The whole g w o one hour. For him focused Global Insights the news out report local bureaus. D. W. Made for mines. The perception that germans are why their head in blue eyed has never been true and will never be too its an. People always ask me where im from its not possible to be german and black. From the moment i get up and leave the house in the morning im confronted with racist views images and styria types of people. As a child alice wanted to have white skin because ive heard bed being black and not being able to blend in and i was kind of sticking a hold of the group and being you know different than the rest i didnt want to be different. I am traveling around germany to talk with other black people about our experiences with racism my first stop this hammock thats where i was born into. I had absolutely wonderful parents and that helped me a lot in difficult situations. I mean i always had a lot of friends about what i do remember and that we played these funny games like whos afraid of the black man and tender little meek worlds thats called in german so and i remember that sometimes to run after me and said yeah nothing can hurt me in Something Like janice an african yanis an african and the problem is that african men something bad. I first met some. He did looks when i was a teenager and have today hes one of gemini most successful reface in hip hop on. The voyage metric you might want. To take action that may could prove any moment he died. With a lot of. The things i use a little dont think. Ive come to see semi in this dont know as you. Say the label was this had a number of top ten hits and over a million records just. Like today he also produces other musicians like. Doesnt exist as a foot as a kid i wanted to be white and hugh thats right. Yeah as a kid white and as a teenager i really wanted to be black. Only still need to not have this ambiguity it seems so clear cut like on the white sides and white people just knew who they were black people did to me i felt like i was in the middle i grew up in a white family in a white neighborhood it was definitely a challenge. The challenge of distance vision for me the feeling of being caught in between is something imposed on you from the outside i mean people always say dont you feel tall until conscious black and why do you feel. The feckless yes how i dont find it unusual why should i have to choose whether. Inflicted by me against a few one thing that cause me a fair amount of confusion right from the start was that i have straight hair. Just to spite me and most of. You know when shooters and when she could sneak going on top of the stand in grade school if some kid called me the n. Word and i reacted defensively or aggressively theyd say yes and hey youre not really a nigger because your hair is straight with me so for me that was like ok im dark enough to get called the n. Word but my hair isnt frizzy or curly enough for me to have the right to get upset about it to me that was the first contradiction that was imposed on me from the outside world thats a vote a song for us son about humans didnt you its a song about the stream so i told him i wrote the song in two thousand and eight at the time i was reading a harry potter book to my son in the evening it bad times and one night he said he wished he were white because then he could be like his friends in the moment and all you have to do is paint that thing on his forehead and wear around glasses and hed look like harry potter and it could be love thats in the else we have reports and. That made me realize that theres an acute shortage of dark skinned superheroes so i wrote the song and made a really nice video to go along with it. His issue is with us with. Advice coming to the. Candidates. Im leaving the room when they leave. For that. I might as well like you and i know why you dont like us but. By last nights. Sleep was not my long time thats a long maybe a long long time so really dont like. Much money like. Right now id like to is right. Its a high i can remember when i was thirteen alice into novena and thats when i started going to parties and the other kids would say a van are you why youre listening to that spanish will be listening to black music i did and i liked it more and then it was the best music scene whatever that means hip hop and r. And b. Album and all the school on down it is a c. In the end then all of a sudden yes a black person a part of the majority of im up on my own. And then with these positive associations its whos its even us its who got us a club with us well from a single i think thats one of the main reasons i became who i am and its of the going with this rep thing this yes to the rap was the first thing that gave me a Home Court Advantage so to speak im for tight houses i just had to let my pants hang a little bit lower paying less in this case when my cap to the side moved like this. And everyone was into it it looked authentic and it fit well with my exotic status those clothes if i did graffiti deejaying collected records started producing rasping and and beatboxing all the hip hop disciplines except breakdancing that was too much worse so youre telling me i. Just body type. Only with words. As a journalist i dont have a Home Court Advantage. When i decided to become a journalist and when i became an anchor i was actually i think the first female black anchor and germany i didnt have any role models. But if youre not the baby ill be happy to come for me its really important that should really you know when this watch on the t. V. That might see me and think oh quite i can be on t. V. And read the news and i dont have to have a job which was filled to the face the stereotypes for me that would be great if i could help bring dump areas in that sense. That. People have been living in germany for four hundred years today they numbered about one million from me in cologne after come to see. Do you support them yeah. He was born in one nine hundred twenty five and berlin. Why did your father come from cameroon to germany back then come on by you know the room is a german drawing innit. Weve done for you. Just as people used to dream of going to america. At that time many Young Africans wanted to come to germany. Says there is no such thing as what we now call racism for me at least not as we know it today in the m. D. C. It only started to take