NATOG-Journal Vol. 9 (2024) 1 Cultural Racism and Resistance -Revisiting Post-Reunification Germany in Pepe Danquart’s Short Film “Schwarzfahrer” (Blackrider) Joseph N. Eke Department of European Studies University of Ibadan joniek.j@gmail.com Abstract The tram ride of a young Blackman in post-reunification metropolitan and multicultural Berlin is enmeshed in a cultural racist encounter that problematizes contemporary German- foreigner/migrant relations. Deploying cultural racism and resistance as conceptual framework, and using historical-interpretive and textual analysis, the study examines interacting socio- cultural-cum-political factors and race theorization implicit in the historical contexts of German- foreigner/migrant relations in post-reunification Germany as portrayed in the film. The study concludes that an enduring and deeply set fear of losses of racial identity, people and country escalated the economic, social, and political problems linked to German reunification and induced racial conflict relations that pittedthe native white-German majority against a foreigner/migrant minority – relations yet to fade away in Germany today. Keywords: Cultural racism, Schwarzfahrer, Post-reunification Germany, Blacks in Germany, Conflict relations Introduction In 1993, Pepe Danquart directed the 12-minute short film “Schwarzfahrer” set in the metro-city of Berlin. The film thematizes the toxic cultural and race relations between native Germans and foreigners in Germany caused apparently by social, economic, and political factors associated with the reunification of Germany in 1990. The African foreigner is distinguished by his otherness, blackness, as the extremity of an intolerable foreignness. The study examined cultural racism and resistance depicted in the short film as the offshoot of race theorization and fear features implied in the historical contexts of German-foreigner/migrant relations. The study adopted cultural racism and resistance as conceptual framework and deployed the historical- interpretive and textualanalysis. The conceptual framework will be first set out to explain the study, then the historical time background to the film will be followed by the film summary, analysis, and discussion, and finally, the conclusion. UNIV ERSIT Y O F IB ADAN L IB RARY NATOG-Journal Vol. 9 (2024) 2 cultural racism Cultural racism, also neo-racism, new racism,or contemporary racism (Barker, 1981; Balibar, 1991),assigns the cause for the racist practices of prejudice, discrimination and abuses, both at personal and group levels, to culture rather than to hithertoperceived biological and presumptive psychological traits of a categorized community. Put otherwise, the concept accounts for the shift in the central organizing elements of race discourse and practices from clearly biological to cultural notions (Goldberg, 1993).As Balibar puts it, it is “racism without races … a racism whose dominant theme is not biological heredity but the insurmountability of cultural differences,a racism which, at first sight, does not postulate the superiority of certain groups or peoples in relation to others but 'only' the harmfulness of abolishing frontiers, the incompatibility of lifestyles and traditions; in short, …. a differentialist racism”(1991, p. 21). Cultural racism theory thus contends that the hierarchicalisation of cultures into superior and inferior categories is a revival and reclothing in a new garb of old-style racism (Blaut, 1992).Martin Barker, Étienne Balibar, and Pierre-André Taguieff, key proponents of cultural racism in the 1980s and 1990s, describe as racism the discrimination and hostilities against immigrants promoted by far-right movements in Western countries that relied on a belief in intrinsic and insurmountable cultural differences rather than on the increasingly unpopular biological racism(Barker, 1981;Taguieff, 1990;Balibar, 1991). The practice of racism, which has its roots in the history of colonialist and imperialist systems (Arendt, 1944), is essential to the maintenance of the European capitalist system and has been supported by a historical sequence of differentiated and diverse theories each contextualizing the historical environment of itsera namely the biblical/religious racisttheory ofearly 19th century, the biological racist theory of the middle 19th to middle 20thcentury(1850- 1950s) andthe historico-cultural racist theory of today(Blaut, 1992, pp.289, 290, Ngwenya, 2018, p. 125).The historical itinerary of race theorization presented by Blaut offers insight into the distinctiveness and connectedness of the practice of racism important to our short film analysis. In early 19thcentury, Europeans see their superiority to be the result of their being Christians and thus, naturally favoured by the Christian God. Empirical religious arguments were used to establish the causality by which God gives better hereditary, progress and domination to Christians and justifies discriminatory treatment of non-Christians and even the conquest of their lands: “All of pre-Christian history took place among white people in a small piece of the earth's UNIV ERSIT Y O F IB ADAN L IB RARY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Barker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne_Balibar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne_Balibar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Andr%C3%A9_Taguieff NATOG-Journal Vol. 9 (2024) 3 surface, roughly between Rome and Mesopotamia” (Blaut 1992: p. 291). People migrated from this geographical space to the uninhabited lands of Asia and Africa, in the course of which they degenerated to non-white and lost the arts of civilisation.It was thus believed that “the people of Europe, traditional Christendom, possess cultural superiority, biological superiority, even environmental superiority, but all of this flows from a supernatural cause” (p.291). The secularisation of thought after about 1850 led to the substantial displacement of biblical/theological arguments on racism. The hereditary advantage of the Christian white in religious racism was adapted “to assert the genetic superiority of the so-called white race, grounding this argument now in the immensely influential biological theories of the period, notably Darwinism and (later) Mendelianism”. (p.292). The so-called white race, vaguely identified as European, was now axiomatically believed by most