Journalist and author Alice Hasters is a major contemporary Black German voice. Her bestselling 2019 book Was weiße Menschen nicht über Rassismus hören wollen, aber wissen sollten (What White People Don't Want to Hear About Racism, But Should Know Anyway) led to animated public debates about race and racism in Germany.

In her lecture at UCLA, Hasters will address the central assumption that frames Black German life today: the perception that Black people are "new" to Germany. This assumption erases the fact that Black people have lived in German-speaking lands for hundreds of years. As she shows, it also allows anti-Black racism and its history to be falsely viewed as only an American or Western problem with no relation to the German context. Examining the dynamics that unfold from this skewed understanding. Hasters argues that attending to the history of anti-Black racism in Germany enables a deeper understanding of German identity, racism and antisemitism today.

Alice Hasters is a journalist, author and podcaster. She studied at the German School of Journalism in Munich and after graduating worked for the ''Tagesschau'' and Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg, among others. Since 2016, Hasters has been producing the podcast ''Feuer & Brot'' (tr: Fire & Bread) about politics and pop culture together with Maximiliane Häcke. In her publications, she deals with the topics of Afro-German identity, racism and intersectionality. Hasters was named culture journalist of the year in 2020 by medium magazine. She is the author of Was weiße Menschen nicht über Rassismus hören wollen, published by Hanser Verlag, and is currently a 2023 Fellow at the Thomas Mann House Los Angeles.

This lecture is hosted by UCLA's Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies, UCLA's Center for European and Russian Studies in collaboration with the Thomas Mann House Los Angeles.