Are Swiss People Racist?

When you move to a new country outside of Africa, some things that you never considered become a daily appa­rent pheno­menon. For people of colour, one of the things that suddenly assumes poignant realization is that every day of your life, your skin colour will stare at you in the face and be a deter­mi­nant of your future expe­ri­ences in this new place.

That is not some­thing new, by the way. What will be new is the dimen­sions of these expe­ri­ences, and the way racism will feature in them. I get asked a lot about whether I consider Swiss people racist. Do I? And are they?

On this sunny summer day last year, I went to a swim­ming pool in Zurich with my baby. Instead of using the family chan­ging room (where adult men can also change as long as they are with their fami­lies), I opted for the female-only chan­ging room for personal reasons.

I chose the booths with curtains instead of the open booths. As I began to undress my baby, she started to fuss and cry. As I was navi­ga­ting between soot­hing her and chan­ging into my own swim­wear, a Swiss middle-aged woman came to my booth and stood in front of it.

She raised the curtain slightly and looked at me visibly angry. She then proce­eded to explain in Swiss German (with a raised voice and angry arm gesti­cu­la­tions) that this was a female chan­ging room and the family chan­ging room was next door. 

She stood in front of the booth and continued to speak at a much faster pace, complai­ning to other women about how people should read the signs and not break the laws in public spaces.

It took me a while to realize exactly what was happe­ning to me at that moment. She had seen me enter the chan­ging booth and assumed that since I was black, I was also illi­te­rate. I could not read the signs nor under­stand them (even though they were not written in German but were picto­ri­ally represented).

My baby crying was the last straw, as she trans­lated this as public distur­bance. She then took it upon herself to „correct my wrongs“ by „educa­ting me“ and trying to change the situa­tion to what she considered was the norm: Ever­yone with children must change in the family chan­ging room without excep­tion, even if you do not like to see naked men.

And defi­ni­tely, babies cannot cry in female chan­ging rooms because they are not supposed to be there, even if their mothers were. She did not care about inva­ding my privacy in a public space to achieve her aims. After reali­zing that I was actively igno­ring her, she walked away.

I probably would have doubted the racial under­tones of the whole episode, if the events that came after it had not happened. I finished chan­ging and stepped out of my chan­ging booth. 

Another woman who was with a child much older than my baby in the open booth walked up to me and said in high German: „Please ignore her, you know old women are always looking for some­thing to meddle in.“

I realized that the middle-aged woman had not approa­ched her to repri­mand her for also brin­ging a child to a female chan­ging room. Was it because her child had not cried and disturbed public peace in the chan­ging room? Was the middle-aged woman afraid of her?

The simple answer was that she was not singled out for repri­mand, her privacy was not violated, her child was not frigh­tened by a stranger screa­ming into her face, and she was not profiled based on the way she looks – because she was not a person of colour.

Micro­ag­gres­sions and uncon­scious biases are the biggest examples of racial subjec­tions that I have expe­ri­enced in Switz­er­land. You could be trave­ling on the train, and while everyone’s tickets are checked, you, the person of colour, are the only one who is asked for a means of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion to support your having a valid ticket.

Some­times, people of colour get asked by rail conduc­tors to show their pass­ports as a form of ID even though this is utterly unacceptable. 

It is not the job of rail conduc­tors to vali­date your resi­dency status in a country, so they have no busi­ness deman­ding your pass­port or resi­dence permits as a form of ID. They are not the migra­tion autho­rity, and there are other forms of ID that are not your pass­ports or resi­dence permits!

When I had my baby in a Swiss hospital, I cradled her in my arms and over my shoulder to rock her. A Swiss nurse told me: „You know, you don’t do that with newborns. In your culture, you might think that’s okay, but here it is not.“

I was both surprised at her igno­rance and amazed at her autho­ri­ta­ti­ve­ness on the matter. She just posi­tioned herself as an expert in what is cultu­rally appro­priate, without reali­zing just how racist she came across.

As a person of colour living in Switz­er­land, you could also expe­ri­ence racial treat­ments from insti­tu­tions such as banks. My Swiss bank sent me an offi­cial inquiry deman­ding to know the reasons why I had made trans­fers of certain amounts of money to Nigeria.

When I responded, they went through all the credits that I had ever received in my bank account and demanded to know what the monies were for, inclu­ding credits that were sala­ries from my employers. It was at that point I realized this was a racial witch hunt.

I told them to talk to my lawyers if they had further questions, as I was done being questioned on why I was getting paid for the work that I did. They issued an apology after this, but still could not justify the reasons for such inqui­ries in the first place.

Back to the question: Are Swiss people racist? My answer is no. Ever­yone has poten­tial tenden­cies to be insen­si­tive to other people’s iden­ti­ties, race, culture, and skin color. However, are there racist Swiss people? HELL to the YES! But this is just as there are racist French people, or racist Germans.

Bad educa­tion, gene­ra­tional diffe­rences, insti­tu­tional struc­tures, terrible staff trai­ning, plain igno­rance and nega­tive perso­na­lity traits all contri­bute to streng­thening the poten­tial and tenden­cies for racial occur­rences in Switzerland. 

You would think that the rail opera­tors would know better, and would assume that bank offi­cials should not be that insen­si­tive. Well, I continue to learn as I live this Swiss life the Naija way.