Racist German Army Clip Targets N.Y. Blacks

April 15, 2007 — -- A televised cell phone video clip of a German army instructor ordering a solder to envision African Americans from New York's Bronx borough as he fires a machine gun and yells obscenities during a military training session is igniting outrage in Europe and America.

"You are in the Bronx," says the instructor. "Three African-Americans … are insulting your mother in the worst ways."

A laugh can be heard on the recording.

The instructor adds, "Before each shot, I want to hear a 'motherf-----.'"

As gunfire begins, a soldier is heard, in English, saying what he was told to say.

The German Defense Department issued the following statement to ABC News: "The German Army takes this incident, which has been under investigation since January 2007, as very serious, and we will take appropriate measures. We take this to be a single case and we're fully of aware of the negative implications."

The cell phone video first appeared on a German Internet site, then on German TV, and around the world. It is still running on the Internet.

A German TV reporter who covers the military told ABC News that parts of American popular culture may be largely to blame for the racist behavior of the German soldiers.

"There are quite a lot of [American] B movies or hip-hop songs where black people, Afro Americans, are portrayed as gangsters, are portrayed as criminals," said Carsten Lueb of the German NTV network. "Some people here in Germany they take it for real, not knowing that is completely wrong."

American civil rights lawyer Connie Rice told ABC News: "Nowadays, what you say gets preserved forever, and it gets played over and over and over again in the echo chamber."

That's perhaps why a video from Germany has sparked outrage in the Bronx section of New York City.

"Part of it, I think, is ignorance, maybe stupidity, lack of knowledge," said Bronx resident Keith Nantun. "That's what I believe more than anything else -- because people in their right mind wouldn't normally say derogatory things."