When Greek police searched a Roma camp for weapons and drugs in October 2013, they came across a 6-year old blonde-haired, green-eyed girl named Maria. The police assumed the girl had been kidnaped, so they arrested the Roma parents and handed the girl over to an orphanage. When DNA testing revealed the couple was not the girl\u2019s biological parents, the couple said Maria had been left with them by a Bulgarian Roma woman who was too poor to care for her daughter, a story which turned out to be basically true. But that didn\u2019t stop the Greek media from dubbing Maria \u201cthe blond angel\u201d and proclaiming in banner headlines: \u201cRoma snatch babies!\u201d and \u201cAmber Alert: Dangerous Gypsy band steals babies!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The drama around Maria and her family illustrates that despite efforts by governments and civil society groups across Europe to change the way Roma are seen both by others and by themselves, the racist stereotypes about Europe\u2019s largest and most marginalized ethnic group still flow freely through the veins of the continent\u2019s body politic. More than six decades after Roma bodies fueled the fires of the Holocaust, Europe is still wrestling with how to stop vilifying and start integrating the Roma into mainstream society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s what was at play in Greece, where Panagiotis Dimitras of the Greek Helsinki Monitor, an Athens-based human rights group, told The Independent<\/em>, a British newspaper, that the \u201cdisgusting and condemnable\u201d arrest of Maria\u2019s adoptive parents was based on \u201ca racist presumption by the Greek authorities . . .just because [the parents] are Roma.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Maria was picked up during a police sweep of the Roma settlement in Farsala, part of a broader police operation across the country involving the profiling of ethnic groups and migrants. In the first nine months of 2013, Greek police conducted 1,131 operations in Roma camps throughout the country, during which 19,067 people were temporarily detained, and 1,305 were subsequently arrested on charges of having committed an offense.[2]<\/a> Ironically, the police dubbed the campaign \u201cOperation Xenios Zeus\u201d after the ancient Greek god of hospitality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The racist response wasn\u2019t limited to Greece. Centuries-old stereotypes about Roma know no borders, and the story was quickly picked up around the world. Families in the United Kingdom and the United States whose girls had disappeared contacted authorities wanting to know if there was any chance that Maria could be their daughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Within days of the news about the Greek girl, a witch hunt was underway, with officials and ordinary people in many countries scouring Roma enclaves for suspiciously light-skinned children. In Ireland, a Dublin woman saw a TV news report about the Greek case and quickly drafted a Facebook message to a local TV reporter about a \u201clittle girl living in a Roma house in Tallaght [a Dublin suburb] and she is blond and has blue eyes.\u201d She provided the name and address of the family, and the reporter passed it on to the police. Within hours the 7-year old girl had been taken from her family and handed to Irish welfare officials, after the parents couldn’t find her birth certificate and could only produce an outdated passport. When news of that incident broke, someone else in Dublin told the police about a fair-haired 2-year old boy living in a Roma household in Athlone, west of Dublin. The police immediately pulled him from his home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Both children were eventually returned to their families after DNA testing confirmed their parentage, but activists point out how the incidents highlighted the power of stereotypes. \u201cThe feeling and the reaction is one of shock and disbelief that something like this could happen in a so-called Western, civilized, developed country,\u201d said Martin Collins, co-director at Pavee Point, an organization in Dublin that works with Roma and Irish Travellers, who are distinct from Roma but also have an itinerant lifestyle. \u201cThis was clearly a case of racial profiling and it is extremely dangerous,\u201d he said.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n For Damian Le Bas, the editor of Travellers\u2019 Times<\/em>, a London magazine, the rush to judgment was troubling. \u201cI’m a blond person from a Gypsy family. My hair and eye color were different from many of my relatives. It\u2019s a ridiculous idea that we all look the same. We look about as similar as all Italians look similar,\u201d he said. \u201cThere’s a lack of will to understand the difference.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Roma as scapegoats<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Isabel Fonseca, author of Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey<\/em>, the recent incidents illustrate the assumption that Roma are always involved in illegal activity. \u201cThere are blond Gypsies, lots of them,\u201d Fonseca told the radio program Here & Now<\/em>. Yet she said that widespread prejudice ignores that fact in favor of an ancient \u201cstereotype that the Gypsies will come in the night and steal the blond child.