You can complain about discrimination, for example at work, but it’s not easy. The Federal Commissioner Ferda Ataman wants to change that – the resistance to it is a pure reflex.
Anyone who can’t get an apartment and has black skin, who can’t go to the swimming pool because of a wheelchair, who is just a woman and pays badly, rarely fights back in court. Since 2006, only around 700 complaints of discrimination based on the General Equal Treatment Act have been counted – in more than 300,000 civil and labor law proceedings in Germany. That’s a ridiculously small number.