5. Hello, White People! Hello, World!

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, I'm Barraitune Day and welcome to We're Having a Moment,
a limited podcast series where I try to make sense
of this defining moment around race and policing in the
United States. If you have thoughts you want to share
with me about this series, hit me up on my
community text number two oh two eight nine four eight
eight four four. Just send a text with the word

(00:23):
wham w h a M in the body and consider
signing up for my email newsletter at barraitune day dot
com or on any social media account where you can
find a Barratune Day probably me. This is episode five,
Hello White People, Hello world. Remember team sports pre pandemic

(00:43):
activity involving groups of people working in close proximity to
achieve a common goal. Sometimes involves concussions, sometimes involves personal
growth and development, just depends on the sport. I've been
thinking about team sports a lot lately, and not just
because I miss watching them on TV, but because I

(01:04):
feel like the metaphor works for who's participating in this moment.
What makes this moment feel different from others. I'm used
to a certain player on the field when it comes
to defending black lives, and that player is black, But
I'm seeing a lot of white people show up in

(01:24):
more expansive, sometimes more clumsy, more eager ways than usual.
Let's take protests. I'm pretty sure the color palette of
those showing up to these protests this summer are much
wider and whiter than usual. The people who are calling
city halls and lobbying for changes to policy are not

(01:45):
just black activists on the ground. There white people who
have been waking up trying to get involved. The folks
removing statues of Confederate losers, and it's important to remind
usselves that they lost, and we don't generally celebrate losers.
The folks taking those statues down aren't just black people

(02:06):
or indigenous people. They're white people. And the folks defending
the takedowns are not just black. I see you, Taylor
Swift out there with the cogent argument on Twitter for
why we need to remove these statues in your home
state of Tennessee. I saw Taylor Swift tweet that, and

(02:27):
I retweeted it, and I still can't believe that I
live in a world where I retweeted Taylor Swift on
the subject of white supremacy because her stance was so dope,
more of that, please. We've seen this movement called past
the mic online and on social media where famous white people,
folks with large followings literally pass their accounts over two

(02:50):
less famous people of color with something to say. And
we've seen a series of cancelations. Of course, rest in peace, cops,
after decades of dehumanizing black people, you can finally retire,
hopefully no pension for the show. Rest in Peace, ant Jemima,

(03:10):
after decades of dehumanizing black people, you got to go
and you're gone. And the one I did not see
coming rest in peace Confederate flag at NASCAR events, What, Yeah,
I didn't see that. When coming something is different, you
hear what I'm saying. I've heard a lot of companies

(03:33):
issuing statements, shoe companies, makeup companies, hair gel companies issuing
statements and support of black lives. Now, some of that
is a performance, some of that is pr pressure, but
still it's different. What's more valuable than those statements are

(03:53):
the companies that are going farther and pledging to change
the makeup of their upper management, of their board, of
how they make their products and deliver their services. That
is more meaningful. With the commitment to an anti racist
organization and the use of one's own power to create
more good in the world and more equity in the world.

(04:14):
And this is beyond anecdotal. I I know there was
a lot of reading during this pandemic about how to
make sour dope bread, but the numbers are written now
and some of the top selling books in this country
are things like White Fragility by Robin D'Angelo and How
to Be an Anti Racist by Ibrahm X Kendy, And
I think it's a lot of white people buying those books.

(04:35):
And on a personal note, I've been getting a lot
of texts from my white friends, just checking in seeing
how I'm doing, seeing if maybe I can help them
out with a statement or an education. And maybe there's
people who got my number because I gave it out
at the top of a very public podcast. Can't entirely
blame them. This feels different, and yet it reminded me

(04:58):
of something I had heard before. I had to go
way back to nineteen sixty seven and reread the words
of doctor Martin Luther King Junior, who wrote in nineteen
sixty seven in the book Where Do We Go From Here?
The following paragraph. In spite of the hard reality that

(05:18):
many blatant forms of injustice could not exist without the
acquiescence of white liberals, the fact remains that a sound
resolution of the race problem in America will rest with
those white men and women who consider themselves as generous
and decent human beings. Edmund Burke said on one occasion,
when evil men combine, good men must unite. This is

(05:43):
the pressing challenge confronting the white liberal. When evil men plot,
good men must plan. When evil men burn in balm,
good men must build and bind. When evil men conspire
to preserve an unjust status quo, good men must unite
to bring about the earth of a society undergirded by justice.

