Our experience with Racism in Innsbruck, Austria

We both have lived in different places around the world, including India, U.S.A., Kenya, Switzerland and Serbia. But it was only after we started living in Austria that we experienced racism ourselves on the streets of Innsbruck on a regular basis. This was the first time we had direct experience with racism during our 18 months+ stay together in Austria. We want to write down our personal experiences of racism for a few reasons:

• For us to record our personal recollection of events to look back on them in future,
• To have a better understanding for ourselves on what it feels like to be racially discriminated,
• To share them with others who understand or experienced racism themselves,
• To share them with those who never experienced racism themselves and might be interested in knowing more about this topic,
• And to share them with those who might have difficulty in empathising  with the people who experience racism.

We also want to mention what we are NOT intending to do by sharing our experiences:

• To hint or infer that people and policies in Austria are more racist or less racist than other countries around the world,
• That we have the experience or deep knowledge on how to address or reduce the impact of racism. 

Background: Sam is an Indian-American, born in India and by citizenship an American (U.S.A). His roots are from South India, he has brown skin and his facial features are generally recognised as a person with roots from India or nearby regions. Kathi is an Austrian born in Austria. She is caucasian, and by her facial features she is generally recognised as a white European female.

Sam traveled to Austria between 2013 and 2016 before he started living in Austria. We lived in Vienna from Jan, 2016 and in Innsbruck from July, 2016 until June, 2017. Before Jan 2016, Sam recollects no instance where he felt that he was discriminated against or he was treated differently because of the color of his skin.

What is Race? According to Oxford dictionary, it is “Each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics.” and what is Racism? According to Oxford dictionary, racism is “Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.” Based on these definitions, when we refer to racism or racial discrimination in this document, we are referring to the discrimination directed against a person solely based on their physical characteristics or appearance. 

Our early response to racism: When we first started living in Austria in early 2016, we heard from other friends that their partners and they were facing racism in Austria either directly or indirectly on a regular basis. We were unaware at this time how racism affects a person and we were ignorantly confident that by engaging with the people who were racist towards us -- either by reasoning with them, talking to them, or just giving them a nice greeting or a smile, we might be able to make them realise what they were doing and possibly deter their hate. It was only after we moved to Innsbruck, Austria that we realised that it is not as easy as we thought it would be to deal personally with racism and realised that this problem is a lot deeper, widespread, and complicated than we originally thought.  

Our racism experience: We experienced racism in many forms, some were subtle and others were direct. We started observing subtle racism by the way people looked at Sam. When he was at the supermarket, offices, or walking on the streets, he felt that many were looking at him with anger and disgust. In the beginning, he thought this was just his imagination and they might just be going through a bad day and directing their frustration towards a stranger (in this case, Sam). But in a few months we realised that it was actually directed at Sam when he saw people who were normal in their behaviour and attitude towards others, suddenly showed anger and disgust in their faces when they looked at him. He tried to smile at them and greet them with the hope that this might calm their behaviour in public. Some showed surprise/shock when they received a friendly greeting from him while they were showing their anger and disgust at him. And for others it only intensified their disgust and anger towards him. 

On other occasions, when we were walking on the streets just the two of us, and later on with our child, when we greeted people who were crossing us on the streets, many greeted back with a smile but some looked away and others showed anger and disgust on their faces. 

We experienced this behaviour both from men and women of different ages. These instances continued the whole time we lived in Innsbruck. 

There were other direct instances of Racism, that were not subtle but very direct. Here are some instances that we recall: 

