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You keep projecting what you think I'm advocating for when all I've so far revealed is that I'm advocating for clear language that doesn't flatten reality but acknowledges the different struggles people face, including racist ones. Why do you think that would stop short of a person born into poverty or to one born to parents who didnt have the privilege of a higher education and therefore can't pass on what they haven't learned? You keep talking about this in ways that reveal that for you other peoples struggle is an abstract thought exercise, which is why I advised caution when telling others how to safeguard against or combat racism.

Hamburg is a police state it’s very easy to get harassed by police there. Remember when they declared pretty much all of Altona a “danger zone”? That wasn’t about immigrants it was about leftists, they kicked off the whole thing by claiming, falsely, that a police station was attacked by “people wearing St. Pauli scarfs”.

Believe me I know.

Yes, please do tell me whether Hamburg cops make a distinction between someone looking like they visit the barber thrice a day vs. a punk.

Obviously they do.

By considering your groups’ issues, be that Turks or immigrants in general, to be oh so special, unknown to everyone else, you’re othering yourself.

No, I was othered unprompted. By Turks. They aren't "my group" any less than the "east germans". A comrade is a comrade, a racist isn't.

Is there surname discrimination when looking for a flat? Yes. Is there discrimination against Kevins? Also yes because in reality it’s about socio-economic status and both foreign last name or “low-class” native first name are proxies for low socio-economic standing.

Not entirely. The prejudice Kevin faces is different from the one Jihad faces. That doesn't make Kevins struggle less real. I don't understand why you keep thinking I want to diminish someones struggle when I've repeatedly called for language that doesn't hide injustices. I've helped both a "Kevin" and a "Jihad" try to find apartments while needing rent relief. One was presumed to have snuck into this country and probably dangerous and the other was "just" presumed to be lazy. It both sucks, but one of them had it harder. And we aren't going to be addressing any of it if we can't talk about how or why the systems is the way it is.

The solution is not to preach “oh liberal landlord, you’re being so racist, please ignore your concerns about your tenant’s incomes” as that ignores their systemic financial interest in discriminating against people with low wages, it will never work, the solution is social housing, which, I already mentioned, we’re lacking at least one million units of: That kind of discrimination can only exist in an environment where there’s too few flats on the market, if landlords actually needed to search for tenants then they’d be willing to interview everyone – and then discriminate by actual, not assumed, socio-economic status. It’s not just immigrants that don’t fit into the normative lens of the usual rightoid suspects. Remember who were the first the Nazis put into camps?

Complete projection. I don't know where this is coming from.

Just because you don’t want to deport or do worse to people doesn’t mean that the in-outgroup psychology isn’t the same, and is breeding ground for worse. Yes, that realisation can hurt. It’s also vital. Swimming against the stream is insufficient, you have to get out of the fucking river, take a breather, have a Mojito, learn to walk

More evidence that this is just a thought exercise for you. The grey wolves kill people like me. The fact that you persist after I told you it was hurtful because you are so sure in your (wrong) assumption for why that might be tells me that you don't know what you're talking about. Which makes it less hurtful, so at least there's that, but it's a bad sign about how I think of you because I would like to think of you as a comrade. So why persist in something I told you to be hurtful?

and then throw live vests at the swimmers, first and foremost those that cling to other swimmers.

How about instead to those closest to drowning? What do you propose we do about the people that aren't close to drowning but steal the vests from under the people that are?

Ah, there we have it. “AfD voters and therefore the east are all Nazis”. Especially Kevin, of course, why else could Kevin be angry as you’re denying that discrimination against him can exist. No, they didn’t suddenly become (more) racist. No, demagogues didn’t suddenly learn radically new tricks that made them magnitudes more effective: The underlying conditions, the seeds of betrayal and anger, that they exploit became more and more wide-spread, the precariat grew and grew while conditions and pressures got worse and worse.

Even more evidence that this is just a thought exercise for you, when I'm talking about "the racists" I'm not talking about some abstract demographic, I am thinking of real people. I can visualize their faces. I wasn't talking about "AfD voters and therefore the east" and the fact that your first response always seems to be "but won't you think of the people voting AfD" is making me increasingly wary of you. I was working under the assumption that this "bridging the divide" thing is a pet project that you're overly invested in but I'm increasingly running low on good faith to offer you especially since I don't seem to get any in return.

To be sure I'm not against "bridging the divide" or dismissive of people in the east, especially since they got capitalism working against them double-time when compared to the west. I don't think of them as AfD voting nazis. But you have to understand that for me to call someone who did vote AfD a comrade, they have to earn my trust first because they probably need to unlearn some racist shit or at the very least learn materialist thinking.

I don’t think I ever said that as I disagree with it: Welfare recipients in general, the whole precariat, is getting squeezed. The whole thing started in the 90s when the federal republic lost its (nominal only, but still) socialist rival to the east. Noone is ever promising more welfare for anyone, it’s always “those lazy buggers simply don’t want to work”. “Poverty is a choice” etc, etc. Social darwinism.

Right, immigrants was used as a stand-in for really anyone requiring welfare. It's just that the media focus really is on the immigrants at the moment. But again I am well aware that there are other marginalised groups.

Add “organic potato but parents live off Hartz IV” to the list of people without equal opportunities and we could have a seed of agreement. “Bildungsferne Schichten”, as the euphemism goes.

They were never off the list. I do not understand why you think they would be.

A Turk with Abitur much less degree is rare not because they’re Turks but because their parents didn’t study.

That's an untrue simplification. Turkish people are racistly discriminated against even in school. If their parents didn't have a good education obviously getting Abitur will be even harder, same as for any other person, but they might face additional hurdles or just different hurdles than others. Same for disabled people, they will face bigger hurdles than their able-bodied friends with the same background. Same for girls getting into STEM, their gender probably will cause the barrier for them to be even higher than for boys with a similar non-academic household. Naming the reasons for why some people face different obstacles isn't idpol, it's materialist.

Be a good leftist and spend some of your solidarity budget on Kevin. It’s going to pay off a thousandfold because it will create conditions under which addressing things like racial profiling doesn’t sound like “oh great another way for them to ignore us”.

Kevin always had my solidarity, but I expect to have his. It's not unconditional. Also it doesn't need to be budgeted? What a weird way of thinking about it.

Democracies have capacity limits, when you fix shit that concerns a huge number of people suddenly those have time and nerve for solidarity,

True, which is why I'm advocating for precise language to name concerns so that we get to those with the most first. Because time and again once the majority got theirs the minority was left behind. The people whose only motivation is that their concerns get addressed will lose any motivation once they are. Tit for tat is not solidarity and will never achieve justice.