Their Problem is Not You
I have been thinking about the cancellation of an event at the Volksbad, a temporary outdoor swimming pool installed in front of the Volksbühne, one of Berlin’s major theaters.
The Volksbühne created the Volksbad as a free public pool and also set aside particular time slots for different organizations and community groups. One of those organizations, Each One Teach One (EOTO), works in Berlin on racism prevention and empowering Black people. The Volksbühne gave EOTO a six-hour time slot, from noon until 6 p.m., for a holiday swimming program for Black children and young people. The Volksbühne also reserved time slots for other organizations.
But this particular event became the subject of public controversy. A white CDU politician publicly complained that she would not be able to swim during those hours because she was white and described the situation as discriminatory. The controversy spread through social media, the press, and political debate. EOTO subsequently reported receiving racist emails, discriminatory comments, and threats of violence. Eventually, EOTO and the Volksbühne canceled the event because they said they could no longer guarantee the physical and psychological safety of the children and young people who were supposed to attend.
There has been a great deal of debate about what happened. Frankly, as a BIPOC person living in Germany, I have found much of it difficult to engage with.
But it has made me wonder about something else. Where does that sense of entitlement come from? What makes someone experience another person’s access as their own exclusion?
Concluding that a temporary space created for a particular community constitutes discrimination against you requires an emotional and intellectual process. Another step is required to take that belief and proclaim it publicly. A public statement like this is not simply an expression of frustration. It is a proclamation. It says: A wrong has been committed against me. By making that proclamation publicly, you ask other people to recognize that wrong, validate it, and perhaps even help correct it.
In this case, something much more disturbing happened. The controversy took those six hours away from the children the program intended to serve. As the hostility escalated, EOTO and the Volksbühne could no longer guarantee the children’s safety and canceled the event.
People claimed that the program excluded them, but their reaction ultimately excluded the Black children and young people the program had intended to welcome.
But I keep thinking about the narrative underneath the proclamation. We all carry narratives about ourselves, and they shape how we comprehend what happens around us. They determine what we believe we deserve, what we believe has been taken from us, and sometimes who we believe is responsible.
I know something about this because I have been trying to unravel one of my own. Over the past five years, since my accident, I developed a portrayal of unworthiness. It did not appear out of nowhere. It developed through experiences of trying to receive care and repeatedly not getting what I needed. At times, care felt not simply unavailable but withheld. Over time, those experiences affected my self-esteem. If I wasn't being given care, I began to believe I wasn't worthy of care.
That turned into a story I told myself. Recovery has involved recognizing that story for what it is: a narrative, not a fact. I was entitled to healthcare from the moment I hit my head. The failures of the systems and people around me were not evidence of my worth.
And this is where I catch myself returning to the pool. The narrative underneath the outrage was never really about swimming. The pool was unavailable to the general public for a limited period because the Volksbühne had reserved that time for a program organized with EOTO, just as other times were reserved for other organizations and groups. After 6 p.m., the pool had originally been scheduled to reopen for general swimming.
So what transforms someone else’s few hours of access into an injury against you? What changes someone else’s belonging into your exclusion?
There is an important distinction here between not having access to something for a few hours and being systematically excluded from access in the first place. A temporary space created for people who experience discrimination is not the same thing as the discrimination that made that space necessary. Yet somehow those two things became interchangeable in the public conversation. The person temporarily unable to enter the pool became the injured party, while the reasons Black children and young people might benefit from a protected space became secondary.
I don’t think that question can be answered simply by debating the rules of a swimming pool. It asks us to look inward.
A person can carry an account of scarcity so deeply that another person’s joy begins to feel like something has been taken from them. Another person’s safety feels like a restriction. Another person’s belonging feels like displacement. Another person’s access feels like exclusion. And underneath that, I suspect, there can be anger. There can be fear. There can also be intense grief. Because being so disturbed by another person’s moment of belonging requires something deeper than wanting to swim that afternoon.
The problem is not the children in the pool. The problem is not the BIPOC community. The problem is the narrative through which their presence is being interpreted.
Unfortunately, those private narratives do not remain private. They become policies, complaints, newspaper articles, social-media campaigns, canceled events. Eventually, one person's internal wound can become an external wound inflicted on someone else.
And in this case, that consequence was not theoretical. Children and young people lost an experience created for them because adults turned their few hours of belonging into a political controversy. The very people being accused of excluding others were ultimately the ones who could not enter the pool.
That is where the cycle becomes especially destructive.
People who experience discrimination are repeatedly asked to examine themselves in response to somebody else’s hostility. We wonder whether we misunderstood, whether we asked for too much, whether we should have been quieter, whether our presence created the problem. I know something about that process too. When I couldn't get the healthcare I needed, I internalized the failure. I turned an external failure into a judgment about myself: Maybe I am the problem. Maybe I don’t deserve this. Maybe I am asking for too much.
It has taken years to begin reversing that logic. I was entitled to healthcare from the moment I needed it. And those children were entitled to joy, safety, community, and belonging. Neither requires an apology.
This is one of the more difficult things to understand when struggling with discrimination: sometimes what is directed at you tells you very little about you. It tells you about the person directing it—their fears, their scarcity, their anger, their narrative about who deserves to occupy space.
That does not make discrimination harmless—quite the opposite. People’s unresolved narratives can become extraordinarily powerful when institutions validate them. They can determine who receives care, who enters a room, who gets believed, whose complaints matter and, apparently, who gets to swim.
But recognizing where the problem originates can interrupt something else: the process by which we turn somebody else’s prejudice into evidence against ourselves. There is power in refusing that inheritance, in standing in our own truth without apology, in insisting on our safety, our wellbeing, our inclusion and our belonging while understanding that the hostility directed toward those things may reveal far more about the deficits of the person opposing them than it ever reveals about us.
Their problem may be directed at you. But their problem is not you.
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