Dutch | Moroccan
I identify as an Afrodiasporic German-European. My Mother is Cameroon (Bassa), and my Father is German with partly Polish ancestor. They met during their studies in Germany. I would not say that they blended their cultures. My parents are divorced, so I always switched between German native and German-immigrant culture and unfortunately could drastically witness how much easier life is for native people, while they do not even acknowledge that.
My greatest challenge was to deconstruct and unlearn taught beliefs on race, and still recognize how race as a concept still affects my lived experience. Racial categories simply do not include mixed people, and since we exist, our sheer existence is a deconstruction of a concept that was created to place Whiteness above. It has put me in an identity crisis when I lived in the USA and was treated as part of the country. I asked myself how it was possible that when I was an actual foreigner I was included more and treated better (as a Black person in the USA!) than all my life in my native country Germany? I asked myself how I can be born in Germany, have a German passport and I'm even of ‘German ethnicity’, and still have had my high school teacher refer to me not by my name but by ‘unsere Ausländerin’ (our foreigner)? Only now that I live in my fourth country (The Netherlands) I have developed a cosmopolitan identity and being considered somewhat foreign now actually matches how I feel, and I am much happier feeling cosmopolitan than single-cultured.
When I was younger, I hated being half Black because I had internalized racism and wanted to be as White as the others, so I stopped behavior that was associated with Black and immigrant culture. When I was older, I hated myself because I realized that as much as I suffered from colonialism on a historical sense, I as a half German personally also benefit from it as half of me (Cameroon) has been colonized by the other (Germany), so I stopped acting White-German.
My role model is Wilfried Schlüter, he is a former law professor, was a refugee during WW2 and used to baby sit me when I was younger. If someone remembers a child sitting in the first row of family law lectures, who -God forbid- would even ‘participated’ in the lectures, that was me! I like him a lot because he is sharp-minded, kind-hearted, and holds the same believes on the dangers of ethno-nationalism as me. When I'm old, I want to be like him.
Experiencing racism and sexism simultaneously makes me aware of inequalities and made me good at identifying power structures, also when they are in my favor like in colorism or cis-heteronormativity. I like critical thinking and contrasting with how most people who dare to declare their experience of the world as universal makes it way easier for me to compare it with my experience and to therefore detect that most things are constructed and not objectively ‘true’. I think it would have been very hard for me to have a good understanding of constructed power dynamics, if I would not have experienced intersectional marginalization and would be able to compare dynamics in racism with those of sexism.
Family ties loosen, we still Facetime and exchange pictures on WhatsApp. Unfortunately, the only common language we speak is French, but my French skills could... improve (which makes communication hard). And though I know it has a completely different implication than when my White family refers to me as Black, it still stings my heart when I remember my Grandmother saying, ‘I really have a White girl in my family’, because it was said with pride.
When I was younger I thought I needed to decide and I explain myself to people who question my identity, attempt to strip my identity away from me or give me one I don't have. Now when someone asks me I just say what I feel like and if they don't understand it I do not bother finding a comprehensible explanation anymore. I cannot foresee the future so I can't make an assumption on that.
I had my first female mixed-race teacher in the Netherlands (a medical doctor who held a lecture). I think that this was possible for me as most Black people in med school are still half White in the end (medical school is very exclusive and most people who get in are extremely privileged and mostly White).
It's not really ‘my culture’ but I try to live up to debunk as much discriminatory beliefs that fund systemic oppression as possible as part of my ‘German heritage’. I know part of my family were Nazis and as part of my heritage I see it as a duty to hold against the ideologies my ancestors fought for. And I wished more Germans would acknowledge that their family members were if not active then silent and complicit Nazis and would understand the importance of not being a silent but complicit bystander when facing discrimination. And for my Black part I started braiding my hair and I also do my Moms' hair, which is a nice bonding experience. I also like cooking African dishes and listening to Black music.
My lectures were online, and I had fewer social contacts than I wanted to. Therefore, I became a board member of a local Black women's organization, which, besides learning how to design Instagram posts, has helped me a lot in my identity formation by exploring my Blackness as I was now part of a group in which I had to differ by more than just being a Black woman. Being in that space allowed me to be a whole person.
The last time I cried was some days ago during a 10-year anniversary event of a scholarship program I participated in. A singer, who was also a scholarship holder, sang the song ‘Nie wieder leise’ (Never silent again) by Celina Bostic, which is about how ‘we’ (meaning Bipocs in Germany) used to always swallow everything bad that has been said about us and how we will no longer be silent. The line that made me cry was ‘I used to look for false friends who would not understand anything and who would make jokes at my cost’, because it reminded me of the many times I thought I was friends with and trusted a person, who eventually would not defend me when I would experience degradation or would even agree with the racists remarks made. Unfortunately, this happens in my White family as well. For example, my Grandparents don't really believe that racism exists and e.g., would advise me to have patience with racists instead of condemning their malicious actions. Though after all that the let downs I experienced, I thought I would never trust again. But I know all of my friends know of the importance of solidarity as they have experienced some form of marginalization as well and can therefore somehow relate to my experiences. But just as said in the song, I will now no longer seek validation from people and accommodate myself for them, because I no longer care anymore if I'm being validated by someone just because they are white. I cannot change my family, but I will now tell them what they make me feel like, and I start to see a change.