Montag, 3. August 2009

Being a Foreigner

How has my own family experience been impacted by responses to minority languages and cultures?
40 years past and still my parents are the foreigners, as well as I am. "They are lovely but, you know, they are different". That is one of the most common sentences from the Germans how think of themselves not to be racists. One has to read and to listen between the lines to hear that minorities are not welcome.

My parents are very open-minded and they would like to see our cultures and languages to be respected. They try, as far as they can, to include other cultures like the Turkish or Italians and any other culture as well. Whenever we celebrate something, like my wedding, they invite nearly everyone from the neighborhood. My parents always taught us to respect every human being, no matter where he is from. That is exactly what my siblings and I try to do as far as possible, but with Germans it is often difficult. For the most of them we are always "the foreigners" even if we were born in Germany and raised up there and we have the German citizenship, we all speak German, we are well educated, we work, we pay taxes and insurances and we make as much as we can for an intercultural, peaceful community. However, we are the foreigners and they judge us for every mistake in society.
Concerning our language, Arabic, they are very upset hearing us speaking another language. Most Germans expect us just to speak German because they think otherwise we would not speak the German language adequately. They do not see the Arabic language as a worthy one. Sadly, there are still a lot of non-open-minded people.


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