kadeem greaves:

you mentioned on the phone; one of the reasons you wanted to do this interview is because you wanted to have ideas heard. so, what is one thing you want people to hear?

dreea pavel:

something i would like the world to know?hmm, it's pretty complicated i don't know where to start. what is important to me is solidarity between women of colour especially, but also people of colour in general. i'm half sinti/romani and you're black but to me that's just different shades of brown. to be honest its not like you're a different ethnicity to me… i think solidarity is key to unity.

k––

who are you? who or what do you consider yourself to be?

d––

i am the daughter of two very amazing parents. i grew up very untypical to a lot of other people

k––

meaning?

d––

i never went to kindergarten my dad taught me everything at home. what he thought was worth teaching was poetry, remembering song lyrics and telephone numbers just training our memory. they both make music so i always grew up around a lot of music, especially jazz. i always wanted to be a jazz singer but they told me that i couldn’t sing so i did everything else possible in music. i wrote about music, i wrote music. i did a lot of things around music and now i dj.

k––

have you been discriminated against, in berlin?

d––

the largest "minority" groups in germany are turkish and arabic people. germans distinguish them as one culture.... so, if you are not visibly asian, black or an ethnicity you can easily see, you experience discrimination on a very vague level. i could be discriminated against because you think i am turkish or muslim. maybe because you simply just don't know what to do with me. or if you knew that i was romani i would face even more discrimination, you know what I mean? i feel like that's why i feel a great sense of solidarity towards anyone else. i have experienced everyone's discrimination, maybe not to an extreme extent. i try my best to understand people as best as i can.

k––

i think any minority group's (racial, religious, sexual) reality is closer to how things ought to be.  you understand what discrimination feels like and that allows you to be more empathic and compassionate to others. i believe that empathy makes us human.

d––

i feel like there is a commonality between all people.

the only minority on this planet are white people, they are the smallest race. they are such a small group and their sense of survival is probably bigger than anyone else's. i can look at half of the world and it will resemble me. i'm not worried about me not existing in 100 years. with that premise it makes sense for them to kind of wipe out, hide and distort the history of brown people. due to this destruction their own reality and identity are completely distorted. and they cannot empathize with us ever because they were the makers of our oppression.

k––

you know what's crazy? the current bigotry towards arabs, people don't realize it starts with language…. i heard since 1990, western countries have killed 4 million arabs, that's a genocide and no one talks about that.

d––

we don't speak about any genocide if you think about it....

k––

it is multilayered. even if you move to mitte, you are still not over it.

d––

just as much as you inherit your traits and hair, skin-tone; you also inherit pains and fears.