Small Racism

You’re on a regional train in Berlin when she starts: Deutschland den Deutschen. This look on her face like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever said. The bald guy from Thuringia gets it right away. They’ve found each other, and now they’re bold.

She doesn’t stop. Immigrants. Black people. She’s narrating some future where they don’t exist. Thirty people on this train. Nobody’s looking. Nobody’s saying anything. You can feel yourself going hot, your hands starting to shake because you can sense exactly where this goes.

She lands on you. Points. The words are specific, aimed. And something in you just splits open. You’re standing, and the voice that comes out doesn’t sound like you—shouting back at her about what she is, what all of them are, underneath this ideology they’re pretending is philosophy. Every obscenity you know. Every accusation.

The car goes silent. Everyone staring at you like you’re the real problem. Her face doesn’t even change. She wanted this. She wanted exactly this. She’ll do it again tomorrow, somewhere else, with someone else.

You can’t stop talking. Tears now. Raging at the people around you, about how they’ll get off this train and convince themselves they’re good because they know someone from somewhere else, because they didn’t say anything out loud so they’re not complicit, never mind that they were already thinking it. The rage and the shame are the same feeling.

The train stops. She gets off. Nothing’s different. She won. The small racism, the everyday kind, it’s not some historical atrocity, it’s just there in the city, moving through it like an infection. And you’re left sitting there shaking, knowing it’ll happen again tomorrow.