– No Choice

 

There is gentrification.
And St. Pauli is not an island,
the left scene is not an island.
Institutional racism is everywhere,
also in the left scene or in a place like St. Pauli.
Institutional racism is something
that I, as a black woman, feel everywhere.

I don´t have the feeling that this is a place
where my skin colour doesn´t play a role.
But I can feel life is vibrant here
and I have a subjective feeling of being safe
compared to places where I have lived before,
where you walk down the street and nobody is there.
I see there are certain groups
of people here who try to put up resistance.
When people like this are around,
I might feel a bit safer.

I don´t feel unsafe at the Hafentreppe – I have documents.
When I go there at night, I don´t feel unsafe.
But it is even more dangerous for a person
who is undocumented.

As a Black woman in St. Pauli, I am immediately a prostitute.
As a Black man, you are immediately a drug dealer.
For the police, you are a target
and you are not protected by the state.
I don´t feel unsafe on the street because there are always so many people.
But at the same time, I am a walking target.
I am a walking target for racist police.
I am a walking target for the stereotypes in peoples’ heads.

The Black drug dealer is a construct.
There is a structure behind this.
There is a structure which forces people to migrate
after the weapons have been sold.
People have to leave their country
via dangerous routes.
They arrive after precarious and disastrous journeys
and then there is a structure behind it,
that they don´t get the necessary documents.
There are people from certain countries
who are cast out of the asylum system from the beginning,
so you have people who are forced to do certain work.

The war on drug dealing.
There is a very racist thing behind it.
The bosses are a lighter colour,
then you have the middleman who is a bit darker,
and you have the black Africans who are really the bottom of the ladder,
fighting to survive on the streets and have no choice.

This is, I think, the thing:
They have no choice.
No choice.
All these factors coming together
with the racist concept of the dangerous Black man.