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Greek case was particularly alarming, Fonseca said, because of the \u201csort of glee with which it’s been seized on as proof of a sort of genetic disposition to criminality.\u201d In a country like Greece, with its current economic troubles, she said it\u2019s not surprising that the Roma would serve as \u201ca handy scapegoat for all ills in a given society.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Persecuting individuals for the alleged crimes of their racial group has a long history, and Zeljko Jovanovic, director of the Open Society Foundation\u2019s Roma Initiatives Office in Hungary, said the rush to judgment in the Greek case provided a \u201cperfect excuse for many to intensify collective blame for Roma.\u201d[6]<\/a> What\u2019s ironic, he pointed out, is the media\u2019s failure to cover the story when Roma are the victims of criminal activity, such as the disappearance of 502 out of 661 Albanian Roma children who went missing between 1998-2002 from a state-run institution in Athens. Some reports suggest the children were delivered to human traffickers. But while hundreds of Roma children being taken from their families by the state fails to cause a stir, one blond-haired girl supposedly snatched by Gypsies is instant headline news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such easy scapegoating is widespread. When French harvesters started finding less wild mushrooms in their forests in 2013, they quickly blamed Roma immigrants from Eastern Europe with stealing their crop and clandestinely hauling it off to Spain in the middle of the night. Some self-appointed mushroom defenders even claimed the Roma were incorrectly harvesting the highly prized fungi, thus damaging next year\u2019s crop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFrom the mushrooms’ perspective, I don’t think they care if they are picked by a native or by someone who is not French and takes them to another country,\u201d Thomas Kuyper, a professor of fungal ecology and diversity at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, told The New York Times.<\/em> The claim that mushrooms were being picked incorrectly, he said, was more about xenophobia and anger about losing business, noting that there were similar attitudes in the Netherlands toward pickers from Germany and Poland. \u201cAre people worried for the mushrooms or about the foreigners?\u201d he asked.[7]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet the concept of \u201cforeigner\u201d is in flux with the current expansion of the European Union. The admission of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007, for example, meant that citizens of those countries were now free to travel within the EU. They weren\u2019t immediately free to seek legal employment, however, leaving many of those who ventured west at the mercy of employers who exploited their labor at a fraction the minimum wage.[8]<\/a> Thus many European Roma are caught between discrimination at home, where overall economic stagnation harms all who are poor, and violent repression in their new homes, where increasingly virulent xenophobia and racism easily weave their way into public debate and policy. Repressive policies are driven, to a degree, by class competition. \u201cAs the poor lose out in the region\u2019s economic crisis, they find themselves getting closer to the Roma, who are always one level lower. If neither has work, they begin to see the Roma as competitors, and get angry if they see the Roma getting any sort of assistance,\u201d said Thomas Rodemeyer, coordinator for Roma Ministries for The United Methodist Church in Central and Southern Europe.[9]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n European Union governments, faced with popular discontent about high unemployment, \u201care finding it easier to stigmatize and expel Roma than to provide them with the education, housing and employment they seek,\u201d opined The New York Times <\/em>in October 2013.[10]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Things are getting worse. \u201cWhat is truly shocking is that their living conditions have actually deteriorated since many of them became EU citizens. At the same time, the majority population\u2019s attitude has become more hostile almost everywhere in Europe. The two trends are mutually reinforcing: marginalization breeds contempt, and vice versa,\u201d wrote the philanthropist George Soros in November 2013, describing the plight of Europe\u2019s Roma. \u201cLet’s be honest: there is a Roma problem in Europe, and it is getting worse. But both the problem and its worsening reflect a toxic combination of deep-seated hostility and persistent neglect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMaybe Hitler didn\u2019t kill enough of them\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyone who wonders why the Roma would leave their home countries and migrate westward need only read the words of Zsolt Bayer, co-founder of the ruling Fidesz Party in Hungary. \u201cA significant part of the Roma are unfit for coexistence. They are not fit to live among people. These Roma are animals, and they behave like animals. When they meet with resistance, they commit murder. They are incapable of human communication. Inarticulate sounds pour out of their bestial skulls. At the same time, these Gypsies understand how to exploit the \u2018achievements\u2019 of the idiotic Western world. But one must retaliate rather than tolerate. These animals shouldn’t be allowed to exist. In no way. That needs to be solved immediately and regardless of the method,\u201d he wrote in January 2013 in the conservative daily newspaper Magyar Hirlap<\/em>.