Abitur NRW Englisch 2023 · LK · Nachtermin · Weiterbildungskolleg

Klausurteil A

Chibundu Onuzo

Sunita

This short story centres on Dọlapọ, a Nigerian student who lives in London and is on the verge of starting her working life.

Note: The text is reproduced as it appeared in the original print edition.

“Don’t tell me you introduce yourself to people as dollop?” her mentor Daisy had said in

their first meeting. “That makes you sound like a blob of cream on the end of a spoon.”

“No one can pronounce Dọlapọ.”

“And nobody can pronounce Adaeze. Doesn’t mean I call myself dazed. I walk into a

5 room, confidently with my shoulders back and say, ‘Hi my name is Adaeze, but you can

call me Daisy.’ Now go out, come back in and introduce yourself again.”

Dọlapọ had been sent out of the room twice for introducing herself as Lapo and Olap.

Finally she had come up with Dolly.

“Take a seat, Dolly,” her mentor said. “Now we’ve given you a name, let’s talk about

10 your hair.”

Dọlapọ loved the afro now hidden under her weave, loved its untameable, uncombable

sprawl, loved the extra inches it added to her height, loved the mushroom silhouette of her

head in photos, loved hair that grew up instead of down, gravity-defying, extra-terrestrial

hair.

15 “That’s fine if you want to work in advertising or publishing, or media, or fashion, or

maybe even engineering, but certainly not banking,” Daisy said.

“My friends like it.”

“White friends or black?”

“Does it really matter?”

20 “White or black?”

“Mostly white.”

“They think it’s funky, edgy and cool, don’t they?”

“What’s wrong with that.”

“Never elegant, chic, glamorous; these are the adjectives we use for women in banking.

25 These are the adjectives for success. As a black woman, let me be honest, when you walked

into this room, what I saw was unprofessional, unkempt and unserious.”

She had been paired with Daisy by Diversity Unlimited, a recruitment firm that helped

companies fill up their ethnic minority quota. Daisy had worked for seven years in an

investment bank. Daisy carried a red leather bag with slim, curved handles, discreet, silver,

30 letters spelling out PRADA under the zip. Daisy wore structured dresses, thin black heels,

milky pearls, minimal lipstick, dramatic eye shadow and cascading hair that swept below

her shoulders. Daisy’s hair cost a thousand pounds.

Dọlapọ’s more modest purchase came in a black cardboard box, edged with gold curli-

cue. The hair lay lustrous on a bed of crepe, folded into itself like a small, sleek creature, a

35 sable or mink. Her aunt had gone with her to the salon, leafing through magazines as they

wove Dọlapọ’s afro into lines and then stitched the human hair to hers, tight-running

stiches that made her eyes water. [...]

That first night, with her new hair tucked under a net, she dreamt she was on a cart, her legs

dangling over the platform and trailing above short grass. [...]

40 Dọlapọ had read somewhere that cheese gave strange dreams. That second night, she

exchanged her bedtime snack of Brie and two crackers for carrot and hummus. She dreamt

she was on the back of the cart again, fresh vegetables and fruit crowding around her. It had

rained and the field had turned to mud.

“Sunita,” someone said.

45 She looked back and saw two bullocks, their horns rising like pale crescents, sharp

tipped and dangerous. They were pulling the cart, their shoulder blades rolling with each step.

“My name is Dọlapọ Owolabi,” she said when she woke up. “My name is Dọlapọ

Owolabi,” she muttered as she rode on the tube, the ground beneath her a black mudslide.

In the windows, she saw the marble eyes of a bullock.

50 The third night, she was afraid to sleep. Her first interview was tomorrow and she couldn’t

sleep. Daisy had called her that evening to ask what she thought of the falling oil prices.

Dọlapọ had not heard.

“I’ve told you. You have to be going over the financial pages. Have you done your hair?”

“Yes. I was wondering, do you know where it comes from? Is it Brazil?”

55 “Well, it’s called Brazilian hair but it’s mostly from India. The women sell it to make

money for their families. [...]

This time Dọlapọ dreamt she was in a cool, dark room. She put her hands on the walls,

pitted mud walls that her fingers slid into. There was an earthen bowl in front of her. She

drank from it and tasted buffalo milk, fat and creamy, freshly squeezed from an udder that

60 morning.

“Sunita, stop dawdling. Hurry so you won’t be late for school.”

She stepped into the sunlight, into a lane with other huts with brown walls and grey

thatched roofs, thatch made from woven grass reeds and coconut leaves. There were other

children emerging in blue and white uniforms.

65 “Sunita, where’s your hair?” a little boy with dirty knees asked. She ran her hand over

her scalp and felt the stubble of new growth bristling against her palm.

“Baldie,” he chanted behind her as they walked to school. “Baldie, Baldie.”

She waited until the huts were out of sight and then she flung her bag to the ground.

“Your mother is a baldie!”

70 She launched herself at her tormentor and they fell to the ground.

Dọlapọ woke with her legs still thrashing. She went to her dressing-table and brushed out

Sunita’s hair. She could still feel herself rolling in the Indian dirt, kicking and spitting and

scratching. She hoped she won. Nobody messed with Sunita and nobody messed with her.

She flicked her weave over her shoulder, glamorous for one last time and then she found a

75 razor and began to slit the stitches that bound her and Sunita together.

Six hours later, Dọlapọ walked into a room in Canary Wharf, in a structured dress, thin

black heels, a single strand of pearls and her hair combed out to its tallest and widest, a

globe of an afro, space for Europe, Africa and Asia on her head.

“Hello, good morning. I’m Dọlapọ Owolabi.”

80 “Morning, I’m Mike Jones. Is there a name you prefer to be called by?”

“Just Dọlapọ is fine.”

“Please take a seat, Dọlapọ, and tell us why you want to work in banking.”

Annotations:

30 PRADA – an Italian luxury label for expensive, elegant fashion and accessories

76 Canary Wharf – part of London’s business district

1. Describe the circumstances in which Dọlapọ finds herself and what the text reveals about her hairstyle. (Comprehension) (12 Punkte)

Klausurteil A

Chibundu Onuzo

Sunita

This short story centres on Dọlapọ, a Nigerian student who lives in London and is on the verge of starting her working life.

Note: The text is reproduced as it appeared in the original print edition.

“Don’t tell me you introduce yourself to people as dollop?” her mentor Daisy had said in

their first meeting. “That makes you sound like a blob of cream on the end of a spoon.”

“No one can pronounce Dọlapọ.”

“And nobody can pronounce Adaeze. Doesn’t mean I call myself dazed. I walk into a

5 room, confidently with my shoulders back and say, ‘Hi my name is Adaeze, but you can

call me Daisy.’ Now go out, come back in and introduce yourself again.”

Dọlapọ had been sent out of the room twice for introducing herself as Lapo and Olap.

Finally she had come up with Dolly.

“Take a seat, Dolly,” her mentor said. “Now we’ve given you a name, let’s talk about

10 your hair.”

Dọlapọ loved the afro now hidden under her weave, loved its untameable, uncombable

sprawl, loved the extra inches it added to her height, loved the mushroom silhouette of her

head in photos, loved hair that grew up instead of down, gravity-defying, extra-terrestrial

hair.

