When it comes to racism or discrimination I’m like a super Nazi. I can’t help it; it’s stronger than me. It’s physical. I’m the person you don’t want to have at a party, when someone blabbers out prejudices. I become like police. I detect it everywhere or at least I believe so.
This week I have joined a couple of Iranians for dinner, real ones. Not like me, not like my parents who fled Iran thirty years ago. But the new ones, who grew up there and managed to come to Germany after the green movement in 2009. They are my age and mostly into arts or writing their PhD in I don’t know what. We ate sandwiches in the supposedly best kebab place in Kreuzberg.
Sitting in the midst of them trying to follow the conversation with my poor Farsi. I realized how much everything they said, how they behaved, the slang they used, the irony and humor they had, surprised me.
Obviously I never thought that I could be free of judgmental thinking. But how was it possible that I created an image of how they must be fundamentally different than me. How could over thirty years of dictatorship, oppression, lack of basic human rights let people flourish anyway, and become their own unique human beings? It was actually quite simple and maybe naive but I guess that’s the starting point when the conception of „the other“ deconstructs itself and you discover real people behind ideas.When it comes to racism or discrimination I’m like a super Nazi. I can’t help it; it’s stronger than me. It’s physical. I’m the person you don’t want to have at a party, when someone blabbers out prejudices. I become like police. I detect it everywhere or at least I believe so.
This week I have joined a couple of Iranians for dinner, real ones. Not like me, not like my parents who fled Iran thirty years ago. But the new ones, who grew up there and managed to come to Germany after the green movement in 2009. They are my age and mostly into arts or writing their PhD in I don’t know what. We ate sandwiches in the supposedly best kebab place in Kreuzberg.
Sitting in the midst of them trying to follow the conversation with my poor Farsi. I realized how much everything they said, how they behaved, the slang they used, the irony and humor they had, surprised me.
Obviously I never thought that I could be free of judgmental thinking. But how was it possible that I created an image of how they must be fundamentally different than me. How could over thirty years of dictatorship, oppression, lack of basic human rights let people flourish anyway, and become their own unique human beings? It was actually quite simple and maybe naive but I guess that’s the starting point when the conception of „the other“ deconstructs itself and you discover real people behind ideas.