English Language Notes, vol. 54, no. 2, Fall/Winter 2016, pp. 77-92. In early January 2016, violence at the Cologne train station on New Year’s Eve drew tremendous attention from the German and international public. In a subsequent...
moreEnglish Language Notes, vol. 54, no. 2, Fall/Winter 2016, pp. 77-92.
In early January 2016, violence at the Cologne train station on New Year’s Eve drew tremendous attention from the German and international public. In a subsequent parliamentary debate, a remarkable unity occurred across the political spectrum on the question of how the government might respond to the New Year’s eve events in Cologne, reifying tired tropes of a public threatened by dangerous Muslim men. Most notably, the speakers during this debate almost uniformly called for an increased police presence; some additionally called for additional numbers of workers to process asylum claims. Even as the parliamentarians cautioned against racist responses to the violence of Cologne, they turned to strategies of increased surveillance and security that have historically targeted racialized groups, and suppressed any reference to the de facto ban on North African applications for asylum.
The paradox of rights and racism, whereby human rights are re-racialized even as racism is rejected, reveals the deeply gendered workings of whiteness. The debates about Cologne construed the safe movement of white women as threatened and failed to acknowledge the constraints on North Africans’ movement to and in Germany, while heralding forms of surveillance and policing that often target racialized others. The debates about the violence in Cologne further suggest that where we do not attend carefully to the circulation of racist structures and discourses, or the importance of human security to understandings of human rights, whiteness is easily reinscribed in projects for a more just world.