15 “That’s fine if you want to work in advertising or publishing, or media, or fashion, or

maybe even engineering, but certainly not banking,” Daisy said.

“My friends like it.”

“White friends or black?”

“Does it really matter?”

20 “White or black?”

“Mostly white.”

“They think it’s funky, edgy and cool, don’t they?”

“What’s wrong with that.”

“Never elegant, chic, glamorous; these are the adjectives we use for women in banking.

25 These are the adjectives for success. As a black woman, let me be honest, when you walked

into this room, what I saw was unprofessional, unkempt and unserious.”

She had been paired with Daisy by Diversity Unlimited, a recruitment firm that helped

companies fill up their ethnic minority quota. Daisy had worked for seven years in an

investment bank. Daisy carried a red leather bag with slim, curved handles, discreet, silver,

30 letters spelling out PRADA under the zip. Daisy wore structured dresses, thin black heels,

milky pearls, minimal lipstick, dramatic eye shadow and cascading hair that swept below

her shoulders. Daisy’s hair cost a thousand pounds.

Dọlapọ’s more modest purchase came in a black cardboard box, edged with gold curli-

cue. The hair lay lustrous on a bed of crepe, folded into itself like a small, sleek creature, a

35 sable or mink. Her aunt had gone with her to the salon, leafing through magazines as they

wove Dọlapọ’s afro into lines and then stitched the human hair to hers, tight-running

stiches that made her eyes water. [...]

That first night, with her new hair tucked under a net, she dreamt she was on a cart, her legs

dangling over the platform and trailing above short grass. [...]

40 Dọlapọ had read somewhere that cheese gave strange dreams. That second night, she

exchanged her bedtime snack of Brie and two crackers for carrot and hummus. She dreamt

she was on the back of the cart again, fresh vegetables and fruit crowding around her. It had

rained and the field had turned to mud.

“Sunita,” someone said.

45 She looked back and saw two bullocks, their horns rising like pale crescents, sharp

tipped and dangerous. They were pulling the cart, their shoulder blades rolling with each step.

“My name is Dọlapọ Owolabi,” she said when she woke up. “My name is Dọlapọ

Owolabi,” she muttered as she rode on the tube, the ground beneath her a black mudslide.

In the windows, she saw the marble eyes of a bullock.

50 The third night, she was afraid to sleep. Her first interview was tomorrow and she couldn’t

sleep. Daisy had called her that evening to ask what she thought of the falling oil prices.

Dọlapọ had not heard.

“I’ve told you. You have to be going over the financial pages. Have you done your hair?”

“Yes. I was wondering, do you know where it comes from? Is it Brazil?”

55 “Well, it’s called Brazilian hair but it’s mostly from India. The women sell it to make

money for their families. [...]

This time Dọlapọ dreamt she was in a cool, dark room. She put her hands on the walls,

pitted mud walls that her fingers slid into. There was an earthen bowl in front of her. She

drank from it and tasted buffalo milk, fat and creamy, freshly squeezed from an udder that

60 morning.

“Sunita, stop dawdling. Hurry so you won’t be late for school.”

She stepped into the sunlight, into a lane with other huts with brown walls and grey

thatched roofs, thatch made from woven grass reeds and coconut leaves. There were other

children emerging in blue and white uniforms.

65 “Sunita, where’s your hair?” a little boy with dirty knees asked. She ran her hand over

her scalp and felt the stubble of new growth bristling against her palm.

“Baldie,” he chanted behind her as they walked to school. “Baldie, Baldie.”

She waited until the huts were out of sight and then she flung her bag to the ground.

“Your mother is a baldie!”

70 She launched herself at her tormentor and they fell to the ground.

Dọlapọ woke with her legs still thrashing. She went to her dressing-table and brushed out

Sunita’s hair. She could still feel herself rolling in the Indian dirt, kicking and spitting and

scratching. She hoped she won. Nobody messed with Sunita and nobody messed with her.

She flicked her weave over her shoulder, glamorous for one last time and then she found a

75 razor and began to slit the stitches that bound her and Sunita together.

Six hours later, Dọlapọ walked into a room in Canary Wharf, in a structured dress, thin

black heels, a single strand of pearls and her hair combed out to its tallest and widest, a

globe of an afro, space for Europe, Africa and Asia on her head.

“Hello, good morning. I’m Dọlapọ Owolabi.”

80 “Morning, I’m Mike Jones. Is there a name you prefer to be called by?”

“Just Dọlapọ is fine.”

“Please take a seat, Dọlapọ, and tell us why you want to work in banking.”

Annotations:

30 PRADA – an Italian luxury label for expensive, elegant fashion and accessories

76 Canary Wharf – part of London’s business district

2. Analyze the way in which Dọlapọ is presented, paying particular attention to the narrative techniques and the language used. (Analysis) (16 Punkte)

Klausurteil A

Chibundu Onuzo

Sunita

This short story centres on Dọlapọ, a Nigerian student who lives in London and is on the verge of starting her working life.

Note: The text is reproduced as it appeared in the original print edition.

“Don’t tell me you introduce yourself to people as dollop?” her mentor Daisy had said in

their first meeting. “That makes you sound like a blob of cream on the end of a spoon.”

“No one can pronounce Dọlapọ.”

“And nobody can pronounce Adaeze. Doesn’t mean I call myself dazed. I walk into a

5 room, confidently with my shoulders back and say, ‘Hi my name is Adaeze, but you can

call me Daisy.’ Now go out, come back in and introduce yourself again.”

Dọlapọ had been sent out of the room twice for introducing herself as Lapo and Olap.

Finally she had come up with Dolly.

“Take a seat, Dolly,” her mentor said. “Now we’ve given you a name, let’s talk about

10 your hair.”

Dọlapọ loved the afro now hidden under her weave, loved its untameable, uncombable

sprawl, loved the extra inches it added to her height, loved the mushroom silhouette of her

head in photos, loved hair that grew up instead of down, gravity-defying, extra-terrestrial

hair.

15 “That’s fine if you want to work in advertising or publishing, or media, or fashion, or

maybe even engineering, but certainly not banking,” Daisy said.

“My friends like it.”

“White friends or black?”

“Does it really matter?”

20 “White or black?”

“Mostly white.”

“They think it’s funky, edgy and cool, don’t they?”

“What’s wrong with that.”

“Never elegant, chic, glamorous; these are the adjectives we use for women in banking.

25 These are the adjectives for success. As a black woman, let me be honest, when you walked

into this room, what I saw was unprofessional, unkempt and unserious.”

She had been paired with Daisy by Diversity Unlimited, a recruitment firm that helped

companies fill up their ethnic minority quota. Daisy had worked for seven years in an

investment bank. Daisy carried a red leather bag with slim, curved handles, discreet, silver,

30 letters spelling out PRADA under the zip. Daisy wore structured dresses, thin black heels,

milky pearls, minimal lipstick, dramatic eye shadow and cascading hair that swept below

her shoulders. Daisy’s hair cost a thousand pounds.

Dọlapọ’s more modest purchase came in a black cardboard box, edged with gold curli-

cue. The hair lay lustrous on a bed of crepe, folded into itself like a small, sleek creature, a

35 sable or mink. Her aunt had gone with her to the salon, leafing through magazines as they

wove Dọlapọ’s afro into lines and then stitched the human hair to hers, tight-running

stiches that made her eyes water. [...]