social theorists to be genetically superior. This hereditary superiority of the white race was considered to be the single most important explanation for the white man’s obvious superiority in culture (p.292). In the 1950’s and 1960’s, forced by national liberation and civil right struggles, rise of egalitarian values and the horror of the holocaust perpetrated by Nazi-racism, racist practice(racism) has to be retheorized to justify continued dominance of communities of colour in the Third World and at home based on two propositions: first that “Europeans are not innately superior and that economic development can bring non-Europeans to the same level as Europeans” (p.293). However, though non-Europeans are equal to Europeans ininnate capacity,“they cannot develop economically to the European level unless these societies voluntarily accept the continued domination by European countries and corporations” (p. 293).The theory of modernised racism emerged from this theorization efforts to justify ‘neocolonisation’ with itsessential argument being that: Non-Europeans are not racially, but rather culturally backward in comparison to Europeans because of their history: their lesser cultural evolution. And it is for this reason that they are poor. So, they must follow, under European guidance and “tutelage,” the path already trodden by Europeans as the only means of overcoming backwardness. Non-Europeans were thereby defined as inferior in attained level of achievement, not potential for achievement. Thiswas the real essence of cultural racism. (Blaut, 1992, p. 293) Thistheoretical articulation of cultural racism sought to avoidthe arguments of both religious and biological racism.It appealed to intellectual and cultural history to purportedly claim and affirm UNIV ERSIT Y O F IB ADAN L IB RARY NATOG-Journal Vol. 9 (2024) 4 that “nearly all of the important cultural innovations which historically generate cultural progress occurred first in Europe, then, later, diffused to the non-European peoples” (Blaut, 1992]. Inforegrounding the uniqueness and ascendancy of European mentality and culturefirst asenduring qualities that throughout history earned Europeans a continuously more rapid course toward modernity than non-Europeans and secondly as the only qualities and ideals that non- Europeans must aspire to acquire,it upheld the basis for continued discriminatory, exploitative,and even derogatory practices against non-Europeans.And in explainingrace in terms of culture, culture is convoluted into race to disguise how supposedly innocuous cultural institutions and practices are used to pursue the primordial goals of classic racism. But biological race connections are not altogether dropped in cultural racism only disguised, for frequently, associations to skin colour are culturally interpreted and in turn influence associations to people differently colored such that being white is, for example, associated with goodness, purity, progress and the ideal while being black is associated with stain, badness, retrogression and what is base.Thus, in cultural racism, the pursuit of the aims of classic biological racism is preservedengraved in social consciousness and infused in “institutional patterns, policies, social practices, and behaviors that target, stigmatize, treat as unequal, exclude, or adversely affect individuals on the basis of their perceived ethnoracial membership, even if conscious belief that they are inferior or unworthy is absent” (Chin and Fehrenbach, 2009, p. 4). Balibar further leads to the understanding of these aims of classical racism in his conceptualization of the nature, aims and mode of realisation of racism. According to him: Racism - a true 'total social phenomenon' inscribes itself in practices (forms of violence, contempt, intolerance, humiliation and exploitation), in discourses and representations which are so many intellectual elaborations of the phantasm of prophylaxis or segregation (the need to purify the social body, to preserve 'one's own' or 'our' identity from all forms of mixing, interbreeding or invasion) and which are articulated around stigmata of otherness (name, skin colour, religious practices) (Balibar, 1991, p. 17). In the hierarchicalisation of race in the 19th century, and subsequently of culture, by European anthropologists, those judged to be less civilised, barbaric, ‚primitive’ and ‚lacking in culture’ were justified for colonisation (Sorrells, 2016, p. 29);it turns out that the people called ‘black’ were and have been kept at the lowest rung of that racio-cultural ladder (cf. Fortin, 2006, p. 21) and thus targeted for the worst kind of disregard, abuse, humiliation,and even dehumanisation ‘just for being black’.But as Chin and Fehrenbach assert, „Race doesn’t exist in nature; rather, UNIV ERSIT Y O F IB ADAN L IB RARY NATOG-Journal Vol. 9 (2024) 5 groups become racialized when their difference is registered and invested with heightened negative social meaning” (2009, p. 4). Cultural racism explains the racist vituperations of the elderly bio-(native-white)Germanlady in the short film. Resistance is an oppositional act/activity or behaviour aimed at unsettling, curtailing or even changing a power relation or a status quo regarded as oppressive and abusive. Resistance takes place within the context of the interplay between the wielders of power and those subordinated to them.The mode (manifest acts or inactions), scale(individual, collective, locally confined or widespread), target (individual, collective, organization/institutional, social structures), direction/goals (achieving change, curtailing change) and the dimension (political, identity based) of resistance are widelydiverse (Hollander and Einwohner, 2004). While resistance necessarily includes an action or behaviour in opposition (verbal, cognitive or physical) that is expected to be visible and have intent, the visibility and intent of a resistant action may not be readily or necessarily recognizable especially in ‘every day’ acts of resistance that chip away on power unnoticed like gossip, humour(Sorensen, 2008), subtle subversions at the work place(Baines, 2008)and other seemingly minor infractions of rulesas against social movements and revolutions (Hollander and Einwohner, 2004, pp. 544, 545). In clarifying the central definitional issues and disagreements to the concept of resistance, Hollander and Einwohner (2004) developed seven