(06:03):
Nothing can be more detrimental to the health of America
at this time than for liberals to sink into a
state of apathy and indifference. MLK still bringing it, still
got it, still got the words for the moment, so
many moments after his own moment. And it feels to
me like the white liberal And I take that not

(06:24):
as a political designation, but as a state of mind,
someone who sees themselves as generous and decent, that the
white liberal King wrote about, has at least in part,
maybe temporarily a little bit gotten the message, and that's great.
That has helped me feel less alone. That has helped

(06:47):
so many of us feel less alone, because the hard
truth is, we will not bring it into systemic racism
by the efforts of black people alone, Indigenous people alone,
are people of color alone. We're gonna need white people,
just as we are not going to dismantle systemic misogyny

(07:09):
and sexism by the efforts of women alone. We men
need to be a part of that too. So it
brings me a level of gratitude and joy and shock
and a little hesitation, but mostly joy when I see
so many white people in America showing up for black lives,

(07:29):
and I want to acknowledge that that is a key
part of how I've been thinking about this moment, that
we're not alone in the moment. But it's not just
white people in America showing up. That has made me

(07:51):
feel less alone and been a sign of solidarity. To
quote the Star Wars franchise, there is another, and that
other is the whole rest of the world. We have
seen the whole world show up in this moment physically
take to the streets in this moment in solidarity with

(08:13):
the Black Lives Matter moment and movement in the US.
I've seen it on various TV channels and all kinds
of social media feeds. I'm talking about rallies in London, UK,
in Lagos, Nigeria, Mexico City, Auckland, New Zealand, where I
saw people perform the powerful hakka dance of the indigenous
Maori people. I still get emotional when I think about it,

(08:37):
and definitely when I hear it. But these demonstrations haven't
just been about solidarity with us in the US. It's
also been about the fight for black lives in each
of those countries, especially the European countries. It turns out
I know some black people in Europe. Yeah, and you're

(08:58):
gonna meet one of them very soon. Truly, my favorite
part of making this show has been the ability to
hopefully introduce you to voices that you haven't heard from before,
Voices like Diana Arcy. Diana is a Black Latin ex
Alaskan born artists and researcher who's been living in Berlin
since two thousand four. She's the founder of this political

(09:22):
nonprofit speech Karaoke Bar it's called politico Key. She also
created and directs Artists Without a Cause. That's a nonprofit
that supports and researches arts and activism and the intersection
of those two. She also, because she's mad Busy, created
something called the White Guilt clean Up Project, and you

(09:44):
should just google that one. Google white Guilt clean up
and see what you get back. I last saw Diana
in person in Berlin in the summer of almost exactly
one year ago today. Remember when the e let Americans
in That was nice. At the time, Diana was explaining

(10:06):
to me the situation of black people in Germany and
the Black Lives Matter work that she was helping organize there. Yes,
there is a Black Lives Matter organization in Berlin. So
for this episode, I knew I needed to talk with
Diana about this moment we're in right now. We spoke
via Skype because honestly, I just need a break from Zoom. Okay, So,

(10:30):
the Black Lives Matter movement in Berlin actually started, uh
four years ago, and there was the first Black Lives
Matter protesting was the first one, and um and that
was primarily the first very first one was primarily about
police fire from the US that was started by an American.
The first one was produced by an American. And basically

(10:53):
we've been having the same problems as black people here. Um,
but it's even worse because there's been a loose and
even among Germans that black people are not German and
there are no black people here unless they're migrants or
their expats. And so there's a long history and like
Afro Germans going back five six hundred years and they've

(11:14):
been completely erased from uh, from everything, from all of society.
So there's this level of in this invisibility that black
Germans suffered that are like suffer under and um. And
then there's this feeling from from like the dominant German
society that we dealt with the Holocaust. So we're good,

(11:36):
we don't see color and everything, it's fine, but when
we look at police violence, when we look at deaths
in custody, it's the majority of it is our black
people and it's it's black people or or poscs. And
we just had on the eighteen what was the eighteenth
of June, we have a black Moroccan man who was
murdered by the police. He was apparently brandishing a knife

(11:57):
and he was shot in the back by police. So
every year we have one of these stories come up and, um,
there's another black man in Germany, Orrijala was murdered in
two thousand and five. Well, the police won't say he's murdered,
and officially, by law, I cannot say he's murdered. Um,
but he was cancuffed to a mattress on the floor

(12:21):
of of a cell and according to the police, he
lit himself on fire and committed suicide on a flameproof
mattress with no actual he had nothing on him. He
was in custody, and rather than looking into it, the
local government and ZAC none had, they decided to to
basically right off the investigation and say we're no longer

(12:44):
going to investigate this anymore. That's from two thousand and five.
So people been fighting since two thousand and five to
get this investigated, and we just we continually have these incidences.
But whenever something pops off in the US, what you
end up having here you have the white majority jumping
up and saying racism is such a horrible thing, so
bad it's going on in the United States. But then
you have black people here who are like great that

(13:07):
you think that racing is so bad in the United States.
It's actually really really bad. You're two and we're dying
here and we're also taking police violent. That's thank you
for giving that context and actually want to stay in
the context of the history first before we continue to
what's going on today. So you're describing events over the
past fifteen years. You've been living in Germany for sixteen years.