shape when the Young African started asserting themselves for instance by marrying german women oh. And the reaction was there taking away our women. In quincy in the name will instead be fallen way. And now you appeared in ethnographic exhibits also known as humans zeus what was said like stands before imagine human being those of us being exhibited like objects literally exhibited earth present from what they supposedly represented of namely africa with vast skirts and drums dancing saunas. Didnt and the idea was that people under splay were foreign exotic. And were showing spectators what their homeland was like this in. Basically it was just a big show. Me i might as good im going to go number out of school evidence how crazy istead us a german was supposed to imitate this will receive in. Africa i was just such a huge continent. And hes a consummate. Widowhood shrugs i was and im a black man so of course i should be able to do that as thats how it is its in my blood and lets talk about the nazi era its so hard to imagine because black people would obviously attract attention in every genre that was so racist thats right as a mom both to kind and. We didnt need to wear yellow stars. Everyone could see we were aliens. Did you know a lot of other black people in germany where you sure everyone knew everyone in the mirror so many colonial films made back then that many of us would meet up as part of the cast. Yet thats me. This is mine and thats my closest and im still dont like the fact that the shot a close up of me. And everyone who was in black was in that film. And it. Is a good thing i was sixteen at the time. And it struck me that my god were all here together. He can take us away without anyone noticing or not us as they did that and that thought weighed very heavily on me this. Is good thank god i never came to paris but in the we were too few in number to matter to the nazis that. When i die you know you know all contact with white women with the pharaoh have been horrible home. I would have been sterilized. And i might also have been charged with racial defilement bigness and shunned. You say that you took great care not to get too close to white women all girls. Was it like having all trying to become invisible how can we imagine that while it was that see men the sleestak thats the right word invisible i mean could it be counted on the of course with a face like this i could never completely disappear. But i tried. I think of sense i really did have some smoke and skipped as i and the main thing was to keep your head down can your mouth shut. I made sure i did that as well. To the point that i started to start on this. Yeah i started terribly well been understood listening to the difficult often horrible things you experienced. How did you find the strength to go on what one of the double c. Well i have to say with gods help. Yes but i became a religious person the league as i mentioned above. Thank you thats what you owe. To you dont you michel always says theres nothing in the german constitution that states what the german is supposed to look like but some people havent gotten the message for them were still exciting. When i was a child complete strangers would touch my hand say it feels like a birds nest. Oh my god its good to see you says. I watch breakfast t. V. Every morning i turn on the set and think and afro german woman on german public t. V. Be as were so proud of you. Oh youre just such a wonderful job does one thousand two months the story but tear me a look at your hair and to talk about that yes we do. That will work in some coconut oil. Like me. Thanks a lot to me is that yes i think it is enough now my love your curls ok and then i would always wake up this movies a look these are the hurdles. Right now im really happy to be talking to s. That dont call the founder of cars a local cully Hamner Agassi and thats how sometimes i think that black peoples has really politicized its like a political statement whether you have to have done it naturally the stereotypes that they have is messy and wild that doesnt go all the bun in the professional but also how the afro hair just isnt acceptable. Our Society Still doesnt comply with our ideals of beauty. Look at beyond saying shes a black woman that shes a performer of the shes the embodiment of empowerment but she still wears a straight blonde weve. You know ive met women who work in law offices in places like that we get into trouble if they wear their hair naturally that kind. Of not to mention hot off to the south can you tell us about the natural Hand Movement does is this sort of fell into it. Its about allowing people with afro textured hair to wear it naturally without causing a fuss or having to feel selfconscious. Thats what life is about accepting yourself to get seven limbs absence of times. Change. To feel comfortable in your own skin thats the goal but its not so easy. I think the problem is that if you see all these stereotypes about africa about tribes about being primitive of barry a native underdeveloped. It hits you. Part of the problem of the images from the days of colonialism and the lin dance to streets named after german nice and colonialists it was c. N. N. Berlin in one thousand nine hundred eighty four that european nations had a conference when they carved up africa and to colonies. Was. Bought. By me at a street festival aimed at forcing the city to change the name from the us. And here was just a crazy akins political scientists and activists wife its important for you to rename districts the term of one of the oldest german words. A person but look at the root of the term it has a latin in the greek root morris and morris and guess that means dark or black but it also means stupid heathen and primitive and so we see already in the origin of the word that there is this idea of black inferiority but then we look into the history of the street name if we see that the street was named quiet its name in the context of the brandenburg involvement in the transatlantic and statement and to prize how to say this germany deal with this colonial history i think as a huge problem. A lot of aspects of german korean history are not widely known we cant even begin to understand National Socialism without looking at the colonial and to see that its because we find that they are ideological political but also