Learning to be critical of racism

The grandmother of French author Alexandre Dumas was a black slave from Haiti. The great-grandfather of the Russian author Alexander Pushkin was deported to Russia as a slave from Eritrea. So both were people of color. Would you have known? I've only just learned that. How do such blind spots arise in our cultural socialization?

For three days, 15 people talked about racism, tolerance, whiteness and child development. The participants were lecturers at Waldorf colleges, members of the Pädagogische Forschungsstelle (Pedagogical Research Center), authors, members of the “Zukunft.Machen” project and myself. We were led by two trainers from Phoenix e.V., a Berlin-based association that has been offering anti-racism training for around 40 years. We had been invited by the Pädagogische Forschungsstelle beim Bund der Freien Waldorfschulen (Pedagogical Research Centre at the Association of Waldorf Schools Germany), which is currently working on updating the curriculum for Waldorf schools, including the revision of history lessons in the spirit of decolonization or the replacement of discriminatory or racist readings, for example in English lessons.

In the course of the workshop, we participants were gently but firmly introduced to some of the wounds. For example, we were confronted with figures that many of us were not yet familiar with. Such as the genocide of Africans by European kings and colonial rulers, for example the Maafa in the Congo, where an estimated 10 million people were murdered within 23 years.

Racism in children's media

And we learned that in almost every episode of the popular children's radio play series TKKG, the mostly male perpetrators are foreigners. That many children's books in Germany still portray African people as living in huts and wearing bamboo skirts. Tintin in the Congo is full of racist stereotypes and may date back to the 1920s, but it is still widely bought and read today. A low point for me in my engagement with children's books was the picture book Der kleine schwarze König (The Little Black King) by Bernhard Langenstein from 2007, in which the narrative occurs that the dark-skinned King Balthazar gets white palms after touching the cheeks of the newborn baby Jesus. What incredible arrogance!

«Race doesn´t exist, but it does kill people»

Race is not a biological concept, but a sociological one. It is a construction that helps people to legitimize violence and power. The French sociologist Colette Guillaumin once said «Race doesn't exist, but it does kill people.» Since the beginning of colonialism in the 15th century, it has become increasingly true that people are racially discriminated against and killed because of their skin color. In Germany, too, numerous people of color have been murdered for racial reasons in recent years, most recently last year the mother of six Yazy Almiah from Syria, who died after an arson attack on a refugee shelter.

When researchers discovered the ruins of a huge stone-built city in what is now Zimbabwe in the 19th century, they were convinced that it could never have been built by black people. It might have been the Greeks or other white people. Their idea was that of course only white people would have had the competence to have accomplished such architectural wonders.

If today's kindergarten children are asked which doll is smarter, the light-skinned or the dark-skinned one, they often answer that it is the white one – and vice versa, the one that is punished more often is the dark-skinned one. So we don't seem to be far away from the narrative of the inferiority of people of color – even though all colonies are now independent countries again.

«I am not racist»

«We are all human beings, and for me all people are really the same, I don't even see the color of their skin». I later spoke to another participant about this statement made by an acquaintance of hers. Is such an attitude naive? Or is it really possible? Some of the men in our group also made similar comments at the beginning. Are women more sensitive to racism because they have often experienced discrimination themselves as women?

Being white

Most white people do not realize that they are white. But whiteness is a place and state of structural advantage and privilege, a place that is invisible, yet sets norms and defines society. Can white people deconstruct whiteness? What is left of them then? How do we all deal with our children, what do we pass on to them of what lives in us through narratives in books, films, series and music videos – often unconsciously absorbed?

Shock

One participant was very shocked by some of the information we received during the seminar. «I am so shocked by the information that has been withheld from us. We learn about the Holocaust at school, but I was not even aware of the many genocides against the Natives in Australia, America or Africa,» said the 40-year-old.

Role play

The trainer places two chairs in the middle of the room, one with a sticky note saying «There are races of people» and the other with the sentence «There are no races of people». In very quick succession, we are asked to sit on a chair and explain the respective statement to our counterpart. Everyone who took part was amazed at themselves afterwards. It was more comfortable to sit on the «There are races of people» chair and everyone was able to come up with lots of untruths, propaganda and lies. On the other chair, we felt more helpless, more speechless, more insecure. How can this happen to us as a group that largely describes itself as non-racist?

Urgent need for prospective teachers

Dr. Tatjana Pavlov-West took part in the workshop as a lecturer at a university where Waldorf teachers are trained. Among other things, she is a lecturer in English methodology at the Freie Hochschule Stuttgart. She said that we must learn to think, speak and act in an anti-racist way, especially in educational institutions, in order to create a space in which all students and pupils, regardless of skin color, origin, religion or sexual orientation, feel treated equally. «According to the Stuttgarter Erklärung (Declaration from Stuttgart), Waldorf Schools against Racism and Discrimination, we at Waldorf institutions are committed to diversity and tolerance and speak out clearly against any form of discrimination. However, to ensure that this does not remain just empty phrases, anti-racism training should become a compulsory part of teacher training. We must devote sufficient time to this topic in order to sensitize future teachers to various forms of discrimination. This is the only way we can guarantee that this awareness lives on in schools and that a safe learning environment is created for all students.»

Conclusion

«It was scary for me to realize that the mere absence of POC in my childhood and youth had already shaped me in a racist way», summed up a 35-year-old participant. Over the course of the training, we had created a “sun of racism”: around 40 terms that we associated with racism. This sun obviously shines on all of us and we also pass on this racism non-verbally, even if we seem to be “only” gripping the child walking by our hand tighter when a group of Sinti and Roma come towards us, for example. «I want to get rid of my racism», said one participant, «I just don't know how my head is supposed to reach my emotional life». We all can't help the way we have been racialized - so how can we break out of the spiral? The American philosopher Angela Davis once said «It's not enough not to be racist, we have to be anti-racist». I returned to the editorial office from Bonn with this in mind.