Face it. Your “white anti-racism” ain’t exactly all that “anti-racist”.

Have a good day. And don’t forget to make that donation.

this ‘interest’ what German city/Region only is because you already knew that I am German and your ‘concern’ is not about me being Bavarian, but being German.

I don’t like making assumptions and therefore when I meet somebody on an American message board speaking/writing German I ask, if s/he is German or not.

Besatzungskinder is a term used not just by some “Schlup”, whatever this is. And it’s not talking about what tragedy is greater, it’s nonetheless the reality of some or many Germans today that they had to grow up without father, that their mothers sometimes or often where excluded from society also because of sleeping with the enemy and for Black Germans growing up with a white mother in an often quite racist surrounding. It’s a particular part of history and the history of some Germans today. And that some would like to know who his/her father is is also part of this.

>TO THIS DAY REMAIN excluded from being Germans.

Yes, and this has to change.

But a question to you. You can easily blame Russia for how East-Germany is today, but you seem to deny the fact, that America was (and still is) a white supremacy nation, with laws of racial segregation at home at that time and with a North and West not being able or willing to have an ‘ameliorating’ effect on the Southern States. Do you think that white American soldiers left their own racism at home? That it didn’t have any impact in how they occupied Germany, bringing “American values” to Germany?
As I said already, there was a chance missed. Germany after the War had no power. And the decision that West-Germany pays reparations to Jews was a political one. Why only Jews and not the other racialized victims of Nazi-Germany? Also because they were not relevant for the occupying forces. What was important, also for the US, was a Europe becoming stable again, also in material terms, therefore the Marshallplan, also with the goal to bind European nations towards the US and not Russia, this was the start of the Cold War, and a growing European economy also benefited the US. Victims without a political lobby could easily be forgotten, no reparations for them up to today. And no, this doesn’t talk about Germans not being responsible for their actions and non-actions, but as I told you already, history doesn’t happen in a vacuum and political change to the more positive doesn’t happen without political pressure.

Second. Just because some schlup used the word “Besatzungskinder” on some ill-informed website and – as you did – exclusively for “uneheliche” (born out of wedlock) children with all of the negative connotation which the German cultural sphere historically imbued this term, that doesn’t make it any more “correct” for you to use it. Besides, it is debatable whether the greater tragedy wasn’t the fact that the children born within a German mother/Non-German father marriage by (an OFFICIALLY UNCONSTITUTIONAL) sexist law that expired on March 31, 1953 but nonetheless is employed as the basis for German bureaucratic practice were and TO THIS DAY REMAIN excluded from being Germans. http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/media/auslaender6.html

Whether you wouldn’t consider me as German or not because I am “black” AFTER you asked the question ain’t the point at all. The point is, that you found it necessary to ask that particular question in the first place.

German is not an easy language for a non-native speaker and a German native speaker usually can easily recognize whether a German or a non-German native speaker is using German in speech or writing. For example, I was less concerned whether you were “German” and more interested what German city or region you are from.

First, as to your “information” on the “Fraternisierungsverbot” (non-fraternization). The US military’s Non-fraternization policy in Germany was pretty much ended on JULY 14, 1945 at a press conference by General Eisenhower and officially so on OCTOBER 1, 1945 and not in 1955. By 1955 marriage restrictions had long been lifted for years.

Second. Just because some schlup used the word “Besatzungskinder” on some ill-informed website and – as you did – exclusively for “uneheliche” (born out of wedlock) children with all of the negative connotation which the German cultural historically imbued this term, doesn’t make it any more “correct” for you to use it. Besides, it is debatable whether the greater tragedy wasn’t the fact that the children born within a German mother/Non-German father marriage by law were and TO THIS DAY REMAIN excluded from being Germans. http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/media/auslaender6.html

Trotz dieses Verbots – wurden bis 1952 mindestens 50.000 uneheliche Kinder – deren Väter ausländische Soldaten waren in Deutschland geboren.
Während der deutschen Nachkriegszeit sollen es mehr als 100.000 gewesen sein.
Wobei eine genaue Zahl nicht bekannt ist.
Man spricht hier von den so genannten Besatzungs-Kindern.