personal continuities linking german colonialism and National Socialism. Please and i set off to uncover some of the traces. Off colonialism in the german capital. Ok i think i moved to berlin ten years ago but this defers time im seeing this fresco can you explain what im seeing so we had the house and this here shows us the trail of tobacco so you see and slaved african men harvesting tobacco then enslaved African Women packaging the tobacco then it is sorted in a way that you know it as a white overseer and then its package further its made ready for shipment and you see one of the white oversea as its already lounging and having a smoke but then you see the ship departing for well theyre not releasing its burden because you see the silhouette of the german and the french dont so this clearly explains the source of the wealth that was used to build this place right but of course it also implicates the people that frequented here and the suffering that is also depicted here. People often defined by this skin color its a well known South African artist robin wrote place with the stereotypes he experienced apartheid in south africa now hes been living in berlin for fourteen hes. Bought it could tell you to see you i could see you working on a new p. C. s. I have a work in process and its a world guy some knowledge in this is about myself african i did thirty. Of course the african is a strong some bull its interesting that you chose here of course i can identify with that but whats this i mean what what role detail at a for him play for you he became a way to to classify a place been sold to a place through he to. Who did you pick to kind of the stand and before the racial category. Saying that if they go through my head they say its f. I have i am sorry to be let on the public at a west coast that is colored always mixed race. So if the goal waned we invaded to find you here because you guys as white how were you classified as on a farm classified as call it as if it is a person of mixed race and so on might be and so my grandparents and. In many ways my cultural background is quiet complex because i know you know we dont associate ourselves with black and neither white. Sorry. I know you view it as black. German content what i think is in the german gone pics im viewed as out of oh really so thats actually pretty interesting. I use off as a way to subvert but also to to play with. And on the valve will watch these kind of cultural labels off. This particular piece reading speed of mental painting if it needs to be defined it needs to be categorized and im trying to nabi explore the notion of something that is completely in this something that is completely undefined. I was born in one nine hundred eighty one and in the early ninetys we had a serious off duty of racist attacks and gemini and also hot and high as to get it and so willing it must be backed by stan the stephen king. During the attacks. It was really heartbreaking to see and it frightened me so much as a child. And i think thats something that is also very scary if you look at the recent vice and racist attacks on refugees in germany and so few of the people who take them were caught and put on trial and i think thats a very dangerous message to everyone who experience racism because it means ok you can be attacked but you know you can attack people but you can get away with it in that it gives us the message ok people can do to you whatever they want they wont be put on trial. And that scares me a lot. About us an apprentice rufo working in the eastern german state of six an eon height he hasnt been living here for very long in two thousand and thirteen he fled book enough fossil for germany his job gives the twenty eight year old some stability was but otherwise his life is often difficult recently he will speak not by of right wing fuck i mean he send the town of war where he lives as a hero eight months ago you were beaten up right here tell us about that you should get right i went into the school and saw a man and if with a woman and child. And he said in my didnt look at that he sure does using the n. Word for us to look at this black piece of trash we need to go i didnt say anything that. I went to the counter to pay for this and he went like this. And i said this is what do you want from me and he says ill show you your school i went over there and he hit me three or four times like this and i yelled muzzle how bad the way you had it been a boa list due to the i felt a lot of pain in my stomach and i come down the block for about a month. And were not holding. On but how does it feel when no one steps in to help you when youre being beaten up and you often treat it with hostility and its hard to get and im at how do you cope. But to not cause your so im always afraid when i go out now going to so to see who can i go to work im afraid of what might happen along the way. People make just just like im going to cut your throat so i did see and they shouted go back to where you came from shocking people do that to me every day so much. This is the courthouse in the town of stand up its where the man who beat up he says some try. How do you to be annoying youre about to see the person would take you as just. Im not afraid. I cant wait to see him again fuck and look into his eyes dizzy and fall saddam is you. Know. The attacker who has a long criminal record was found guilty of assault and sentenced to ten months in jail but he appealed was just a reason for his hearing. The. Cameras arent allowed inside the courtroom. After a four hour last the conscience. And how was it for you today to assure me i never expected it to go so well and yes of course and very pleased to mr. C. Ter. The conviction is upheld but the attack intends to appeal again. Once you wake up in the morning and you switch on the radio or you switch on the t. V. Youre confronted with all these stereotypes about africa and its really difficult to talk about racism in germany because once i experience it when i talk about racism people say oh youre too emotional youre over reacting the comfy true im sure the person didnt mean it that way so they dont really take it serious and that its really hard because i feel like i am not taking serious but my experience its. Just well those were. The super. Nice girls really is. Without regret because it should all is. And listeni