The Augsburg Zoo outrage go beyond simple "black German experience"

By Gyavira Lasana (New York USA)
Since summer 2002 Yonis has allowed me, a black American, to participate in discussions generated on Afronetz. Nonetheless, it has been my policy to refrain from direct participation in affairs and concerns of blacks in Germany. My experience as a black American has a partial relevance here, yes, but for the most part I am severely limited in Germany. I do not yet know the language and culture, and the personal and societal relationships lived and endured by black Germans come to me only second-hand at best.

So I am the outsider who listens. Recently, however, issues in relation to the "failed" protest of the Augsburg Zoo outrage go beyond simple "black German experience" and beg some comment and rebuttal, especially to my usually clear-headed friend Ibi. The judge in the matter before the court in Augsburg argued that the display was a matter of "taste." Well, so too is the sentiment that "I do not want to eat in the same restaurant with blacks; ride in the same train car with blacks; use the same toilette as blacks, sit in the same classroom as blacks," and so on.

And here lies the problem: When private taste becomes public policy the common good has been violated. (This display, by the way, recalls a recent embarrassment in New York, at the Museum of Natural History, where it was discovered that a dead Eskimo had been stuffed, mounted (taxidermy) and placed on display. Now, that is exotic!) I am truly frightened by the argument of the city/state attorney, who pleaded that no "reasonable" person would object to the display. What is reasonable, of course, changes from generation to generation.

In 1938, no reasonable person saw any objection to sterilizing "mischling bastards" or dismissing Jews from university faculties. Did this not make sense at the time? Of course it did, unless you asked the Jews and mixed-race Germans. Finally, something must be said about the perception that the black community has failed. The movement for Third World parity is eternal. It continues, moves forward, one-step at a time. We of today have a responsibility to those who have brought this far. More important, we are responsible to the next generation, and the unborn.