(13:29):
What is your connection to enroll within Black Lives Matter?
And what are the primary sort of focal points of
Black Lives Matter in Berlin? To think about anti racism
or racism itself, we are fighting in a way that
people in the United States had to fight a hundred
years ago. So there's a denial about what is racist.
There's a denial to anything that can be construed a

(13:50):
structural racism, and that goes all the way through the
entire government. There's a lack of services. We're literally a
hundred years behind. It's kind of hard to describe, but
one of my even examples to sort of talk about
when I'm talking to other American activists that are in
the United States is like we can't even get them
to accept that the N word is a derogatory term.
So UM. One anecdotal example is I was actually involved

(14:15):
in shadowing a court case where a guy with a
Nazi tattoo that apparently wasn't visible when the black person
got attacked was screaming the N word and trying to
hit a black person with a ball. But because we
couldn't see the swastic tattoo when the violence happened, it
wouldn't get tried as a hate crime because the N
word isn't a racial slur. So we have that as

(14:39):
an issue. We have, you know, when they use the
word race in Germany, when they use the word lessa,
it's so loaded with the Holocaust that currently there's this
thing called Laglund Gazettes, which is essentially like it's the
rights of all humans in Germany, and there is a rule,
an anti discrimination rule within this law that says that
you can't be discriminated against for sex. You it be

(15:00):
discriminated against for disabilities, you can't be discriminated for less of. Now,
what the German government is talking about is they want
to remove the word race from the Brune Gazettes, and
their feeling is if they remove the word race, then
we dealt with it and it's over. Well, yeah, I
mean if you don't have the word race, then you
can't have the word racism. So problem solved that that's

(15:23):
kind of it. And then but then they're like talking
about replacing it with other words. And then some of
the words they're talking about replacing it with or like
you know, ethnic background or like racial identity. There's all
these different words were coming up with. But basically all
it creates is like a legal whole in which you
can't actually sue, you can't actually see anyone for discrimination

(15:43):
based off of race, and it actually opens up another
hole potentially where we can actually be sued for reverse
racism depending on the words they choose to use. So
there is no concept of understanding of what the word
race means. There's no actual understanding what racism is. If
you imagine like Americans getting annoyed with the few times
they have to hear, oh, well, that's racist against white people.

(16:05):
We hear that here every day all the time, persistently
and constantly. We're trying to fight a battle that should
have already been dealt with when Germany was like, Okay,
we're no longer going to do these things anymore. So
so we have that we have the invisibility of black people.
We have the lack of Germany willing to deal with
this commonial past. They don't get educated in their colonialism.

(16:27):
There's an assumption from many Germans, white Germans, that Germany
had no colonies. They forget that the Berlin Conference happened here,
that the dividing up of Africa happened in Germany. Uh,
they don't know that the first concentration camps that were
ever created were created before World War One to exterminate
black people in Africa. So there's all this history. Even

(16:51):
when they talked about the slave trade, it's always spoken
about as if it was just the Dutch and the
Portuguese and the Spanish. But when you study German history
you find out, oh well, a lot of those Dutch
boats were financed by German businesses. You can find the
remnants of this stuff actually even here in Berlin, like
on buildings. So the history is all there, but there's

(17:13):
this unwillingness to deal with it, and there's this unwilling
to acknowledge it. So when they think about blackness or
black people, they speak about black people as if they
just come over just recently from the Mediterranean and so
it's kind of like a multi tiered issue because the
community itself is like we have black Germans, we have
black Europeans, then we have black Americans who are here,

(17:33):
and then we have you know, black Africans, and then
we have black refugees. And anti blackness is such a
big thing that hits so many different parts of our community,
and it doesn't ever seem that like we have the
numbers of like being a lot of people here because
there are no racialized statistics on anything. So the Buddhist
potat side the National Police Force put out a statement

(17:54):
a few years ago where they said there's no racial
profiling in Germany, and it was like, yeah, of course,
there's no racial profile. And if you keep zero statistics
on the race of the people that you stopped, we
we know what that is like. In the United States,
we have a president who thinks there is no COVID
if you don't test for COVID, So very familiar with
you with race. There is no racism because we have

(18:18):
no racialized statistics on anything, which they don't collect because
of their fear of when they did collect them in
the past. When we look at when they collected racialized
statistics that was pre Holocaust, so there's a spear of
doing it. But then it gives sort of black activists
here really very little leaks to stand on because we
have a lot of like anecdotal stuff and we're collecting

(18:39):
the statistics on our own. But then the government doesn't
want to take it seriously because it's not coming from them,
and is there any understanding because you know, we get
a version of the German story here. And I think
even of Brian Stevenson at the Equal Justice Initiative who
often highlights Germany's response to the end of World War

(19:00):
Two in the end of the Holocaust as a much
better version of reckoning with history, like you don't have
Nazi soldier statues the way we have Confederate statues, which
are increasingly coming down, but it's a much delayed thing.
So Germany is often held up as a particular example.
Merkel is held as an example of inviting of migrants

