The perception that germans out wide the ahead in blue eyed has never been true and will never be too. 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 abuse images and syria types of people. As a child out. Wanted to have white skin because i felt bed being black and not being able to blend in and i was kind of sticking out 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 1st stop is ham thats where i was born and. I had absolutely wonderful parents and that helped me a lot in difficult situations. I mean ours had a lot of friends about i do remember. That we played these funny games like whos afraid of the black man and tender little negroes its called in german so and i remember that sometimes they ran after me and said yeah nothing can hurt me in Something Like janice an african man as an african and the problem is that african men something bad. At 1st met somebody looks when i was a teenager and have today hes one of germanys most successful rappers and hip hop artists. For. The record food for my machine i do. A lot. Of it is over using them dont think that i have come to see sammy. And its doing the as you. Say the way he was this had a number of top 10 hits and its a little the a 1000000 records. Its like today he also produces other musicians. But as a kid i wanted to be white and cute. Yeah as a kid white and as a teenager i really wanted to be black to meet soon. Thats nice only the only thing to not have this ambiguity it seems so clear cut like on the white side 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 see tall until conscious black and why do you feel. This yourself dont find it unusual why should i have to. Hide in fact that when youre going to few one thing that caused me a fair amount of confusion right from the start was that i have straight hair. Does display mean and was a woman machine and when she wrote as and when she could sneak out 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 1st contradiction that was imposed on me from the outside world and thats he wrote a song for us son about humans didnt you its the song of the she does it so i told him i wrote the song in 2008 at the time i was reading a harry potter book to my son in the evening at bad times and one night he said he wished he were white because then he could be like. His friends means a moments notice and all you have to do is paint that thing on his forehead and wear around glasses and hed look like harry potter mr mimic a blouse that snowdens e. L. C. Harry potter is going to obviously in combat 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. A musician was with us we. Have a 00000000000000000 advice to. Come down to. Im looking down at the way they look at the long haul that. I might as well like i dont like i dont like. A. Lot of the last guy. Was not a long time that fellow may be long gone sometimes selflessly dont like. Much money on the side but i like his rights talk. Its a high i can remember when i was a teen i was into novena and thats when i started going to pot to do stuff and the other kids would say. Why youre listening to that anderson 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 it was cool on them 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 money and i mean and then when these positive associations pulls its you must its you and you notice and does it go with us well from a single i think thats one of the main reasons i became who i am been through to the ring with this record thing this test of a rap was the 1st thing that gave me a Home Court Advantage so to speak im for tired houses i just had to let my pants hang a little bit lower paying less in the scope of my cap to the side and. Moved like this. And everyone was into it it looked authentic and it fit well with my exotic status this close i did graffiti deejaying collected records started producing wrapping around and beat boxing and all the hip hop disciplines except break dancing that was too much work so youre telling me youre not just body type because ill. 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 1st female black anchor and gemini i didnt have any role models. Did you not think maybe ill be happy to come for me its really important that children you know when to switch on the t. V. That might see me and think oh right i can be on t. V. And read the news and i dont have to have a job which was filters the face the stereotypes for me that would be great if i could help bring down various in that sense. That people have been living in germany for 400 years but today they numbered about 1000000 from me in cologne of come to see. Do you support that. He was born in 1025 and valiant. Why did your father come from chemical into germany back then come on by your dotel room was a german colony. Weve run 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 was no such thing as what we now call racism. At least not as we know it today. You see you can only started to take shape when the Young African started asserting themselves for instance by marrying german women oh. True following the reaction was there taking away our women the imprint seen the name on set the following way. Now you appeared in ethnographic exhibits also known as humans zeus what was it like standing for the imagine human beings. Being exhibited like objects literally exhibitor through the press and from what they supposedly represented of namely africa with ballast skirts and drums dancing saunders. Still. Didnt and the idea was that people under splay were foreign exotic. And were showing spectators what their homeland was like this and. Basically it was just a big show so i mean you know i might as good and one of the number of us show evidence how crazy is that us a german was supposed to imitate just received cuts off africa which is such a huge continent. And hes a consummate. Window head shrug so i was sort of im not black. So of course i should be able to do that yeah 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 as right as a member of the 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 oh yeah sure everyone knew everyone and there were 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 its not like the fact that the shot a close up of me. And everyone who was in black was in that film. And. It was a good day i was 16 at the time. And it struck me that my god were all here together. He can take us away without anyone noticing or not does his oath. And that thought weighed very heavily on me this. Is good thank god i never came to pass but in the via we were too few in number to matter to the nazis that. When a guy who boy did all contact with white brimming with the fair women horrible home field. I would have been sterilized. And i might also have been charged with racial defilement big ice and shunned. Oh how do you say that you took great care not to get too close to white women all gods. Was it like how you being all trying to become invisible how can we imagine what it was that see men the sleestak thats the right word invisible we could be counted on the of course with a face like this i could never completely disappear. But i tried. I think thats what i really did thats who smoked 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 study the source. Yeah i started terribly. Well the amount of food listening to the difficult often horrible things you experienced. How did you find the strength to go on i dont know yeah. Well i have to say with