analytical typologies of resistance namely Overt, Covert, Unwitting, Target-defined, Externally-defined, Missed, Attempted and Not-resistance resistances taking into consideration that three distinct groups: actors of resistance, their targets and interested observers including researchers may judge an act to be resistance or not. Resistance explains the response of the young Blackman to the abusive violence of the elderly white bio-German lady in the film Schwarzfahrer. Historical Time Background to the Film, ‘Schwarzfahrer’ UNIV ERSIT Y O F IB ADAN L IB RARY NATOG-Journal Vol. 9 (2024) 6 Pepe Danquart’s“Schwarzfahrer” is a 1993 12-minutes short film that contextualises ‘everyday’ race relations in post-reunification Germany. This historical time-setting is remarkable due to the resurgence of German race consciousness expressed in antiforeigner behaviours in Germany that resonates a sensitivity to the German past (cf. Panayi, 1994, p. 280).During the Cold Warperiod (1949-1990), West Germany was, farmore than communist East Germany, particularlyliberal and accommodative of foreign workers, refugees and asylum seekers, especially from South Eastern,Central Eastern, and Eastern Europe including Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Portugal, Yugoslavia; Hungary,Czechoslovakia, communist East Germany,but also Chile, Algeria,Vietnam(Decan, 2004;Poutrus, 2014;Oltmer, 2016;Spicka, 2018). There were, however, intermittent conflicts and legal challenges to the liberality of the asylum law by Germans, several social upsets over ‘unwanted foreigners’, over ‘misusing the right to abode’, over the ‘acceptance of ‘non-European migrants’ and the ‘fear of dangerous migrants’ (Poutrus, 2018, pp. 124, 126-127). Against expectations, many of the foreign guest workers recruited in the wake of the German economic miracle of the late 1950s and 1960s would not return to their lands. Early integration programmes devised for the foreigners, southern Europeans (Turks in particular) and non-Europeans, were, however, to enable them to function in West German social and economic lifebut without envisaging their integration into German citizenship; for a hierarchy of difference, both of culture and race, held by both German state actors and the Germanpopulaceoutlaws such integration (Spicka,2018, pp. 4-5). Spicka (2018) citing Chin and Fehrenbach (2009, pp. 14-15) notes that “Culture, in short, functioned in the same way as the older, now discredited category of race: it served to explain fundamental incommensurable differences among peoples.” The eventual signing of the reunification treaty between the former German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG or West Germany) on August 31, 1990 and its coming into effect on October 3, 1990, formalised the crossing of borders between Germans of both states, the transformation of East Germany into federal states of one reunited Germany and guaranteed for former east Germansthe economic, social and political freedoms whichthey hitherto did not have under their former communist state. However, reunification also came with two major economic problems; first was the dramatic massive loss of employment for East Germans, whose previous communist planned economy must become a capitalist free market economy and who equally lost the sense of community and social support under communism; the secondwas the huge burden of taxation on west Germans to rebuild east UNIV ERSIT Y O F IB ADAN L IB RARY NATOG-Journal Vol. 9 (2024) 7 Germany and cater for their east German kinsmen and women (Human Rights Watch/Helsinki, 1997; McLaren, 1999, p. 167). These problems scaled down the economic well-being of Germans causing resentment and bitterness. The upset over economic adversity and social isolationbecamepoliticized into xenophobic attacks against foreigners, especially by anti- foreigners and nationalist movements.MacLaren (1999), however, establishes that there was a deeper root cause to the hostilities against foreigners than problems caused by economic hardship such that “solving economic problems will not likely reduce right-wing violence, and instead, governments need to emphasize reducing the hostility toward immigrants and other outgroups by focusing on the root causes of this hostility, which do not appear to be economic in nature” (pp 166, 178). Ireland (1997) further identifies some rather fundamental causes of attacks on foreigners namely the disquiet and anxiety over the unsettled question of German identity, over what it means to be German, complicated by the division into two Germanys and reopened with reunification and the influx of foreigners; the unsettled fascist past of Nazism in East Germans; and East-German state policies that provoked anti-foreigner sentiments.(pp.543- 546).However, though much of the violent attacks against foreigners started in the east of Germany, an estimated 60 percent of the overall attacks took place in the West of Germany thus suggesting that right-wing or extremist violence was not localized in the east of Germany (McLaren, 1999, pp. 166, 167). The post-reunification period, particularly between 1990-1993, witnessed an unusually critical upsurge in the number of migrants and refugees into reunified Germany (440, 000 in 1992) that quadrupled West Germany’s highest number of migrants per annum before the fall of communism in 1989(over 100, 000 in 1988) (Oltmer, 2016;Molnar, 2021, pp. 497-498). Already by 1989, the non-German population of West Germany had reached 4,845,882 while that of East was at 191,200 if 400, 000 Soviets were excluded (Panayi, 1994, pp. 277-278).This upsurgepredicated resurgent waves of racism and anti-foreigner attacks rooted in a deep,morbid, and apocalyptic fear of Überfremdungsängste (over-foreignization fear), “that the arrival of large numbers of non-Germans—described variously as distinct races or unassimilable ethnic or religious groups—would bring about the collapse of the state or the destruction of the German people”(Molnar,pp. 2021:493). Molnar holds further that the fear of “race-mixing” has been a sustained index in German social relations history (2021, pp. 494-496, 513-515). In 1991, racial violence went up dramatically in reunified Germany from 270 to 1,483 representing 449% increase. This rose further in 1992 by 74% from 1483 to 2584 but decreased by 24% in 1993 UNIV ERSIT Y O F IB ADAN L IB RARY NATOG-Journal Vol. 9 (2024) 8 from 