(19:20):
versus other Europeans, and then the EU in general seems
like an example of a better safety net and all
these things which feel so much more progressive and just
like snap your fingers, it's better, but you're coloring that
picture with a bit more nuanced for us. How do
you feel about that sort of Americanized version of Germany's

(19:42):
role around these issues of integration and justice with which
you know to be the deeper history and the current experience. Well,
we currently have a Minister of the Interior who said
that integrations failed, right, there is no real concept of
integration if you have fourth generation people, whether they're black
or whether there are other POC people that still aren't

(20:03):
considered by the larger society to be German despite the
fact that they've been four or five generations here, because
they don't look German um and I always like to
you know, and then this idea of the statutes are
coming down. Yeah, of course there's no Hitler statutes. That
we have statues and monuments and street names of the
people who murdered hundreds of thousands of Africans and their
colonies prior to worar One. Those street names still exists.

(20:27):
Activists here have been asking for over thirty years for
Germany to take these things down and they haven't taken
them down. You know, we got lucky last year where
they swapped like a few street names. We even have
a street in the middle of Berlin. That is another
word for the ed word, because there's multiple words for
the Edward here and the street is named that, and

(20:48):
black activists here have been asking for over thirty years,
can you please change the street name to just any
other name? And it's still not changed. There's a food
bamb station that's also has the big sign with the
name of the street on it. We call it ensas,
so we don't say the word. So we still have
all these remnants here that the German government doesn't want
to think about or doesn't want to look at. And
it's like, okay, if we look at the fact, Okay,

(21:11):
yes there were reparations paid to some Jewish families. Um,
there was some reckoning of these things, but at the
same time, there wasn't really a full recogning of it.
You know, if we go in the past and we
look at like who was running Germany after World War Two,
you know a lot of the people weren't that different.
And just because they chose to deal with this one issue,

(21:33):
this one group of people, doesn't mean that they didn't
continue to discriminate the other people that they were also
in turning and putting into concentration camps like Roma and
Sinti people, like black people, Armenian people. There are all
these other people that were also victims of the Holocaust.
They didn't get to see the same kind of like
reckoning as the Jewish community did because they were such

(21:54):
smaller groups. So on that side, it's like okay, yeah,
you know, you know. But then on the flip side, Okay,
we have socialized healthcare, we have really great gun control laws.
There's all these other mechanisms that are in place that
are quite good. So it is, you know, it is
definitely a lot easier to live here in the sense
of you don't have to worry about dying on the

(22:16):
street immediately. But we have records of neo Nazis who
who are in the police, you know, and if a
neo Nazi is in the police force, there's nothing we
can do about. There's no mechanisms in place that we
can fight that off with. And even the German government
and the police force itself, when they do find these people,
we find out that like, oh, they knew about this

(22:38):
for six months, seven months before they actually did something.
So the system of policing has been broken. Racial profiling
has been made legal in Berlin and actually German wide, Um,
we have this freedom of movement that's supposed to be
allowed throughout the European Union. According to like a high
case in the German version of the Supreme Court, a

(22:59):
black man try to take the police to court because
he said, you can't stop me for crossing the border
between Netherlands and Germany. And then the basis of the
police being able to stop him was it was based
off of his previous experience with stopping other people. And
the High Court agreed with the cops, so they basically
legalized racial profiling. All these things are becoming legal, and

(23:21):
they're basically spreading across the entire country. And because of that,
you know, on one hand, okay, maybe it's not as bad.
It's a lot easier to sort of to deal with
in the sense where it's like, we don't see people
being murdered by the police every day, but we still
see people being murdered by the police, and the people
who are being murdered are black people, in POC people.

(23:43):
And then in the European Union, you know, the European
Union is a complete joke. They put out a statement
that said, like their pro black lives matter, and like
that's really great that they wanted a virtue signal and
say black lives matter. That's great, But what about the
hundreds of thousands of black people who are dying in
the Mediterranean and trying to get over here. And the
reason why they're trying to get over here is because
their countries or where they come from have been so

(24:05):
destroyed by European imperialism and colonialism. That's the only reason
why they're coming here, because we destroyed their countries. So
they're coming here, and you puts out a statement saying great,
black lives matter. But at the same time, they're fighting
boats dinghies trying to come over from the Mediterranean, and
they're shipping people back to countries where they're probably going

(24:29):
to be killed. So you can't say black lives matter
and choose select and choose which black life matters in
that context. And so these are the kinds of things
that we're dealing with here where it's like it's very selective,
Like you know, there is a lot of like exceptionalism
where you know, this example of here's an example of

(24:50):
a great black person, and like this is what we
should all strive to be. But anyone who's not that
we don't care about their life. They don't matter. Yeah,
So so bring me up to date two late May,
early June, when on American TV sets we're seeing people

