Recently I wrote about the dream of Udo Ulfkotte, Thilo Sarrazin, Horst Seehofer and others of an "ethnically unified" (i.e. aryan) Germany. It is only a matter of time before talented "foreigners" get sick of the eternal "integration debate' or the primacy of the "Deutsche Leitkultur" (primary culture) and start voting with their feet. Who wants to hear over and over that they don't do enought to "fit in" to rigid social norms? Or when even the chancellor says on national television that "multiculturalism is dead" in Germany? WHy should they have to listen to a best-selling author tell the world that they have low IQs, that they are not suited for knowledge-driven economy?
Sueddeutsche Zeitung (via Politblogger) has a good article on the exodus of talented young people with Turkish bacground from Germany:
Auch Karatas und Ahmet sahen sich in Deutschland, dem Land in dem sie aufwuchsen, immer wieder mit Ablehnung konfrontiert. "Ich habe erlebt, dass meine Familie eine Wohnung nicht mieten durfte, weil wir Türken waren. In der Schule musste ich mich immer dafür rechtfertigen, überhaupt das Abitur zu wollen", sagt Ahmet.
"Obwohl ich als Akademikerin sicher mehr über deutsche Geschichte und Kultur weiß als viele Deutsche, hält sich der Penner auf der Straße, der kaum drei zusammenhängende Sätze formulieren kann, für etwas Besseres – für mich ist das ein Indikator für das allgemeine fremdenfeindliche Klima", sagt Karatas. In der Türkei wird um ihre Herkunft weniger Aufheben gemacht. "
(Karatas and Ahmet were constantly confronted with rejection in Germany, the country they grew up in. "I saw how my family couldn't rent an apartment because we were Turkish. In school I always had to justify why I wanted to pursue the Abitur," Ahmet says.
"Even though I have a university degree and know more about German history and culture than most Germans, any bum on the street that can't put together three sentences thinks he is better – for me that is an indication of a climate hostility towards foreigners," says Karatas, In Turkey no one makes a big deal about her background.
Being smart, fluent in German, and ambitious is not enough, evidently. These young people would apparently have to take on "ethnic German" names, dye their hair, renounce their religion, and obiliterate every evidence of their heritage if they want to "integrate" according to the requirements of politicians like Horst Seehofer:
Während die Wirtschaft sich also noch um die Zuwanderung von Fachkräften sorgt, CSU-Chef Seehofer keine Arbeitskräfte mit fremdem kulturellen Hintergrund mehr will und die Koalition über ein Punktesystem für Einwanderer nachdenkt, entwickelt sich Deutschland still und heimlich zum Auswanderungsland. Nach Angaben des Statistischen Bundesamts lag die Zahl der Türken, die Deutschland verließen, im Jahr 2008 bei etwas mehr als 34.800, nach Deutschland zogen im gleichen Jahr nur 26.600.
(While business is trying to generate an influx of qualified workers, CSU leader Seehofer doesn't want any moe workers with foreign cultural backgrounds and the coalition is considering a "point system" for immigrants. Germany is becoming a country of emigration. According the Office of Federal Statistics, the number of Turks who left Germany in 2008 was over 34,800, while only 26,600 came to Germany that year. )
Angela Merkel is correct: multiculturalism is dead. And the country is worse off because of it.
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This is an aspect I have wondered about since the public climate changed so dramatically: How long do they stomach this change?
They surely must feel extremely unwelcome by the time. If the well educated ones leave, this would indeed be a shame.
Yes I know you won’t believe I mean it this way, but I do.
I do think that immigrants should be able to gain their place here – only I would demand a whole lot more from them than you would.
For example:
I cannot see why they should not give their children German names. This would accelerate the process of assimilation considerably.
Also secularism is a reality here. People who allow their religion to influence all their aspects of daily life are (rightly) considered to be odd today.
Really, the Germans love to pat themselves on the back about their wondrous cultural norms. And a lot of them don’t mind expressing racial ideas that would make a Southern Cracker blush.
I couldn’t believe how I was treated in Berlin because people mistook me for a Turk. It was crude beyond belief: being followed around in stores, shouted at by a museum guard, glared at by passersby on the street, and so on… just the everyday crap I imagine any person of color puts up with in at least Northern Germany. And I’m not even a person of color, just tanned from living in Hawaii. East Indian friends of mine corroborate my feeling that Germans are hostile to dark-skinned people. They got the treatment all the time in Berlin and found it exhausting.
And I think telling people they ought to change their names in order to fit in is offensive and disrespectful of others.
@Hattie,
How did this experience differ from Switzerland?
Many people there are darker, so I don’t stand out as looking different. I was never hassled there. Remember those Roman legions?
It always pays to speak English and not German, too, I’ve discovered. That way I’m not identified as an immigrant but as an American. A lot of my friends did that when they shopped on Bahnhofstrasse, even if they spoke Swiss or German, because they got better service.
But my East Indian friend, who lived in Switerland when she was younger, as well as in Berlin, was constantly propositioned in downtown Zurich, the premise being that dark-skinned women were prostitutes.
This is street level stuff, of course, and I imagine all kinds of people have all kinds of good experiences in Germany and Switzerland. Good friends and career satisfaction and all that.