Integration to my mind means mixing of groups of people. As I learned during the integration course which I attended this is not how it works here. Attending was not compulsory for me but it is a requirement for german citizenship. I am as yet undecided if this would be the right thing for me but I decided to go the course anyway.
Despite all the attempts to sort everthing into balck and white the shades of grey persistently remain. To give some context the course was divided into three sections: German political system, History and the most contentious people and society. The vast majority of the images in the book were of eople who looked to be ethnically white, the majority male and lacking in cultural diversity. The notable exception to this was the headscarf/kopftuch. This proved to be a huge theme during the course, both to demonstrate how diverse Germany while also showing an example of possible discrimination. I found this poorly handled by the authors of the book because the woman in the book who was employed had to change her workplace for a different one as a solution to the problem of a manager who took exception to the fact that the employee wore a headscarf. This is discrimintation which is against the German costitution. It was not clear what the nationality of the employee was but if she was a non german citizen then she would have no elected representative to comaplain to and be represented by. This was a small example of what I suspect could be part of a bigger problem.
The course felt like an attempt to civilise us barbarians with no understanding that we bring other worldviews and perhaps a better understanding than many. We after all had this integration done to us but only going in one direction. The resentment that this can lead to should surprise nobody. Politically speaking the migrant popultion is part of a complicated game of catch played out on a gameboard of climate change. Climate change is caused by human ativities including oil exploration and warmongering. Migrants can't vote so nobody speaks for the migrants. And so this cycle continues.
The bias of the writers is evident. In my mixed class I felt that we were not the intended target group for this course. I feel a weary sense of resignation start to form cutrain like over my judgement. It sits uneasily with me because to feel you have to first see. When you become immune to seeing what do you then miss?