“Black Like Me” in Germany

Last updated on: May 7, 2013 at 6:35 pm by Svend White

“Black Like Me” in Germany 2013-05-07T18:35:00-05:00 Svend White

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It's a very serious matter, but I must say that I came near to wetting myself from laughter at this pic (lifted from the Danish newspaper Politiken) of Günter Wallraff, a famous German investigative reporter who went undercover as a Somali immigrant in painfully unconvincing blackface.

He has written a book and created a film about the open racism he encountered at every turn in daily life. I'm reminded as an American of the famous experiment carried out by a Texan journalist John Howard Griffin, who traveled f0r 6 weeks through the South in disguise as a black man in 1959 and then published a searing account of the ubiquitous racism he found (in some cases from people who'd received him warmly the previous day as a white man) in Black Like Me.

I don't think the prejudice and discrimination Wallraff encountered will surprise anybody who follows developments in German society with any regularity, but it is nonetheless a bit perplexing that so many people could be taken in by this comically inept disguise. Hence this observation from an article in the UK's Time Online:

Philipp Lichterbeck, film critic for the Tagesspiegel newspaper,
says
that Mr Wallraff’s disguise made him look like a clown. The fact that
nobody
suspected that something was amiss, he says, “does not exactly testify
to
the worldliness of the Germans”.

Seems to me that have to be seriously, well, inbred not to find something a bit queer about this supposed "Somali" gentleman.

The shirt is simply divine, though. As is the horrified stare of the young guy.

Update: I finally put my finger on why this particular image was so familiar. Anyone remember this movie?

Download:

FLVMP43GP

Download:

FLVMP43GP

I miss Gene Wilder (and Richard Prior, needless to say). They were a great team.

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