2584 to 1963 with over 100 attacks per month in the early months of 1993 (Panayi, 1993, pp. 266, 273-274). Several of the attacks on foreigners, immigrants and refugees, which in some cases resulted to murder, happened with impunity while the state appeared powerless to stop the violence (Panayi, 1993, pp. 272, 268, 270, Human Rights Watch/Helsinki, 1995, p. 3).Human Rights Watch reports how that: Television audiences around the world watched with horror as the local population in certain German cities crowded around and supported neo- Nazi assaults and arson attacks on defenseless asylum seekers. People whose only offense was that they did not look German have been killed. Other "foreigners" have been driven from their houses. Widespread beatings of "foreigners" seem to have become a regular feature of major holidays in some places in Germany. (Human Rights Watch/Helsinki, 1995, pp. 1, 2) There were 7 million foreigners in Germany in 1994 out of which 1.2 million were born in Germany. In the foreigner distribution to this 7 million, “EU nationals accounted for a quarter of foreigners living in Germany. Turkish nationals (2 million), by far the largest group, represent 28% of the foreign population living in Germany. citizens of former Yugoslavia (18%), followed by Italians (8%), Greeks (5%) and Poles representing 4 percent (Münz and Ulrich, 2004). Out of the 7.3 million foreigners in Germany in 2002, Africans account for 4% or 300 000. One quarter of the foreigners come from the EU-15 countries (1.9 million), More than one quarter (2 million) are from other European countries including the former Yugoslavia (590 000) and Poland (320 000). A third quarter were from Turkey (1.9 million), and the remaining quarter came from Asia (12 per cent or 877 000), Africa (4%), and the Americas (3 percent or 220 000) (Siebert, 2003). The 300, 000 African foreigners exclude the about 500,000to 800,000 or 0.6 to 1 percent Black- Germans or Afro-Germans of Germany’s total population who share in the identity stigmatization and discriminatory treatment of blacks in Germany(Kraft, 2014, p. 2). A particularly significant feature of Germany’s demographics wasthe absence of official statistics of Blacks, though they are the most visible minority group (Mohdin, 2017). Blackshire-Belay (2001, pp. 268-269)) affirms: There are no statistics on the number of African Germans in the population of the Federal Republic. If there were such data, they would be significant only in that they would help African Germans to gauge how many people must cope with the stress that comes with the racism that is subjectively felt UNIV ERSIT Y O F IB ADAN L IB RARY NATOG-Journal Vol. 9 (2024) 9 and objectively experienced by a Black person living in a majority White— and, most important— self-defined White society Summary of the Film Pepe Danquart’s “Schwarzfahrer”, filmed in black and white, won the Oscar in 1994 as the Best Live Action Short Film. Its subject-matter is factored in the ironic pragmatic pun of its title “Schwarzfahrer”, with double literal and real meanings of ‘black rider’ and the crime/criminal ‘fare-dodger’ respectively. In the German Rotwelsch – a collection of crook speechstarting from the late Middle Ages, the word ‘Schwarz’(black) is mostly associated with smuggling, night/secretive and illegal activities, in short, with criminality (Frank, 2015; Leemeta, 2021); it has dominantly negative undertones. In the short film, ‘Schwarzfahrer’ not only relates or refers to the punishable crime of boarding a public transport without a ticket but also directs the gaze on the particular passenger/rider in the tram, who is most visible because of his skin colour, black,and thus presumed a crime in the immediate white and black racial discourse. In the plot set in metropolitan multicultural Berlin, a white German motorcyclist tries unsuccessfully to start his motorbike. In frustration, he abandoned it and dashed to catch up with the about-to-depart tram still having his helmet on and without a ticket;a young Blackman joins the same street tram with others and in fluent German asks an elderly ‘bio-German’ lady if the seat next to hers is free. She surveys him disgustingly from the head down. looked away without any response. The young man goes ahead to sit next to her to the chagrin of the lady and the amusement of a young boy sitting opposite them with his mother. The elderly white German lady goes into an intermittent and deafening tirade of cultural and racial abuses on the young black man calling him „Flegel “, „Neger“ and „Hottentotte“, heaping on him typical prejudices directed against immigrants and asylum seekers but heremains calm and silent to the abuses as he eats a snack, most probably, peanuts.The co-passengers maintain deafening silence except foran older white German man who nodded silently in a prompting agreement with the lady.The ticket inspector enters the tram and makes his way toward the seats, the elderlywhite bio- Germanlady brings out her ticket which the young man speedily and shockingly snatches from her and eats to the bewilderment of several onlooker co-passengers, especially the young boy who calls the attention of his mother to the incident.The eating of snacks throughout the ride by the young Blackman also provides reasonable doubt that he is eating anything other than a snack. The young Blackmanstops eating as the ticket inspector arrives and shows his ticket with a UNIV ERSIT Y O F IB ADAN L IB RARY NATOG-Journal Vol. 9 (2024) 10 closed-mouth smile. The elderly white bio-German lady must get down the tram not having a ticket; her allegation that her ticket was devoured by the young Blackman sounded nonsensical to the inspector – and theco-passengersremain silent. Analysis/Discussion of the Film The presence of the young Blackman, strongly disgusting to the elderly bio-German lady, was the point of departure for the lady’s vituperation and tirade against foreigners in general and the young Blackman in particular. She calls the young Blackman a ‘Flegel’- a badly brought up, ill- mannered, and uncouth young man. Ill-manners and unculturedness, summed up in the young black man,define these foreigners in Germany who,though live on the tax of their host, will not adapt to the host’s custom and behave decently, “Wer von unseren Steuern profitiert, könnte sich wenigstens anständig benehmen. Als ob man sich nicht an unsere Sitten anpassen könnte“[if