This is the story of Nastasia. She had to fight for higher education because she belongs to the Sinti and Roma population, which is still discriminated against in the German education system.
Nastassia Kordila-Balke is an assistant at Lehe Primary School in Bremerhaven. For her, it is not something to be taken for granted:
"For a Sinta member to become a civil servant or work in the public sector, there was no such thing. That was unattainable for me. "I didn't even have to think about it, it was so far away."
Sinti and Roma are still discriminated against in the German education system. This often prevents progress in education and in life, as the Independent Commission on Anti-Gypsyism's 2021 report shows. The commission investigated the situation of Sinti and Roma for two years.
Nastasia believes that this is a typical stereotype for Sinti and Roma: "And people say: 'You are very sensitive.' Yes, my daughter is musical, but I see racism here. In other children, it was certainly not so pronounced."
Today, Nastasya's daughter is in the seventh grade of high school - it is a top level school. He has a four (very good) in German and mathematics.
What Nastasya's family is experiencing is called structural racism. Racism as a structure allows inequality to be legitimized and "normalized." It is about historically established power relations. Sinti and Roma have been persecuted for centuries. After the Nazi terror, marginalization continued. The Nazi genocide against the Sinti and Roma was politically recognized only in 1982. Racist prejudices still exist: Sinti and Roma are "lazy" and do not adapt to the majority population.