[11]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bayer has also used the pages of Magyar Hirlap <\/em>to refer to Jews as \u201cstinking excrement.\u201d Such explicit racism is a reminder that during the 20th<\/sup> Century in Europe the fate of Jews and Roma were inextricably linked together in the Nazi death camps. Yet while post-war Europe was relatively quick to acknowledge that the Holocaust was rooted in racial hatred for Jews, excuses for violence against the Roma have lingered unchallenged, with right wing politicians and law enforcement personnel saying they deserve repression given their alleged predisposition toward illicit behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In July 2013, Gilles Bourdouleix, a member of National Assembly in France, was recorded, during a confrontation with Roma squatters, stating, \u201cMaybe Hitler didn’t kill enough of them.\u201d He later argued that he had been misquoted, but a prosecutor began a preliminary investigation into whether Bourdouleix was an \u201capologist for crimes against humanity,\u201d a crime in France that carries a maximum penalty of up to 45,000 Euros and one year in jail.[12]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The increasing hostility toward Roma in Western Europe is based on a notion that they are outsiders. The EU can expand its geographical borders, but widening the cultural concept of what is European is something else. \u201cThese are dark-skinned people, not Europeans like you and me,\u201d said Riccardo De Corato, the deputy vice mayor of Milan, Italy, defending his administration\u2019s closure of Roma camps in 2010.[13]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n A World Bank-funded survey in 2005 showed non-Roma citizens in several European countries showed no interest in examining their own prejudices as a causal factor in the marginalization of the Roma. \u201cThe prevailing perception is that the Roma are responsible for their low social and economic standing. It is no surprise that non-Roma express deep opposition to any government funding targeting only the Roma,\u201d the report stated. \u201cThe views of the so-called majority populations exhibit several contradictions. They base their opinions about Roma on day-to-day observations, but many have only had superficial contact with Roma. All groups favor integration, but non-Roma bristled when specific examples of integrated schools and communities were raised. Non-Roma claim that Roma prefer segregation and thus are the ones who must take the initiative to integrate.\u201d[14]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Underlying both the blatant hate speech of politicians like Bourdouleix and De Corato as well as that of more nuanced commentators is a stubborn belief that the Roma are responsible for their own fate. While that sentiment obviously ignores centuries of European history, it shows up across the political spectrum. In Germany, where many Roma newcomers are looking for housing, a group called Pro Deutschland<\/em>, an anti-Muslim party with ties to neo-Nazi and other extremist groups, discouraged Berlin landlords from renting to Roma by passing out leaflets claiming the Roma had only come to the city to plunder the social welfare system. Yet those right wing crazies weren\u2019t the only ones calling for the expulsion of the Roma. The liberal Der Spiegel <\/em>magazine and television program featured an \u201cinvestigation\u201d of Berlin apartment blocks overrun by Roma who allegedly live on welfare benefits while trashing their housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe people have to go\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In France, former president Nicolas Sarkozy had responded to the influx of Roma from Eastern Europe with mass evictions. His government dismantled their camps and deported the residents back east, hoping they would stay away and become someone else\u2019s problem. His actions were sharply criticized by many on the left, including his successor, Fran\u00e7ois Hollande. Yet the new Socialist president, sworn in to office in May 2012, ended up acting much like his right-wing predecessor. In just July and August of 2012, 22 Roma camps, where about 2,300 people lived, were torn down across France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In response to criticism from rights activists, Hollande\u2019s interior minister, Manuel Valls, said the Roma newcomers have a lifestyle that\u2019s so different from the French that integration is impossible and they must be expelled. In response, Viviane Reding, the vice president of the European Commission and the EU