That first night, with her new hair tucked under a net, she dreamt she was on a cart, her legs

dangling over the platform and trailing above short grass. [...]

40 Dọlapọ had read somewhere that cheese gave strange dreams. That second night, she

exchanged her bedtime snack of Brie and two crackers for carrot and hummus. She dreamt

she was on the back of the cart again, fresh vegetables and fruit crowding around her. It had

rained and the field had turned to mud.

“Sunita,” someone said.

45 She looked back and saw two bullocks, their horns rising like pale crescents, sharp

tipped and dangerous. They were pulling the cart, their shoulder blades rolling with each step.

“My name is Dọlapọ Owolabi,” she said when she woke up. “My name is Dọlapọ

Owolabi,” she muttered as she rode on the tube, the ground beneath her a black mudslide.

In the windows, she saw the marble eyes of a bullock.

50 The third night, she was afraid to sleep. Her first interview was tomorrow and she couldn’t

sleep. Daisy had called her that evening to ask what she thought of the falling oil prices.

Dọlapọ had not heard.

“I’ve told you. You have to be going over the financial pages. Have you done your hair?”

“Yes. I was wondering, do you know where it comes from? Is it Brazil?”

55 “Well, it’s called Brazilian hair but it’s mostly from India. The women sell it to make

money for their families. [...]

This time Dọlapọ dreamt she was in a cool, dark room. She put her hands on the walls,

pitted mud walls that her fingers slid into. There was an earthen bowl in front of her. She

drank from it and tasted buffalo milk, fat and creamy, freshly squeezed from an udder that

60 morning.

“Sunita, stop dawdling. Hurry so you won’t be late for school.”

She stepped into the sunlight, into a lane with other huts with brown walls and grey

thatched roofs, thatch made from woven grass reeds and coconut leaves. There were other

children emerging in blue and white uniforms.

65 “Sunita, where’s your hair?” a little boy with dirty knees asked. She ran her hand over

her scalp and felt the stubble of new growth bristling against her palm.

“Baldie,” he chanted behind her as they walked to school. “Baldie, Baldie.”

She waited until the huts were out of sight and then she flung her bag to the ground.

“Your mother is a baldie!”

70 She launched herself at her tormentor and they fell to the ground.

Dọlapọ woke with her legs still thrashing. She went to her dressing-table and brushed out

Sunita’s hair. She could still feel herself rolling in the Indian dirt, kicking and spitting and

scratching. She hoped she won. Nobody messed with Sunita and nobody messed with her.

She flicked her weave over her shoulder, glamorous for one last time and then she found a

75 razor and began to slit the stitches that bound her and Sunita together.

Six hours later, Dọlapọ walked into a room in Canary Wharf, in a structured dress, thin

black heels, a single strand of pearls and her hair combed out to its tallest and widest, a

globe of an afro, space for Europe, Africa and Asia on her head.

“Hello, good morning. I’m Dọlapọ Owolabi.”

80 “Morning, I’m Mike Jones. Is there a name you prefer to be called by?”

“Just Dọlapọ is fine.”

“Please take a seat, Dọlapọ, and tell us why you want to work in banking.”

Annotations:

30 PRADA – an Italian luxury label for expensive, elegant fashion and accessories

76 Canary Wharf – part of London’s business district

3.1 Many companies try to become more diverse by introducing ethnic minority quotas. Commenting on this, journalist Yomi Adegoke claims that real change requires "diversity of thought" and not merely "diversity of staff". Evaluate this view and also consider what it might mean for the world of work. (Evaluation: comment) (14 Punkte)

Klausurteil A

Chibundu Onuzo

Sunita

This short story centres on Dọlapọ, a Nigerian student who lives in London and is on the verge of starting her working life.

Note: The text is reproduced as it appeared in the original print edition.

“Don’t tell me you introduce yourself to people as dollop?” her mentor Daisy had said in

their first meeting. “That makes you sound like a blob of cream on the end of a spoon.”

“No one can pronounce Dọlapọ.”

“And nobody can pronounce Adaeze. Doesn’t mean I call myself dazed. I walk into a

5 room, confidently with my shoulders back and say, ‘Hi my name is Adaeze, but you can

call me Daisy.’ Now go out, come back in and introduce yourself again.”

Dọlapọ had been sent out of the room twice for introducing herself as Lapo and Olap.

Finally she had come up with Dolly.

“Take a seat, Dolly,” her mentor said. “Now we’ve given you a name, let’s talk about

10 your hair.”

Dọlapọ loved the afro now hidden under her weave, loved its untameable, uncombable

sprawl, loved the extra inches it added to her height, loved the mushroom silhouette of her

head in photos, loved hair that grew up instead of down, gravity-defying, extra-terrestrial

hair.

15 “That’s fine if you want to work in advertising or publishing, or media, or fashion, or

maybe even engineering, but certainly not banking,” Daisy said.

“My friends like it.”

“White friends or black?”

“Does it really matter?”

20 “White or black?”

“Mostly white.”

“They think it’s funky, edgy and cool, don’t they?”

“What’s wrong with that.”

“Never elegant, chic, glamorous; these are the adjectives we use for women in banking.

25 These are the adjectives for success. As a black woman, let me be honest, when you walked

into this room, what I saw was unprofessional, unkempt and unserious.”

She had been paired with Daisy by Diversity Unlimited, a recruitment firm that helped

companies fill up their ethnic minority quota. Daisy had worked for seven years in an

investment bank. Daisy carried a red leather bag with slim, curved handles, discreet, silver,

30 letters spelling out PRADA under the zip. Daisy wore structured dresses, thin black heels,

milky pearls, minimal lipstick, dramatic eye shadow and cascading hair that swept below

her shoulders. Daisy’s hair cost a thousand pounds.

Dọlapọ’s more modest purchase came in a black cardboard box, edged with gold curli-

cue. The hair lay lustrous on a bed of crepe, folded into itself like a small, sleek creature, a

35 sable or mink. Her aunt had gone with her to the salon, leafing through magazines as they

wove Dọlapọ’s afro into lines and then stitched the human hair to hers, tight-running

stiches that made her eyes water. [...]

That first night, with her new hair tucked under a net, she dreamt she was on a cart, her legs

dangling over the platform and trailing above short grass. [...]

40 Dọlapọ had read somewhere that cheese gave strange dreams. That second night, she

exchanged her bedtime snack of Brie and two crackers for carrot and hummus. She dreamt

she was on the back of the cart again, fresh vegetables and fruit crowding around her. It had

rained and the field had turned to mud.

“Sunita,” someone said.

45 She looked back and saw two bullocks, their horns rising like pale crescents, sharp

tipped and dangerous. They were pulling the cart, their shoulder blades rolling with each step.

“My name is Dọlapọ Owolabi,” she said when she woke up. “My name is Dọlapọ

Owolabi,” she muttered as she rode on the tube, the ground beneath her a black mudslide.

In the windows, she saw the marble eyes of a bullock.

50 The third night, she was afraid to sleep. Her first interview was tomorrow and she couldn’t

sleep. Daisy had called her that evening to ask what she thought of the falling oil prices.

Dọlapọ had not heard.

