Finding one’s identity is difficult. A lack of positive role models complicates the search even further; but what if there were no role models at hand and no footsteps to follow in any direction?
Who am I? Where do I come from and where do I belong? are essential questions each of us seeks answers to as we come of age and search for our very own identity. While these queries and their respective answers may be personal, they are mostly left to the scrutiny of social scientists, demographers or politicians. For teenagers with nurtured roots in the Diaspora, the quest for identity is a combination of personal and cultural exploration. In the case of African teenagers, particularly those raised in modern Germany, the situation is a very interesting one because they are the first generation of Africans to be born here, and thus have opportunities their parental generation did not have.
The African migration to Germany began on a large scale in the 198o’s; youths referred to in this piece mainly belong to the second generation of these immigrants. Life as a black teenager in Germany can sometimes be dispiriting; the likelihood of finding local role models with similar ethnic origins is very slim. As of today most prestigious positions and other financial and public offices are seldom held by persons of color; it will be fascinating to see how this budding generation contributes to changes in these fields. But the question still lingers: How are black teenagers, particularly those in Germany, considered to be pioneers in many ways, deal with the issue of self-identity all by themselves?
This journey of finding one’s identity can last a lifetime. Each of us goes through the phase, and most of us make the most significant changes and developments during puberty and the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Part of the question of who we want to be can be answered by discovering who we are, and respectively where we come from. For teenagers with immigrant parents, this question is of special relevance because the issue of living in-between two cultures sometimes creates harsh irritations.
These irritations are often demonstrated among a generation of disconsolate foreign teenagers. Adjectives like aggressive and troublesome are often used to label these youngsters, and social disintegration or parallel societies have been buzzwords in the discourse on the phenomenon of crimes committed by urban foreign youth in several European nations. So far, Black teenagers in Germany have not fallen under the classified problematic group and there have been very few reports, if any, on black teenagers in crime statistics.
And these adolescents, though branded by such material stamp as a German passport, often do not feel a part of the people they are supposed to represent – Germans. They often feel excluded from mainstream society and thus, consciously or not, choose to identify themselves with their native cultures or other cultures like the African American or Hip hop culture.
Torch, a Germany-based Haitian musician describes his feelings about living in-between two cultures when he states: “Haiti is far, but East-Prussia – denotes a territory in Germany, though the term Prussia is no longer used – almost even further.”
This indicates why so many find a “cultural home” in pop-culture. Broadcasted aspects of culture are more accessible and sometimes even closer to our experienced reality than aspects of the national cultures we live in.
I remember my own adolescence and the difficulties I faced finding my cultural identity. Growing up as a teenager in a mixed peer group; our defining element and denominator was the fact that we all had foreign roots and thus demarcated ourselves from Germans. Identification hence manifested itself as a form of demarcation from the norms of mainstream society. Youngsters who experience this feeling of a jagged perspective coupled with exclusion from society are quite likely to accept this as fate. In this lays a great danger, because the frustration is often channelled into violence, graduating to the adoption of criminal lifestyles as an alternative to the opportunities society does not seem to offer. Adding on to the experience of a jagged perspective, the differences between African and German culture are remarkable, to say the least.
I recently read an article which stated that the most extreme form of being German is being Afro-German. This remark indicates the difficulty of being German and simultaneously being black. The difficulty to combine these two elements in one identity ostensibly stems from history, specifically the period of the Nazi regime. The image of Germans as racist, regarding blonde hair and blue eyes as the most desirable form of physical beauty has unfairly cemented itself in the minds of people. Being black thus is the exact opposite of that notion.
Stereotypes often ascribed to blacks and Germans outside of physical appearance are at extremes. While racially biased descriptions of the black person contain adverbs like lazy, undisciplined and happy, Germans are often described as zealous, disciplined but lacking a sense of humour. The real discrepancy might not be as immense as between alleged stereotypes, yet it is probably not easy to merge these two into a new single identity.
Looking beyond factors such as musical and fashion trends, Afro-Germans face a difficult task in forming their identities, hardly having local figures for identification. The question is, can our teenagers and adults still pull through their chances of creating positive images? I am certain they will.