• “Rassenschande” (shame for the race): Both of us, and our three month old child were on a main street (Museumstraße) when a white man in his 40s walked up to us off-guard from behind us and shouted very loudly  “Rassenschande,” which loosely translates to “shame for the race” and walked away. First it was a feeling of shock that someone could walk up to us in public with so much aggression and come so close to us with our child on us, and then a feeling of helplessness that a person can do this on a busy street and simply walk away with no repercussions. The people around us on the street  who were standing/walking near and far seemed to be unaffected by this event. 
• “Schwarzer Mann raus” (Black man get out): Kathi was pregnant that time, and both of us were walking towards a movie theatre when a white man in his late 30s or early 40s shouted “Schwarzer Mann raus,” which translates to “Black man get out.” It was again a feeling of helplessness where the person walked away before we realised what had happened. 
• Yell from behind: Sam was walking back home from the hospital at around 10pm after a full day of sleeplessness after their child was delivered at the hospital. Four teenagers, two boys and two girls were walking on the same street behind him. Sam was on the phone talking with his parents outside Austria. While on the phone he stopped at a pedestrian red light signal to cross the street when one of the four teenagers, a boy, came from behind unnoticed so close that Sam could feel his breath and shouted into Sam’s ear as loud as he could in German. Sam could hardly understand what was said as he was on the phone. All four of them walked away laughing. 
• Middle finger: After a three hour train ride, we were sitting with our baby at a bus stop in Linz waiting for a regional bus. Two young white men in their 20s, driving on the road in front of us, slowed down, honked their car, showed their middle finger, and drove away laughing and excited about what they did. We can not say with absolute certainty that their actions were racially motivated, but at the same time we are also not willing to call this a random incident by stupid youngsters who randomly picked us to show this behaviour.
• Inaudible frustration: There were a few other instances, at least four that we recall, that happened on busy city centres and roads where people walked by very close to us, said something in a frustrated voice to us, and by the time we realised what happened they walked away. Among these incidents, the ones we remember is one from a woman in her 40s who walked next to us off guard, said something, and pointed her frustration towards our child and walked away with anger and disgust on her face. The other incidents were from men in their 50s and 60s, at least three times, when they passed by us, said something in a frustrated voice to us and walked away before we could respond or understand what happened. 

Sharing our racism experience with people and their responses: We tried to keep these experiences to ourselves for many months as we were not clear how to address this issue. After a lot of thinking, we decided to move out of Innsbruck for various reasons, and racism being one of them. After we decided to move away, we started sharing our experiences of racism with the people that were close to us and also with those who were our acquaintances. 

To our surprise, we received a wide range of responses, some expected and some totally unexpected. Some comments made us feel sad, some made us feel more upset, and luckily very few but some made us feel that they can empathise with our feelings and understand to some extent. Here are some of the responses we received:

• Surprise: Irrespective of age or gender, almost everyone was surprised to hear that we experienced racism in Innsbruck. Most of them said that they are not aware that racism existed in Innsbruck, at least publicly on the streets. 
• Empathy: Here, we mean empathy as someone's ability to understand and share the feelings of another. Out of all the conversations we had, there were very few people that were able to empathise with us. For those who did, it was heartfelt and we felt good to know that at least a few people understand our feelings and pain. Some said that they were ashamed to hear that it happened in their city and wished it was different. 


• Sympathy: Here, I mean Sympathy as someone’s feeling of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune. A lot of people showed sympathy for us when we shared about our experiences. It felt a bit awkward to receive sympathy in this situation, and gave us a feeling that we were treated like victims of a natural disaster like a flood or famine and not as people affected by a man made problem.
• Denial: Some totally denied that it was racism and argued it might be something else. They insisted that those people on the streets might be saying something else and we just assumed that it was racism. 
• Ignored the topic completely: As we mentioned the topic of racism, some chose not to respond to it at all. They never mentioned this topic or discussed it with us after our first mention. 
• “You are overreacting”: Some said that we are overreacting and we should simply ignore the issue thinking that the people who are racist are stupid and we can find stupid people everywhere. We were told that there was no necessity to act against this experience and we need to learn to ignore racism as any other common problem that we might face in life on a daily basis. 
• “See the good side”: Some said that even though there might be an issue with racism, we should look at the positive things that the city and country has to offer. We should enjoy the good things and take racism as a thing that is unavoidable in a country that offers so much and best quality of everything. 
• “Are you emotionally weak?”: Some asked if Sam was emotionally weak and he was too sensitive to racism and maybe he should be strong enough to be able to let go of these things (as in let those people be racist and learn to ignore). 
• “Where else would you not face racism?”/”You won't be able to avoid this anywhere in the world”: To our surprise, many people questioned where else would we not find racism and we should possibly not have our expectations too high to find a place with less or no racism compared to Innsbruck. When we heard this, it gave us a feeling that we should accept that Sam and our child are second class citizens everywhere in the world because of the color of their skin, and trying to find a place that has less public racism compared to Innsbruck should not be something we should look forward to. When we told them how their comments sounded to us and asked if they had any other intent behind this comment, they were unable to provide any other intent than what we felt. It was very painful to hear this from people we trusted and shared our experiences with, only to be told to accept that we are second class citizens and we should expect racism anywhere we lived. Furthermore, most of the people who asked this question, have not lived anywhere outside Austria.


