ABSTRACT
A young man is singled out by police and made to identify himself on a commuter train because he is Black. Another young Black man is refused entry to a nightclub because, according to the doorman, it has reached its quota of Black people. An Afro-German woman is evicted from her flat because her neighbours do not want to live near a Black single mother. A theatre manager states that instead of hiring Black actors, the troupe’s white actors would have their faces painted black. Trains, clubs, rental flats and performance stages are all spaces regulated in various ways by the state. Whilst all of these spaces are clearly within the scope of the German constitutional non-discrimination clause, entry into clubs, the rental of dwellings and terms of employment also enjoy the more specific statutory protection of the General Equal Treatment Law. However, formal legal provisions are part of a larger scheme of regulatory structures. Unfortunately, the regulation of these spaces is lodged squarely within broader social practices of racial exclusion. Both law enforcement and private citizens use racial thinking in the policing of public spaces, and their guardianship of these spaces is supported to various degrees by the law. Black people who have resisted being excluded from these spaces have, in the process, helped expose the social and legal norms that maintain racial exclusion.
