Your Well-Educated Kanak

Now it's time for the reactions I got when I made my point about the story. Context After raising concerns about how migration is represented in the textbook, I wrote to the publisher. You can find the whole email here: Hamid's Story and the Politics of Gratitude in a German Language Coursebook. Below is the reply from the publisher, with my reflections right after each part. In the emails below, the parts in bold are what I changed from the originals (anonymisation, removed passages). Email…

From the perspective of an immigrant from a Muslim-majority country, this story sends a troubling message: the message is that simply escaping war should be enough reason to be grateful. I am still not sure how to tell this story, but I guess it makes sense to start with what I found problematic in the first place, which I believe I explained quite well in my letter to the publisher of the book. So, everything here is like the original email I sent them, except for the parts in bold. Subject:…

Do I have the energy to go through that process? Will it really change anything? Discrimination happens everywhere and all the time — but that doesn't mean we need to normalise it. It's one thing to know how often it occurs, in which forms, and in which contexts. It's another to notice how people react when the affected person speaks up. Can I go to the police and report it? Will they take me seriously? Are there initiatives that really listen? Will the justice system be on my side? Will such a…