A German state minister sparked a social media storm on Tuesday after calling a beloved German pop singer a “wonderful Negro” during a TV debate on Europe’s migrant crisis.<\/p>\n
The Twitter hashtag #Neger (Negro) topped trending topics in Germany the morning after Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann used the term for Roberto Blanco, who is of Afro-Cuban origin.<\/p>\n
“Roberto Blanco was always a wonderful Negro, who most Germans thought was wonderful,” Herrmann had said in a TV talk show Monday evening on public broadcaster ZDF.<\/p>\n
Continuing on the topic of immigrant “success stories” in Germany, he added that football powerhouse Bayern Munich also has many star players “with black skin”.<\/p>\n
The debate centred on Blanco — a household name whose career as a singer peaked in the late 1960s and early 70s — comes as Europe faces its biggest migrant influx since World War II, with Germany the top destination.<\/p>\n
On social media, people poured outrage and scorn on the comment from the minister of the conservative southern state of Bavaria.<\/p>\n
Twitter user @Herzistvoll wrote: “A ‘Negro’ is only wonderful when he amuses white people with singing, dancing and football”.<\/p>\n
User @TheGoodOldGamer commented that Herrmann “also has nothing against #Negroes who do the housework and work in the fields”.<\/p>\n
Another Twitter user wrote that “whether Joachim Herrmann also finds #Obama wonderful remains unclear”.<\/p>\n
An online comment from Berlin daily Tagesspiegel sneered that “little Joachim would like to be picked up from the 1950s”.<\/p>\n
Herrmann on Monday morning was back on the airwaves to justify his comment, saying he had replied to a caller who had first used the term by saying he “did not want to have Negroes at all”.<\/p>\n
The minister said this comment was “completely unacceptable”, adding that “I usually don’t use the word Negro at all”.<\/p>\n
Source: AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A German state minister sparked a social media storm on Tuesday after calling a beloved German pop singer a “wonderful Negro” during a TV debate on Europe’s migrant crisis. The Twitter hashtag #Neger (Negro) topped trending topics in Germany the morning after Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann used the term for Roberto Blanco, who is … Continue reading “Social media storm after German minister says ‘negro’”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3],"tags":[51,11009,12190,2532,1548,429],"class_list":["post-20185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-germany","tag-negro","tag-racis","tag-slavery","tag-social-media","tag-twitter"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20185"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20187,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20185\/revisions\/20187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}