“I’ve told you. You have to be going over the financial pages. Have you done your hair?”

“Yes. I was wondering, do you know where it comes from? Is it Brazil?”

55 “Well, it’s called Brazilian hair but it’s mostly from India. The women sell it to make

money for their families. [...]

This time Dọlapọ dreamt she was in a cool, dark room. She put her hands on the walls,

pitted mud walls that her fingers slid into. There was an earthen bowl in front of her. She

drank from it and tasted buffalo milk, fat and creamy, freshly squeezed from an udder that

60 morning.

“Sunita, stop dawdling. Hurry so you won’t be late for school.”

She stepped into the sunlight, into a lane with other huts with brown walls and grey

thatched roofs, thatch made from woven grass reeds and coconut leaves. There were other

children emerging in blue and white uniforms.

65 “Sunita, where’s your hair?” a little boy with dirty knees asked. She ran her hand over

her scalp and felt the stubble of new growth bristling against her palm.

“Baldie,” he chanted behind her as they walked to school. “Baldie, Baldie.”

She waited until the huts were out of sight and then she flung her bag to the ground.

“Your mother is a baldie!”

70 She launched herself at her tormentor and they fell to the ground.

Dọlapọ woke with her legs still thrashing. She went to her dressing-table and brushed out

Sunita’s hair. She could still feel herself rolling in the Indian dirt, kicking and spitting and

scratching. She hoped she won. Nobody messed with Sunita and nobody messed with her.

She flicked her weave over her shoulder, glamorous for one last time and then she found a

75 razor and began to slit the stitches that bound her and Sunita together.

Six hours later, Dọlapọ walked into a room in Canary Wharf, in a structured dress, thin

black heels, a single strand of pearls and her hair combed out to its tallest and widest, a

globe of an afro, space for Europe, Africa and Asia on her head.

“Hello, good morning. I’m Dọlapọ Owolabi.”

80 “Morning, I’m Mike Jones. Is there a name you prefer to be called by?”

“Just Dọlapọ is fine.”

“Please take a seat, Dọlapọ, and tell us why you want to work in banking.”

Annotations:

30 PRADA – an Italian luxury label for expensive, elegant fashion and accessories

76 Canary Wharf – part of London’s business district

3.2 On the morning after her third dream, shortly before the interview, Dọlapọ's thoughts keep circling around her situation. Write an interior monologue in which Dọlapọ considers what she hopes for and what she fears regarding the interview, and also thinks about the next time she will meet Daisy. (Evaluation: re-creation of text) (14 Punkte)

You are a participant in the European youth project Technology needs Diversity. For the project's website, every participant is asked to write an article on the current situation in her/his home country.

Drawing on Gabriel Rinaldi's statements, write an online article in which you outline the challenges facing the German tech sector as well as possible ways of improving the situation.

Source text: "Diversität in der Tech-Branche: Vom Algorithmus vergessen" by Gabriel Rinaldi

Klausurteil A

Chibundu Onuzo

Sunita

This short story centres on Dọlapọ, a Nigerian student who lives in London and is on the verge of starting her working life.

Note: The text is reproduced as it appeared in the original print edition.

“Don’t tell me you introduce yourself to people as dollop?” her mentor Daisy had said in

their first meeting. “That makes you sound like a blob of cream on the end of a spoon.”

“No one can pronounce Dọlapọ.”

“And nobody can pronounce Adaeze. Doesn’t mean I call myself dazed. I walk into a

5 room, confidently with my shoulders back and say, ‘Hi my name is Adaeze, but you can

call me Daisy.’ Now go out, come back in and introduce yourself again.”

Dọlapọ had been sent out of the room twice for introducing herself as Lapo and Olap.

Finally she had come up with Dolly.

“Take a seat, Dolly,” her mentor said. “Now we’ve given you a name, let’s talk about

10 your hair.”

Dọlapọ loved the afro now hidden under her weave, loved its untameable, uncombable

sprawl, loved the extra inches it added to her height, loved the mushroom silhouette of her

head in photos, loved hair that grew up instead of down, gravity-defying, extra-terrestrial

hair.

15 “That’s fine if you want to work in advertising or publishing, or media, or fashion, or

maybe even engineering, but certainly not banking,” Daisy said.

“My friends like it.”

“White friends or black?”

“Does it really matter?”

20 “White or black?”

“Mostly white.”

“They think it’s funky, edgy and cool, don’t they?”

“What’s wrong with that.”

“Never elegant, chic, glamorous; these are the adjectives we use for women in banking.

25 These are the adjectives for success. As a black woman, let me be honest, when you walked

into this room, what I saw was unprofessional, unkempt and unserious.”

She had been paired with Daisy by Diversity Unlimited, a recruitment firm that helped

companies fill up their ethnic minority quota. Daisy had worked for seven years in an

investment bank. Daisy carried a red leather bag with slim, curved handles, discreet, silver,

30 letters spelling out PRADA under the zip. Daisy wore structured dresses, thin black heels,

milky pearls, minimal lipstick, dramatic eye shadow and cascading hair that swept below

her shoulders. Daisy’s hair cost a thousand pounds.

Dọlapọ’s more modest purchase came in a black cardboard box, edged with gold curli-

cue. The hair lay lustrous on a bed of crepe, folded into itself like a small, sleek creature, a

35 sable or mink. Her aunt had gone with her to the salon, leafing through magazines as they

wove Dọlapọ’s afro into lines and then stitched the human hair to hers, tight-running

stiches that made her eyes water. [...]

That first night, with her new hair tucked under a net, she dreamt she was on a cart, her legs

dangling over the platform and trailing above short grass. [...]

40 Dọlapọ had read somewhere that cheese gave strange dreams. That second night, she

exchanged her bedtime snack of Brie and two crackers for carrot and hummus. She dreamt

she was on the back of the cart again, fresh vegetables and fruit crowding around her. It had

rained and the field had turned to mud.

“Sunita,” someone said.

45 She looked back and saw two bullocks, their horns rising like pale crescents, sharp

tipped and dangerous. They were pulling the cart, their shoulder blades rolling with each step.

“My name is Dọlapọ Owolabi,” she said when she woke up. “My name is Dọlapọ

Owolabi,” she muttered as she rode on the tube, the ground beneath her a black mudslide.

In the windows, she saw the marble eyes of a bullock.

50 The third night, she was afraid to sleep. Her first interview was tomorrow and she couldn’t

sleep. Daisy had called her that evening to ask what she thought of the falling oil prices.

Dọlapọ had not heard.

“I’ve told you. You have to be going over the financial pages. Have you done your hair?”

“Yes. I was wondering, do you know where it comes from? Is it Brazil?”

55 “Well, it’s called Brazilian hair but it’s mostly from India. The women sell it to make

money for their families. [...]

This time Dọlapọ dreamt she was in a cool, dark room. She put her hands on the walls,

pitted mud walls that her fingers slid into. There was an earthen bowl in front of her. She

drank from it and tasted buffalo milk, fat and creamy, freshly squeezed from an udder that

60 morning.

“Sunita, stop dawdling. Hurry so you won’t be late for school.”

She stepped into the sunlight, into a lane with other huts with brown walls and grey

thatched roofs, thatch made from woven grass reeds and coconut leaves. There were other

children emerging in blue and white uniforms.

