In the Wake of the Halle Murders

Many in my Western German city are probably, like me, relieved to be at some distance from the young man who tried to gun down a synagogue. The East has long been known for poverty and trauma. Before the wall fell, the repressive regime did all it could to substitute itself for the family, and largely succeeded. The children and grandchildren of the former East Germany seem to fall prey to racist ideologies at a higher rate than they do where I live. 

Which is not to say that such problems don't exist where I live. I had thought of my city as freer of the tribal divisions afflicting the former East Germany, until a visiting pastor  mentioned the regular weekly prowl of neo-Nazis through a working class neighborhood. He told us that when his parish was preparing for a march on tolerance and acceptance, the neo-Nazis succeeded in blocking it, legally, as a "disturbance of the peace." Neo-Nazis are getting louder in a neighboring city. Another neighboring city is divided into Italian mafia, anti-Western Arab groups, and neo-Nazis. Each of these tribes offers something that feels like family. A neo-Nazi group is nothing if not a substitute for a real family--and therein lies its unfortunate source of power. Try persuading a young man who likes to wear a uniform and carry a stick that better, more satisfying things exist in life than a selfie portraying his boot on the neck of a refugee. 

My children came home from Gymnasium with a few stories. A girl who'd decided to wear a hijab was told it "didn't go" with the uniform required for choir, and she couldn't wear it to performances. The instructor in question got told off by other students, was pressured into apologizing, but the girl apparently quit choir, not wanting to belong to a group led by someone with that teacher's attitude toward her religious identity. Another student from an African nation was asked--by a different instructor-- if she could since a song "in African." This teacher--who has a Ph.D.--referred to Africa as "a country," even when students remonstrated, and when the student whom she'd asked to sing pointed out that she did not speak the language in the song. 
These students did not complain. The teacher is the teacher. Or maybe the students feel they have to put up with these incidents, that they should not make trouble. I think we should all talk more. I know the teachers, know they probably have no idea how much their words hurt. I doubt they remember offending. 

Speaking as a teacher, I would advise any young student who has experienced a moment of mindless racism--which is about how I'd classify these incidents--from a teacher to write up the incident with their own interpretation of it and with pointed, but friendly, suggestions to remedy the problem.