you live off our taxes, you should at least behave properly.It's not as if it were so difficult to adopt to our customs“]. The Germans have managed on their own, created their wealth and do not need savages, Hottentotten, hanging around and snatching what belonged to the Germans; “Wir haben es alleine geschafft. Wir brauchen keine Hottentotten, die uns auf der Tasche herumliegen”. ‘Hottentotte’-is a name derisively or pejoratively used by European colonists for the Khoi-Khoi people of South Africa and Namibia to refer to their European-ascribed otherness – primitivity, barbarity, and deformity of language and culture (c.f. Jeffreys, 1947; Nienaber,pp. 1963:86). Further worries, fears and discontent, which are grounds for the elderly bio-German lady’s invectives on the foreigners include: 1. The ubiquitous presence and multiplying numbers of foreigners that threaten the German natives’ social space “Jetzt kann man schon nicht mehr Straßenbahn fahren ohne belästigt zu werden”, “Die vermehren sich ja wie die Karnickel da unten, alle quer durcheinander“ [„one can’t even ride the tram anymore without getting pestered“.„They breed like rabbits down there, all mixed up together “] 2. dissapproval of a liberal immigration policy/law that admits these foreigners “Es wäre früher nicht passiert, dass alle reindürfen zu uns. Mein Hans sagte immer: „Lassen wir einen rein, kommen sie alle, die ganze Sippschaft “[„In the past, we wouldn’t have allowed them all in. My Hans always said if you let one in, they’ll all come, the whole tribe of them “]. UNIV ERSIT Y O F IB ADAN L IB RARY NATOG-Journal Vol. 9 (2024) 11 3. The fear, as a result of 1 and 2 above,that the bio- or native white German population could beextirpated and the German homeland eventually lost to foreigners “Wenn das jetzt so weitergeht bei uns, gibt es bald nur noch Türken, Polen und Neger hier. Man weiβ ja schon bald nicht mehr, in welchem Land man lebt.”[„if it continues like this, there’ll soon be nothing but Turks, Poles and Nigger here. We won’t be able to tell what country we’re living in“] 4. Worsening unemployment for the German due toforeigners snatching ‘German jobs’ through working illegally “Jetzt wo wir selber so viele Arbeitslose haben. Dann arbeiten die alle noch schwarz.”[„We’ve got enough unemployed of our own and then they all work illegally“] 5. The ‘facelessness’ of these foreigners not only in the idiomatic sense of their lacking in character but in the physical sense of not being able to identify and control them (by law) due to the sheer similarity of their facial appearances and names. In other words, they do not look German, they lack differentiable facial identity, and their collective difference (since they look alike) or otherness is a crime. “Als ob das jemand kontrollieren könnte, wo von denen einer aussieht wie der andere. Man müsste wenigstens verlangen können, dass sie ihre Namen ändern, bevor sie zu uns kommen. Sonst hat man ja gar keinen Anhaltspunkt.”[„Its impossible to control themsince they all look the same. We should at least make them change their names before they arrive here. How else are we to tell them apart?“].If they cannot change their physical look engraved in them by nature/biology, they at least must be made to change and differentiate their names. 6. They naturally and disgustingly smell like stench and carry AIDS. “Im Übrigen riechen sie penetrant. Aber das kann man ja schlieβlich nicht verbieten.” „Kein Wunder, dass die da alle AIDS haben.”[“What’s more, they smell awful. But of course, there is no law against that”. “No wander that they all have AIDS”]. Thus they are by their ‚cultural nature‘ unhygienic, disease carriers and transmitters. They are a social nuisance. This is set against the desire to get rid of them but the frustrating fear that this might be impossible, “Die kriegen wir nie wieder los.”[“We’ll never get rid of them”] 7. They come uninvited to prey on wealth created by the Germans alone: this is not acceptable; they are not needed. „Warum kommt ihr überhaupt alle hierher? Hat euch denn jemand eingeladen?“Wir haben es alleine geschafft. Wir brauchen keine Hottentotten, die uns auf der Tasche herumliegen.”[„Why do you come here anyway? UNIV ERSIT Y O F IB ADAN L IB RARY NATOG-Journal Vol. 9 (2024) 12 Did anyone invite you? We alone created our wealth, we don’t need these savages living off us“] 8. The foreigners are considered not only to be social nuisance but also security threats. “Ich traue mich ja schon nicht mehr auf die Straße, wenn’s dunkel wird. Man liest ja so viel in der Zeitung. Na ja, wir haben uns jedenfalls einen Hund angeschafft, als man dem Türken die Wohnung unter uns gegeben hat.“[„I’m scared to go out when it’s dark these days. The things you see in the papers. At any rate, we bought a dog when those Turks moved into the apartment below us“] 9. Most annoying is the intolerable presence of the African, whose stark, uncompromising, and disagreeable otherness is marked by blackness that makes the European Italian and the half-European white Turk far much more tolerable and acceptable. To the elderly white German lady, every black person comes from Africa.“Als ob nicht die Italiener und Türken schon genug wären. Jetzt kommt auch noch ein Afrikaner...” [As if the Italians and Turks weren’t enough, now comes an African still…”]. 10. When the young black man ate and swallowed the elderly white German lady’s ticket in protest resistance, she called him nigger, Neger, to the ticket controller but also described him to be less than human, an animal, in using the verb fressento explain his action. Neger is a discriminatory, derogatory, racist, and exclusionary reference for blacks. The primary or immediate basis of provocation of the elderly bioGerman lady is based on what she considers the unculturedness of the young Blackman, which is extended to all foreigners; their lack of hygiene, their refusal or inability to adapt to the ways of life of the host culture presumed to be superior in this instance, their seemingly disrespect of the host culture. The marked cultural difference of the foreigners, but particularlyof the black foreigner, is then associated with the ascribed savagery and primitivity of his origin and further to skin colour, facial appearance, and name. The marked cultural-racial otherness of the foreigners and their increasing influx are considered existential threatsto both the country and