Page - 237 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Round Table Discussion | Worst Case and Best Practice 237 what does actually make you feel at home? Admittedly, there will be a variety of responses, but it's quite possible that there are certain communalities in terms of obeying the rules of the house but still having enough free space to move around in. That could be something that each one of us could think personally and see whether he wants it to be applied to the first question. In terms of worst practices we are heading to share some that seem to have emerged from the sessions or from your personal experiences. Horst mentioned that a worse practice will be just to shift stereotypes from the bad guys to the good guys and create, you know, all kinds of unrealistic expectations. Horst Pöttker Yes, but in the beginning I also mentioned another kind of worst case. And this is not to take notice of the minorities – not to take notice of the fact, that there are people who are not Christians but Muslims, who are not white but coloured, who have another language, and so on. I think it is the first and very important step to take notice. Even if it is a criticism and negative notice, it's better than not to take notice at all. I learned this from my historical material about the Polish minority in Germany before World War I. But you also know this from your personal relationships, to your relatives and to your wife and your children and so on – not to take notice of the other is the worst case. Augie Fleras Just in response to your comment. I mean, would you say that, prior to the First World War, German presses actually did see themselves as exclusively ethnic presses? With the result, that they made no bones about the fact that if we are white, ethnic press, we’re not interested in you. We are only interested in ourselves or we are only interested in you when you provoke or create problems. That notion of the mainstream media as ethnic media provides us with plausible answers why the media don't do what one will assume to be the right and responsible thing to do, but that they invisibilize minorities unless there is a crisis or a catastrophe. From the audience I think that in this case, like Horst mentioned in his paper, there was a dialogue of silence. You had the Polish papers with completely no reports about Germans, as far as they could: not to buy in German shops, not to read German newspapers, not to marry Germans, not to take any notice of Germans. So it was a dialogue between two who didn't want to talk. I would say, one should take this kind of worst- case scenario of ignoring each other. I am now reading a Turkish