A newly minted website of the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth triggered consternation in the country after it defined White people as benefitting from White privilege and claimed that “being White” means benefitting from racism.
Regenbogenportal (Rainbow portal in German) was created to promote the concept of “rainbow families,” in which at least one parent is a member of the LGBTQ social group.
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In its glossary, the website had a separate entry on the condition of “being white,” which, according to the website, means that “The term ‘white’ describes a social position in which people are not negatively affected by racism, but rather benefit from it. ‘White’ does not refer to the color of skin or any other characteristics of people.”
“In contrast to ‘black,’ ‘white’ is not an empowering self-designation and is therefore written in small cap, sometimes in italics.”
It appears that the government has removed the definition after the website’s definition of “being White” was widely covered in the German press. Now, only an error message exists. However, a photo of the website’s definition along with an English translation is provided below.
The definition has also been archived at the Internet Archive.
In contrast, the same website describes “Black” the following way:
“‘Black’ is an empowering self-designation by people who share experiences based on colonial history and its continuities, and anti-Black racism. Not all people who are affected by racism claim this term for themselves.
The political term “black” does not describe a person’s skin color or other characteristics, but social affiliations and mutual solidarity in resistance to racism.
To make this clear, “black” is capitalized. Black people and people of color are structurally affected by everyday, societal, institutional and/or other forms of racism.”
This term remains up on the website at the time of publication. The site consistently spells Black with a capital “B” and white with a small caps “w.”
Given the wide array of left-wing terminology for a variety of subjects, the website is the German federal government’s effort to build a website to serve as an explainer for the many people bewildered by LGBT concepts, with the portal describing itself as “the federal government’s pool of information on same-sex lifestyles and gender diversity.”
Most glossary terms do not focus on race, with other terms focusing more on gender or sex, such as “butch,” which is a lesbian person with strong masculine attributes, or the “social concept of gender,” which, according to the website is the social experience and “felt gender” of a person, which “is not limited by their birth sex.” There are also more exotic terms, such as “endosexuality” which supposedly means the person is “non-intersexual.” These people can be clearly defined as male or female, and according to the website, “Endosex is considered the norm in society, and endosex people enjoy societal benefits such as not having to declare themselves or their bodies, not undergoing gender reassignment surgery, and/or not being pathologized.”
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The racist definitions and extreme gender language from a website backed by a German ministry have provoked a number of columnists to condemn the project, including one from one of Germany’s most popular newspapers, Die Welt.
“The federal government’s ‘rainbow portal’ is a website straight out of a politically correct photo book and has probably been infected by the left-wing woke virus. ‘Being white’ has nothing to do with the color of the skin, you can read there. Why does the Family Ministry publish such nonsense?” asked the paper’s chief reporter, Anna Schneider.
In a column on website Tichys Einblick, publicist Max Roland had the following comment on the ministry’s definitions:
“I have learned something again: consequently, one would have to assume that dark-skinned Congolese in the Congo are probably ‘white’ because they represent the majority of society, and light-skinned Boers in South Africa are probably ‘black’ because they had to endure a colonial history (at the hands of the British). What the digression into neo-racial studies is doing on a ‘rainbow’ website remains open — it can possibly be explained by the catchphrase ‘intersectional’.”
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) also demanded the website be taken offline and revised.
“I call on the Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Lisa Paus, to immediately take the rainbow portal offline and revise it. It must be ensured that the state does not knowingly misinform the citizens. Official channels of the federal government are not to be misused as a playground for minorities, but should only serve the common good,” wrote Mariana Harder-Kühnel, the family policy spokeswoman for the AfD parliamentary group.
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She also pointed to what she says are false claims being used to back up the definition of “being White,” pointing out that the federal government is claiming that Whites enjoy “advantages” over blacks and “people of color” and that the housing and labor markets are examples of these advantages.
“A request to the ministry reveals not only that this factual claim is completely unfounded, but also that official government channels can be politically abused by various interest groups at will,” she said, regarding a request the AfD over statistical evidence that blacks or people of color are being discriminated against in the housing market. She attached her request for evidence of discrimination to the federal government and the resulting answer.
“When I asked for statistical evidence of the information provided, the federal government, which officially operates the ‘rainbow portal,’ replied that it had nothing to do with the content. The offer, which is clearly recognizable as one of the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, uses the articles of editors who expressed ‘their own opinion on the subject.’ Accordingly, the German Federal Government indicated it would not answer the question of statistical evidence for the blanket statement that ‘white people’ enjoy social advantages. This is not surprising insofar as there is no such statistical evidence.”
