I was deeply moved when I read the breaking news in Germany on Monday: "Man pushes boy in front of train." There were tears in my eyes, and a thousand thoughts ran through my head. But as is always the case when these tragedies occur, my first thought was: "Let's hope it wasn't a foreigner"
I am a dad, too, and my thoughts were with the family of the boy and his mother, who was also pushed onto the tracks but managed to survive. "How can anybody do something like that? What drove this man?" I asked myself. And then I read that police arrested a suspect — a 40-year-old man from Eritrea.
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Expectations to condemn
It was clear what would happen next: The man's motives were overshadowed as his nationality became the central focus of the story — as if a perpetrator's origins are crucial to his character. Once again, I have to deal with barroom cliches: "the foreigners," "the migrant," "they are all dangerous, all of them potential attackers."
Pavlovian conditioning continues: Again, I — the child of a former guest worker from Turkey and a German national — have to justify myself. Society expects me to condemn the actions of a person with foreign roots. Society also generally suspects everyone from Eritrea or any other African country. Don't get me started on how right-wing populists use this sentiment to their own political ends.
My Nigerian neighbor has avoided the bus and the subway this week. I asked him why he is now driving to work and he told me he felt uneasy taking public transportation home on Monday — people gave him contemptuous looks, they whispered to each other, then he heard a racist slogan. Unease quickly became fear. I can totally relate to that!
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Facing xenophobia
You can imagine how I reacted when I heard on the radio the other day that a mass argument at a swimming pool forced the facility to close: "Let's hope it wasn't foreigners!"
Then the broadcast said: "Most of the 40 young people on a rampage were from North Africa." Again, I thought: "To make matters worse — Muslims!" Again, I have to explain myself. Again I have to condemn what 40 ruffians did just because most of them have the same religious beliefs as I do. That hasn't changed, despite the fact that the Dusseldorf police and mayor revised down the number of troublemakers, as well as their origins.
I would like to clarify, and probably not for the last time, that I most adamantly condemn every cruel act, every attack or crime by migrants, Muslims, Christians, Germans or anybody else. German society must realize a fact I am convinced many individuals lose sight of: At some point, most people will forget about the terrible attack in Frankfurt. The hatred and the racist slurs that many people with a migrant background face after such attacks, including myself, will continue to be a part of our lives on a daily basis.