justice commissioner, warned France that it could face sanctions if it didn\u2019t temper its treatment of the Roma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some observers have suggested that Hollande\u2019s government has turned on the Roma in order to pander to voters who might otherwise stray into supporting the rising far right National Front party. While motivation for the government\u2019s policies may be unclear, the consequences are not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cRepeated forced evictions have disastrous consequences on the Roma\u2019s health, education and ability to secure an adequate standard of living. Forced out of one informal settlement after another they end up in ever poorer housing conditions, forced to sleep on the streets and in tents until they manage to build another makeshift home,\u201d said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International\u2019s Europe and Central Asia program director. \u201cDuring forced evictions, they often lose their belongings, identity papers and medical records; in many cases schooling is disrupted and medical treatment is interrupted, while ties to local employment and support networks are severed. Yet, under French law they do not receive adequate reparation.\u201d[15]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Fonseca admits that the French government\u2019s response echoes the general frustration of ordinary citizens. \u201cThe general feeling in France is that these people have to go,\u201d she said in the radio interview. \u201cSo it’s a popular thing whether you’re a right or left government. You’re not going to have very much trouble with that.\u201d[16]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n It wasn\u2019t supposed to come to this. In 2005, 12 European governments and some United Nations agencies launched the \u201cThe Decade of Roma Inclusion,\u201d an initiative that brought together governments, private sector leaders and civil society groups to improve Roma education, health and housing, in part by getting governments to seriously address core issues of poverty, discrimination, and gender. Yet many Roma have felt excluded from the Decade\u2019s planning and execution, and even well-designed plans at a continental level have to be translated into effective national and local plans of action, a development that won\u2019t take place when there\u2019s lingering animosity among political elites toward the Roma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cThe Decade makes almost no sense for us,\u201d said the Rev. Daniel Topalski, superintendent of The United Methodist Church in Bulgaria and Romania. \u201cIt was created by people abroad with little understanding of our situation. It was an excuse to have meetings and programs and write reports. If you ask Roma people about the Decade, they don\u2019t know about it or they see it as white guys trying to earn money on their behalf.\u201d[17]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The failure of many governments to meet the benchmarks established by the Decade have led to calls to extend it beyond 2015, and even to broaden it to include additional countries like France and Germany. Others propose a more radical solution, creating a European Roma Charter, essentially a non-geographic Roma state that would provide citizenship for Roma individuals. The international community would then relate directly to the Roma without national governments as intermediaries. This would let governments off the hook for the services they are largely not providing now, but is premised on Roma political organization achieving a maturity it has yet to demonstrate. It would also sound the death knell for any prospect of integration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n France deports Roma teenager<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While the failure of the Decade and the resurgence of racism throughout Europe represent somber prospects for improving life for most of Europe\u2019s 12 million Roma, some signs of hope do stand out, most prominently the demonstrations in France that followed the government decision to seize a teenage girl on a field trip and deport her to a country she didn\u2019t know and where she didn\u2019t speak the language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Leonarda Dibrani was a 15-year old girl who with her mother and father and five siblings had come to France four years ago from Kosovo. Because the breakaway region is not part of the EU, the family applied for asylum. Their application was denied. When their time ran out in October 2013, the French police arrived at their home to repatriate the family. But Leonarda was in school\u2013in fact, on a field trip with her classmates. The police tracked down and stopped the school bus and took the girl away in front of her friends. Leonarda and her family were put on a plane to Kosovo that night. Leonarda\u2019s classmates and teachers got the word out about what they witnessed, and thousands of French youth took to the streets in protest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 An official investigation showed the police carried out the law correctly, but President Hollande admitted \u201cthere was a lack of discernment in the execution of the operation.