• May be they think you are Indian: Some expressed their frustration that Indian tourists are very dirty and they leave trash everywhere when they tour Innsbruck. And they thought this might be the reason they were racist towards us. Even though it was a plausible reason it was a bit silly to hear that. 
• How do you know it is less racist there?:  When we shared that we want to explore other parts of the world and see if the culture and people show less public racism towards us, we heard comments like “how to do you know it is better elsewhere or in the country you are traveling to compared to Innsbruck/Tirol?” This response was not only unsupportive of our plans to explore other parts of the world, but it also felt that some people were  upset that we were talking about racism in Innsbruck. 

Also, during further discussions about this topic, we realised that very few people actually had close contact with non-white males. Only two of our friends told us about their personal experiences or the experiences of a non-white male friend who faced racism. The few other people who knew non-white males never met with them one-on-one in public or took a walk with them through the streets, so they never got to see or experience racism firsthand. This was the case even with young people in their 20s. With their limited exposure, it was understandable that that they were surprised about our experience. 

We believe that most of the people we spoke to, heard about racism in the past but they were never confronted with a situation where they had to respond to this issue directly. It was always an issue of other people and it never demanded a direct response from them. When we raised the topic of racism, we had the impression based on the responses we heard, that they felt a strong need to defend Innsbruck, Tirol, and Austria. Maybe due to our inexperience with sharing this topic, we expected people who we consider close to empathise with us rather than defend their city or country. We were surely disappointed. As most of them will live in Tirol/Austria possibly for rest of their lives, it might have been uncomfortable for them to hear issues about the land that they are very proud of. Also they had little interest in this topic possibly because it is not only an uncomfortable topic but it is also something they might never face themselves. 

Another question we had here was whether a person always needs to have personal experience with a topic to be able to empathise with others experiences and feelings? At least we don’t think so. 

Changes in our behaviour after experiencing racism: 

The issue of racism affected us in more ways than we thought. Having to face racism on a regular basis, and with the unexpected responses we received from the people we considered close to us, we started observing some uncomfortable and unpleasant changes in our behaviour. As we were not sure what response we would receive from strangers on the streets, we started greeting people less often on the streets, reduced making eye contact with people on the streets, and started looking down when crossing people. This behaviour of ours only hurt us more as the time passed. 

We felt increasingly lonely that there were very few people around us who understood our issues and who were able to empathise with us. 

Another behaviour we observed in ourselves was that we were a lot more aggressive than before in our choice of words and in our body language when we were talking or discussing about topics that we felt were unfair to us or to others. 

This experience also gave us an opportunity to understand racism a bit better and we developed more empathy towards people who face racism in Innsbruck and around the world. 

Our current views on racism

We do not want to recommend or propose solutions to address the issue of racism as we are not experts in this area. However, we want to share our current views about this topic which are constantly evolving over time. 

Racism, and discrimination in general, are not fair in any form whether it is sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, or any other form of discrimination. We strongly feel that it is the least we can do as a duty to our society and to our future generations to pay attention to different aspects of discrimination that are happening around us and we are educating ourselves more about the issues concerning discrimination. We are sharing this document as our way to bring awareness about these topics. In addition to this, we are also working on gender equality starting with following it at home both in words and actions. We also have a social media online group promoting gender equality. We wish to continue exploring and finding ways to positively contribute to the topics of discrimination whenever and wherever we find an opportunity. 

You can read about our entire journey here. 

You can connect with us here.