Dispute over designated government commissioner Ferda Ataman: This is a campaign

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Ferda Ataman

Photo: Metodi Popov / IMAGO

The head of the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency (ADS) has been vacant since 2018 - a circumstance that has not really bothered anyone in recent years.

So the replacement shouldn't be an overly spectacular affair, one might have thought until recently.

Unspectacular because it is a specialist authority with a legally defined mandate.

And unlike in the 1990s, it is now widely recognized that research and well-founded reporting on discrimination, as well as counseling those affected, are important tasks to be performed by the state.

This assessment has now been shown to be wrong.

The response to the polemical, and in some cases unfortunately also denunciatory, criticism of Ferda Ataman, the designated head of the ADS, has been surprisingly large in the print media and social media.

The reporting focuses primarily on criticism of her person, while the broad support from migrant self-organizations, anti-discrimination associations and others is hardly mentioned.

The criticism focuses on individual tweets or columns, prizes awarded by an association in which she works voluntarily, or topics on which Ataman allegedly said too little.

Almost nowhere is it about what it should be about: the work of the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency and the General Equal Treatment Act, the requirements for the further development of the legal requirements and improved equipment for the institution.

From a social science point of view, it is not surprising that media from the conservative spectrum or with a populist orientation have launched a campaign against a woman with a migration background, who has positioned herself clearly against complacency with the conditions in Germany, against nationally colored concepts of homeland and Islamophobia.

She undoubtedly did so occasionally with polemical exaggeration, but consistently factually well-founded.

It is more irritating that the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" puts the planned appointment in the context of an alleged transformation of the responsible ministry into an "agitation center of the Greens".

The fact that the »Süddeutsche Zeitung« also agreed to this campaign

Ferda Ataman represents such a position and is therefore assigned the function of pawn sacrifice.

She is discredited in order to prevent the anti-discrimination agency being appointed to a person who dares to speak uncomfortable truths.

Even if that wasn't the intention, it would still be the expected effect.

Symptomatic of this are the reactions that her no doubt intentionally provocative use of the potato label triggered for native Germans.

Nobody has to like that.

However, when journalists in the serious press describe this as racism that can be equated with the use of racist vocabulary from colonialism, then it becomes clear that there is still a lack of racism-critical education here.

In addition – and this is more important – criticism of discrimination can only really be consensual if it does not affect the self-image of those who only locate discrimination and racism in the right-wing extremist spectrum.

However, this is in contrast to numerous scientific studies which have shown that

The criticism of those who position themselves as Islam-critical migrants against Ferda Ataman is different.

They accuse her of misjudging and denying problems within Islam and the migrant communities.

This is done without presenting any credible evidence and without addressing the fact that Ferda Ataman, as a woman from a secular family, has no discernible reason to speak out in favor of patriarchy and religious fundamentalism.

She never did either.

On the contrary, as a journalist she reported explicitly on problems in migrant milieus.

The fact that it is not helpful to play off discrimination against minorities by the majority against problematic conditions within minorities, but also not vice versa, seems to have escaped this position.

Ferda Ataman can be trusted to have both in mind.

Ferda Ataman has also taken clear and unequivocal positions against anti-Semitism.

Claims to the contrary are demonstrably false.

The Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency needs intelligent, technically competent management with leadership qualities.

And she needs it in a timely manner, without the protracted delay that would be expected if her appointment failed.

Scientists like myself who have worked with Ferda Ataman are just as convinced of her competence as her former supervisor Armin Laschet.

Her nomination is also expressly supported by the Federal Conference of Migrants' Organisations, the German Anti-Discrimination Association, the German Lesbian and Gay Association LSVD, the "Charter of Diversity" initiative and also by personalities such as the director of the Anne Frank educational institution Meron Mendel.

Critical public scrutiny of such a mandate is undoubtedly a democratic virtue.

However, the public debate over the past few weeks has not done justice to the objectivity required for this.

It is therefore to be hoped that those responsible for politics will not be impressed by a campaign in which Ferda Ataman's suitability for the office of anti-discrimination officer is questioned in a highly problematic manner.