I used to say that I was a young American woman of the rebel generation: a
liberal, one who has invested her heart in Western Europe's social
successes. In adolescence, I looked over the Atlantic with hazy eyes, a
young girl in love for the very first time, softening my thoughts when
considering that continent: not only of cobblestone streets, not only of
ancient castles and tongues, but of acceptance, inclusion, ethnic
understanding. There where the words of racism would not be spoken. In my
naiveté, I thought of it not as silence but of a thunder already come to
pass.
Growing up in New York City, I experienced the words, wonderings, walks of
many cultural groups. I witnessed multi-ethnic, multi-racial gatherings of
friends sipping cappuccinos on Broadway. I witnessed inter-cultural
kisses, marriages, children birthed and raised with utmost success.
However, I also witnessed the formation of social fault lines, which broke
open along what we call "race." I came to know those who were simply swept
inside the shattered earth of our spoken quake, our
discrimination—-segregated, excluded, omitted in both the public and
private spheres of minds. When glued back, these lines left
not only crooked societal scars but the remnants of men, women and
children torn by preconceptions, misconceptions, rhetoric that gave way to
the vile actions of countrymen, neighbours with bluer eyes.
This is why I loathed the words. This is why I believed they should not be
spoken. Without the proper vocabulary to hate, the rivers of the mouths of
those who sought to hate would fast run dry. They would choke on the
absence of the words upon which depravity depended. This linguistic
emptying would hollow them of their ability to act. Yet in my world, the
words—black, white, Asian, African American etc.—cluttered, hyphenated,
uttered not in whispers but booming orations, took center stage. They were
spoken by those who hated, by those who feared they could hate and by
those who hated the hate. Aloud, we believed they were normalcy: but I can
still today feel the hesitation of each heart that utters the words of
race, a Pinocchio nose within us both as individuals and a society that
spurts forward with each uttering of what does not exist. Thus
came forward my question, screamed in my ears by the graffiti streets of
Berlin: is it better to speak of, attempt to make real, that which is
biologically impossible or is it better to silence the words even if we
cannot silence the acts that those words breed?
I am more afraid of the nameless. I am more afraid of the words that
cannot be spoken. I am more afraid of those who say to me, in that city,
at once a great tombstone and womb of European history, that there is a
single race, the human race. I am afraid, because even with thousands of
African migrants, the Berliner politicians assure me that this is not a
topic of importance, it is not spoken of; they hush me not with words but
with their own hazy eyes. I am afraid, because refugees are housed among
extreme rightists without second thought. I am afraid, because integration
policies, set not in stone but in words on plastic pamphlets, seek to
quiet the cultures, to forcibly assimilate, make German ethnic and racial
groups. I am afraid of the ultimatum—become deutsch or accept ostracism. I
am afraid of the fires that burn beneath, rather than upon their tongues;
even lacking the dictations, they are dragons of such bigotry.
In the words of Toni Morrison, language alone protects us from the
scariness of things with no names. Although we have created cruelties with
our words in the United States, here in Germany they live and breathe too
without them. Until these parasitical norms can be spit forth
in the breath of murderers, martyrs, civil servants & civil society, their
worminess (burrowed inside mind and mentality) will hinder change. Europe,
just as the United States, has thus far failed in creating civic
nationalism. Here too, where east meets west, where walls of bipolarity
have been both built and torn down, lies deep racial and ethnic
discrimination.
We have lifted an iron curtain only to veil (rather than avail) the
continent in ghostly curtains of quietude. No matter what the distancing
of mouths from minds, only actions are authentic orators: they have spoken
and continue to speak. Why do we never think to silence steps taken? Why
do we think only to silence sour words? We have washed out the mouth of
post-war Germany—deportation cannot be uttered, race cannot be
whispered—but neither history nor the present can be cleansed with such
linguistic scouring. We cannot make a fairytale out of this castle-laden
land; the haze of the air fettering our eyes is not a marker of
enchantment but rather verbal renunciation. Instead of burning that which
may lie upon the dragons' tongues, we must bring forth from the womb of
history the unfortunate reality that lies in human hearts: coming
forward, bearing witness, to the truths that have been birthed with no
name.
