There’s a very small core
of people who are extraordinarily active, while the rest of the
Roma remain terribly oppressed—if you know where to get
your news, you regularly hear news stories about Roma who are
being forced to live on top of an old lead mine that’s slowly
poisoning their community and their children most of all; about
Roma families who remain internally displaced refugees in places
like Kosovo, years after the war has officially ended; about Neo-nazis
anointing themselves as the keepers of the law and organizing
patrols in order to harass the Roma and keep them from moving
about freely; about the accelerating pace of ghettoization in
Eastern Europe in general, forcing more and more Roma to live
in utter squalor, segregated from the rest of the community; about
more fences being built around Roma ghettos to restrict their
freedom even further; about racist films on Roma being billed
as legitimate “documentaries” and even being broadcast
on government television; about rampant police abuse of Roma;
about Roma children burning to death because of arson attacks
on their homes; about coercive state sterilization of Roma women;
and so on.
Oh discordia
We continue to chip away, however, working where we can to make
a difference, sending volunteers where we can to help teach, to
help improve leadership skills, to give the Roma the chance to
interact with someone who won’t judge them on sight (or
will at least judge them much less than others would), to help
make connections. We also continue to give younger Roma the chance
to go somewhere else to be a volunteer, to learn leadership and
group methods, to learn foreign languages, and then to come back
to their communities and be troublemakers—catalysts of change.
Another sign of hope that I’ve seen is the evolving discussion
about and understanding of what it means to be Roma, or what it
is that constitutes a Roma identity. For many non-Roma, someone
being Roma is as much socioeconomic as racial, if not more so,
and they often do not attribute their prejudices against the Roma
people in general to individual Roma that they know. The majority
society has been defining “Roma” for centuries, but
now Roma are stepping up to take back the right to define their
own identity. This process is still very much in its infancy (compare
it to the difficulty of trying to create a common Black identity
in the United States during the Civil Rights era, and the extent
to which that was or was not accomplished), but it is progressing,
and there are many signs of hope.
The sense of self-identity among the (for lack of a better word)
"common" Roma differs greatly from country to country.
In Germany, for example, the Sinti and Roma have a much better
developed sense of a dual identity—that they are both Deutsch
and Sinti/Roma—than Roma in other countries do. In many
places in Hungary, the Roma don't want to have a sense of a separate
"Roma" identity—they just want to be accepted
by the mainstream and live as Hungarians do. In Hungary (as well
as in Transcarpathia—I can't say too much about the particular
situation among Hungarian-speaking Roma in Romania or elsewhere),
the sense of Roma identity lies very much along linguistic lines:
those who speak some form of Romani are "Roma," and
those who speak Hungarian are "cigány" (“Gypsy”),
and many (again, not all, but many), view assimilation as the
answer. This is a debate that continues among the Roma themselves,
as to what degree of segregation, integration, or assimilation
is the answer to their problems.
The situation is very different for the Roma elite. Among educated
Roma, there is a very conscious movement towards trying to establish
a more or less unified Roma identity across all of Europe, even
allowing for the differences in culture and Romani dialects existing
in different areas. I would say, however, that this process is
very much being driven by the elite, and in a sense is rather
non-democratic, since it is a process that is happening, to a
large extent, without the input of 95 percent of the Roma population
of Europe. The process you can observe among the Roma is sort
of the opposite of the way that national identities usually form.
Usually, you have a common identity among the "common people,”
and then an intellectual elite comes along to articulate and study
this identity. With the Roma in Europe, it's an elite trying to
build an identity, and though this identity has historical and
cultural roots, it is actually a new identity, since there has
never been a trans-European Roma identity before. Prior to this,
identity and allegiances were built primarily along extended family
and clan lines. This identity is a new phenomenon, born out of
a desire for recognition, the need for a common identity for the
Roma to rally around, and practicality (since it’s difficult
to lobby with governments and European Union institutions if there's
infighting among the Roma or different groups claiming to be the
"real" Roma, which is one of the barriers to progress
in Hungary at the moment).
The other aspect of this is that in many places, the Roma have
to re-learn their ancestral culture and language because the powers
that be robbed it from them in the past. It's very difficult to
build some kind of identity around a common culture that you don't
even have, or that you have to re-learn. I can imagine that trying
to build a common Roma identity around culture and language that
you had to learn from another person could feel quite artificial
and fake, and I can understand why many Roma would rather simply
assimilate into Hungarian society than re-learn and re-establish
their own cultural identity.
So, among the elite, there is a conscious attempt to create this
identity, but that's not even set yet, and it's certainly not
spread to the Roma in general.
That's my take on it, as a non-Roma who's been exposed to both
sides of things, to the elite and to the "common" Roma.
The difficulties facing the Roma are massive. They live in situations
of embedded racism, which is so pervasive that it affects those
who would want to help the Roma in escaping their situation—the
churches, international non-government organizations, governmental
initiatives, and so on. Trying to restructure a system of racism
that has been cementing itself into place for more than 500 years
is no small task. I am definitely hopeful however, even though
the movement towards a common Roma identity and the Roma movement
in general are moving very slowly at the moment, are very chaotic
and fractured, and seem at times to be trying to destroy themselves,
they are continuing to develop, so I have much hope for the future.
Oh marvelous error!
I wish you a wonderful, non-materialist and non-consumerist Christmas
and a happy New Year, and I wish you magnificent times with family
and friends!
I realize that most of you will have already done your shopping,
so I’ll leave you with links like www.altgifts.org,
www.heifer.org, and www.sojo.net
(or even my home page
on the Mission Connections site) as gift ideas for the future.
What could be more fun than telling someone that you bought them
an ox, ten chickens, protection for an acre of coastal reef, support
for a Roma mission development project, or a year’s supply
of water for someone in need? Just an idea.
And in the spirit of the season, I leave you all with a ditty
from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play
And mild and sweet the words repeat,
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
I thought how as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had roll'd along th' unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.
And in despair I bow'd my head:
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong, and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men."
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men."
'Til ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men!
Peace to you,
Grant
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