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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Some data to support this: https://fortune.com/2020/06/19/corporate-germany-race-divers...

> There are 179 people on the management or executive boards of Germany’s 29 Fortune Global 500 companies. Just two of them are not white—both hailing from South Asia—and none is black.

Contrast the US: https://deloitte.wsj.com/riskandcompliance/2019/03/12/women-...

> Total minority representation increased to 16.1 percent (912 board seats) from 12.8 percent in 2010, the first year Fortune 500 data were captured.

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> Just two of them are not white—both hailing from South Asia—and none is black.

"Whiteness" is a US concept, which doesn't make much sense in a German context. That sentence only tells me that some South Asians are neither white nor black.

I have no idea how they'd classify e.g. Turks. I think Greeks are considered white in the US, so maybe Turks too.

The other big immigrant group in Germany are Vietnamese, but they're kind of hamstrung by mostly having moved to East Germany. (East Germans in general are economically disadvantaged.)

I think statistics about ethnicity would be more useful if they were based on easily interpretable categories like own country of birth, country of birth of parents, grandparents, etc.

Wait... how could Greeks not be considered white? I’m afraid to ask, but what would a “white” European consider the race of Greeks to be?

Depends on the place and the person, but some certainly are racist against Greeks.

I'm pretty sure these racial categories are American abstractions, whose names have only reflected their composition in recent decades. The Irish, for instance, were long not considered 'white'; they were just 'Irish'.

So, white and off-white (I.e., lesser whites)?

And white-adjacent.

I live in the US, but was born and raised in France and Greeks are considered white there. If the 1998 football team described as "black-blanc-beur" had included players of Greek descent (and maybe it did?), they would have been part of the "blancs", just like Youri Djorkaeff.

Take what you read with a grain of salt. I'm certainly very skeptical of the implied claim that Germans wouldn't consider Greeks as white.

Note that being considered white doesn't preclude Greeks from being discriminated against, just like some people discriminate against e.g. white Poles.

Greeks, like Armenians in USA are kind of a tossup case, see for example the YA novel "The Westing Game" where a black character compares themselves to a Greek with darker skin

The point is that Germans are not in the habit of classifying people by race unless they're racist, and even then they don't tend to think in terms of Whites vs Blacks. For Nazis, it's about Aryans vs Jews, where the "Aryan race" is considered to consist of tall, blond, blue-eyed people. Most Greeks would not be considered Aryan, as would most Germans, for that matter.

I find it quite telling that you are surprised Greeks might be considered anything but white, while not showing any surprise about Turks. I don't think there's any difference in skin color, so that confirms my suspicion that "whiteness" isn't just about looks.

> I find it quite telling that you are surprised Greeks might be considered anything but white, while not showing any surprise about Turks. I don't think there's any difference in skin color, so that confirms my suspicion that "whiteness" isn't just about looks.

There are many more people of Greek descent than of Turkish descent in the USA. It's very possible that the person you replied to is simply not familiar enough with people of Turkish descent to express surprise at your claim.

>"Whiteness" is a US concept, which doesn't make much sense in a German context.

This is true, unfortunately the supremacy of American culture over the last century means that all of these concepts that do not fit very well into other contexts have been exported, I often run into situations in Denmark that would be horrifyingly racist in the U.S (not to say that Denmark doesn't have it's own racist traditions, but the grafting on of the American viewpoint does not exactly fit).

Of course when the concept is exported it in some way becomes the thing over time, and then people try to import the solutions to the problem.

So, first of all, "white" and "black" are not good terms to use in Germany. Most of Germany's migrants are not from Africa and most are from the EU. Germany has a "black" population of about 2%, compared to the 10+% in the US.

Then, you get the fact that the minorities in the US are more qualified than the ones in Germany. Germany doesn't attract the most talented in the world, like the US and due to the lack of two oceans protecting it from the rest of the world, Germany doesn't get to be too picky about its migrants. The biggest attraction to foreigners is its welfare state. So I would hesitate to conclude to much from such a simple comparison.

I don’t understand, am I supposed to think it’s a problem that German companies are being managed by native Germans?

If the makeup of management doesn't reflect the underlying population, especially if non-management does, then yes of course that's a problem.

I as an ethnic German can echo the GP's point. Non-management can be quite diverse, but management is very much old, white, ethnic Germans as far as the eye can see.

There are still a lot of conscious/unconscious ethnic biases in Germany, especially among the older population.

Management is usually made of middle aged experienced people with really good speaking skills who have lived in the country for a decade or two at least. I suppose that the migrants in germany meet none of these criteria.

Management is actually usually made up of previous management’s social circles.

I suspect that is the only criteria migrants don’t really check, and that is the point.

If by native you mean citizen, then there are also non-white natives of Germany. Without data on the ethnic makeup of the population it's difficult to say how poorly they're represented

> am I supposed to think it’s a problem that German companies are being managed by native Germans

Yes, you are supposed to think that now for some reason.

Germany doesn't have many black people because Germany didn't import them as slaves and never really colonized Africa.

This whole statistic is worthless without context. Like how Germany's first immigrants after WW2 were low skilled Turkish workers and only recently Germany became more attractive for high-skilled immigrants because the US effectively shut down its visa program for the majority of people.

I'm not saying Germany is perfect but just whipping out some numbers without context doesn't cut it.

Also, it's pretty bold for Americans to lecture other countries on racism while their police is gunning down people simply for the color of their skin and is separating children of refugees from their parents to put them in cages. Meanwhile Germany is providing healthcare and shelter for all refugees but apparently doesn't currently promote a few dozen high-skilled workers that very likely could've made it anywhere to be CEO.

> Germany doesn't have many black people because Germany didn't import them as slaves and never really colonized Africa.

Germany did colonize Africa and committed its fair share of attrocities in Namibia, but the colonies were taken away after WWII - way before the African independence movement took hold (which was immediately followed by an uptick of citizens in those former colonies migrating to colonial powers)

You mean after WWI. But yes, both to having colonies, but being a smaller player than others.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_colonization_of_Africa

Germany is no stranger to slave labor and didn’t abolish it until much later than the US did (1945). And not by choice either. The US has never had genocide on the industrial scale of what Germany has done in the 20th century. Slave labor today doesn’t seem to be an issue for Merkel either, as evidenced by recent trade deals.

Germans playing the moral superiority card is humorous to me.

You missed my point entirely. I never compared past atrocities as it is unfair to the current generation. What I compare is the current state of affairs.

Germany today is giving shelter and free healthcare to refugees but apparently not CEO positions.

The US is gunning down blacks and forcefully taking children of refugees away from their parents but some immigrants became CEO of large companies which apparently makes the US more immigration-friendly and less racist than Germany.

US is doing no such things and Germans are far more racist than Americans it’s not even close.

> Germany doesn't have many black people because Germany didn't import them as slaves and never really colonized Africa.

Yes, that was a weird point to make in the article because it's not as if there are many Black people in Germany. But you have to admit that having just two non-white people out of 179 (1.1%) on corporate boards is pretty odd. Germany is white, but not 98.9% white. Turks make up over 5% of the population.

Definitely true. Germany made a huge mistake not integrating 1st and 2nd generation Turks better and the 3rd generation is now feeling especially lost as Turkey isn't home and Germany doesn't feel like home either.

Aren't Turks white?

This specific distinction doesn't really make any sense in Europe.

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