Comparing Anti‐Black Racisms While White: Anecdote and Evidence of Racism in Germany and the United States

ABSTRACT Courses of Black German culture taught in the United States implicitly confront expectations of comparison between, if not ranking of, anti‐Black racisms of the two countries. Through a critical self‐reflection and evaluation of my own experiences teaching Black German culture as a White instructor, I suggest that White instructors of these courses, who have not experienced anti‐Black racism themselves, may grasp for what they perceive as canonical evidence in order to counteract that lack. Overvaluation of evidence and devaluation of anecdotal anti‐Black racism, a dynamic deeply ingrained in predominantly White academia, is precisely what such courses are meant to critique. This article explores how anecdote and evidence can function for a White instructor; when and how that process can become particularly problematic; and a series of pedagogical practices and works of Black German culture that can help to preclude those problems. This combination reveals the importance of deconstructing the evidence‐anecdote hierarchy to the Black German movement itself and, therefore, the importance of that deconstruction to courses on Black German culture