Fighting Für Perception

 

 Fighting Für Perception 

An activist messaged me early this morning. They asked my opinion on Germany's latest buzzword. A few years ago it was integration, then wahlen, klima, warntag for honorable mention, after came the infamous ausländer raus and now it's Stadtbild. There is a demo today and I guess they wanted my own sound bite about it. Well, all I could say was Basquiat's radiant child and crowned king of the common men slogan is SAMO. It is indeed the same ole in Germany. A whole lot of people who are far removed and doing nothing keep pushing the narrative and asking the hit dogs to holler on their take. Well I feel the same way when I walk at a normal pace yet a German angrily rushes by. Why should I question or concern myself with their rude loss of all sense of personal space when they pass. The same way in which a person revs their engine, Tokyo drifting past just for you both to end up at the same stoplight in perfect unison. So why should I put myself out there for crowds of ambivalence. I am just voluntarily subjecting myself to tired feet and Covid. Nothing changes here ever even the sentiments that surround change when it comes to people actively changing the racial climate. 

I wish it was easy to call them all crisis actor but It is way more nuanced than that. There will be the usual suspects. Students of life who pay less than 3k€ for a masters in psychology. The hippies that still gather their hemp reusable bags when I stand near them on a train. The abandoned single mothers who take out their aggression on child free Black women who appear to be enjoying their freedom and or youth. Their half Black children peering out from underneath them looking at me in fear because the "Schwarzermann" is realized. They too will grow up to be those in the crowd fighting an unknown oppression. The kind they  have only read about in books but feel they are experiencing in real time. There will be the old liberal who clutches their pearls too but they have conservative views with lib leaning hearts. I mean I get their stance more than the young folk, these for all type benefits affect them more than any demographic. The assimilated others will be down there too. POC’s vote for the AfD so rightly so they belong there down to counter the narrative. They are there not because they care that our own chancellor thinks their existence is a an eyesore just like an altkleidung box. No, they are there because to be German is to go to a weekend demo between a Turkish brunch and a Korean fried chicken dinner. But they aren't ruining the Stadtbild it's the Africans or the Kurds not them!? Not the better Africans and the hoch Deutsch speaking Kurds.

Seriously, I don't have a poker face good enough to stand among a privileged anti-mob to fight for something as petty as perception. It looks bad I know. Not the elderly suffering isolation, not the alt right steadily kindling a dull flame, not the homeless day drinkers who can't go camping because of legalities, not those floating skirts in the train station doing magic with unpaid baby formula and dishwasher tabs. No, it's us in the offices at the start ups, us turning the beds inside your hotels, members of a FLINTA group having intellectual banter while crossing through a park or best yet my mother eating a brötchen while using self checkout at Marktkauf while two idle cashiers question why she didn't drop off her bakery tüten at Customer Service if she didn't want to be accused of stealing. Yeah we are making things really difficult to ahem see. Picture is clear to me as it has been every day since I arrived in Germany. Words change, sentiments too, as well as parties and fraktions but the perception never does. Sorry but I personally will not stand, march, fight for those ignorant people including our chancellor to see us differently.