Until this year, I have spent zero time in Germany. Not that I'm protesting or have a problem with Germany. I believe Germany has become a positive force in the world and a bedrock member of the order of Western Liberal nations. Germans have changed a lot since World War II and if anything have been very careful to educate their young about the horrors of hate – and to make reparations as best as anyone can for what their country did. When I was a kid, my Bubbee wouldn't buy anything for me that said "Made in West Germany" – which meant losing out on some art supplies one time I can remember. I've had two BMW's and figure if my former father-in-law, the son of two Holocaust survivors – can work as the CEO of the US division of a German company and since I met him have driven two Mercedes and a BMW, then who am I to hold a grudge?
Still, Germany has never called to me and only because of flying Lufthansa to France and yesterday returning from Greece have I been in the Munich and Frankfurt airports. Which are very nice.
That said, being in a German airport made it hard not to think about some of the ironies of the current complexion of Germany. First, there's the obvious irony of using a German airline to reunite a Jewish father with his kids. But more to the point, like much of Europe – if not more so – Germany has in recent years welcomed a LOT of immigrants into what has been a traditionally homogenous society. A society so homogenous that when mixed with the right cocktail of totalitarianism and hatred, it rooted out anyone it considered different and systematically extinguished them.
Yet as waves of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa crossed the Mediterranean seeking asylum, Germany took in one million predominately dark and muslim people. If there isn't a greater indicator of a changed Germany, I don't know what is. Certainly, that's a major motivator of Germany to take on such an ambitious goal – to show beyond the shadow of a doubt that it is new and different Germany.
Since World War I, Germany has always had a special relationship with Turkey and as such, much of Germany's post-war immigration has been Turkish. In fact, on my flight from Frankfurt to Los Angeles, one of the flight attendants was Gay Turkish-German. Talk about three words that would have been unimaginable to put together even 30 years ago. Yet there he was – living proof that change is possible.
Perhaps because of Germany's generally positive or at least familiar experience with integrating Turks, it imagined other muslim nationalities and cultures would be relatively easy to absorb?
However, Syrians and Libyans are not the same as Turks and integration has not been as simple. For Germany or any of the countries of Europe – the Western ones in particular – who took in refugees.
"All of one ethnicity is too much," my friend Tony said yesterday. "A mix is just better."
Tony is extremely well traveled and has been an expat for more than 20 years. His conclusion is interesting given he comes from massively diverse America and lives in multi-ethnic Singapore.
Then he added, "Bad mixes are the worst."
And that's the conundrum.
For those of us who believe people are people and tribalism and divisions are fictions that evade the universal truth that Us and Them are harmful artificial constructs – Tony's last comment is problematic. Yet true.
The paradox is that in one sense we are all humans and if we could stop focusing on the differences we would see how much alike we really are. As Depeche Mode so aptly put it, "People are people, so why should it be you and I should get along so awfully?" Despite that, we don't all see – or want to see – what forward thinking Depeche Mode preaches and as Tony said, bad cultural mixes are indeed the worst.
In other words, our ideals and the everyday reality of life don't always align. Is it realistic for Christian Europe to absorb large waves of Arabs? As discussed before – what happens to a traditionally homogenous culture like Germany or France – if large portions of the population are from a defiantly different culture that does not want to assimilate?
Singapore works in part because it's very selective about which cultures it allows to immigrate. Indians and Chinese make good immigrants because they fit with Singapore's own Tamil Indian-Singaporean and Chinese-Singaporean base. There's inherent cultural compatibility and a high degree of successful assimilation. Singapore allows a number of other nationals to come and work for limited durations in specific industries – often in mandatory dormitory housing and with no expectation of residency or permanent immigration. Thai, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Indonesian, Burmese and Filipino workers understand the deal before arriving. Singapore is an opportunity to work hard and make some money for a while. Then they must leave.
It seems Lee Kuan Yew and Tony Cohen agree about bad mixes being the worst.
As a Jew of the diaspora, it's hard to be completely okay with the idea that a minority can be labeled different or other – and not have the same rights and opportunities as others. In most of Europe, Jews were not considered nationals or subjects of the countries they inhabited until the Jewish Emancipation of 19th Century. It took hundreds of years for Jews to count among the people they lived alongside and in whose armies they fought. My great-great grandparents were locked in ghettos and forced into shtetyls.
How can I condemn that and be okay with the idea that MY immigrant group is ideal and some other immigrant group deserves to be treated as second or third class citizens?
At the same time, how can I not see Tony's point? Some immigrant groups just mix better with the dominant culture than others. Some immigrant groups are happy to assimilate and become proud Germans, French, Americans and Singaporeans. Others are not.
Not everyone is disposed to become a gay Turkish-German flight attendant.
I'm too tired during these two days on the ground at home to come up with the clear solution or an argument on how we address the cultural paradox or how Europe should handle its conundrum?
For now, I'm willing to say sometimes two incompatible truths can exist simultaneously. Or maybe – there are higher and lower truths that exist simultaneously. There's the truth of our ideals – the truth behind the artificial constructs we create – and the truth of the everyday world with all its flaws. How do we live our ideals and navigate practical realities without being hypocrites? Perhaps we simply can't. Maybe all we can do – if we're dedicated and fortunate – is to stand up for our ideals in key moments and contribute our inch of forward progress whenever possible.