65 “Sunita, where’s your hair?” a little boy with dirty knees asked. She ran her hand over

her scalp and felt the stubble of new growth bristling against her palm.

“Baldie,” he chanted behind her as they walked to school. “Baldie, Baldie.”

She waited until the huts were out of sight and then she flung her bag to the ground.

“Your mother is a baldie!”

70 She launched herself at her tormentor and they fell to the ground.

Dọlapọ woke with her legs still thrashing. She went to her dressing-table and brushed out

Sunita’s hair. She could still feel herself rolling in the Indian dirt, kicking and spitting and

scratching. She hoped she won. Nobody messed with Sunita and nobody messed with her.

She flicked her weave over her shoulder, glamorous for one last time and then she found a

75 razor and began to slit the stitches that bound her and Sunita together.

Six hours later, Dọlapọ walked into a room in Canary Wharf, in a structured dress, thin

black heels, a single strand of pearls and her hair combed out to its tallest and widest, a

globe of an afro, space for Europe, Africa and Asia on her head.

“Hello, good morning. I’m Dọlapọ Owolabi.”

80 “Morning, I’m Mike Jones. Is there a name you prefer to be called by?”

“Just Dọlapọ is fine.”

“Please take a seat, Dọlapọ, and tell us why you want to work in banking.”

Annotations:

30 PRADA – an Italian luxury label for expensive, elegant fashion and accessories

76 Canary Wharf – part of London’s business district

Erin Aubry Kaplan

Is My Little Library Contributing to the Gentrification of My Black Neighborhood?

About a year ago, I decided to build a library on my front lawn. By library, I mean one of

those little free-standing library boxes that dot lawns in bedroom communities around the

country – charming, birdhouse-like structures filled with books that invite neighbors and

passers-by to take a book, or donate a book, or both.

5 I’d spotted the phenomenon on walks through upscale, largely white neighborhoods around

Los Angeles and immediately resolved to bring it home to Inglewood. Why not? A library is

not so much a marker of wealth and whiteness as it is an affirmation of community and cozy,

small-town camaraderie that Inglewood, a mostly Black and Latino city in southwestern Los

Angeles County, has plenty of. We deserved no less.

10 Prepandemic, Inglewood was gentrifying, another reason I’d been inspired to do the library:

I wanted to signal to my longtime neighbors that we had our own ideas about improvement,

and could carry them out in our own way. There are organizations that help people build

these little libraries, but I did mine independently. I envisioned it as a place for my

neighbors to stay connected during the pandemic. The wooden post on which the library

15 sat was a stake in the ground, literally.

The response to the library was slow at first – it was the first in the area, and some people

mistook it for a birdhouse, or a mailbox. But I was pleased to soon see people stopping by

to browse and take home books.

Then one morning, glancing out my front window, I saw a young white couple stopped at

20 the library. Instantly, I was flooded with emotions – astonishment, and then resentment, and

then astonishment at my resentment. It all converged into a silent scream in my head of,

Get off my lawn!

The moment jolted me into realizing some things I’m not especially proud of. I had set out

this library for all who lived here, and even for those who didn’t, in theory. I would not

25 want to restrict anyone from looking at it or taking books, based on race or anything else.

But while I had seen white newcomers to the neighborhood here and there, the truth was,

I hadn’t set it out to appeal to white residents.

Now that they were in front of my house, curious about this new neighborhood attraction,

I didn’t know how to feel. By bringing this modern cultural artifact here from white

30 neighborhoods, had I set myself up, set up the neighborhood? Was I contributing to

gentrification and sending the wrong message about how I wanted the neighborhood to be?

What I resented was not this specific couple. It was their whiteness, and my feelings of

helplessness at not knowing how to maintain the integrity of a Black space that I had

created. I was seeing up close how fragile that space can be, how its meaning can be

35 changed in my mind, even by people who have no conscious intention to change it. That

library was on my lawn, but for that moment it became theirs. I built it and drove it into

the ground because I love books and always have. But I suddenly felt that I could not own

even this, something that was clearly and intimately mine.

As the couple wandered on, no books in hand, I thought about how fragile my feeling of

40 being settled is. It didn’t matter that I own my house, as many of my neighbors do.

Generations of racism, Jim Crow, disinvestment and redlining have meant that we don’t

really control our own spaces. In that moment, I had been overwhelmed by a kind of fear,

one that’s connected to the historical reality of Black people […].

When my uncle, Paul Aubry, bought a house in Los Angeles in the predominantly white,

45 working-class South Central neighborhood of the late 1940s, he wasn’t just buying a house;

he was putting his stake in the ground, making his claim to the American ideal of belonging.

My uncle’s claim was rejected. A cross was burned on his lawn. As more Black families

moved to the neighborhood, white people moved out in droves. The ground shifted under

Uncle Paul’s feet. That white flight forged the chiefly Black and brown South Central of

50 popular imagination and created similar demographics in other city neighborhoods across

the country, including Inglewood.

It has to be said that there’s nothing inherently wrong with the Black-, Latino- and

immigrant-rich neighborhoods that resulted from those flights. Community has always

been our greatest asset, and its greatest source of capital. But now, as younger generations

55 of white people move back to the neighborhoods their parents shunned, in the phenomenon

I call “white return,” it all suddenly feels up for grabs – again. […]

[T]he moment with the couple I saw through my window raised for me a serious moral

question about how I should act. Screaming at them to get off my lawn would be adopting

the values of the oppressor, as my racial-justice activist father used to say. Yet my

60 resentment was not analogous to the white resentment of generations past (and of now,

I’d argue). White resentment has always been legitimized, and reinforced, by legal and

cultural dominance […].

My little library, affirming as it is, is also an illusion; it can’t save our neighborhood. Still,

in 2021, it has become increasingly important to maintain and grow Black space, on its own

65 terms. As I watched the white couple peruse my little library, the most complicated feeling

of all was the brief, bittersweet satisfaction I took in watching them drawn to my lawn, and

to my idea. It felt empowering and hopeful on the one hand, defeating on the other.

So what message do I hope they took from my library? The same message I wanted to send

to the rest of my neighbors, my community: Black presence has value – in every sense of

70 the word, and on its own terms.

Annotations:

· gentrification – process of changing the character of an urban district through wealthier residents and businesses

2 · bedroom communities – a residential area in which a large number of people live but do not work

30 · (to) set someone/something up – here: to do harm to someone/something

41 · Jim Crow – term used for the laws and customs that segregated and demeaned African Americans, primarily from the 1870s to the 1960s

41 · disinvestment and redlining – lack of investment and systematic denial of various services to residents of predominantly non-white areas

Klausurteil A: Leseverstehen und Schreiben integriert

1.

Outline how Erin Aubry Kaplan plans to make her neighborhood better, as well as the thoughts and experiences she links to this plan. (Comprehension) [12 Punkte]

Erin Aubry Kaplan

Is My Little Library Contributing to the Gentrification of My Black Neighborhood?

About a year ago, I decided to build a library on my front lawn. By library, I mean one of

those little free-standing library boxes that dot lawns in bedroom communities around the

country – charming, birdhouse-like structures filled with books that invite neighbors and

passers-by to take a book, or donate a book, or both.

