Martin Hyun, whose parents come from South Korea, was the first Asian-born player in the German Ice Hockey League. He worked as a consultant for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. He is also an official in Paralympic sports.
It strikes me very badly that people of Asian origin are currently increasingly exposed to racist attacks and insults because of the corona virus. I am the son of South Korean guest workers. The lack of nursing and mining personnel prompted the federal government to recruit miners and nurses from South Korea.
I was born in Germany and have a German passport. But German citizenship is not an automatic ticket to society. After all, my Asian migration background is visible, I can’t hide it.
Racism and discrimination are my constant companions. Even now in the coronavirus crisis, I have not been spared. In my gym I saw people suddenly avoid me or change the treadmill as soon as I showed up. In a full S-Bahn, I was sitting alone in a four-person compartment because nobody dared to sit next to me.
When I was 14 or 15 years old, a film team visited us in the ice rink during training. The journalist asked me about my goals. I replied that I wanted to be the first German-Korean in the German Ice Hockey League (DEL). Some teammates laughed at me, ridiculed me.
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The racist acts of terrorism in Rostock-Lichtenhagen also spilled over into my hometown Krefeld. A mob of teenagers and schoolmates of almost 100 people surrounded me and my friends. “Fuck off our country!” They shouted in my face. An incisive experience that I will never forget.
This year we celebrate 30 years of reunification. For me it was not a pleasure to play in the east after the turn. There were always discriminatory incidents on the ice or outside the stadium. Just as the former Vice-Chancellor of Vietnamese origin, Philipp Rösler, was mistaken for a tourist in the Bundestag, I too have had this experience in some stadiums of this republic.
I was stopped by security guards and asked about my role in the team. I remember, for example, when the fans called “Nasi Goreng” or other Asian dishes for me during a game in Augsburg and the whole stadium laughed. And when I was traveling to Canada for a tournament with the junior national team, the German customs official asked me if I would travel to a table tennis tournament.
There are several other examples of this type, unfortunately. That’s how I worked in the Bundestag after my sporting career. One day, when I was about to walk down the hall of the European Committee secretariat, an administrative clerk shouted after me: “Stop! You triggered the alarm! “
Racism is deeply rooted in society
The woman was firmly convinced that I had illegally infiltrated the Bundestag. Even my house ID could not convince them otherwise. And when I once entered the room at a congress, the president of a well-known employers’ association looked at me and asked me in front of the other managing directors and project managers: “Are you the translator?”
I am aware that I am just one of many who encounter such everyday racism. You just have to watch TV. A hardware store chain showed an Asian woman a few years ago who got ecstatic from sniffing a sweaty undershirt from a white hobby gardener. A cliché of the white man.
There was a lot of excitement about the clip, afterwards a similar pattern can usually be observed, including in this case: Great horror at the company, explanation that the company is multicultural, announcement of consequences and awareness-raising workshops, vow of improvement.
My siblings and I made it to academics within a generation of workers. We studied all three. I studied and did my doctorate in the USA, Belgium and Bonn. I am not only a person with a migration background, but also a foreign student. This irritated inexperienced administrators in this country.
Although my degrees from the United States and Belgium were accepted as fully qualified with German degrees, the personnel personnel were not satisfied despite the letter from the authority. They did not accept it, although the district government’s certificate confirmed that the letter had the value of an original certificate and should be recognized as evidence. Nevertheless, the clerks asked for more information. Each time the information requested was submitted, further information was requested. It was pure harassment.
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I also remember an interview situation for a job at the United Nations in which Germany should be represented. Then the person from the Federal Foreign Office asked me whether there were any “loyalty conflicts” to be feared in my case. The question was like a slap in the face.
When I was 41, I learned that racism is deeply rooted in society. It won’t change with the next generation either. On the contrary, it is passed on. Most have a very limited understanding of racism because of less intensive contact with minorities. They grow up isolated.
In the German media, the heroes and heroines are white
The topic does not exist in school, during studies, in professional life, in the neighborhood and in other areas of life. They are not affected by racism and therefore do not have to deal with it. Pictures of foreigners are briefly formed by short encounters and media. It is therefore not surprising that, despite my many years in Germany, I am perceived as a translator, table tennis player or as a tourist.
Bio-German people in management positions operate and operate in structures in which ethnic diversity is seen as a kind of disruptive factor for homogeneous harmony. If migrants in managerial positions make it, they learn one thing very quickly: just do not confront their white colleagues with the topic of racism or discrimination and bring the homogeneous harmony out of balance. That can cost the job.
The rapper Samy Deluxe sums it up in his song “Superhero”: “All of his superheroes are white.” In the German media, the heroes and heroines are white. The ideal of beauty is white. Who does not remember the group picture of the young white climate activists from the World Economic Forum in Davos, in which the 23-year-old black Vanessa Nakete was simply cut out of Uganda?
The people who determine which films are promoted, which actors are cast, which books are published, which articles are written, which people are proposed on candidacy lists are almost all white. It is clear who the choice is. When I look around the Bundestag, I don’t see a single MP with an Asian background. It is the same in ministries, foundations and companies. The Hessian FDP politician Jörg-Uwe Hahn is right when he says that society is not yet far enough for an Asian-looking vice chancellor.
Racism towards Asians is not taken seriously and trivialized in society. It takes more than just a tweet from the Minister of State for Integration with the content: “In the Corona crisis people are insulted, sprayed with disinfectant spray – because they are read as Asian.”
No tweet, no expression of solidarity, no fairy lights and no law can force a person not to love and respect someone like her. As banal as it may sound, it starts with parenting.
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