Today we are talking about a children's playground in Berlin Mitte, the Volkspark Friedrichshain. Racism is still trivialized in various ways today, both intentionally and unintentionally. This leads us to normalize violent expressions or games. Those affected experience microaggressions. Here are examples of what this can look like:
- Denial: Some people simply deny the existence of racism or claim it's not a big problem.
- Trivialization: Some people acknowledge that racism exists, but play down its significance. This can include the assertion that racist incidents are only isolated cases.
- Blaming the victim: Some people blame the victims of racism for their own mistreatment, claiming that they are oversensitive or that they are responsible for their own oppression.
- Stereotyping: Some people rely on stereotypes and assumptions about racial groups. This may include the assumption that all members of a particular group share certain characteristics or that certain racialized groups are inherently inferior or superior.
Now let's get into the subject:
First question:
What is a tipi village?
Maybe you know them from old or not so old cowboy movies... Right?
Well, indigenous peoples have many different ways of life. They have a rich and diverse indigenous culture with a history that goes back thousands of years. One of these many ways of life are the tipi villages. This generalization leads to indigenous peoples being perceived as a homogeneous group. This is also often done with the African continent. As a black person, you are too often asked: "Do you speak African?". Do people in Europe speak European? Not really, do they?
Back to the playground: To understand the colonial continuity of the playground, we should go back to the racial theory of Carl von Linnaeus from 1835, in which he divided the human race into the white, red, yellow and black races.
The red race were indigenous people who, according to his teachings, were supposedly "wild and uncivilized". All three races were defined as mentally underdeveloped. And this is where it gets interesting, because now the comparison with children comes into play. Because how exactly do children behave in a playground: wild, loud and uncivilized. Or do they?
So this seemingly harmless playground suddenly becomes quite violent, because it reproduces the image of an alleged inferiority of indigenous people by equating them with children.
Another example: This song Cowboy and Ind**** is sung during carnival time in Germany and at the latest, that's when the game is played. Guess who usually wins: the cowboy or?
In reality, this "game" that was played was genocide. European settlers killed not 1, 2 or 5 million, but 56 million indigenous people over the course of about 100 years in South, Central and North America.
The problem with racism is that it is trivialized so well that it appears completely harmless in the eyes of people who do not belong to the group in question. It is important to recognize these forms of trivialization of racism and actively work against them in order to effectively deconstruct racism and promote equality and justice for all.