5 I’d spotted the phenomenon on walks through upscale, largely white neighborhoods around

Los Angeles and immediately resolved to bring it home to Inglewood. Why not? A library is

not so much a marker of wealth and whiteness as it is an affirmation of community and cozy,

small-town camaraderie that Inglewood, a mostly Black and Latino city in southwestern Los

Angeles County, has plenty of. We deserved no less.

10 Prepandemic, Inglewood was gentrifying, another reason I’d been inspired to do the library:

I wanted to signal to my longtime neighbors that we had our own ideas about improvement,

and could carry them out in our own way. There are organizations that help people build

these little libraries, but I did mine independently. I envisioned it as a place for my

neighbors to stay connected during the pandemic. The wooden post on which the library

15 sat was a stake in the ground, literally.

The response to the library was slow at first – it was the first in the area, and some people

mistook it for a birdhouse, or a mailbox. But I was pleased to soon see people stopping by

to browse and take home books.

Then one morning, glancing out my front window, I saw a young white couple stopped at

20 the library. Instantly, I was flooded with emotions – astonishment, and then resentment, and

then astonishment at my resentment. It all converged into a silent scream in my head of,

Get off my lawn!

The moment jolted me into realizing some things I’m not especially proud of. I had set out

this library for all who lived here, and even for those who didn’t, in theory. I would not

25 want to restrict anyone from looking at it or taking books, based on race or anything else.

But while I had seen white newcomers to the neighborhood here and there, the truth was,

I hadn’t set it out to appeal to white residents.

Now that they were in front of my house, curious about this new neighborhood attraction,

I didn’t know how to feel. By bringing this modern cultural artifact here from white

30 neighborhoods, had I set myself up, set up the neighborhood? Was I contributing to

gentrification and sending the wrong message about how I wanted the neighborhood to be?

What I resented was not this specific couple. It was their whiteness, and my feelings of

helplessness at not knowing how to maintain the integrity of a Black space that I had

created. I was seeing up close how fragile that space can be, how its meaning can be

35 changed in my mind, even by people who have no conscious intention to change it. That

library was on my lawn, but for that moment it became theirs. I built it and drove it into

the ground because I love books and always have. But I suddenly felt that I could not own

even this, something that was clearly and intimately mine.

As the couple wandered on, no books in hand, I thought about how fragile my feeling of

40 being settled is. It didn’t matter that I own my house, as many of my neighbors do.

Generations of racism, Jim Crow, disinvestment and redlining have meant that we don’t

really control our own spaces. In that moment, I had been overwhelmed by a kind of fear,

one that’s connected to the historical reality of Black people […].

When my uncle, Paul Aubry, bought a house in Los Angeles in the predominantly white,

45 working-class South Central neighborhood of the late 1940s, he wasn’t just buying a house;

he was putting his stake in the ground, making his claim to the American ideal of belonging.

My uncle’s claim was rejected. A cross was burned on his lawn. As more Black families

moved to the neighborhood, white people moved out in droves. The ground shifted under

Uncle Paul’s feet. That white flight forged the chiefly Black and brown South Central of

50 popular imagination and created similar demographics in other city neighborhoods across

the country, including Inglewood.

It has to be said that there’s nothing inherently wrong with the Black-, Latino- and

immigrant-rich neighborhoods that resulted from those flights. Community has always

been our greatest asset, and its greatest source of capital. But now, as younger generations

55 of white people move back to the neighborhoods their parents shunned, in the phenomenon

I call “white return,” it all suddenly feels up for grabs – again. […]

[T]he moment with the couple I saw through my window raised for me a serious moral

question about how I should act. Screaming at them to get off my lawn would be adopting

the values of the oppressor, as my racial-justice activist father used to say. Yet my

60 resentment was not analogous to the white resentment of generations past (and of now,

I’d argue). White resentment has always been legitimized, and reinforced, by legal and

cultural dominance […].

My little library, affirming as it is, is also an illusion; it can’t save our neighborhood. Still,

in 2021, it has become increasingly important to maintain and grow Black space, on its own

65 terms. As I watched the white couple peruse my little library, the most complicated feeling

of all was the brief, bittersweet satisfaction I took in watching them drawn to my lawn, and

to my idea. It felt empowering and hopeful on the one hand, defeating on the other.

So what message do I hope they took from my library? The same message I wanted to send

to the rest of my neighbors, my community: Black presence has value – in every sense of

70 the word, and on its own terms.

Annotations:

· gentrification – process of changing the character of an urban district through wealthier residents and businesses

2 · bedroom communities – a residential area in which a large number of people live but do not work

30 · (to) set someone/something up – here: to do harm to someone/something

41 · Jim Crow – term used for the laws and customs that segregated and demeaned African Americans, primarily from the 1870s to the 1960s

41 · disinvestment and redlining – lack of investment and systematic denial of various services to residents of predominantly non-white areas

Klausurteil A: Leseverstehen und Schreiben integriert

2.

Analyze the way in which Kaplan conveys her opinions about the circumstances of Black communities in the US. Concentrate on the communicative strategies and the language she uses. (Analysis) [16 Punkte]

Erin Aubry Kaplan

Is My Little Library Contributing to the Gentrification of My Black Neighborhood?

About a year ago, I decided to build a library on my front lawn. By library, I mean one of

those little free-standing library boxes that dot lawns in bedroom communities around the

country – charming, birdhouse-like structures filled with books that invite neighbors and

passers-by to take a book, or donate a book, or both.

5 I’d spotted the phenomenon on walks through upscale, largely white neighborhoods around

Los Angeles and immediately resolved to bring it home to Inglewood. Why not? A library is

not so much a marker of wealth and whiteness as it is an affirmation of community and cozy,

small-town camaraderie that Inglewood, a mostly Black and Latino city in southwestern Los

Angeles County, has plenty of. We deserved no less.

10 Prepandemic, Inglewood was gentrifying, another reason I’d been inspired to do the library:

I wanted to signal to my longtime neighbors that we had our own ideas about improvement,

and could carry them out in our own way. There are organizations that help people build

these little libraries, but I did mine independently. I envisioned it as a place for my

neighbors to stay connected during the pandemic. The wooden post on which the library

15 sat was a stake in the ground, literally.

The response to the library was slow at first – it was the first in the area, and some people

mistook it for a birdhouse, or a mailbox. But I was pleased to soon see people stopping by

to browse and take home books.

Then one morning, glancing out my front window, I saw a young white couple stopped at

20 the library. Instantly, I was flooded with emotions – astonishment, and then resentment, and

then astonishment at my resentment. It all converged into a silent scream in my head of,

Get off my lawn!

The moment jolted me into realizing some things I’m not especially proud of. I had set out

this library for all who lived here, and even for those who didn’t, in theory. I would not

25 want to restrict anyone from looking at it or taking books, based on race or anything else.

But while I had seen white newcomers to the neighborhood here and there, the truth was,

I hadn’t set it out to appeal to white residents.

Now that they were in front of my house, curious about this new neighborhood attraction,

I didn’t know how to feel. By bringing this modern cultural artifact here from white

30 neighborhoods, had I set myself up, set up the neighborhood? Was I contributing to

gentrification and sending the wrong message about how I wanted the neighborhood to be?

