Thus, despite its many manifestations and interpretations, multiculturalism in Germany can be primarily seen as an answer to the question of “Germanness”. While Joppke, sees this as largely a push aided by (perhaps alarming) immigration patterns to understand Germaneness without old concepts of nationhood, I attempt to put new emphasis on what this new Germanness meant. While attempting to perhaps transcend nationhood, multiculturalist movement in Germany predominantly attempted to understand Germaneness through reorganizing and interpreting new racial and ethnic makeup, which were the consequence of continued immigration and new refugee waves. Ultimately it is an ethno(-racial) project meant to protect already existing and carefully crafted color-blind and race-blind rhetoric (as a legacy of post-Nazism).
While it might seem controversial to refer to multiculturalism in Germany as a racial project, it is important to notice that the reference is to an ethno(-racial) project. While Omi and Winant specifically created their racial formation theory with the United States in mind, there are many parallels to be made. It is true, that, when regarding the majority of immigrants in Germany and the ethnic and racial makeup or “ethnic” Germans, the rhetoric of multiculturalism may not be a strictly racial project per say. Germany has very specific connotations of race and racism that deal directly with the killing of Jews, i.e. ethno-racial genocide. (Joppke 2011, 65). While
The 1949 Disney Cartoon film is faithful and accurate to the Washington Irving's story , “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Disneys 1949 cartoon was faithful and accurate to the washington Irving’s book because, Ichabod Crane was described as Tall and lanky as some of his characteristics in both Washington Irving’s book and the 1949 Disney movie. Brom Bones was the reason Ichabod had to fight for katrina. In both the movie and book Ichabod was always standing strong in the fight for katrina even though he was smaller.
The book is broken down into four sections which explains his conception of the main argument, the ideas of national community, racial grooming, destruction of countries, and the perception of the war. The ideas of national renewal, while not something the German people supposedly wanted, would soon reshape the society even when they knew their former Jewish friends and neighbors were victims of genocide under the Nazi regime. The evidence given throughout the analysis include written letters between the day-to-day German people and diaries of both prominent and average members of society. The vast array of people proved that the Nazi regime had touched even the furthest people from society to accept their ideas of German
The space of liminality, of ambiguity, is the space through which the determination of racial classifications can become most complex and deterministic for further understandings. In this space of liminality the distinctions between races become further obscured, yet concurrently these racial distinctions are made most evident. In both the Nazi and Jim Crow contexts, the liminal space between German versus Jew, and White versus African-American becomes how race is constructed. Yet, these liminal spaces are not simple, nor binary, instead these spaces are multidimensional; German versus Jew becomes German versus German-Jew versus Jew, and White versus African-American becomes White versus less White versus African-American. In this complexity, in these liminal spaces, the fundamental question of race emerges: who is an other?
Peter Fritzche’s book, Germans into Nazis, contends that, “Germans became Nazis because they wanted to become Nazis and because the Nazis spoke so well to their interests and inclinations…however, voters did not back Hitler mainly because they share his hatred of the Jews…but because they departed from established political traditions in that they were identified at once with a distinctly popular form of ethnic nationalism and with the basic social reforms most Germans counted on to ensure national well-being.” (8-9) His argument rests on the notion that the Nazis had a vision for Germany that incorporated Germans into a national community, throwing off the restraints of a tired government, and propelled them towards a future that would
This reflection of the average German’s perception of guest workers is brought into focus by Ali: Fear Eats the Soul to critique the state of Germany’s failure to develop effective public policy that takes into account the reality of the ingrained cultural beliefs of German society. Der Spiegel’s 1973 article “The Turks are Coming! Save Yourself if You Can!” reflects both the disconnect between the German government and the public as well as the general sentiment stereotyping these guest workers as “foreigners… only welcome in the Federal Republic as exotic and cheap helpers… who will soon go back to where they came from” (GiT 110.) These disparities combined with blatant classism and racism permeated German society such that widespread rejection of Emmi and Ali’s relationship, from friends and family to the “professional” workplace, was within German standards of social conduct. Within this
The phrase "a lesson to be learned and a tragedy to behold" has been indelibly attached to the Holocaust that to think of it in any other way is thought to insult all those of the Jewish community who lost their lives to the attempted genocide of their race by the Nazi regime. Despite such brevity attached to learning lessons from the Holocaust one must wonder whether the lesson has actually been learned or if people will continue to repeat the mistakes of the past. Angela Merkel, the current German Chancellor, has stated that the German experiment towards multi-culturalism has failed, those who wish to migrate into the country must learn the German way whether it is the language they speak, the culture they have or the very religion they
Postcolonial historian Matthew Frye Jacobson in Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race traces the “racial odyssey” of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe who were at first regarded as racial other, and then relegated to the status between black and white, and finally inclusive as Caucasian white. These in-between groups were classified as “Hebrews,” “Celts,” “Mediterraneans,” “Iberics,” “Slavs,” “Teutons,” and the like in nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Jacobson analyses the contest over the definition, boundaries, internal hierarchies, and identities of inclusion into the white races, and the eventual Caucasian by the mid twentieth century. Caucasian identity united all European origin
The Author Marable defines “multiculturalism” as “the recognition that our nation’s cultural heritage that does not begin and end with the intellectual and aesthetic products of Western Europe, rather multiculturalism rejects the model of cultural assimilation and social conformity.” However, Multiculturalism is often been misinterpreted, Marable according to him said that, the “melting pot” never existed.
