TALKE TALKS: Diversity and Exclusion

Howdy from Texas, dear readers,

are the Americans better than us? I often ask myself this question; I didn’t move from Germany to America for nothing. You quickly notice their shortcomings: Americans drive worse than we do – they rarely signal, overtake from the right, never know who has the right of way, and often brake for absolutely no reason. They are worse gourmets because they rush to eat, oversalt everything and have no idea about good products and table manners. They also make worse homeopaths because they pump themselves full of pills and act like you’re a hippie when you recommend simple healthy solutions like fresh air. They are also poor builders: taps, pipes, door handles, light switches, foot slats – everything breaks down and collapses in a short time, whereas in Germany it feels like it lasts a century. But our German superiority becomes most clear when cleaning windows. The English window design is already pathetic (everything bad in the USA somehow comes from the British): the windows are so difficult to open that most people probably lose the desire to wash from the start. And then the professional window cleaners who all around us only do so once a year – just not more often! ̶ get involved, not even the window frame was wiped. “Ugh!” you want to scream, or “Ew!”

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But over time you also notice a latent American superiority. They are better at business, after all, they have the best economy in the world, and with that comes their enviable talent for making much more money than we would ever be able to. Regardless of whether it’s a “Finance Bro”, a Mukbang TikToker (someone who films themselves gorging themselves) or an Only Fans member who sells their own bathwater – the opportunities to collect tons of money in the USA are limitless. Here, $100,000 a year is brazenly considered a “starter’s salary.” When I lived in Germany, 100,000 was a living wage for me as a humanities scholar! The Americans are also superior to us when it comes to having fun, or are there theme parties in Germany at every measly opportunity? American society, as I have often reported, is more child-friendly and, in my opinion, better when it comes to diversity. How, you ask, is this possible? With all the cases of racism in the country? The construction of the Mexico Wall, the murder of George Floyd, the wave of Asian hatred during the pandemic, the Islamophobia after 9/11 and the anti-Semitism on university campuses?

But if you ignore the crazies and radicals, then you realize that Americans are much further along in terms of diversity and inclusion than we Germans (and the rest of Europe). In my hometown, the mega-multicultural Hamburg (40 percent of the population has a migration background!), there are countless German families who have no contact with migrants at all. They then say things like “your Turkish girlfriend” about a girl whose parents were born in Germany and deny racism where it is quite obvious. Hamburg is split into two camps: There are the typically German corners and activities, like Elbe and cycling, where you never meet migrants, or those that seem to only exist for migrants, like coffee shops in Harburg or Altona. And who is to blame for this development? Both sides, of course.

In Texas, on the other hand, everything is mixed, you are surrounded by so many ethnicities and nations that it would be considered bigoted to define people by their origins. The majority of the population also seems to have the same hobbies (brunch, pool, consumerism and children’s birthday parties). And although Germans travel much more than Americans, the latter, bizarrely, show more interest in other cultures. So since Americans have more business, more fun, more children and more diversity, we should invite many more of them to Germany to learn from them. In order for them to come, we would have to give up Sunday rest, homeopathy, hiking and cycling. The migrants would like that.