"Race" out of the Basic Law? Resistance in the Union

The Greens consider the term "race" no longer appropriate and call for the phrase "racist" to be included in the Basic Law. The CDU and CSU consider this to be "symbolic politics".

Berlin (dpa) - In the Union, the Greens call for deletion of the term "race" from the Basic Law meets with skepticism and rejection.

Such a deletion is "more symbolic and does not take us one step further," said the Union Group's domestic spokesman, Mathias Middelberg (CDU), the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung".

The chairman of the interior committee, Andrea Lindholz (CSU), said she considered the call "a rather helpless bogus debate". Deleting the term could also complicate case law, she argued. "Without a corresponding legal concept, which is also anchored in international law, racism could be even more difficult to grasp legally."

Union parliamentary group vice-president Thorsten Frei (CDU) told the newspaper that in the fight against racism "the linguistic revision" of the Basic Law "will not help us". The Basic Law was "not formulated linguistically as we would do today because our constitution is a historical document". The ban on "racist inequality of treatment of people" is "in 2020 as current as in 1949". An "update is not necessary".

Hesse's Prime Minister Volker Bouffier (CDU) at least advocated "very carefully" examining an amendment to the Basic Law. But more important is "a comprehensive societal debate on how we decisively counter racism". The Prime Minister of Schleswig-Holstein, Daniel Günther (CDU), told the newspaper about the dispute: "I don't care. I prefer to fight racism rather than to deal with such theoretical stuff."

Greens boss Robert Habeck and the green vice president of the Schleswig-Holstein state parliament, Aminata Touré, had justified in the "daily newspaper" to justify their demand: "It is time that we unlearn racism." The term manifests a division of people into categories that contradict the claim and spirit of the Basic Law. "There are no" races ". There are people."

Specifically, it is about Article three paragraph three of the Basic Law. There it says: "Nobody may be disadvantaged or favored because of their gender, their origin, their race, their language, their home and origin, their faith, their religious or political views. Nobody may be disadvantaged because of their disability."

The FDP, the Left and the SPD had shown themselves openly to the Greens' demand, Federal Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer (CSU) indicated willingness to talk: "I am not blocking myself". It was more important for him to contain racism in practice, Seehofer had emphasized.