race of the Germans – economically, socio-culturally, politically, and racially. The intense desire of the German lady is to get rid of them, but she doubts the possibility of that perhaps because the hateful liberal immigration law has already allowed too many of them into the country. She smolders inwardly with anger, fear, and hate expressible only in her invectives, tirades, and hurtful abuses. She represents the dominant sentiment and voice ofbioGermans towards foreigners and blacks at that UNIV ERSIT Y O F IB ADAN L IB RARY NATOG-Journal Vol. 9 (2024) 13 time seen in the affirmative smile of the German man who prodded her on and the deafening silence of the co-passengers. This silence of the co-travelers can, before the confiscation of the elderly bio-German lady’s ticket by the young Blackman, be judged to be the result of not so much support for the hurtful abusive violence of the lady as it is of a self-preserving strategy againsttheprevailing foreigner hate attitude and foreigner-attack-readiness that have permeated the fabric of German social consciousnessat this time and is considerably sympathised with by the German state. The Germans in the tram who disagree with the lady cannot openly chide her or it could be seen as siding with foreigners against not just a fellow German but against a prevailing German sensibility while the foreigners keep silent for fear of possiblereprisal. The young Blackman cannot report to the authorities because being a racialized foreigner, he will neitherget a listening nor be taken seriously nor will anywitnesses come forth to support his complaint. After the young Blackmandispossessed her of her ticket, the silence in the tram to the German lady’s plight was further enhanced by the high-pitch and objectionable nuisance value that her vituperations have acquired in the course of the dreary journey. There were those in the tram whosimply considered her a good riddance. The elderly whiteGerman lady speaks from the position of the dominant narratives, sentiments, and ‘readied-aggressive-action’ of the native majority Germans against foreigners that have not only muted the voices of the foreigners in public social spaces but also the voices of any support for them. The native majority has power and its voice and presence are fully represented in institutional structures and public spaces of daily social relations like public transport. The foreigner minority is excluded, muted, racio-culturally abused, and persecuted. How does the young Blackman, who represents the extremity of culturally racialized foreignness,stand up to this power relations? The resistance of the young Blackmanis expressed in two forms; first in silence, but defiant silence precursory to developing alternative action rather than acquiescence to the oppressive racio-cultural abuses (cf. Pickering, 200D, p. 65, D’Astros and Morales, 2023). The second is in subversive oppositional action to diminish the narrative and abusive power of the native-majority white German as represented by the elderly lady within the confines of the narrow public social space, the tram. He was cautious though to localize his resistance in order not to provoke an escalation that could result in public and mass attention and possible attack on foreigners, including himself. His strategy was thus to turn the law against the elderly white UNIV ERSIT Y O F IB ADAN L IB RARY NATOG-Journal Vol. 9 (2024) 14 German lady or turn her against the lawby shockingly and discreetly dispossessing her of her tram ticket under the cover of the deafening silence of the observer co-passengers.The elderly white German lady was found guilty of evading tram ticket payment and was led off the tram by the ticket controller to atone for her guilt. Her excuse and explanation,in discriminatory, dehumanising and racist language, that the young Blackman‘gobbled’ her ticket, “Der Neger hier hat ihn eben aufgefressen”[this nigger just ate it],not only sounded outlandish and unbelievable to the ticket controller since the young Blackman,even with a smile, convincingly presented himself to be friendly and law-abiding with his tram ticket as evidence but it also showed the elderly white German lady to be racist (Libbon,2008, pp. 83-84); the German verb, auffressen’, used by the elderly white German lady to describe the action of the young Blackman to the ticket controller, is used inreferring to the feeding of animals and beasts.The delay occasioned by the stop to resolve the elderly white German lady’s alleged ticket evasion prevented the ticket controller from reaching the real ticket dodger in the tram, the German bike manin a helmet, before the controller got off the tram with the lady. The three main characters in the plot became Schwarzfaher by the pun of the word: the German motor-biker, who was in the tram without ticket ab initio; the elderly white German lady, who by the action of the young Blackmanisnow without a ticket; and the young Blackman, who has a valid ticket but rides the tram asblack (his skin colour), the black-rider. In the seven analytical typologies of resistance by Hollander and Einwohner (2004), four fall within the general relevance of this study namely overt, covert, missed, and attempted resistance because they all contain ‘intention of resistance’, while two, overt and covert are particularly applicable. The other three typologies are ignored here due to the absence of intention in their resistance. Briefly summarized, overt resistance, is behavior that is visible and readily recognized by both targets and observers as resistance and, further, is intended to be recognized as such(p.545); covert resistance is intentional acts that, however, go unnoticed and, therefore, go unpunished by their targets, although they are recognized as resistance by other culturally aware observers (p.545); missed resistance is an intentional act that is recognized by its target but unrecognized by third-party observers - Such acts take place in settings that are known and accessible to the actor and target but are inaccessible to others (e.g., secret societies) (p.546); and attempted resistance is resistance where an actor’s intentional act goes unnoticed by both targets and observers alike(p.546). UNIV ERSIT Y O F IB ADAN L IB RARY NATOG-Journal Vol. 9 (2024) 15 The resistance action of the young Blackmanby which he dispossessed the elderly bioGerman lady of her ticket, her lawful