Local struggles, global issues: The role of race and belonging within street renaming struggles in Berlin’s Wedding district

Since 2004 there has been a debate surrounding two streets and a square in Berlin’s Wedding district that bear the names of perpetrators of German colonialism: should the streets be renamed or simply be rededicated to other German men bearing the same surnames? Through struggles over street renaming within the African Quarter of Wedding, we show how processes of marginalization, racialization and whiteness are negotiated through the situated materiality of local spaces, yet these negotiations are continually tied to wider national and global struggles. We draw on critical whiteness studies, as well as post- and de-colonial theory, to examine what discourses are employed by groups agitating for and against street renaming and how these debates are covered by the international, national and local media. The paper unpacks the disconnection between present day racializing practices and colonial histories, highlighting how recognizing racism is connected to how colonialism has been dealt with (or not) in Germany.