Multi-cultural discussion

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What an awesome class today. The theme was Multi-cultural society. We talked about what culture was, what made a society multi-cultural and whether we thought Germany was a multi-cultural society. We talked a lot about foriegn workers in Germany and how the Germans feel about foriegners. During the 60s, 70s there was more work than there were German workers, so Germany advertised in Turkey and Italy for 'Gastarbeiter' (guest workers). Of course a lot of them came, especially a lot from Turkey. In the early 1990s, when the wall fell, there was an anti-foriegner mentality that came from East-Germany. During that time, there was a lot of violence aimed at foriegners. In responce, there was a lot of advertising and so forth to promote tolerance. We looked at one such advertisement today and I absolutely loved it:

Your Christianity Jewish
Your Car Japanese
Your Pizza Italian
Your Democracy Greek
Your Vacation Turkish
Your Numbers Arabic
Your Writing Italian

And your neighbor is only a foriegner?

It really calls attention to the fact that we all draw from one another. We have no problem taking what we want from other cultures and countries, but still we view the foriegner with distain and misunderstanding. In reality we're all the same. I also really liked this one:

Every person is a foriegner -- almost everywhere

Anywhere but in our own country we're foriegners and can be in the same situtation as a foriegner in our country if we travel. We continued on the topic of discrimination against foriegners and the fear of foriegners in Germany (during different times in more recent history) and why that might be.

After our break we watched a great short film, 'Der Schwarzfahrer' (The Black Rider) by Pepe Danquart. It was filmed in 1992 and recieved an Oscar in 1994 for best short film. In German a 'Schwarzfahrer' is a person that rides the bus or train without having bought a ticket. A 'schwarz Fahrer' is a black person riding the bus or train. The movie began by showing a german trying to start his motorcycle. Of course it wouldn't. So, he took the bus (without buying a ticket). A black man got on the bus and asked an old woman if the seat next to her was free. She glared at him, looked him up and down and then ignored him. He then sat next to her and was very polite in doing so. She then began to complain about all the foriegners in Germany and how they were taking away german jobs, making the streets unsafe, living off of German tax payers money and so forth. The entire time the black man sat looking out the window not responding to any of it. The other passengers either looked away and pretened to ignore her or responded slightly to what she was saying. She continued to belittle foriegners, especially those from Turkey, Italy, Polen and Africa. She went on and on about how Germany should get rid of them all and she could hardly tell what country she was in anymore. At one of the stops the 'Kontroller' (person that checks for tickets) got on the bus. The old woman was still talking about how bad foriegners were as she dug in her purse for her ticket. The black man still sat quietly next to her eating chips (or whatever he had with him) and pulled out his ticket. Suddenly he reached over, grabbed the ticket out of her hand and stuffed it in his mouth and ate it. Of course when the 'Kontroller' got to her, she told him that the man ate her ticket. He didn't believer and again the other passengers remained silent. The next stop the old woman had to get off with the 'Kontroller', 'cause she was now the 'Schwarzfahrer'.

There's more to the film that I can't possibly get all of it down here. There's lots of little things that are going on on the bus that are important. If you ever get a chance to see the film, do. It's only about 15 min. long. Not only was it a commentary on the stereotypes of foriegners but also on the passivity of the others around the lady and the black man. They saw an injustice being done, first by the lady injustly putting down all foriegners and then by the man eating her ticket, and yet no one said or did anything. In doing nothing, they became one of the offenders. It really was a very very interesting film.

After we talked about the film we then broke up into two different groups and debated about whether a multi-cultural society was good or bad. Coming from the US my opinion was of course it's good (I'm still of that opinion). It, however, was quite interesting to hear the arguments against a multi-cultural society from the students from France and Denmark. Both are societies that are very mono-cultural. Coming from a country where multi-cultures is the norm it really never entered my mind that people would object to others bringing their own cuture with them into another country. To hear arguments (and rather good ones) for total assimilation into the host-culture, was neat. Mortan, from Denmark, brought up the very good point that countries that are mono-cultural don't have the same conflicts between cultural groups that say the US has between Whites and Blacks, Whites and Mexicans and so forth. Or the problems that Iraq has between the two religious groups (which is also a big part of culture). I had never thought about those problems as being an argument against multi-cultural societies, but rather just part of the process of people of different beliefs and practices living together. Needless to say it was a very thought provoking day (and a difficult one... try expressing ideas surrounding this topic in a foriegn language... was challenging, but fun)

Well, I should get going now... still have to go shopping before I meet my group. We're going to a restaurant for dinner tonight =) Ciao!

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