| A Very Brief History of Black Germans |
| Fatima El-Tayeb |
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There are about 500,000 black people living in Germany (European nations do not officially record their citizens’ race). Nevertheless, if black Germans traveling or living abroad are questioned about their origin, they are usually met with the response — from black and white people alike: "Oh, black Germans, I had no idea they existed!" If they are asked the same question in their home-country, which happens at least as frequently, the most heard answer is: "Yes, but where do you really come from?" It is obvious that black Germans are not exactly a well-known minority. Instead, they are usually assumed to be non-existent and under a constant requirement to explain, or rather justify, their presence in a white country. Prior to the 1980s, virtually no research was done on the history of Germans of African descent and while scholars by now have shown that there has been a black minority in Germany since the 15th Century, this did not change the general perception of Germany as a (very) white nation. Contrary to US legal practice, until 2000, German citizenship was based on "the law of blood," meaning that whoever descents from a German is legally considered German (even if his or her family migrated to another part of the world centuries ago). Whoever is without "German blood," on the other hand, remains a legal "foreigner," even if born in and raised in Germany. This peculiar concept of national identity does not only create a disenfranchised "foreign" population actually German in every sense but the legal one, such an anti-assimilationist ideology, which considers "foreignness" a hereditary trait rather than a temporary state also creates |
naturalized and racialized definitions of Germanness that put minorities on the defense whether they possess citizenship or not: until proven otherwise they are "Outsiders," expected to be very literally on their (natural) way out of a nation they cannot belong to. German minorities therefore not only need to fight for political influence but for a basic recognition as part of German society. Contemporary black Germans are a case in point: contrary to e.g. the Turkish minority, most of them have one German parent (usually the mother: both among African migrants in Germany and African American soldiers stationed there, men vastly outnumber women) and therefore possesses citizenship. Nevertheless, being black, they are routinely perceived as "foreigners" (see the question about origin cited above — every black German has heard it hundreds of times). Being non-existent in the public mind, minorities are not granted the role of active subjects within public debates — in fact, not even if they are its object. The refusal to grant black Germans the right of self-definition is a striking example. While the term afrodeutsch (Afro-German) is almost unanimously used as self-reference by those black Germans who intervene in the political and cultural discourse, white Germans at least as unanimously reject it in favor of "colored" (liberal version) or Mischling (mongrel). |
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Since the 1980s though, there has been an active and diverse Afro-German movement. The term "Afro-German" already gives you an idea how important the fight of blacks in the US was for the development of a black German consciousness. In fact, "Afro-German" was coined by the US black feminist activist Audre Lorde when she first met black Germans in 1984 (back when African Americans still were Afro- |