(25:10):
all over the world say Black Lives Matter, and you're
involved in that in Berlin. How did the demonstrations in
your city come to pass? Well, the very first demonstration
that happened, I guess it was like a few days
after George Floyd was murdered. Several like POC organizations were
in contact with different groups and they decided to hold

(25:31):
the very first demonstration, which had two thousand people, which
was really big for a Black Lives Matter demonstration. Is
that like every black person in Berlin or well, so
that's the things are, right. So then you have a
lot of white people showing up, and it's great that
they're showing up, but it's also very dangerous when they
show up, because a lot of white German people when

(25:53):
they come to these things, they're looking at them through
the lens of USA is so bad, and they don't
want to deal with the context of what it what
it is to exist here. And I actually spoke at
the first demonstration and I called everyone out at the
first demonstration. There are a lot of F words said um,
like German. F words are actual like English. I think
I spoke in English. I was very emotional and I

(26:14):
couldn't really handle doing it in German, and I started
in German where I explained to everyone I would only
speak English. Um. But it was this but it's this
thing where it's like, you know, they hear these words,
they come out and they want to talk about how
bad it is in the United States, but they don't
want to look at the conditions of what it is
to exist as a black person in Germany. So I

(26:36):
was spent a lot of time in my speech sort
of trying to turn the conversation onto let's talk about Origala,
Let's talk about these people who have died here. Let's
talk about women refugees fighting for their lives in these
interment camps that they're putting them in inside of Germany.
So if you make it over the Mediterranean, if you
make it a Germany, they basically lock you away. And

(26:56):
then it got worse with COVID and so they were
all books that were things happening barytone day here. But
just talking to you, not to Diana. I'm cutting my
own interview off because I want you to hear for
yourself what Diana said at that rally that she's just described,

(27:16):
and I could just let you hear her talk about it,
or could insert a piece of it. So here's the
first three minutes of her speech. It starts off with
a bit of German. Don't be afraid, beautiful language. She'll
get to English very very quickly. Okay, I'm Diana. I'm
from Black Lives Matter Berlin. Today was a sena and

(27:37):
benin Joan so Naso often Black Lives Matter of page. Um,
I'm from Virginia. Charlottesville was not that long ago, and
I have been to too many of these marches and
I have seen too many of your faces. And I'm

(27:59):
gonna let me to say this right now, though, Black people,
I love you. I love that all of you are here,
and I love if you need this, if you need
to be here, whatever you need right now, if you
need to mourn, if you need to yell, if you
need to if you need to stay the fun home,
whatever you need, because it's about us right now. It's
about us right now. And there's a lot of people

(28:22):
who want to organize, and there's a lot of people
who like don't know where to go, you can come
to us. We are looking for people. We are small,
we do not have all the capacities in the world,
and we need We are trying to help people on
the ground. We have been posting online. We have been
vetting like fundraisers. We have been vetting. We have been vetting, like,
where are the same emails? We have been vetting where
you need to like, where you need to put yours. Okay,

(28:46):
it's like we gotta do better than just being fucking
activists online read posting ship without knowing where the hell
it comes from. It's not good it's not good enough.
All right, But black people, I love you, and I
love that you're here, and I love if you're not here,
and whatever you need. But I came here to talk
to the white people who are going to be here,
and the white people who like to show up and
the white people who are never really around when there's

(29:07):
no video, because there's a lot of anger right now,
because there were two videos back to back, but there
were two other people who died where there was no video.
Brianna Taylor died and it was like it was like
what like a month before it was, even before it
even really came into the news. They tried to hide
that ship, you know, right after Georgia and Tony mcdaiden,

(29:30):
he's a trans man in Florida, was also murdered. But
ain't nobody talking about him. Nobody because there's no video.
And I'm tired of seeing, you know, when there's a video,
because there's enough black death not even not even black
deaths in the United States. There's enough black decks here
where y'all don't show up. And I know some of

(29:51):
you are here today. Some of y'all wrote Black Lives Matter,
asking me us, Oh, what are you gonna do? Like,
what can we do? You need to do something, you
need to do something. A lot of white people wrote
us asking us to do something. None of you all
wrote us to ask us what we need, not one
of you. And I'm over it. I'm done with it.
Racism is your fault. You invent edition. White supremacy is
more fault. You invent edition. And if you are not

(30:14):
fighting against it when there is not a video, then
you are part of the problem. We're tired, We're so
funny tired. Oh yeah, Diana was real fired up, right

(30:36):
especially at white Germans who love to point the finger
of racism at the USA without looking internally. Now, let's
just return to my interview with Diana. Yes, this is
bad what's happening in the United States, but we have
shipped we can fix here, and let's fix these things here,
and let's not just point the fingers at the bad

(30:58):
Americans for how bad they are, because we've got a
lot of bad seeds here. And this is you know
what the German election was what seen and we saw
for the first time in history a right wing party
make it into parliament. And a lot of people aren't
taking the a f D really seriously, but they're saying