What I resented was not this specific couple. It was their whiteness, and my feelings of

helplessness at not knowing how to maintain the integrity of a Black space that I had

created. I was seeing up close how fragile that space can be, how its meaning can be

35 changed in my mind, even by people who have no conscious intention to change it. That

library was on my lawn, but for that moment it became theirs. I built it and drove it into

the ground because I love books and always have. But I suddenly felt that I could not own

even this, something that was clearly and intimately mine.

As the couple wandered on, no books in hand, I thought about how fragile my feeling of

40 being settled is. It didn’t matter that I own my house, as many of my neighbors do.

Generations of racism, Jim Crow, disinvestment and redlining have meant that we don’t

really control our own spaces. In that moment, I had been overwhelmed by a kind of fear,

one that’s connected to the historical reality of Black people […].

When my uncle, Paul Aubry, bought a house in Los Angeles in the predominantly white,

45 working-class South Central neighborhood of the late 1940s, he wasn’t just buying a house;

he was putting his stake in the ground, making his claim to the American ideal of belonging.

My uncle’s claim was rejected. A cross was burned on his lawn. As more Black families

moved to the neighborhood, white people moved out in droves. The ground shifted under

Uncle Paul’s feet. That white flight forged the chiefly Black and brown South Central of

50 popular imagination and created similar demographics in other city neighborhoods across

the country, including Inglewood.

It has to be said that there’s nothing inherently wrong with the Black-, Latino- and

immigrant-rich neighborhoods that resulted from those flights. Community has always

been our greatest asset, and its greatest source of capital. But now, as younger generations

55 of white people move back to the neighborhoods their parents shunned, in the phenomenon

I call “white return,” it all suddenly feels up for grabs – again. […]

[T]he moment with the couple I saw through my window raised for me a serious moral

question about how I should act. Screaming at them to get off my lawn would be adopting

the values of the oppressor, as my racial-justice activist father used to say. Yet my

60 resentment was not analogous to the white resentment of generations past (and of now,

I’d argue). White resentment has always been legitimized, and reinforced, by legal and

cultural dominance […].

My little library, affirming as it is, is also an illusion; it can’t save our neighborhood. Still,

in 2021, it has become increasingly important to maintain and grow Black space, on its own

65 terms. As I watched the white couple peruse my little library, the most complicated feeling

of all was the brief, bittersweet satisfaction I took in watching them drawn to my lawn, and

to my idea. It felt empowering and hopeful on the one hand, defeating on the other.

So what message do I hope they took from my library? The same message I wanted to send

to the rest of my neighbors, my community: Black presence has value – in every sense of

70 the word, and on its own terms.

Annotations:

· gentrification – process of changing the character of an urban district through wealthier residents and businesses

2 · bedroom communities – a residential area in which a large number of people live but do not work

30 · (to) set someone/something up – here: to do harm to someone/something

41 · Jim Crow – term used for the laws and customs that segregated and demeaned African Americans, primarily from the 1870s to the 1960s

41 · disinvestment and redlining – lack of investment and systematic denial of various services to residents of predominantly non-white areas

Klausurteil A: Leseverstehen und Schreiben integriert

3.1

Assess the extent to which Kaplan's statement that "Black presence has value – in every sense of the word, and on its own terms" (ll. 69 – 70) corresponds to the social and political reality of the United States today. Draw on the text and on what you have studied in class about American myths and realities. (Evaluation: comment) [14 Punkte]

Erin Aubry Kaplan

Is My Little Library Contributing to the Gentrification of My Black Neighborhood?

About a year ago, I decided to build a library on my front lawn. By library, I mean one of

those little free-standing library boxes that dot lawns in bedroom communities around the

country – charming, birdhouse-like structures filled with books that invite neighbors and

passers-by to take a book, or donate a book, or both.

5 I’d spotted the phenomenon on walks through upscale, largely white neighborhoods around

Los Angeles and immediately resolved to bring it home to Inglewood. Why not? A library is

not so much a marker of wealth and whiteness as it is an affirmation of community and cozy,

small-town camaraderie that Inglewood, a mostly Black and Latino city in southwestern Los

Angeles County, has plenty of. We deserved no less.

10 Prepandemic, Inglewood was gentrifying, another reason I’d been inspired to do the library:

I wanted to signal to my longtime neighbors that we had our own ideas about improvement,

and could carry them out in our own way. There are organizations that help people build

these little libraries, but I did mine independently. I envisioned it as a place for my

neighbors to stay connected during the pandemic. The wooden post on which the library

15 sat was a stake in the ground, literally.

The response to the library was slow at first – it was the first in the area, and some people

mistook it for a birdhouse, or a mailbox. But I was pleased to soon see people stopping by

to browse and take home books.

Then one morning, glancing out my front window, I saw a young white couple stopped at

20 the library. Instantly, I was flooded with emotions – astonishment, and then resentment, and

then astonishment at my resentment. It all converged into a silent scream in my head of,

Get off my lawn!

The moment jolted me into realizing some things I’m not especially proud of. I had set out

this library for all who lived here, and even for those who didn’t, in theory. I would not

25 want to restrict anyone from looking at it or taking books, based on race or anything else.

But while I had seen white newcomers to the neighborhood here and there, the truth was,

I hadn’t set it out to appeal to white residents.

Now that they were in front of my house, curious about this new neighborhood attraction,

I didn’t know how to feel. By bringing this modern cultural artifact here from white

30 neighborhoods, had I set myself up, set up the neighborhood? Was I contributing to

gentrification and sending the wrong message about how I wanted the neighborhood to be?

What I resented was not this specific couple. It was their whiteness, and my feelings of

helplessness at not knowing how to maintain the integrity of a Black space that I had

created. I was seeing up close how fragile that space can be, how its meaning can be

35 changed in my mind, even by people who have no conscious intention to change it. That

library was on my lawn, but for that moment it became theirs. I built it and drove it into

the ground because I love books and always have. But I suddenly felt that I could not own

even this, something that was clearly and intimately mine.

As the couple wandered on, no books in hand, I thought about how fragile my feeling of

40 being settled is. It didn’t matter that I own my house, as many of my neighbors do.

Generations of racism, Jim Crow, disinvestment and redlining have meant that we don’t

really control our own spaces. In that moment, I had been overwhelmed by a kind of fear,

one that’s connected to the historical reality of Black people […].

When my uncle, Paul Aubry, bought a house in Los Angeles in the predominantly white,

45 working-class South Central neighborhood of the late 1940s, he wasn’t just buying a house;

he was putting his stake in the ground, making his claim to the American ideal of belonging.

My uncle’s claim was rejected. A cross was burned on his lawn. As more Black families

moved to the neighborhood, white people moved out in droves. The ground shifted under

Uncle Paul’s feet. That white flight forged the chiefly Black and brown South Central of

50 popular imagination and created similar demographics in other city neighborhoods across

the country, including Inglewood.

It has to be said that there’s nothing inherently wrong with the Black-, Latino- and

immigrant-rich neighborhoods that resulted from those flights. Community has always

been our greatest asset, and its greatest source of capital. But now, as younger generations

55 of white people move back to the neighborhoods their parents shunned, in the phenomenon

I call “white return,” it all suddenly feels up for grabs – again. […]

[T]he moment with the couple I saw through my window raised for me a serious moral

question about how I should act. Screaming at them to get off my lawn would be adopting

the values of the oppressor, as my racial-justice activist father used to say. Yet my

60 resentment was not analogous to the white resentment of generations past (and of now,

I’d argue). White resentment has always been legitimized, and reinforced, by legal and

cultural dominance […].

