Summary

A Black woman faced systemic racism and stereotyping from her white relocation agent in Basel, Switzerland, while searching for a multicultural neighborhood to raise her mixed-race children.

Abstract

The author, a Black woman, recounts her experience with systemic racism and discrimination while attempting to find housing in Basel, Switzerland, with the help of a white relocation agent named Dotty. Despite feeling comfortable in the diverse neighborhood of Klein Basel, Dotty discouraged her from living there due to racist stereotypes about the residents. The agent's biases led to a challenging housing search, with the author and her family being turned down for apartments in predominantly white areas. Eventually, the author's white husband managed to secure an apartment after approaching an agency without his wife, suggesting possible racial discrimination. The family's subsequent discomfort in a predominantly white suburb and the author's determination to protect her children from racism by moving to a more diverse city highlight the pervasive impact of systemic racism on their lives.

Opinions

The relocation agent, Dotty, held and expressed overtly racist views, including stereotypes about drug dealing and the unsuitability of Klein Basel for raising a family due to its multicultural population.
The author felt that the relocation agency's practices were not sensitive to the needs of Black and brown employees, indicating a lack of diversity and cultural awareness in the company's relocation process.
The author's experience suggests that the housing market in Basel, or at least the agencies they interacted with, may have been biased against non-white tenants.
The author believed that living in a diverse community was crucial for her children's well-being and sense of belonging, which led to the family's eventual move to Geneva.
The author emphasizes the need to dismantle systemic racism, as it negatively affects many lives and is deeply ingrained in various aspects of society, including housing and employment.

My White Relocation Agent Told Me A Black Woman, Not To Move Into A Black Neighborhood

All those Black people are dangerous she said

Photo by Watoker Derrick Okello on Unsplash

When I moved to Basel, Switzerland for work, I was assigned a relocation agent to help me find a place to live. Before we met, I’d already spent some time checking out the classifieds. I thought I might have a stroke of luck and find an apartment sooner.

I did find one and on my first day in the city, my husband and I had an appointment to go visit it. It was in Klein Basel — which directly translates to little Basel. The neighborhood was multicultural with its numerous stores and restaurants owned by Sri Lankan Tamils, Turks, and other Black and brown people that looked just like me and my children. I liked the atmosphere and felt that we could easily fit in there. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the place, so a few days later, we met with Dotty, our relocation agent.

Dotty was white and had lived in Basel all her life. During our first appointment, she asked us what type of place we wanted to live in. Since it is easier to rent than buy property in Switzerland, we opted for an apartment. I shared with Dotty that we’d visited a place not far from Messeplatz — the fairgrounds in Basel, a few days earlier.

“Oh that’s in Klein Basel “, she responded in surprise. “Why would you ever want to live there?”

I thought she was joking but quickly realized by the look on her face that she was dead serious.

“We actually liked it quite a lot there. It’s very multicultural and it’s a place in which we’d love to raise our children”.

“Oh no, no. There are too many Turks, Tamils, and Africans there, and they deal drugs, it is not a good place to raise a family”.

I looked at her with a look of astonishment on my face.

“Didn’t this woman realize that she was talking to me, a Black woman with brown children?”

It was astounding how overtly racist she was. It didn’t even cross her mind to refrain from making such racist comments to a mixed-race family.

She had us visit many apartments in Grosse Basel as well as places in the suburbs. In some of the villages out of the city, I felt uncomfortable, as though the local population did not want us there. Dotty put our name forward for many of those apartments and we were turned down every single time.

I’ll never ever know if there was racism involved. All I can say is that when Dotty’s time with us was over and we still hadn’t found a place, my white husband went to an agency without me, his Black wife, and secured a place within a week. Maybe it’s all a coincidence, but I’m pretty much sure that the agencies that didn't rent to us weren’t too keen about having a Black tenant.

We moved into our new apartment which was in the suburbs of Basel — in Therwil specifically. From the second we moved in, we knew we wouldn’t be happy there. It was the complete opposite of Klein Basel, there were almost no Black or brown people in the entire village.

I worried about putting my children into the local school there. I knew they would be the only mixed-race children there and that they would feel isolated and lonely. I was lucky that my company contributed to tuition at the international school. My children still suffered from racism there, but I think that it would have been much worse in the local school.

When my children got older, I realized that we could no longer continue living in Basel. We had to move to a much more multicultural city where they would feel valued and appreciated. I wanted to protect them from racism — like the type I had experienced while growing up.

We were lucky to be able to move back to Geneva — a diverse city, a few years later. I’ll never forget what my children said on their first day of school:

“There are many people that look like us here”.

Those words have stayed with me all these years.

People often ask how systemic racism manifests itself. The above account is a perfect example of it. The corporation that hired me in Basel at the time didn’t think to brief the relocation company they used to be more culturally sensitive to the needs of Black and brown employees. The relocation agents were like robots, repeating tired and racist stereotypes about Klein Basel to the people they were helping to settle in.

As a recently hired employee, this sort of thing offended me because it showed me that the company wasn’t truly diverse. There entire hiring and relocation process catered to white employees, not to Black and brown ones. I felt that I was the odd Black woman out in a system that was not made for me. As I have often mentioned, there is not one area of my life that racism hasn’t touched, and there are many people like me. This is the reason why racism needs to be dismantled. It negatively impacts so many lives and needs to be eradicated once and for all.

Thank you for reading my perspective.