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."
Another Bronx resident, Bob Grant, said, with some sarcasm: "Nice to see racism is alive and well. Kind of goes back to what we dealt with Don Imus. You know, his comments were ignorant, slanderous, sexist, racist."
That, of course was a reference to the American radio talk show host recently fired for the following racial slur against the Rutgers women's basketball team after it nearly won the U.S. collegiate championship: "Those are some nappy-headed hos, I can tell you that."
As Americans debate who has the right to say what in the wake of the Imus controversy this weekend, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama criticized some Black hip-hop entertainers for "degrading their sisters" when they refer to African American women in negative terms. He spoke of a "coarsening of the culture" that helps create the environment in which Imus made his racist remark.
And now a German video has angered even more people.
"It's a shame," said Bronx resident Myra Bellamy. "We haven't moved forward. If anything we're moving backwards."