The elephant in the room called ‘skin type IV’: ‘Südländer’ (Southerner) as a discriminatory category in German police reports

Abstract

ABSTRACT Ervedosa’s article demonstrates from a cultural perspective that the categories ‘Südländer’ (Southerner) and ‘südländisches Aussehen’ (Southern looks) in German police reports are discriminatory since they challenge the central principles of the German constitution. They infringe the fundamental right in Article 3.3, that is, the right not to be racially discriminated against, the fundamental rights of human dignity (Article 1.1) and human equality (Article 3.1), as well as the constitutional right to be a German citizen regardless of one’s skin colour (Article 116). It argues that the terms are a form of skin-colour racism in that the police carry out their work—investigations, searches, inquiries and so on—on the basis of the perpetrator’s racialized phenotype. The categories basically stand for ‘Mediterranean looks’—even referred to in the past as the ‘Mediterranean race’—and phenotype: dark hair, dark eyes and so-called ‘skin type IV’, that is, ‘olive or brown skin’. They are the product of a tradition of racialized, exclusionary thinking that collides with the humanistic and democratic values of the Grundgesetz (Basic Law).