OT: German identification with/appropriation of civil rights movement/Black power movement was Re: antedating banjo (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Amy West]

On 4/27/12 12:00 AM, Automatic digest processor wrote:
> Date:    Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:21:26 -0400
> From:    Wilson Gray<hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Re: antedating banjo (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
> On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 4:38 PM, Cohen, Gerald Leonard<gcohen at mst.edu>  wrote:
>> >  Lumumba, Mobutu, and Kasavubu
> Used by Germans as terms of opprobrium for black GI's, back in the
> day. This kind of demonstration of antipathy was rare, though. The
> typical reaction of the German_strasse_  to black people was one of
> "really intense curiosity*, as though we were some kind of life-form
> so totally alien that they couldn't quite wrap their minds around what
> they were seeing. And I'm talking about the streets of Frankfurt,
> Stuttgart, Koeln, and Berlin and not those of some tiny, Black Forest
> village.
>
> It was this kind of reaction that caused the former expatriate black
> author, James Baldwin, to return to The World and to comment that he
> had more in common with the most ignorant, racist "Mississippi
> wool-hat" than he had with any European. Of course, Baldwin, like
> Steve Buscemi, was "kinda funny-lookin'." But, still...
Wilson, in the fall I heard an *excellent* presentation by a German
prof. from Uni Hamburg about Germans, and esp. German youth, in the '70s
identifying with the US civil rights and Black Power movement: holding
protests, wearing afros, reading and identifying with activists like MLK
and Audre Lourde. It explained to me why I came across an MLK Strasse in
Kassel when I was there in 1989. A lot of it was admiration for the
resistance and also an air of superiority -- "we're not that rotten" --
according to the presenter. She also went on to argue that Germans have
this amnesia about their own colonial and African slavery history
(quick: who remembers which African nation is a former German colony?)
and think about race purely in terms of the Holocaust, thereby
overlooking their own prejudices regarding African Germans.
(Unfortunately I have forgotten her name, but I will get it for you: she
was brought in by one of my colleagues. She's published on this and you
may be interested in reading her stuff.)
>
>> >  'Isn't Kennedy a funny name?'
> Especially when you consider that its literal translation is "ugly
> head." Some have speculated that, perhaps, the ancestor was a warrior
> known for wearing an impressive helmet. But that's only a WAG
> motivated by the fact that, to modern sensibilities, it seems unlikely
> that the literal meaning could have been meant. Of course,
>
> Youneverknow.
>
> And then there's the name, "Dick Butkus." In high school, the most
> that I had to deal with were names like Hoogstraet, Schwendemann,
> Hickenlooper - I nearly lost it! - Griesedieck, and Eisenhauer. Of
> course, I'd long been familiar with Ike's surname. But he was
> essentially a mythological creature. My fellow-student bore that name
> and was real!
As for funny names, this Germanist did not take her husband's last name
because she did not want to be known as "Frau Wurst." And after hemming
and hawing for three days, she finally gave up and named her oldest son
"Nick Wurst." Sigh. Another quarter in the therapy jar.

---Amy West

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