gods help. I became a religious person the link as i mentioned above. Thats what you have. To do when youre michele always says theres nothing in the german constitution that states what a 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. Right. Oh my god oh my god its good to see you still see my watch breakfast t. V. Every morning i turn on the set and think its like an afro german woman on german public t. V. Be as were so proud of you so sure oh youre such a wonderful job does 1000 too much the story like a tear may look at your hair we have to talk about that yes we do. That will work in some coconut oil but we need. To. Cancel on t. V. That aside i think it is enough i love your curls ok then i would always wake up the movies are good these are the girls. Now im really happy to be talking to instead dont call out the found out of cause a local all clearly have magazine thats how sometimes i think that black peoples has really politicized its like a political statement whether you have to head down naturally the stereotype is that the hair is messy and wild that doesnt go over well in the professional but also how her 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 made a scale and to unite 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 tradition hat off to. 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 7 names as 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 that barrier a native underdeveloped. It hits you. How does the problem of the images from the days of colonialism and belin dance to streets named after german nice and colonialists. And berlin and 884. 00 dead european nations had a conference when they cost the f. A. 10. 00 to colonies. And yet a street festival aimed at forcing the city to change the name from was. Neat. And here was just a crazy akins political scientist an extremist why its important for you to rename districts the term is one of the oldest words. Person box look at the root of the term it has an action in the greek groups morris and morris and yes that means doc or black but it also means stupid heathen primitive and so you see already even the origin of the work 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 trans atlantic and slave meant and to prize how would you say to us germany to deal with this colonial history. I think is 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 continuity. 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 10 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 and weighed you know as a white overseer and then its packaged further its made ready for shipment and you see one of the white overseers is already lounging and having a smoke but then you see the ship departing for them not even you see its berlin because you see the silhouette of the german the french dome 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. Vic people are often defined by this skin color so when known South African artist robin vote place with the stereotypes he experienced apartheid in south africa now hes been living in berlin for 4 changes. I. Could tell you to see you i could see you working on a new piece yes. I have a work in process and its a world guy some alderman this is about myself african i did. And of course the african is a strong some bull its interesting that you chose here of course i can identify with that but let us i mean look at what war detail at a for have play for you he became a way to to classify a place been sold to a place through he to. Who do depict a kind of the stand and before the racial category. So saying that if they go through my head they say its f. I have i am exactly black on the public categorized as color that is colored always mixed race. So if the coal way and we invaded to find you here because you guys is white how will you classify this 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 squire i complex because i know you know we dont associate ourselves with black and neither white. Sorry but i know you view it as black d. C. s german content what i think is in the german gone pics im viewed as out of oh really so thats actually pretty interesting. I used off as a way to subvert but also to to play with. Down the valve will watch these kind of cultural labels off. This particular piece reading speed of me if it needs to be defined it needs to be kept to good eyes and im trying to knob explore the notion of something that is completely in this something that is completely undefined. I was born in 1981 and in the early ninetys we had a serious offer of basis to take c. In germany and also placed in hot and high us to get it and selling it must be backed by stand the skunk. 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 rise in 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 east and german state of sex in the on hot he hasnt been living here for very long in 2013 he fled book enough oxygen for germany his job gives the 28 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 8 months ago you were beaten up right here tell us about that. I listen to this little and saw a man and it with a woman and child. And he said why didnt you look at that im sure did you say the n. Word for us to look at this black piece of trash when they go i didnt say anything that. I went to the counter to pay their school and he went like this. And i said thats what do you want from me and he says ill show you i went over there and he hit me 3 or 4 times like this. You know muzzle history of how bad a way you had it in a bowl i list to today i felt a lot of pain in my stomach losses and i come down the block for about 2 months. And more not knowing. 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 explain and im it how do you cope. With it in a culture so im always afraid when i go out now in a sort to see who can i go to work im afraid of what might happen along the way roads people make just just like im going to cut your throat so it is seeing and they shout go back to where you came from shocking people do that to me every day. This is the courthouse in the town of stendhal its where the man who beat up he says im trying. How do you feel knowing youre about to see the person would take it as just. Im not afraid. I cant wait to see him again fuck and look into his eyes dizzy and fall saddam is sure. To. Be a tech guy who has a long criminal record was found guilty of assault and sentenced to 10 months in jail but he appealed which is the reason for his hearing. The police. Cameras arent allowed inside the courtroom that the. Up to 4 hours the conscience. Isa how was it for you today. I never expected it to go so well and of your surprise and very pleased to. See. The conviction is upheld but its teka intends to appeal again. Once you wake up in the morning and just 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 company true im sure the person didnt mean it that way so they dont really take it serious and that is really hard because i feel like i am not taking serious but my experience its. Worth it to quote the secrets. I was racism without regret because he should all use. And listening in the author of this play is the artist and writer. The story shes originally from particle but has lived for many years a 1000000000. From me it took a lot of effort to Research Lecture me history because there was nothing that was presented to me in school for example what told us the silencing play in your eyes i think in the last wor