A short story about Racism and the construction of the “Other”

Racism is and has never been a stable unchanging phenomenon. It’s a discourse through and trough. Speaking about the “New Racism” therefore can be slightly misleading. Usually an old image of race pops into our minds. You might think about Nazis, genocide and the biological picture of race. It can feel greatly old-fashioned like bygone tales of plague and scurvy. No reasonable sane person would admit to believing in race theory today. Considering this, why is racism still an issue today? Why can’t we do file it then? 

As already mentioned - racism is very flexible. It doesn’t primarily describe the idea of race. It rather stands for the characteristics of the construction of race. Therefore the “enemy image” and more boldly the construction of the enemy images alias “Othering” might be less misleading for understanding racism. Whenever you’re dividing people in unalterable groups whether on ethnic, race or broad culture, you’ve created the matrix for racism. This usually isn’t a very conscious process and doesn’t explain much without further explanation. Everyone generalizes at some point every day. If your hairdresser gives you an unsatisfactory haircut and that happens a couple of times with various other barbers. What would your attitude be like when the next haircut is unavoidable? Would you have the same attitude like the first time or do you expect “Edward Scissorhands” and “Sweeney Todd”? 

On some level Othering is a very natural and helpful tool to manage your life. If someone is sitting in front of a cash register you can be very certain that this person will take your money and let you pass with your groceries. The problem arises when your drawers get literally stuck in the cabinet. In this case it’s getting more and more complicated to empathize with the Others. You emotionally withdraw yourself what makes you literally not able to understand him/her realistically. This lack of connection and direct communication can lead to severe enemy images. By that goes a progressive growing fear. I remember being a toddler and moving in my first private room. After a couple of weeks I’ve been convinced that there were creepy monsters under my bed. Every time I wanted to get out of it, I made huge (for my age and condition) jumps to avoid getting snapped by these monsters. With time my phobia raised to a level where I was very certain how these monsters look like and how to fight them. I had no ambition to confront them personally, so I took my slipper and began to slap the parquet floor from now and then, just trying to keep them in their hiding place. I’ve obviously been a weird kid... 

However, what I wanted to point out is that imagination plays a major part in the enemy construction. You don’t really need the presence of the "enemy" to construct it.

In today’s Germany and obviously anywhere else in the world the media has become the most canalizing and powerful tool for opinion making. It presents itself as impartial and objective and finds its ways trough television, newspapers, radio and internet. Even if you manage to avoid these media, you have to deal with the snowball system. Humans and societies are of permeable character. What influences one individual ultimately passes via communication to another. With the ongoing growth on technological level the ties between people multiple. Trough networks like Facebook, Twitter, mobile phones and E-mail accounts one is permanently swamped with information. It becomes increasingly harder to track the roots/sources of all this information. In the end it’s essentially a matter of trust. We are living in a weird bivalence. Although we have an increasing number of publications, the actual variety of information seems to shrink. I came to the thesis while watching a documentary about US media. On several points the news coverage especially while covering the “War on Terror” was in every medium almost identical. Whole phrases seemed cloned. The only difference was the wrapping. The problem in my opinion is that almost no publisher in the world really does "independent research" (whatever that means) or at least tries to. Usually they buy their sources from press agencies. It’s a bit like shopping regional food in Germany. You can’t expect to get e.g. grapes during wintertime and if you get them you'd better be very careful eating them thoughtlessly.

The 'problem' is that you can’t really blame the press or the farmer in this metaphor. It’s a bit like asking the queen about homeless people. Their lives are presumably so far off from each other, that you can’t seriously expect her to develop real empathy. At best you're getting pitty, but what's that good for? This example is obviously overstating but I hope you’re getting the picture. 

Anyhow, there doesn't seem to be the one cause for racism and other forms of discrimination. Neither  does a powerful minority oppresses us with discrimination. Without us as citizens no discrimination would be possible. We're a very vivid part in the mechanism. The media is just one jigsaw in this far bigger framework and works more as catalyst than source of racism. If we wanna dig for the core we have to take a look at the reasons, why groups and individuals alienate themselves from others. 

The process of Othering is not a one way scenario that only affects the other. It also affects the one that alienates him- or herself. I think that someone who suppresses the natural human empathy to another being on a rational level automatically grows uncertainty and fear or dulls. It seems very inhuman to do so. Why then would anyone take that path? Again, it’s obviously not a self-centered conscious choice. Moreover it might be a semi-conscious choice which is closer to our everyday life than maybe expected. Haven’t we all at some point been on the stage where we asked ourselves whether we continue a relationship or not? Be it mother, father, friend or partner. In my family half of my relatives have stopped talking to each other. However that didn’t stop them from talking about each other. With my examples I don’t wanna apply that canceling a relationship is ultimately racial. I’m just trying to reveal the basical psychological patterns of othering. 