Im Mai 1955 endete die offizielle Besatzungszeit in Deutschland.
http://www.gi-search.net/ge/hintergrund_besatzungszeit.htm

My question then was:
Bist Du deutsch oder warst Du in Deutschland? (Are you German or do you have been in Germany?)

Your answer:
To answer your question: Ich bin Amerikaner. Und ja, ich war schon mal in Deutschland. I am American and yes, I have been in Germany.

You can call this a sarcastic lie.

Now, who said that the US Military was someone of “us” – in this instance Germans? No one ever made that point. The point that was made is that it is a fact, that without the American military’s presence in West Germany today you’d be learning Russian, live under a fascist “internationalist socialist” system that wasn’t much better than that of the fascist “nationalist socialist” system of the Nazis, and that certainly proved to be a much more fertile ground for the traditional good old German racialism than the system in West Germany, f**ked up as the prevalence of racism was, remains, and, with the opening of the wall, was strengthened.

Besides, this picture of the self-isolating US over-lord presence is quite inaccurate. The greater number of US service families tended to live “on the economy”, that is, among Germans in German neighborhoods, renting apartments at premium rents from German landlords. Particularly when the US military was still largely made up of draftees the interaction between US soldiers and Germans was quite active, peaceful, and fruitful. Hundreds of thousands of Germans worked on US military bases. That can not be said of the Soviets in the Soviet-occupied Zone.

Now what exactly is your point about what you call the “Besatzungskinder” (“occupation children”), a term as derisively offensive as can be?

The most common and simultaneously most asinine and racist question which white Germans ask black Germans when they hear or see black Germans speak or write German like the native Germans they are is “Woher kannst Du denn so gut Deutsch?” (“How come you speak German so well?”). Your question at the time was wholly inappropriate and unnecessary. And asinine question is deserving of of a sarcastic answer.

But with one thing you are right, so far it never occurred to me that the children of members of the American military in Germany, who also live within the military base, can have dual citizenship, for me American Army was American Army, including their children living with them. Own American news, radio stations, schools, even driving through Germany with private cars having American licence plates, approaching Germans with talking English doesn’t make this occupying force somebody of “us”. I grew up having a US military base as almost neighbor, only some kilometers away.

Something different are those children ‘Besatzungskinder’, with American soldiers as fathers and Germans as mothers and the American fathers leaving mother and child behind in Germany. These children are German, there are also organizations, trying to help these children to find their fathers.

I once said so where?

because you once said so.

Interesting. Let me see what do you, jwbe, know about me:

(1) Clearly I have (I would even say have excellent?) command of the English language.
(2) Clearly I have (I would even say have excellent?) command of the German language.
(3) Clearly I have lived in Germany.
(4) Clearly I have lived in the United States.
(5) Clearly I have a black American father and a German mother

Which of these facts would indicate that I am a “You Americans”.

Why would you automatically assume that I am an American and not a German (even if I exclusively were an American citizen), or both American and German for that matter (and as would be logical in view of the facts which you know about me)?

This “othering” of people as non-Germans who don’t fit the categories of “Germaness” invented by German racialists in the past and perpetuated even in the present is pretty deep-seated, what ya think??

Wie schon gesagt, Geschichte passiert nicht im Vakuum und Du kannst auch gerne für Dein Amerika all die positiven Seiten vereinnahmen, und alles Versagen anderen zuschieben, aber die Realität ist nicht so einfach.
Du kannst auch gerne mitteilen, was Du im Prinzip von mir willst, anscheinend scheints Dich ja zu stören, daß ich Dein Amerika kritisiere.

What, now you’re “trying” to imply that I can’t use the English language? I’m not “trying” anything. I said what I said: “the presence of US military personnel had an ameliorating effect on German racism”. That is not the same as saying “the US-military was not racist”. I’ll state it again in German so that there is no chance that you misunderstand: Die Anwesenheit von US-amerikanischen Truppenmitgliedern hatte verbessernde Auswirkungen auf den deutschen Rassismus. Das ist nicht dasselbe wie “das US Militaer war nicht rassistisch”.

My true problem is racism. In this case, as, once again, manifested in it’s “white anti-racist” face. It is highly instructive that even the most apparently “radical” white anti-racists can not but help try to occupy the cognitive space of non-whites. “Anti-racist” indeed.