Word: white
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...course, backroom dealmaking doesn't usually lead to swift decisions. E.U. officials are already dropping hints that the new leaders may not be selected at Thursday's dinner after all. That puff of white smoke may not come until Friday morning or even later. It's likely that few Europeans are waiting with bated breath...
Wallraff, who filmed his experiences as a black man as part of a new documentary, Black on White, has made a career of this sort of daring, investigative reporting. In his 40 years as a journalist, he has worked undercover at a tabloid newspaper, industrial plants and fast-food chains to expose the conditions the employees faced. In the 1980s, he posed for two years as a Turkish "guest worker" and wrote a best-selling book revealing shocking examples of discrimination and exploitation. But Wallraff's latest project may be his most controversial yet. His attempt to address racism...
...using white privileges. He is mimicking suppressed minorities and earning money, attention and even respect," Noah Sow, a black journalist, academic and musician, said in an interview with the news website Tagesschau.de. Tahir Della, a spokesman for the Initiative of Black People in Germany (ISD), said Wallraff's methods hark back to the minstrel shows of the 1920s in the U.S. "[Those shows] came about because blacks weren't allowed to perform in clubs and theaters, so whites dressed up to caricature them," Della told the news website TheLocal.de. "Mr. Wallraff is using the same form, playing a role...
There is a less controversial precedent for such a project. Fifty years ago, John Howard Griffin, a white journalist, darkened his skin with pigment-changing pills and traveled through the Deep South as a black man, chronicling his experiences in the classic American novel Black Like Me. The American author and journalist Grace Halsell embarked on a similar journey in the late 1960s and wrote the novel Soul Sister, which was also highly acclaimed. Wallraff, who came across both books after he started shooting Black on White, says he has wanted to make this kind of film for years...
...Black on White is not being met with the same level of enthusiasm. Some feel the reason may be that racism remains a touchy subject in Germany. The country's black population, which numbers between 300,000 and half a million, is mainly made up of African immigrants and the descendants of children born to black American and French soldiers and German women at the end of World War II. And even though their numbers are rising and there has been talk lately about Germany becoming a multicultural society, many minorities say they still feel like outsiders because they...