The state of Berlin

This city feels like an old friend with a lingering illness.

It's not just that the city is poor - debt like a Third World country, average income per person of just 1157 euros per month -- but that the citizens come off as so resigned.

Americans need to airlift some of that famous optimism. Planes full of chirpy midwesterners should start landing at Tempelhoff Airport every 5 minutes or so.

The latest topic for handwringing angst has been violence in the schools. The tone of the articles is racist. "Arabs" and "Turks" are commiting most of the violence, they say. "Germans" are frequently the victims. (Never mind that most of the "Turks" are in fact German. Will they ever get a handle on this?) More and more the papers produce this breathless drama of German victimization in the schools. German children attacked as "pig-chompers!" What next?! Soon these Arabs will be kicking our dachhunds and peeing on our garden dwarves!

The racist tone of the articles, I think, is just a symptom of cluelessness. People don't know how to talk about ethnic tensions in a way that isn't tinged with panic and uncertainty. They grasp for easy explanations and false tropes, and race is the biggest, falsest easiest trope of all.

If we could all just take a deep breath and say "everything is going to be ok......." I wish Germans knew more about ethnic tensions in the U.S. Of course middle class white boys at integrated schools get beat up now and then, and of course it is an issue - particularly if that boy is you or your son. But it's not a social calamity. One would hope that newspapers could keep an eye on the big picture.