Knowledge on Race and Doing Racism: The Long History of Racism in the Federal Republic of Germany

In her historical study "Racial Knowledge in the Transformation of the Federal Republic of Germany into an Immigration Society 1940-1990," Maria Alexopoulou, historian and activist (Die Unmündigen e.V.), uses many examples to show how doing racism actually works.  Racial knowledge about foreigners (“Ausländer”) circulated widely and was constantly consolidated into institutional, structural, and everyday racism through various practices: in the residency rights, in the housing market, in the (denial of) political rights, and in naturalization.

The discussion with the sociologist Kimiko Suda will focus on questions of the long duration of the circulation of racial knowledge and doing racism, and how these have been inscribed as systemic racism in Germany's immigration society to the present day, far beyond the "AfD problem”.