permit to be in the tram, was intentional, forged on the anvil of defiant silence. The intention was to dispossess the lady of voice and stop the narratives of racio-cultural discrimination and abusive violence. But the action achieved more, it turned the negative social perception of ‘schwarz’ on the elderly white German lady; she became ‘schwarz’. The elderly white German lady, herself the target, recognized the resistant action and its intent, though shocked by the act; for if found guilty of fare-dodging, she would be removed from the tram by the law, which she knows very well. She also knows that the young Blackman acted in a clear response and opposition to her sustained tirade against him and his co-foreigners right from when he sat beside her. Her shock was, however, not just from the ‘weird’ act of the young Blackman but much more from the fact that the Blackman reacted at all: for his muted voice was expected to be total and absolute.The ‘observer others’ in the tram recognize the resistant action of the young Blackman and knows the intention. This resistance, at this point, will seem to fit Hollander and Einwohner's overt resistance typology.However, the actor – the young Blackman, whose act and intention were visible to all of the actor, target, and observer, goes unpunished for his resistance action, just as the case would be in the covert resistance typology. The resistance strategy of hiding his resistance from some of the co-passengers through the feigned eating of his snack, hiding it in the law of the land by smilingly showing his tram ticket and, especially in the shadow of the ‘observer silence’ of other co-passengers protected the actor and shielded him from punishment. The law-enforcement authority, the ticket controller, does not know the resistance, but he was also not an observer, and there was no witness to support the allegation of the lady.The resistance here, thus, falls within a hybrid of an overt- covert typology. It remains to examine the seemingly curious, shocking, and strange act of eating and swallowing the fare ticket of the elderly white German lady by the young Blackman; for his conduct here appears to affirm the ascription of unculturedness and savagery to him by the elderly bioGerman lady. In her essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak’, Spivak (1993) shows that the voice of the subaltern, sub-marginalized social groups, in hegemonic postcolonial relations are silenced beyond representation. They cannot speak, cannot be listened to, and cannot be spoken for; they are neither present nor represented nor representable in institutional structures of power (pp.75, 80); Trapped in oppression and silence, they may only mumble ‘speech’ in bizarre symbolisms (pp. 103, 104), in the “elaboration of insurgency” (p.82).The foreigner-African UNIV ERSIT Y O F IB ADAN L IB RARY NATOG-Journal Vol. 9 (2024) 16 foreigner-hate of the majority native-German, at this time, appears to have secured the absolute silence or voice-mutedness of the foreigner, especially of the Blackman, regarded as the extremity of otherness and foreignness. He is the completely denegated other.Muted in the abusive racial violence he had to bear, no one can speak for him. His resistance and revolt can only be expressed in the bizarre ‘unvoiced’ act of Auffressung Conclusion The historical contextualization of the film’s theme shows that its media representation of German-foreignertoxic racio-cultural relations goes beyond the immediate post-reunification socio-economic and political causes. It extends to deeply set prejudices and fears running through European capitalist and postcolonial race theorization and the fear of Germans losingtheir country, people, and culture through race-mixing and outnumbering by foreigners. The hierarchicalisation of cultural difference through classification into the uncultured, ill- mannered foreigner against a cultured and well-mannered native white German is extended to the skin colour, facial expression,and name of the foreigner. The foreigner, especially the black foreigner, is culturally racialized, targeted for abusive racial violence, and driven into fear and mutedness of voice within the unequal power relationsbetween the majority bioGermans and minority foreigners, especially blacks. Trapped in racial oppression and silence, and smouldering pain, the young Blackman could only self-defensively resist in weird symbolic speech. The causative factors of the German-foreigner racio-cultural conflict relations suggest the imperative for the (re)articulation of race theory that is emptied of hatred, discrimination, and subjugatory intents against the racial other; a social reengineering of the German mind to appreciate difference, both cultural and racial, as part of the exciting wholeness and health of the human society; and for a German immigration policy that is deliberate and focused to admit only foreigners who will duly and fully respect the difference and country heritage of the German people. References Arendt, Hannah. (1944). Race-Thinking before racism. The Review of Politics, 6 (1), 36 – 73, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034670500002783 Baines, Donna. (2008). Race, Resistance, and Restructuring: Emerging Skills in the New Social Services. Social Work,53(2), 123-131. UNIV ERSIT Y O F IB ADAN L IB RARY https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-politics https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-politics/volume/A36049B37C9532264A003CB29E60DF4D https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-politics/issue/8E34954869EB9A45C59DA6A4E8916E6A https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034670500002783 NATOG-Journal Vol. 9 (2024) 17 Barker Martin. (1981) The New Racism: Conservatives and the Ideology of the Tribe. London, JunctionBooks. Blackshire-Belay, C. Aisha. (2001). The African Diaspora in Europe: African Germans Speak Out. Journal of Black Studies, 31 (3), January,264-287. Blaut, J. M. (1992) ‘The theory of cultural racism’, Antipode 24(4): 289–299, doi:10. 