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Biontech researcher couple Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci
Photo: Stefan F. Sämmer / Ritzau Scanpix / imago images
Actually, one of the most important reports this week is primarily about the discovery of a promising corona vaccine.
Since it is not entirely irrelevant for information purposes which researchers are responsible for this find, we got to know the human medicine couple Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci, who founded the company Biontech.
Both have Turkish roots, both are German, which is why one simply swapped one success for another in tabloids and social media: The discovery of a vaccine was now also told as a story of successful integration.
Uff.
This is difficult for four reasons.
Samira El Ouassil Right Arrow
Photo: Stefan Klüter
Born in Munich in 1984, is an actress and author.
In 2016 her book "The 100 most important things" (with Timon Kaleyta and Martin Schlesinger) was published by Hatje Cantz Verlag.
In 2009 she was candidate for chancellor of the PARTY, which at that time was not admitted to the federal election.
She was recently awarded the Bert Donnepp Prize for media journalism for her media critical column "Wochenschau" (uebermedien.de).
Complexity reduction and dehumanization
To want to tell a successful person with a history of immigration primarily about his or her origin reduces a three-dimensional individual with history, present and future to his or her migration background.
In the reporting, you could see how quickly some actors and the media appropriated this simplified narrative of the immigrant explorers who had immigrated, in order to fill them with their priorities in a kind of self-projection pride.
Depending on where you are in terms of identity politics, the success of Sahin and Türeci suddenly becomes their own in a euphoric identification: Turks were proud because the scientist couple has Turkish roots;
Germans were proud because it is Germans who manufacture a German active ingredient in a German company;
Women were proud that with at least one woman involved, half of the discovery was also made by at least one woman;
Leftists were proud that they could oppose the right.
But in all these appropriations, the two were abstracted to partial aspects of their personalities and made into trophies for their own self-assurance.
Appreciation of right narratives
The success of non-white people should not be used as evidence in the fight against racism or as a gesture of triumph against right-wing extremists like those in the AfD.
Nevertheless, one could observe how the success of Sahin and Türeci was ostentatiously presented to the right-wing extremists in the Bundestag with grim satisfaction.
However, this serves exactly the idea of comparability and competition of the value of people as they claim rights.
By using success as an argument to demonstratively counter racist discrimination and insults, one appreciates this right narrative in the first place. You shouldn't need successful Germans with Turkish parents to be able to triumphantly demonstrate to a Nazi that you are Racism isn't that constructive after all.
In the English-speaking discourse, this is called
respectability politics
- the idea behind it: if marginalized people adapt sufficiently, the problem of discrimination will be solved.
However, this politics of respectability fails to recognize the structural moment that institutionalized forms of discrimination have, whether in business, education, politics or the legal system.
Reni Eddo-Lodge, the author of "Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race", writes: "The politics of respectability is the persistent belief that racists would suddenly make a dramatic change of heart and give up their racist attitude if Blacks would just get better, dress better, and behave properly. "
The exposed enthusiasm on the part of the left is in a certain way a form of self-assurance, but this malice, which is perceived as fair if not even noble, unfortunately also reveals a deeply internalized perception of what we call successful integration: successfully integrated especially someone who has achieved outstanding results and / or is economically strong.
In the case of the vaccine, the problem is not the appreciation of the incredibly important and historical work, the problem is the astonished coupling between the public appreciation and a migration background.
Relocated class struggles
Recognition linked to economic success plays off underprivileged groups against each other.
It promotes the implicit expectation that people will assimilate socially as well as economically, a process that, in the eyes of rights, is what distinguishes the "good" from the "bad" migrants.
Of course, the very concept of a monolithic model of assimilation is absurd.
What exactly does it mean to have integrated "well"?
And above all: Integrated into what?
This notion contradicts the heterogeneous social structure and demography of Germany as well as the immigration history of this country, the integrative constants of which are language and liberal democracy, which is characterized by the fact that its heterogeneity has a societal power.
At the same time one uses the idea that only economically or socially above-average successful people are "well" integrated, but there are also many lower-income people with a migration history: taxi drivers, construction workers, assembly line workers, cleaning staff who are "well" integrated in that they are Master the German language, identify with the Basic Law and live in Germany, work hard, pay taxes, like everyone else.
However, their achievements do not make headlines, at least they do not seem to be a prime example of successful integration.
Or to put it the other way around: you would not tell a white taxi driver that he is not well integrated into German society because he is "only" a taxi driver - taxi drivers with a migration background are conveyed exactly that with such high-performers-are-super-immigrants.
German can only be who deserves it?
Those who combine success and migration use a neoliberal perspective on immigration, according to which one has to earn to be German.
A dominantly positive idea of immigration is often associated with hard-working people who are resilient even in adverse situations, who diligently fulfill their duty, and who have a pioneering spirit.
Such a characterization attributes the success of an immigration to individualistic qualities.
This solidifies the social mode that everyone is solely responsible for their own personal happiness and may be made responsible - accordingly everyone is to blame if the ascent does not succeed.
This ultimately fails to recognize the systemic barriers that immigrants encounter in their efforts to integrate.
The inspiring stories of ascension easily obscure the view of the problems of structural discrimination and inequality of opportunity, because they are gladly presented as a shining example.
From liberal dreamers of upward mobility as anecdotal evidence of "Anyone-can-do-it-if-he-only-wants" and as proof that the alleged discrimination and inequality of opportunity does not even exist: "Look here!
The two did it too. "
Successful people with a migration history will always be instrumentalized as evidence of the permeability of society, and they did not inevitably manage it thanks to, but often despite the structures.
When does origin play a role
However, now comes the big but!
- namely the question of how one can still tell stories of migration with all these problems and inadequacies?
There is one point that should not be underestimated: a kind of "Kamala-Harris effect", an empirically measurable connection between representation, identification and the integrative power of role models who are similar to oneself. One could argue that by ignoring the A person’s identity-political aspects would run the risk of making part of a person invisible in this noble attempt to create a post-racist society.
So the question is - how relevant is all of this in a narrative?
If the person is socio-politically committed to these issues or deals with them in their work and represents them descriptively, for example politicians, artists and activists, then it is relevant.
But the most important piece of information remains with two scientists who had a research breakthrough: these two people have found an active ingredient that could perhaps end the pandemic.
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