My little library, affirming as it is, is also an illusion; it can’t save our neighborhood. Still,

in 2021, it has become increasingly important to maintain and grow Black space, on its own

65 terms. As I watched the white couple peruse my little library, the most complicated feeling

of all was the brief, bittersweet satisfaction I took in watching them drawn to my lawn, and

to my idea. It felt empowering and hopeful on the one hand, defeating on the other.

So what message do I hope they took from my library? The same message I wanted to send

to the rest of my neighbors, my community: Black presence has value – in every sense of

70 the word, and on its own terms.

Annotations:

· gentrification – process of changing the character of an urban district through wealthier residents and businesses

2 · bedroom communities – a residential area in which a large number of people live but do not work

30 · (to) set someone/something up – here: to do harm to someone/something

41 · Jim Crow – term used for the laws and customs that segregated and demeaned African Americans, primarily from the 1870s to the 1960s

41 · disinvestment and redlining – lack of investment and systematic denial of various services to residents of predominantly non-white areas

Klausurteil A: Leseverstehen und Schreiben integriert

3.2

You have been asked to speak at the international Forum for Global Challenges and plan a speech on The Crisis of Belonging in Times of Displacement and Migration. Using UN Secretary-General António Guterres' statement that "[w]e need more effective international cooperation and a more compassionate approach to migration" as your point of departure, write the script for this speech. (Evaluation: re-creation of text) [14 Punkte]

Klausurteil B: Sprachmittlung isoliert

Your British friend belongs to the Future Workshop at her/his school and is involved in a project called Urbanization Worldwide. The participants are expected to provide examples of present-day urban development in various countries.

Using Katharina Grimm's article, write an email to her/him in which you outline how ghettos in German cities have developed and which solutions are possible.

[18 Punkte]

Erin Aubry Kaplan

Is My Little Library Contributing to the Gentrification of My Black Neighborhood?

About a year ago, I decided to build a library on my front lawn. By library, I mean one of

those little free-standing library boxes that dot lawns in bedroom communities around the

country – charming, birdhouse-like structures filled with books that invite neighbors and

passers-by to take a book, or donate a book, or both.

5 I’d spotted the phenomenon on walks through upscale, largely white neighborhoods around

Los Angeles and immediately resolved to bring it home to Inglewood. Why not? A library is

not so much a marker of wealth and whiteness as it is an affirmation of community and cozy,

small-town camaraderie that Inglewood, a mostly Black and Latino city in southwestern Los

Angeles County, has plenty of. We deserved no less.

10 Prepandemic, Inglewood was gentrifying, another reason I’d been inspired to do the library:

I wanted to signal to my longtime neighbors that we had our own ideas about improvement,

and could carry them out in our own way. There are organizations that help people build

these little libraries, but I did mine independently. I envisioned it as a place for my

neighbors to stay connected during the pandemic. The wooden post on which the library

15 sat was a stake in the ground, literally.

The response to the library was slow at first – it was the first in the area, and some people

mistook it for a birdhouse, or a mailbox. But I was pleased to soon see people stopping by

to browse and take home books.

Then one morning, glancing out my front window, I saw a young white couple stopped at

20 the library. Instantly, I was flooded with emotions – astonishment, and then resentment, and

then astonishment at my resentment. It all converged into a silent scream in my head of,

Get off my lawn!

The moment jolted me into realizing some things I’m not especially proud of. I had set out

this library for all who lived here, and even for those who didn’t, in theory. I would not

25 want to restrict anyone from looking at it or taking books, based on race or anything else.

But while I had seen white newcomers to the neighborhood here and there, the truth was,

I hadn’t set it out to appeal to white residents.

Now that they were in front of my house, curious about this new neighborhood attraction,

I didn’t know how to feel. By bringing this modern cultural artifact here from white

30 neighborhoods, had I set myself up, set up the neighborhood? Was I contributing to

gentrification and sending the wrong message about how I wanted the neighborhood to be?

What I resented was not this specific couple. It was their whiteness, and my feelings of

helplessness at not knowing how to maintain the integrity of a Black space that I had

created. I was seeing up close how fragile that space can be, how its meaning can be

35 changed in my mind, even by people who have no conscious intention to change it. That

library was on my lawn, but for that moment it became theirs. I built it and drove it into

the ground because I love books and always have. But I suddenly felt that I could not own

even this, something that was clearly and intimately mine.

As the couple wandered on, no books in hand, I thought about how fragile my feeling of

40 being settled is. It didn’t matter that I own my house, as many of my neighbors do.

Generations of racism, Jim Crow, disinvestment and redlining have meant that we don’t

really control our own spaces. In that moment, I had been overwhelmed by a kind of fear,

one that’s connected to the historical reality of Black people […].

When my uncle, Paul Aubry, bought a house in Los Angeles in the predominantly white,

45 working-class South Central neighborhood of the late 1940s, he wasn’t just buying a house;

he was putting his stake in the ground, making his claim to the American ideal of belonging.

My uncle’s claim was rejected. A cross was burned on his lawn. As more Black families

moved to the neighborhood, white people moved out in droves. The ground shifted under

Uncle Paul’s feet. That white flight forged the chiefly Black and brown South Central of

50 popular imagination and created similar demographics in other city neighborhoods across

the country, including Inglewood.

It has to be said that there’s nothing inherently wrong with the Black-, Latino- and

immigrant-rich neighborhoods that resulted from those flights. Community has always

been our greatest asset, and its greatest source of capital. But now, as younger generations

55 of white people move back to the neighborhoods their parents shunned, in the phenomenon

I call “white return,” it all suddenly feels up for grabs – again. […]

[T]he moment with the couple I saw through my window raised for me a serious moral

question about how I should act. Screaming at them to get off my lawn would be adopting

the values of the oppressor, as my racial-justice activist father used to say. Yet my

60 resentment was not analogous to the white resentment of generations past (and of now,

I’d argue). White resentment has always been legitimized, and reinforced, by legal and

cultural dominance […].

My little library, affirming as it is, is also an illusion; it can’t save our neighborhood. Still,

in 2021, it has become increasingly important to maintain and grow Black space, on its own

65 terms. As I watched the white couple peruse my little library, the most complicated feeling

of all was the brief, bittersweet satisfaction I took in watching them drawn to my lawn, and

to my idea. It felt empowering and hopeful on the one hand, defeating on the other.

So what message do I hope they took from my library? The same message I wanted to send

to the rest of my neighbors, my community: Black presence has value – in every sense of

70 the word, and on its own terms.

Annotations:

· gentrification – process of changing the character of an urban district through wealthier residents and businesses

2 · bedroom communities – a residential area in which a large number of people live but do not work

30 · (to) set someone/something up – here: to do harm to someone/something

41 · Jim Crow – term used for the laws and customs that segregated and demeaned African Americans, primarily from the 1870s to the 1960s

41 · disinvestment and redlining – lack of investment and systematic denial of various services to residents of predominantly non-white areas