(31:19):
things that are basically ripped from mind comp we're seeing
there's news articles about police being involved with a f
D members feeding them information for investigations when they are
investigating into like left groups. Right. Of course, Hofer, who's
in ad minister, he changed the way that they put
together statistics for like high crime, terror crimes right. And

(31:41):
it used to be they would look at left terror,
right terror, and then foreign groups. And then he added
a fourth category, which is called it's Deutsche finders Kite,
which is an anti German and so he's looking into
trying to come up with statistics for people who are
against Germans, which Germany doesn't really exist, and on our

(32:04):
research and looking in that, you know, it's one way
for him to try to like drop the statistics for
right wing groups, and it's another way for him to
to say, Okay, well, if other groups are saying things
that can be considered anti German, which is anything that's
not about like this white German ideal, then that can
be categorized into that group and you can have better

(32:24):
statistics than the current statistics. So this is for me,
this is like this reverse racism idea coming into the forefront.
So there was a demo on the Saturday, there was
another demonstration on the Sunday that was also five thousand people.
And then on the sixth of June, a couple of
young activists who actually were not connected to anyone and
nobody knew who they were until after, decided to hold

(32:47):
a demonstration at Alexander Platz. And at that demonstration, according
to the police, there was fifteen thousand people there. According
to the demonstrators, they think the count is much higher
than that. They think it's probably thirty and at the
end of that they ended up being ninety six people arrested,
the majority of whom we're black or POC, and half
of them were actually children, they were under eighteen. But

(33:10):
out of thirty thousand protests, is how many of those
were actually black was very very low. The percentage of
people that were actually black people were very very low.
And so the fact that the cops were there in
full riot gear and we're ready to sort of like
break heads, and then they managed to bust a lot
of heads of a lot of black or brown people

(33:31):
in a crowd of fifteen thousand or thirty thousand, depending
on whose numbers you look at, where you know, a
fraction of that number were actually black and POC. So
you know, but it's this thing where it's like it
keeps going, and there's been demonstrations. It was another one
last week. There's another demonstration plan on July four, there's
another demonstration coming on. There's basically it's going to keep going,

(33:54):
and part of it is in solidarity with the United States,
but then it's also about like, let's talk about black
lives worldwide. Let's talk about what this means to be
black everywhere, all of this stuff is everywhere, and we're
seeing the same things with activists that we talked to
from the UK. Switzerland is doing quite a bit. There's
even a Black Lives Matter group in Latvia Latvia that

(34:15):
we just found out about. They just wrote us and
we found out about them. The Finns have been out
protesting and demonstrating to Black people in Finland have been protesting,
and so it's kind of this amazing thing where we're seeing, um,
where I'm seeing, at least for the time that I've
been here the first time, that there's been a lot
of attempts at sort of communicating across the borders um

(34:38):
and sharing tactics and ideas and plans. And also just
like seeing black communities where we kind of just wrote
off and didn't think there was anyone. But it's so
exciting to see that, Like, despite the fact that the
community is here, you know, because it's so intersectional, we're
dealing with so many complicated issues and and we don't
even all speak the same language either, right, we have

(35:00):
literally literally do not speak the same language. So we
have French speaking black folks, we have Arab speaking black folks,
we have the German speaking black folks and then the
ones who only speak English, and you know, we had
a big meeting actually, there was actually a big meeting
today where we were trying to meet with just like
black organizers or an activist from just the Berlin scene.

(35:22):
And one of the groups that came, we had to
translate for them because they could only talk in French.
And a few people who came could only speak English,
and the majority of us who were there speak German,
but we couldn't do the meeting in German because we
had these few people who couldn't speak French or German.
So we're kind of trying to that navigated on that point.
And then there's so many different issues, you know, where
it's like, you know, like especially like black refugees and

(35:45):
like what they're going through, and it's not only what
they're going through when they're on their way here, but
what happens to them when they come here, and they're
so separated from the rest of us too, So it's
really complicated my last formal question. But in the US,
we've had a coalescing around this demand to defund the police,

(36:05):
and there is, yes, a broad umbrella of black Lives Matter,
and there's a lot of demands underneath of those, but
defund the police has become the refrain, and we've seen
motion more quickly than we've seen before. We're past the
body cams, were past the citizen oversight boards. It's now
about budgets and alternative modes of public safety and shifting

(36:27):
that money. Is there a similar narrowing or coalescing around,
if not one echoing call, a shorter list of needs
and demands to emerge from what sounds like a very
diverse group of black lives matter in Berlin and Germany
and even across Europe. I mean, we're still putting it together, right,

(36:49):
and we're still talking. We're trying to talk to everyone
and like find out where everybody is and what their
needs are, and um, defund the police is definitely on
our list. The crime is the lowest it's ever been
in thirty years, but the police got a twelve increase,
which is like, for what if crime is at a
thirty year low, a thirty year low, then why does