One of the difficulties of accepting multiculturalists is that defining a multicultural society, or institution seems to be determined by one's perspective. A commonly held view suggests that being
Emerging during the post-WWII reality of the United States, the term “multiculturalism” has long been embedded into the fabric of American understandings of race and ethnicity. Despite recent efforts to move ‘beyond multiculturalism’, this word and the color-blind ideology supporting it will continue to shape the trajectory of attitudes, policies and activism in the United States. Similarly, multiculturalism in Germany—which was adopted from US-American concepts to address Germany’s own unique post-WWII large-scale—will continue to shape the trajectory of group relations in Germany. As such, this paper focuses on a comparative perspective between Germany and the United States and their respective perceived need for and utilization of the rhetoric of multiculturalism(s). What can we come to understand about multiculturalism in two cases of Germany and the United State? By building off existing sociological perspectives on each case individually and existing academic comparisons, it will become clear, that while distinctively a “(ethno)racial project:” (Omi and Winant) and perhaps as an ethno(racial) project, multiculturalism is used in both countries differently: in the US it is supposed to be answer to the race problem in an ironically “color-blind” society that increases the attention on ethnic and most importantly racial differences; in
Like the English and the Dutch, the French decided to try to become friends with the natives. A close friend on the explorers was the huron tribe, the french colonies and the huron tribe live in peaceful coexistence, even marriages between the natives and the french. But soon europe disease killed many on the huron.
Jaime is an 18-year-old Mexican American who lives with his mother and sister and has a baby with his current fiancée. He also attends a large urban high school. Within high school, Jaime encounters the challenges of being an immigrant and having a bicultural identity, develops resilience, understands the influences of his mother’s parenting style, and further develops his identity. He is nearing the end of his adolescence and beginning to show traits of an emerging adult.
Human history is riddled with clashes of race, religion and ideologies which have lead us to where we are today. While the world moves to a more progressive stage, it still drag along the undying fire that is racism and inequality. For a very long time the United States made it hard for minorities such as African Americans and neutralized immigrants to vote, only because they prioritized white US born than others. In other Cases, such as in Germany, many civilians find themselves in an inner struggle to find a middle ground about their Refugee crises. Germany has spent the last seventy years repenting for their war crimes and have now taken in refugees from war torn syria, many civilians are outraged as foreign nationalism come in and claim
Due to irreversible or insoluble situations such as wars, coups, or natural disasters, some people have to move to other countries without any preparation or plan, which only delays the time for the immigrants to completely become a part of society and for the natives to totally embrace the new people. When it comes to the discussion of reactive immigration, this essay focuses more on the refugees who flee away from the corrupted or destroyed countries. When refugees start their new life in a totally new environment, often at the tables of discussions for refugees is the issue of integration. In fact, the reaction of the natives regarding this matter is not so favorable; rather, there have been voices against the refugees. For instance, the German interior ministry had recorded 336 assaults on refugee shelters since the start of the year – over a 100 more than in the whole of 2014 for the reason of conflicting political ideology (Harding, Oltermann and Watt, 2015, online). Even in the statistics, it shows that almost a half of the natives still find it challenging to accept and integrate with the refugees. To elaborate, Hamado Dipama (2015), a local spokesman for the ProAsyl refugee council in Munich who is originally from Burkina Faso, claims that after 13 years in Germany, and a long battles for permanent residency, the Burkina Faso native is deeply grateful for the second chance this country has given him. However, he remains nervous about the identity fault-line he sees running through the heart of German society, between an ethnically homogenous memory and a heterogeneous reality. The unresolved issue of German identity, he says, “remains a deep well of casual racism” (Scally, 2015) – for him and new arrivals from Syria. This
Many political leaders in Europe have declared that their attempts on multiculturalism have failed, “In October 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel proclaimed that a multicultural approach had ‘utterly failed’ in Germany. In February 2011, French President Nicolas Sarkozy also called multiculturalism a failure, and British Prime Minister David Cameron indicted his country’s policy as of multiculturalism for failing to promote a sense of common identity and encouraging Muslim segregation and radicalization.” (Bloemraad, I. 2011, page 1). Not only do political figures of European countries believe that multiculturalism has been a failure, but citizens of many European countries believe the same impression, as stated in Kenan Malik’s text ‘What is wrong with multiculturalism? A European Perspective’, there are three myths about immigration that have grounded the present-day view that multiculturalism as a political process has been unsuccessful. The first myth being that “European countries used to be homogenous but have been made diverse by mass immigration”, the second myth is “the claim that contemporary immigration to Europe is different, and in some eyes less assimilable, than previous waves” and the third myth is “European nations have become multicultural because minorities wished to assert their differences.” (Malik, K. 2012, pages 1 and 2). Malik then