1111/j.1467-8330.1992.tb00448.x. Chin, Rita & Fehrenbach, Heide. (2009). Introduction. What’s Race Got to Do With It? Postwar German History in Context. In: Rita Chin, Heide Fehrenbach, Geoff Eley, and Atina Grossmann After the Nazi Racial State: Difference and Democracy in Germany and Europe. The University of Michigan Press, 1-29. Danquart, Pepe. (1993). Schwarzfahrer. Oscar-prämierter Kurzfilm. Magnet Film on Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWnSv0MMTns D’Astros, Caecilia Drujon & Morales, Jeremy. (2023). The silent resistance: An ethnographic study of the use of silence to resist accounting and managerialization. Critical Perspectives on Accounting. In Press, Corrected Proof, Available online 23 August 2023, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2023.102648 Fortin, A. Jeffrey. (2006). The Idea of Africa.The Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619 - 1895. Vol.2: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglas. Ed. Paul Finkelman . Oxford Uni. Press, 15-22. Frank, Demis. (2015). Wer ist der Schwarzfahrer? Zu Pepe Danquart's "Schwarzfahrer". Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Philosophische Fakultät II). Münich: GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/338027 Heilig, Gerhard., Buttner, Thomas & Lutz, Wolfgang. (1990). Germany's Population: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future. Population Bulletin, 45(4), Repr. Laxenburg: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, 1-62. Hollander, Jocelyn A. & Einwohner, Rachel L. (2004). Conceptualizing Resistance. Sociological Forum, 19(4). (Dec., 2004), 533-554. Human Rights Watch/Helsinki. (April 1995). Germany for Germans: Xenophobia and Racist Violence in Germany. New York, https://www.hrw.org/reports/germany954.pdf Ireland, Patrick R. (1997). Socialism, Unification Policy and the Rise of Racism in Eastern Germany.International Migration Review31(3) Fall, 541-568, https://doi.org/10.1177/019791839703100301 Jeffreys, M.D.W. (1947). The Origin of the Name Hottentot. African Affairs, 46(184), 163-165, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a093573 Kraft, Marion. (2014). Coming In from The Cold: The Black German Experience, Past and Present. New York, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Leemeta. (2021). Soziolekt: Rotwelsch – die Sprache der Diebe und Gauner. München,December.https://www.leemeta-uebersetzungen.de/blog/interessantes/soziolekt- rotwelsch-die-sprache-der-diebe-und-gauner Libbon, Stephanie E. (2008). Exploring Otherness through Pepe Danquart's Schwarzfahrer: A Lesson in Cultural Sensitivity. Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German, 41(2), 82-87, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-1221.2008.00009.x UNIV ERSIT Y O F IB ADAN L IB RARY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWnSv0MMTns http://www.grin.com/institution/6 https://www.grin.com/document/338027 https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a093573 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-1221.2008.00009.x NATOG-Journal Vol. 9 (2024) 18 McLaren, M. Lauren. (1999). Explaining Right-Wing Violence in Germany: A Time Series Analysis. Social Science Quarterly, 80(1) March, 166-180, https://www.jstor.org/stable/42863880 Molnar, Christopher A. (2021). “Greetings from the Apocalypse”: Race, Migration, and Fear after German Reunification.Central European History 54, 491–515. Mohdin, Aamna. (2017). Statistically speaking, black people in Germany don’t exist. Quartz Daily Brief, September 23,https://qz.com/1078032/can-germany-combat-inequality-when- it-has-no-data-on-race Münz, Rainer & Ulrich, Ralf E. (2004). Changing Patterns of Immigration to Germany, 1945- 1997. Research & Seminars, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Philosophische Fakultät III, Chair of Demography Ngwenya, Thoko. (2018). Racialization of Gender, Work, and the Visible Minority Women at Workplace: With a Particular Focus on African Black Women in Canada. In: George J. Sefa Dei & Shukri Hilowle Cartographies of Race and Social Difference . Switzerland: Springer Nature. Critical Studies of Education Vol.9, 123-132. Nienaber, G.S. (1963). The origin of the name “Hottentot”. African Studies, 22(2), 65-90, DOI: 10.1080/00020186308707174 Oezcan, Veysel. (2004). Germany: Immigration in Transition.MPI-Migration Policy Institute,https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/germany-immigration-transition Oltmer, Jochen. (2016). Germany and GlobalRefugees: A History of thePresent. Journal for Institutional Comparisons, In: CESifo DICE Report 14(4), Asylum Policy, 26-31. https://www.ifo.de/en/publications/2017/article-journal/germany-and-global-refugees- history-present Panayi, Panikos. (1994). Racial Violence in the New Germany 1990–93. Contemporary European History,3(3), 265-288. doi:10.1017/S0960777300000898 Pickering, Sharon. (2000). Women, the Home and Resistance in Northern Ireland. Women & Criminal Justice,11(3), 49-81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J012v11n03_03 Poutrus, Patrice G. (2014). Asylum in Postwar Germany: Refugee Admission Policies and Their Practical Implementation in the Federal Republic and the GDR Between the Late 1940s and the Mid-1970s. Journal of Contemporary History, 49(1) 115–133. Siebert, Horst (2003): Germany - an immigration country, Kiel Working Paper, No. 1189, Kiel Institute for World Economics (IfW), Kiel http://hdl.handle.net/10419/3099 Sorrells, Kathryn. (2016). Intercultural Communication, Globalization and Social Justice 2nd Ed. Los Angeles, Sage. Sorensen, Majken. (2008, July). Humor as a Serious Strategy of Nonviolent Resistance to Oppression. Peace & Change, 33(2), 167-190 Spicka, Mark E. (2018). Guest Workers, Social Order, and West German Municipalities, 1960–7. Journal of ContemporaryHistory 0(0), 1–21. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. (1993). Can the Subaltern Speak? In Colonial Discourse and Post- colonial Theory: A Reader. Williams, Patrick and Chrisman, Laura. Eds. London and New York, Routledge. 66-111. Taguieff, Pierre-Andre. (1990). The New Cultural Racism in France. Télos UNIV ERSIT Y O F IB ADAN L IB RARY https://qz.com/1078032/can-germany-combat-inequality-when-it-has-no-data-on-race https://qz.com/1078032/can-germany-combat-inequality-when-it-has-no-data-on-race https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/germany-immigration-transition%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20d http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J012v11n03_03 http://hdl.handle.net/10419/3099 javascript:void(0); NATOG-Journal Vol. 9 (2024) 19 1990(83), 109-122. DOI 10.3817/0390083109 UNIV ERSIT Y O F IB ADAN L IB RARY Oezcan, Veysel. (2004). Germany: Immigration in Tr