She doesn't like the word, but it's still attached to her again and again: migration background.

Her mother: comes from the Allgäu.

Her father: from Ghana.

And Hadija Haruna-Oelker, born in 1980, has set himself the task of writing and arguing against all those who prefer to pigeonhole the world.

She receives recognition for this, for which she is awarded prizes such as the “Medienspiegel” for transparent journalism, but she also offends with this.

Alexander Juergs

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Since 2008 she has been working for the radio show "Der Tag" at Hessischer Rundfunk, and she has her own column in the Frankfurter Rundschau.

And she moderates discussions.

Only recently she was on stage at the "Römerberg Talks", where the war in Ukraine was discussed.

Haruna-Oelker led the debates in a knowledgeable and empathetic manner.

During a conversation in the "Strandcafé" in Frankfurt's Nordend, which she likes because you can have breakfast here for hours, she calls herself an "moved journalist".

But others also accuse her of partiality, for example because she is involved in the Black People Initiative in Germany.

In the past, she was often told that she – as a “victim” – was not allowed to write about racism.

Today she is one of the most sought-after authors on the subject.

For her 500-page essay “The Beauty of Difference” she was nominated for the non-fiction book prize at the Leipzig Book Fair before the book was even published.

In it, the journalist pleads for a different view of our present.

She calls for diversity not to be viewed as a crucial test, but as an enrichment of a society.

At the beginning of her journalistic career, Haruna-Oelker faced a problem that many newcomers to the profession are familiar with: If you want to get a good internship, you have to show that you have already completed internships in important media companies.

A dilemma that is difficult to solve.

But the woman from Frankfurt was lucky.

Internships were advertised in a city magazine, at the news agency Associated Press, at the radio station Planet Radio, at the daily newspaper Frankfurter Neue Presse.

She applied to everyone, even though she couldn't produce any work samples - and was accepted everywhere.

She was then able to continue working at Planet Radio.

She became a city reporter for the magazine "Frizz".

Later she went to the Berlin School of Journalism.

For a while she commuted between the metropolises,

Today she is happy to be at home again exclusively in her place of birth.

"Frankfurt is different from other cities in Germany," says Haruna-Oelker: socially more permeable, more open to the diversity of an immigration society and therefore more lively.

For her, Frankfurt is a place that “has always been good to me”.

She lives in Dornbusch, is married to a geographer, and they both have a disabled child.

The journalist also writes very openly and very touchingly in her book about their “difference”.

She likes to dance, says Haruna-Oelker.

She likes to meet people, keeps in touch with "her girls", with whom she has been friends since school, still likes to go out and immerses herself in the city's cultural life.

The exchange is important to her, the open approach to others, the interest in their biographies.

And that is what characterizes her work as a journalist.