\u201d[18]<\/a> Although polls showed a majority supported the expulsion, Hollande responded to criticism by saying Leonarda could come back to finish her studies if she wished, but without the rest of her family. It was a decision that pleased no one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Interviewed by a French radio station, Leonarda responded from Kosovo in perfectly accented French: \u201cI felt ashamed because the police were there and my friends were asking what I had done, if I had stolen something.\u201d[19]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n If the drama around Leonarda\u2019s repatriation shows that a level of solidarity does exist, at least when the face on the news doesn\u2019t match the stereotype, other pockets of hope exist through Europe. In Germany, new state-level agreements are moving the country from denial of historic discrimination and violence to recognition of the Roma as a minority with rights to promote their culture. Proponents are hoping that older Roma families who immigrated decades ago and successfully integrated into German society will be encouraged to identify themselves as Roma, combating the stereotype that Roma are only the poor newcomers from the east. This helps undercut the rhetoric of right wing hate groups, who try to claim the Roma are all recently arrived moochers. \u201cRoma have lived in Europe more than 700 years, and we still talk about integration. This is the problem because they\u2019re still treated like foreigners in their own countries,\u201d said Ivan Ivanov, director of the European Roma Information Office in Brussels.[20]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a common practice in Eastern Europe to transfer Roma children, when they do go to school, into special education classes that only increase stigmatization and hamper learning. That leaves parents angry and Roma activists pushing for alternatives. Church World Service, with funding from United Methodist Women, is supporting a variety of educational programs for Roma children and adults in Serbia.[21]<\/a> CWS even accompanied several dozen Roma families evicted from Belgrade\u2019s urban center in 2012; when the families were relocated in metal shipping containers at the edge of the city, CWS took over one shipping container to use as a preschool during the day and as a classroom for adult literacy programs at night.[22]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThanks to CWS, we\u2019ve been able to successfully reach out to and include children from Roma families, along with other vulnerable children, in our educational programs. These young children are advancing and learning faster, they are mastering the Serbian language earlier, and they\u2019re integrating themselves more quickly into the community and socializing more successfully,\u201d said Mirjana Cosich, director of the Nasa Radost pre-school in Smedrevo. \u201cAt the same time as we work with the children, we work with their parents. Mothers and fathers are coming to our activities, participating in the education process without fear, wanting to be included in our work, and they, mostly the women, are sharing among themselves their different traditions and cultures.\u201d[23]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Roma meet the melting pot<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The anti-Roma sentiment that has long infected European discourse is being felt farther afield. In 2012, Ezra Levant, a conservative Canadian political commentator, went on a rant against Roma during his televised talk show, The Source<\/em>. \u201cThese are Gypsies, a culture synonymous with swindlers,\u201d Levant said. \u201cThe phrase Gypsy and cheater have been so interchangeable historically that the word has entered the English language as a verb: he gypped me. Well the Gypsies have gypped us. Too many have come here as false refugees. And they come here to gyp us again and rob us blind as they have done in Europe for centuries. They’re Gypsies. And one of the central characteristics of that culture is that their chief economy is theft and begging.\u201d[24]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 To the south of Canada, U.S. culture warriors seem more preoccupied with Hispanic and Latino immigrants than with Roma, who may number as many as a million in the United States, having arrived in several waves since the early 1800s. Some may have arrived even earlier: three Roma are said to have been aboard ship when Christopher Columbus made his second journey to the New World in 1498. Since then, the largest wave came after the abolishment of Roma slavery in the Balkans in 1864. Most recently, Roma immigration has been steady since the 1989 collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although the Roma (even more commonly referred to as Gypsies in the U.S.) are usually associated with exotic culture, University of Texas Professor Ian Hancock, who once served as a Roma representative to the United Nations, says it\u2019s been relatively easy in the U.S. for Roma to hang on to their traditions and yet also blend into the melting pot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBeing an immigrant country, you get people of all backgrounds, of all complexions and appearances,\u201d Hancock said in an interview with Voice of America<\/em>. \u201cAnd so Roma don\u2019t stand out as in opposition to white, in the same way. Which has helped to foster the idea that Gypsy is a behavior and not an ethnicity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hancock, who directs the Romani Archives and Documentation Center at the University of Texas, says popular media portrayals encourage this distortion. \u201cThe media can get away with saying things about Roma that they wouldn\u2019t dare say about other minority populations,\u201d he said.