Report: The word “race” remains in the Basic Law

According to a report, the traffic light coalition is abandoning its plans to delete the word “race” from the Basic Law. This follows concerns of the Central Council of Jews, it was said. It is also legally difficult to replace the term.

It was only on Wednesday that Saarland deleted the term “race” from the state constitution – but the word will probably remain in the Basic Law. This is reported by the “Rheinische Post”, citing circles in the traffic light coalition. The SPD, Greens and FDP factions have agreed to abandon their deletion plans for the time being. They were in agreement, it was said unanimously. Before Saarland, Brandenburg and Thuringia also deleted the word from their respective state constitutions.

In the federal government’s coalition agreement it was agreed to remove the term from Article 3 of the Basic Law. It says: “No one may be disadvantaged or favored because of their gender, their ancestry, their race, their language, their homeland and origins, their faith, their religious or political views. No one may be disadvantaged because of their disability.”

Central Council President against deletion

According to the report, the factions are now emphasizing that they are following the concerns of the Central Council of Jews. Its president, Josef Schuster, had stated, among other things, that he was against the deletion because the word was reminiscent of the persecution and murder of millions of people – “primarily Jews”. “If we delete this memory from our constitution, at some point we will also delete it from our memory,” he wrote in a guest article for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung last year.

“The objections and suggestions are correct,” said coalition circles, according to the report. In addition, replacing the term is legally too complicated. “There are significant concerns about which wording will guarantee the same level of protection.”

Years of debate about the term

The debate about the wording in the Basic Law has been going on for years. The ban on discrimination arose against the background of National Socialism and was intended to prevent racist discrimination. However, critics complain that the wording suggests an outdated view of humanity that is based on the idea of ​​different human “races”. The term “race” promotes racist thinking and remains anchored in people’s minds through reproduction.

Racism cannot be combated credibly if the term is retained, criticized the German Institute for Human Rights. The Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency advocated replacing the term generally with the phrase “racist discrimination” or “racist attribution”.