During an appearance on The Pivot Podcast, Ghanaian-German actor Boris Kodjoe opened up about growing up in Germany and his experiences with being bullied because of the color of his skin.
Kodjoe, 52, who was born to a Ghanaian father and a White German mother, stated that he was subjected to incessant bullying in his childhood because of the color of his skin.
“I was faced with racism, with bullies every single day, growing up in Germany, because I was different,” he said, per Complex.
The Resident Evil star, who grew up in the German city of Freiburg, recalled that his classmates used to either grab his hair or rub his skin to ascertain if he was “real.” He also said some asked about the stereotypes regarding Africa, which included whether people on the continent lived in trees. Kodjoe, however, stressed that it was because of “misinformation and fear.”
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The 52-year-old was just 3 years old when his father left Germany, and he stated that his absence worsened his predicaments. He said that though his White mother tried to make him accept himself as he was, irrespective of how he was viewed, he felt that she couldn’t really understand how he felt.
“I didn’t have somebody to protect me. I didn’t have somebody to explain to me what this was,” Kodjoe said. “My mother did an extremely admirable job in putting a sense of pride and confidence in us… She tried her best to give us a sense that we had value.”
He said that he ultimately turned to sports to escape the discrimination. “It presented me with an outlet, something that I could sort of let out all my aggression and my anger and the pent-up frustration I felt every day,” Kodjoe stated.
Through tennis, Kodjoe, in the 1990s, ultimately received a scholarship to the United States. His career, however, shifted to modeling and acting after he suffered a back injury.
