This article examines both academic structures and their interdependencies with racism and students’ ways of negotiating racism and their experiences with it. Speaking about racism in Germany is socially contested. The text argues, that this applies to academia just as well, but in specific ways. These specifics of the academic context affect the possibilities of students to negotiate their daily experiences of racism as they cannot use appropriate concepts of ‘racism’ or even the term itself to explain their experiences. What lacks in this context are spaces for speaking about and dealing with racism.