious what country you’re from that such people would feel comfortable moving to. But of course don’t share if you don’t want.
  • nubg 3mo ago
    where are you from?
  • DStiego 3mo ago
    I don't think it's an obvious joke. In general, you can totally be against the way immigration is handled in one place while being an immigrant elsewhere. The family you mentioned likely considered themselves different from the immigrants that they complained about. I'm not agreeing/disagreeing with these people I don't know, but the general point is fair.
  • jeroenhd 3mo ago
    > I asked them why they moved here and they answered me straight to my face "Because in Germany there are too many immigrants". This reminds me of those UK elderly living out their pensions in Spain voting for Brexit to reduce immigration. Thanks to outrage media, I think this public perception of immigration ruining everything is almost everywhere now.
• deleted 3mo ago
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