I do remember talking about history at school. It always seemed very ‘romantic’ and far off. The Holocaust seemed like something abselutely ungraspable and undeletable. I just thought that these people impossibly could have been humans. But seeing someone as inhumane can be the breeding ground for xenophobia. I’m not sure how accurate the term phobia in this case actually is, because it’s a clinical term for a mental illness. Accordingly there is the term ‘mentality’ to describe the behavior of groups. I think in both cases it’s just from limited use. It can be helpful to understand some general behavior, but it can also become a huge stigma in the micro level when e.g. analyzing a single individual. I think it is more important to understand some dynamics than establishing a generalization and theory which adapts on other cases. I guess we’ve all witnessed Thilo Sarrazin and his research on migration in Germany. It really gave us a cautionary tale for what happens if you want to explore the mentality of groups. I hope it’ll get into the history books as a good example of how quantitative research can worsen the conflict it claims to solve. 

The arising question at this point for me is: what does one give this Othering? It must have some positive impact on the subject mustn’t it? Assuming that the human is a social being we could conclude that one can’t live without other humans. Therefore it wouldn't seem far from seek that we define ourselves in relation to other people would it? Consequently we gossip and bitch about colleagues, professors, employees, strangers etc. pp. We don’t even know some of them. We’re constructing images out of sciolism. I’ve approximately trashed about 1000 times more people than I’ll ever learn the names of. When I look back it mostly gave me confidence and drew me closer to the people I gossiped with. It on some level unified us. The problem with gossiping is that there eventually comes the bad feeling that folk might be talking similarly about you. Whether that is true or not, the thought alone can be scary, can't it? I’m talking from experience when I add that it can become a dangerous vicious circle. The more you bitch about the more your self esteem depends on it. 

The dynamic of your group begins to change while the invisible other becomes the main topic. Even if you want to take a step back you are very likely to get lost in group dynamics. I guess that’s the core reason why many consolidations fail. Every semester the students of the ASH experience similar dynamics while the mutual election for the seminars. When one seminar is overcrowded some have to move. Since the first semesters some peer groups have emerged. They mostly want jointly in the very same course and don’t want in other courses even though they don’t really know the prof. they deny or the alternatives in their schedules. If finally one brave individual switches courses, he/she picks usually to some unfortunate often another overcrowded course. You have to consider various interdependence chains. Finally it  appears easier to stay status quo than working it out on the personal level. For our university it might be unfortunate but ok. 

Talking about racism it gotta be challenged on every level I say. It’s not just affecting in which courses you sit, it’s lowering the quality of everyones lives on several levels. Similar to mental disorders you have to carefully and patiently find ways to change the information processing. According to a survey of the University Leipzig in 2004 almost half of the questioned Germans agreed to the statement that Germany is dangerously alienated by its many foreigners. That seems like dangerous breeding ground for enemy constructions to me. 

Differing to the Third Reich, there isn’t a strong right wing party yet, nonetheless there are alerts like a poll for Thilo Sarrazin book “Germany abolishes itself” unveils. It stated that half of those polled agreed with his racial theses. But there are some signs of hope. One might be Germany’s democratic-parliamentarian history. Even though it’s no more than half a century old, it has more or less successful overcome some challenges. Politics aren’t ignoring the problem of racism completely. Thus in 2006 Germany established the General Law on Equality, which shall provide the tool to challenge all kinds of discrimination. Besides, simply the remembrance (if we would do it properly) to the atrocities during Germanys Nazi period should prevent the government and the population from collapsing into former patterns, shouldn’t it?

Nonetheless, we are facing a racial German society today. Even though we are an immigration country, we’re still not practicing proper integration with our new neighbors. The act as equal partner in the integration process hasn’t worked out yet. Often both sides have stopped the negotiation and communication. Our society is torn apart, like other countries in the world we've a separation between the people who life here for many generations and those who joined later. The sad part in this story is that we really could get along together. It would be enriching for everyone and many fears would vanish in thin air. Instead we’ve discrimination in almost every field of life. If you take a look at the labor marked you see migrants working either in the low wage sector as cleaners, cashiers, farm workers etc. or not at all. Every 5^th young migrant is unemployed. In this stage of life this is a precarious circumstance. Similar discrimination occurs when it comes to housing, education and surprisingly health care. Even though Germany has a public health care for all citizens, migrants lack in accessibility. One cause for that is probably the language barrier. Germany is very strict on the monolingual approach, unlike other countries like India, which e.g. has around 20 official languages, Germany sticks only to German. But I don’t think that monolingualism will endure eternally. Many young people speak 3 or more languages. If we don’t wanna lose diversity and ‘freedom’, everyone has to open up to prevent assimilation and frustration in our society. You can only start with yourself by trying to comprehend your own enemy images. It’s a discourse it’ll never be over but it’ll become much easier with practice - I promise.