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Comment by jupp0r | Hacker News Reader

On the other hand, there's also a deep suspicion towards foreigners and some of the most right-wing sentiments you will find anywhere in Germany. I literally witnessed some Indian-American colleagues of mine being physically assaulted because they had non-white skin color and were walking down the street. This in combination with the already existing labor shortages severely limit the region's potential.

Source: I lived and worked in Dresden for a decade.

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I double on this. Colleague from Philippines was spited on in Neustadt during normal walk in the evening. I had a car with foreign plates for a while and it was scratched on both sides. Coincidence? It was first and last time my car was intentionally scratched.

It's quite sad, but it is what it is. If you're not white you shouldn't stay there for long. Particularly not at night or whenever there's a football match. It's gotta be hard for such a place to compete with more cosmopolitan regions, particularly with Germany's demographics. If Dresden can't attract immigrants then its semiconductor industry will have to move elsewhere as ethnic Germans retire.

EDIT: I don't mean to say you can't live there. It's not a war zone. But it's a rough place.

This is big problem. Without (more) PoC living in this area, nothing improves.

But would I recommend a PoC friend to live in Dresden? Not really, I would rather advise him to look for a job in Berlin or Frankfurt.

> Without (more) PoC living in this area, nothing improves.

That's an interesting take. Why?

It is repeated all over the place but its not true. Talent and intellectual diversity doesn't come from skin color. "Region X needs more people of skin color Y" is always nonsense.

I don't know whether their take is the generic "diversity is always good" nonsense or whether they specifically referred to PoC as cheap immigrant labor that will help the economy and make locals richer (as that in practice is their role in Germany and most other rich countries).

Germany is very different from most western countries (Canada, Australia, US, UK, etc) in that most immigration there is not highly skilled professionals.

It is harder to learn how to better integrate minorities if all the minorities have left.

> in Berlin or Frankfurt.

My half Moroccan friend was spit on by some middle eastern looking guy because he was drinking a beer in public, and that was in Berlin

Berlin isn't inclusive, it's based on communitarianism, every little (or not so little) community live in group and at the few points they interact with each other you get the same issues as you get everywhere else.

It looks good on the surface but when you live here you start to see it for what it really is.

> This in combination with the already existing labor shortages severely limit the region's potential.

The potential comes not from the region, but the people living there.

I wonder how much the WW2 allied atrocities (firebombing of civilians in Dresden) factors into this.

I think the bombings have nothing to do with this. Hamburg was completely bombed to the ground, too, and there are not hard feelings left towards British or Americans. The reasons are found in the hard awakening after 40 years of socialism and the time during and after reunification.

The firebombing of Dresden specifically has been instrumentallized by far right wing groups to put the German population in a victim role.

It nevertheless has little to nothing to do with the attitudes against foreigners.

The rubble of the bombed downtown found a spot between the intact Wehrmacht barracks (today Stauffenbergallee) and intact SS headquarters in the Hellerhof. How does this come across?

Dresden xenophobes do like to make a point out of this, as if it would excuse anything. But other cities were hit hard as well and there even the most right wing prefer to avoid bringing it up. It does factor, but not causally in the way you seem to suggest.

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