(37:09):
the police need more money? So we're asking the same
questions in the US and I had hoped that that
was like our thing. I'm like, oh, America's crazy, but
the reasonable trains on time Germans like they all they
won't be But you're telling me, you're telling all of
us y'all have the same inflated police budgets at a
time of record low crime that we do. That's that's disappointing. Okay,

(37:32):
break my heart more as as inflated as yours, but there,
but it's ridiculous. It just makes no sense at all.
And considering like how much violence is perpetrated against black
folks here, there's even less reason to give the cops
more money. So defunding the police is definitely one of them. Um.
Freedom of movement is definitely a really really really high

(37:53):
up on our list. If you look black and your
crossing borders in Europe, the way that people are treated
as widely different, Um, it definitely. You know, for me,
it's pretty easy. I have an American passport, But if
I'm traveling with someone who's darker skin than me, even
if they had an American passport, I don't think they
would be treated as well as I would be. And
there just needs to be like actual, real freedom of
movement is what we were promised with the formulation of

(38:16):
the EU needs to be guaranteed for black people. There's
the removing of all this colonialists, remnants, statues, street names,
all of the stuff needs to go. One there needs
to be full recognition of like actual what structural racism
is and the fact that it exists in all levels
of Germany, including the German government. In the current formulation

(38:40):
of how the rules work is that if you experienced
discrimination from a German government office, you cannot file a
complaint because officially they don't discriminate. Yeah. Wait, that's kind
of a kind of circular that's convenient rhetorical trap. They're like,
I need just say that agift. Just maybe I misheard.

(39:02):
A German government office, like a federal office, cannot discriminate
against me because they do not discriminate. So if I
experienced discrimination from a German government office and want to
file a complaint, I can't file a complaint because officially
they do not discriminate. That is magic. That is one
way to end systemic racism or oppression is just to

(39:26):
declare it doesn't exist. Okay, so you're trying to So
there needs to be full recognition of social Yeah, like
I said, we're a hundred years behind, right, and it
makes sense to the place that could create Kafka, that
this would be like how it would work. I feel

(39:47):
like black people here were living perpetually in the trial
and Bill Murray's a groundhog day like this is literally
like this is the role that we're in constantly, and
that one for me takes the cake. So they just
passed in Lynn like a local law that says that
we can file complaints from city offices for discrimination. And
now the rest of Germany is up in arms about

(40:08):
it and they're super mad about it. And now they're
saying they're no longer going to send if Berlin needs
cops for whatever event, They're not going to send police here.
They're not going to help out. And then horse ho
for the Minister of Interior, this genius. He was like, Oh,
don't worry about it, Like the Berlin law won't apply
to any any other states who send people here. So

(40:29):
like if if Munich sends cops here, they won't fall
under the discrimination law of Berlin because they don't want
us to be able to sue the cops for discrimination. Yeah. So,
and we only have this in Berlin. This is a
little fleck of the entire country. And that law needs
to happen everywhere. I would say from Black Lives Matter

(40:49):
in Berlin and from several other organizations. A lot of
us think that course a ho For just needs to
be fired. He needs to go. He cannot be the
Minister of the Interior, and America needs to cut that cord.
But not for discrimination, because they don't do that. You
have to find some other reasons to find. I think
the fact that like the level of reports of Nazis

(41:10):
in the police force and now there's it's not like SWAT,
but it's some like high level force. I don't know
if it's in the police or in the army. They
have to dismantle it because there were so many right
wing people in it. Wow. And like when you say
right wing people, can you define that a little more,
because I don't want to give the impression unless it's
true that it's the equivalent of like there were Republican

(41:32):
police officers. Like you're using the right wing as something
they're Nazis want the okay, Yeah, they want to destroy
and kill everyone who does not look or feel or
smell like a prototypical white, blonde hair, blue eyed German.
Maybe if you're a brunette you can stay. Maybe maybe

(41:53):
you know, if you're if you're skin is a little
too tan, that might be problematic for them. So for me,
it's like these are you know, when we say right
wing here, we're not talking about Republicans. We are talking
about we are talking about white people who want to
kill other people for the mere the mere problem of
existing in their eyes. You know. The a f D
says this stuff, the np D says this stuff. There's

(42:15):
a lot of right wing groups that say all this stuff,
and basically their whole premise is that Germany needs to
remain German, despite the fact that this idea of Germany
that they are fixated on is the Germany that Hitler
fixated on that actually never existed. When I talk about,
you know what it's like here, this level of invisibility

(42:36):
that black and POC people have. Hitler did an amazing job,
right like in the fact that he convinced the world,
and he convinced Germans that to be German is to
be this monolith, to be this one thing, and he
erased the existence of the multiculturalism that was here, of
the queerness that was here. The first transgender research library

(42:58):
was in Germany and it was destroyed by the Nazis.
That's in like the twenties, during the tens, the Nazis
destroyed it. There was definitely like a very like intersectional,
multicultural like group of people who have always been existing here.
But then post War War two, all of that gets
a raised. We're still today when people talk about Germans,

