Essay about racism

iLab on Friday, 30th of september 2011

page 9, exercise G

"Initiatives to improve my community"

There is one issue in our community that is very dear to my heart. Unfortunately I have to assert that there are still members of our community coming to me and telling me about personal experiences with racism. I'm not talking about non-involved people, not about those who just notice racism as an unlovely part of our society - I am talking about people being discriminated against themselves, those who suffer from this completely unacceptable behaviour.

Despite the fact, that there are still people looking at immigrants on the streets as if they were disgusting, there are still people verbally harassing them or ignoring them as if they were not worth being noticed. I want to focus on a worse problem: The systematic marginalisation of foreign people in our society. Not by a single person or small groups of Neo-nazis, but by serious enterprises.

Let me give you an example:

About 2 weeks ago I talked to a friend of mine who finished school one year ago by passing his Abitur with an excellent grade. Mehmet comes from a very well-educated and well situated family, that originally comes from Iraq but since they immigrated to Germany 14 years ago they are very well integrated into society and even get involved a lot with our community issues.

So as usual the high-school graduates  were planning their so-called "Abi-parties" - parties they organize themselves to earn money for their prom  and their final year book. My friend organized a lot and took a big part in the work himself, so that finally the party that took place in the MAX-discoteque became a great success. Only one person couldn't enjoy the happy party: It was Mehmet. And you know why? Because they didn't let him in!

Imagine yourself doing a lot of work, getting involved in such a great project not for your own benefit but for that of your community your part of, standing there in front of a club knowing that YOU made all this happen, and then being rejected by security without any reason given.

The worst thing about it is, that this is no exception in Kiel. I remember many evenings I wasn't able to go out with my friends because all of us knew they would be rejected by security, most of the time by rough words but sometimes even by physical force.

We have to recognize the need for action, we have to help these people, we have to stop people being discriminated against just because of the color of their skin, the origin of their parents or even of their grandparents!

We bear responsibility to protect these people from being segregated against for no reason.

The root of this problem is the high aggressive potential coming up in clubs where people are drinking and being troublesome. The operators of these clubs might think they could reduce this potential by rejecting foreigners or even people looking like they could be foreign, but they are totally wrong. Of course they only seek for more security and a better atmosphere for peaceful visitors, but they completely chose the wrong way.

There have been, are, and will always be young people who want to checkout the limits and who run riot, but this is not a question of nationality or color of skin. 

Operators of clubs must invent new criteria for selecting aggressive people, they must stop selecting only those people who are not originally German, and they must stop allowing their securities using bare violence.

We should support advanced trainings for security men to learn how to read body language, recognizing the aggressive potential of young visitors of their clubs, to have on the one hand a more efficient system to make attendance at a club safer, and on the other hand solve the problem of antiracist discrimination.




This was an essay we were supposed to write concerning a topic that we feel strongly about. I enjoyed writing it, because I'm really upset about  the racist judgements of the security in my hometown, so it was really easy for me to write a proposal about it. We were also told to include the 'three-point' device, which I evaluate as very useful but still easy to integrate at the same time, as it makes the text sound stronger and more powerful.