Statement on Racism and the Recent Protests
Recent events in the United States have spotlighted the persistence of deeply engrained structures of systemic racism on all levels of society—not only in North America but also in the United Kingdom, Germany, and other European countries.
In the department of British and American Studies, we regard it as our responsibility to expose, contextualize, and critically examine the cultural formations that undergird such discriminatory structures. The postcolonial and comparative approaches we bring to these issues have made us the more aware that racism is a core component of the societies in which we live and work. We condemn racism and stand in solidarity with those protesting against racist violence and other forms of discrimination against people of color.
We encourage you to read up on these issues beyond our regular course offerings and public events. The following sources could serve as starting points for further information.
- Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New Press, 2010.
- Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. Spiegel & Grau, 2015.
- Hasters, Alice. Was weiße Menschen nicht über Rassismus hören wollen, aber wissen sollten. Hanserblau, 2019.
- Holt, Thomas C. The Problem of Race in the Twenty-First Century. Harvard UP, 2000. (available for download)
- Niro, Brian. Race. Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
- Ogette, Tupoka. Exit Racism: Rassismuskritisch denken lernen. Münster: Unrast, 2017. (also available as audio book)