Summary of  Paper Identität, Repräsentation und Community-Empowerment

By Fazil Aulia

This writing focuses on the aspect of the unwillingness of the german society in recognizing the importance of identity politic.

Although people worldwide applaud the struggle of Nelson Mandela, whose organization was identity politically motivated, the people in Germany still find it hard to recognize identity based politic of past-migrants and anti-racism as part of democratic self-determination and participation, as opposed to other forms of  identity motivated organizations like worker unions.. Suspicion often arouse when a person with a history of discrimination founds an organization as to whether he or she may create a parallel society, although in reality such organizations are essential to counter the „Tyranny of Majority“ in the democratic process. In other nations in which the society is multi-ethnic like the USA, talks discussing about the past-history of colonialization and the dark past history of white people are everywhere to be found, in contrary to that of Germany that is still far from that kind of environment, where the majority finds it taboo the discuss such topics and the minority who have suffered racial violence have no interest to discuss racism as a cultural prejudice against „foreigners“.

However identity politic,provides an adequate discussion frame within the community for racism-related topics to be discussed, where the discriminated people can come up with their experiences to share and approach many racial related terms from different perspectives. In short, such move represents the willingness of the minority to voice their concern regarding their problems. The author believes that it would be a start for any movement that brings people against racial differentiation.

            My own racism-related experiences as a non-european in Germany vary from verbal to physical. Typical asian greetings are often thrown in derogatory ways and my apartment was once terrorized through different ways of disturbances. But up until now, discussing it openly in order to seek out the reasons behind their doings and what may cause them is almost impossible as I haven’t found any appropriate frame of discussion to discuss such topics. Moreover, I find it hard to discuss topics like what may cause such racial paradigmas historically because, like the author also said, german society at large often hold themselves back from such topics.