(43:19):
or when they look at Germans, or when they look
at someone who is black and German, they look at
an Afro German person, the first questions out of their
mouth is where do you come from? Yeah, there are
so many echoes of what we are going through in
the United States, and I want to thank you for
being so clear and provide so much context for all
of that. The ideal German, that idea, and like who's

(43:42):
really American? You know, they're the common framework is whiteness, right,
and there is a white supremacy which I you know,
I experienced from European fans. You know of people who've
seen my TED talk as one example, and what you've
described of the white members of many of the rally
overs of Black Lives Matter, they're similar here. It's like, oh,

(44:03):
poor Americans, Oh it's so savage, so brutal, so uncivilized,
and the unwillingness to look inside and see that very
same treat in one's own society, one's own household. It's
a common it's a common theme. So I guess thank
you for reminding me and anyone listening to this, that

(44:24):
we have a lot more in common, um than may
appear to be the case, certainly that the marketing materials
would have us believe. Yeah. I mean one of the
things too, is that I think it's Natasha A. Kelly,
who's a she's a black scholar here, a black feminist here,
if he does amazing work. She said something to this,
and I'm paraphrasing and also adding onto it. But racism

(44:44):
was invented in Europe, and Europeans like to forget that
the Americans might have like perfected the efficiency of it,
but this came from here. And that's something that Europeans
just kind of all always forget when they think about
these things, that it's an American Probably Americans did it,

(45:05):
you know, or like you're bringing this because you're from
the U. S. And it's like, no, I'm sixteen years
here and I'm watching I'm looking at it in the
flesh and seeing it happen every day, and I'm tired
of having conversations of you know, even the German media
here when they talk about this, the first question of
the abouth is have you had experience with racism? What
they ask a black person or any other POC person,

(45:27):
And it's like, we don't need to talk about the
time that I experienced racism. We need to talk about
the structures that forced me to experience racism. But they're
not even prepared here in the media, in the government,
and culture, in pretty much every part of civil society,
they're not ready to have the conversation on the structural level. Yeah, Diana,
is there anything else you want to add? Yeah, I

(45:49):
see things like this. The longer people in the US
fight and stay on the ground and keep pushing things forward,
the bigger of a chance it is for black people
all over the world to become liberated. So I love
everyone in the US who's on the ground, and we've
been trying to support you from here as much as
we can and figuring out how people can send money

(46:09):
from Germany to all the local organizations working on the ground.
Cash app and venmo do not work. So um, it's
been this amazing energy that we've been able to also
like feed off of into bringing together all the different
parts of the black community here so that we can
work together and to fight for the things and fight

(46:30):
for the liberation that we also need here. So UM,
keep up the great work over there, and UM keep
up the fight, and then hopefully when this is all over,
it'll be a lot easier for all of us to
visit each other in a much more beautiful, less racist world.
Uh Dana RC Alvita Zine, Alvita Zine, Alvita Zine. I

(46:54):
was so close. I was so close to just crushing
it at German but alas still or to learn. Thank
you Diana for spending that time. That was Diana Arc
of Black Lives Matter Berlin. You can find the organization
on the internet at black Lives Matter Berlin dot d

(47:14):
e and you can find them on Instagram black Lives
Matter Berlin. Meanwhile, Diana's website is visual Osmosis dot com
and she's on Instagram as visual Osmosis. There's one more
point I want to add as we close out episode
five together, thank you for being here with me. Diana

(47:34):
spoke about the opportunity that the US provides Europeans to
point out racism over there and kind of ignore it
right here in the European context. And the funny thing
to me is Americans, we've done the same thing. It's
this hot potato of racism and the accountability for it.

(47:55):
We've been able to say for so long, well, we're
not Hitler, we're not Nazis, And it turns out we're
all messed up. We all got work to do. We're
all steeped in the stew of white supremacy trying to
dig our way out, and that work will be made
much easier if we all acknowledge the history that has

(48:17):
created the present and take new actions to define a
future that includes all of us. Thank you for listening.
This has been episode five of We're Having a Moment.
Hello White People, Hello world. Like a beast in the
heat of the rambow, I ain't got nothing to lose.

(48:42):
I've been fighting these hard times and the ghetto. The
life that was victory that I choose. It's We're Having
a Moment is a production of I Hearty Yo Podcasts.
Executive produced by Miles Gray, Nick Stump and Barrattune Day Thurston,

(49:05):
produced by Joel Smith, and Elizabeth Stewart. Edited by Justin Smith,
music by Alo Black. You can find my email, newsletter
and a lot more at barrattun day dot com. If
you do the social things, find me on Instagram at
barrattun Day. And if you like text messaging, well send
me one. That's right. You can text me right now

(49:27):
two oh to eight nine four eight eight four four.
Just put the text w h A M wham in
the message.

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