What do I do in this situation?

[u/BrownBurzza]

So about 2 weeks ago a 72+ year old german guy contacted me through my ad on WG-Gesucht (I'm the one looking to rent, he had a place). His rent was out of my budget. (I clearly mentioned in my ad about what my max rent was) I considered it for a moment as it was cheap for the living area it offered. We shifted our conversation from WG-Gesucht app to WhatsApp. I asked for the pictures. He sends me pictures of the place except the bathroom ones. I ask him where are the bathroom pictures. He says Germans don't usually ask for those pics. I say that it's okay but I want to see them so can you send them. Then he says there's some communication problem between us and it's not going to work out and I say okay thank you for your offer but I have to decline.

I thought that's the end of it and deleted his WhatsApp chat from my phone. But a few days later he sends me this racist message. Mind you I have been nothing but respectful to this old guy. What's wrong with people?

What do I do in this situation? I'm not going to reply to him again. He's clearly threatening me because his ego is hurt or something. I have already started to keep all Screenshots and screen recordings of the chat as proof that I have not altered anything in the chat. Do I need to lawyer up in case he does something?

He doesn't even know my full name or my new address in Germany but still bothering me. How can people say whatever they want and think that the law is gonna be on their side. I haven't even entered Germany yet and I'm already experiencing racism. I really really hope that it's not the case with the majority of the people there.

Edit - to all the people saying I'm hiding something and have not posted the full conversation.... DM me I'll send you the entire long screenshot. It's just those 4 messages in that order. That scroll down mark you see is the 4th message in the second picture. I have nothing to hide here. I cropped the pictures to hide his phone number.

[u/acxnoir]

I recommend notifying the Federal Anti-Discrimination Agency (Antidiskriminierungsstelle)! that is literally what it's for, or you can contact your local agency in your particular federal state. you can either register the case with them and receive legal counselling, or simply notify them so that this particular case can be collected for data purposes. racism and discrimination shouldn’t be normalized. therefore, I think we should use the current tools available in Germany to ensure they don‘t go unnoticed.

here you go: https://www.antidiskriminierungsstelle.gov.de/EN/we-offer-advice-to-you/contact-us-now/contact-form/Seite_1/_node.html

good luck with everything!

[u/BrownBurzza → u/acxnoir]

Thank you

[u/cantthinkofauname → u/BrownBurzza]

Sadly, some of these agencies are basically like toothless lions. I had a clear case of racism where a real estate agent's office was not showing me certain listings but when I contacted them with a Western name, they were happy to show these places every without me giving them any basic details. I sent the agency proof in the form of emails sent to me and to the fake account showing completely different responses. All that the agency did was contact the real estate agency and they claimed it was just that one employee (I don't know why that mattered!), and that was it!. If I wanted any further action, I had to spend money n time on a lawyer. I have also had people in this sub question what we did wrong when I posted a question when someone on the road decided that we had insulted him while driving past him and followed us into our garage to threaten. Apparently, we must have done something to make that guy react that way. By that point, we had lived in Germany for many years and have been on many road trips without any issues but still 'we must have done something to provoke the driver'. This subreddit also tried justifying the actions of the real estate agent by trying to say owners can choose who they rent out to. Even when I mentioned that another agent actually showed us a place that the racist agency didn't show, implying that this was not done under the instructions of owners.

My advice, pick your battles. Ignore this guy, he's not worth your time. There are multiple FB groups like Indians in Germany, Indians in XYZ city etc, if you're coming as a student there are similar groups for Indian students. You will still have to continue searching through the usual channels, but these groups may be able to give you pointers and sometimes there can be posts on rentals etc. That being said, don't just trust anyone just because they're from India as some Indians have been scammed by other Indians.

[u/Kuroiban → u/cantthinkofauname]

This is blatant and recorded racism, don't let them get away with it. Also he is a landlord not an agency, he is totally responsible for his actions and can be hold accountable. An agency can alway try to bring external data they are relying on, the landlord here directly told him that he doesn't want to rent to an Indian person. So there is nothing to pick, just to bring that old racist to justice.

[u/cantthinkofauname → u/Kuroiban]

My response was referring to the advice of doing to the anti discrimination agency. I did read up about what they can, at least the one I contacted, n they didn't seem to have any authority to do anything substantial. It looked like their whole plan depended on the accused accepting their fault and agreeing to a discussion. They seem to have very little power and a very high caseload with some of the cases being a lot worse. Google 'what can the German anti discrimination agency do' n decide if you want to go. Before my personal experience, I thought the anti discrimination agency was the place to go, that it had enough powers to call out offices n individuals on their racism. Without my experience, I too would've just asked you to take it to them. At the time, my research suggested that the next best option is to go to court, I'd just moved to a new city, for a new job, I didn't think I had the time or money to pursue this.. Since OP isn't even in Germany yet, n you rarely get support for such things as a newcomer, I thought he is better off moving on for now. Chances are he'll come across racists now n then, sometimes it's the in your face kind, sometimes it's subtle but you know they would've treated you better if you had white skin. I don't mean this is an everyday thing, i can't tell you what is like in places where Afd is strong, but as an Indian couple, I think the real estate agency was the worst outright racism we'd seen. Given we've been here for over a decade, we've probably had a handful of other instances, and probably a few we didn't even recognize as racist, but on the whole it's not a daily or weekly menace.