[25]<\/a> Not surprisingly, a New York Times <\/em>poll in 1992 reported the social standing of 58 ethnic groups in the U.S. Gypsies were at the very bottom.[26]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n More recently, what many in the U.S. learn about Roma in their midst comes from reality television shows like American Gypsies <\/em>and My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding<\/em>. According to documentary film maker Mona Nicoar\u0103, these shows use a kind of \u201cexoticising voyeurism\u201d that makes heavy use of \u201ctried and true tropes: broad stereotypes, artificially constructed conflicts, unidimensional characters, set-up scenes and scripted lines.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In an article she wrote for The Guardian<\/em>, Nicoar\u0103 said accuracy isn\u2019t an objective for the shows\u2019 producers. Instead they \u201care invested in reproducing a version of what it means to be a \u2018Gypsy\u2019 that broadcasters believe to be most comfortable for their audience\u2013Esmeralda-like headscarves, belly dancing, innate violence, gaudy parties, psychic healing parlours.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nicoar\u0103 grew up in Romania, where Roma were enslaved until the 1860s, sent to extermination camps during World War II, subjected to pogroms in the 1990s and are now the target of skinhead attacks. Even today, she wrote, when Roma children \u201care shunted into dead-end segregated schools which trap them in the vicious cycle of poverty and disenfranchisement,\u201d the Roma continue to be blamed for their own marginalization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reality television shows are slowly doing the same in the United States, she wrote, as they \u201cperpetuate this fiction of self-segregation by stressing difference and tradition, by recasting the viewers’ ignorance as secrecy on the part of the Roma and by artificially presenting the preservation of ethnic identity as radically opposed to those elements that make up our common humanity: curiosity and learning, making new friends, falling in love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nicoar\u0103 claims there\u2019s a double standard at work. In the United Kingdom, for example, the last season of Big Fat Gypsy Weddings<\/em> was announced by billboards screaming \u201cBigger. Fatter. Gypsier.\u201d \u201cTry that out with other minorities,\u201d Nicoar\u0103 wrote. \u201cReally, see how it feels.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because there are no well-known Roma public figures in the U.S., no Roma equivalents of Rosa Parks or Joe Lewis, Nicoar\u0103 worries that reality TV will \u201cturn ignorance into all-out prejudice.\u201d She said the UK show led to a spike in bullying of Roma and Traveller children, and where syndicated in Eastern Europe, it has encouraged the racist violence of skinheads and nationalists.[27]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Roma denial, Roma pride<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Roma in the United States speak different languages and come from different countries, so they\u2019re far from homogenous. And rather than settling together as Roma, they tend to migrate into geographical pockets based on nationality, language or some other common identity. They\u2019re thus less likely to identify as Roma, preferring instead to self-brand as Slovaks or Greek or Romanian. That has served to keep them out of trouble in places like New Jersey, where a law enacted in 1917 and not repealed until 1998 allowed local governments to regulate where Gypsies could rent property, where they could work, and what they could sell. The U.S. Roma, not unlike the Roma in Bulgaria today[28]<\/a>, saw concrete advantages in identifying as something other than Roma. \u201cTraditionally, nothing good has come from being identified Roma because the prejudice is so high,\u201d Robert Kushen, executive director of the European Roma Rights Center, told Time<\/em>. \u201cThere’s never been any profit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That also explains why many U.S. citizens aren\u2019t aware of the Roma that may live in their own community. \u201cThey’re simply not present enough in the U.S. for anyone to hate them very much,\u201d Kushen said.[29]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Yet passing themselves off as something other than Gypsies doesn\u2019t mean U.S. Roma are stalwart proponents of assimilation. Indeed, in many places they\u2019ve avoided putting their children in school. In a 1975 article in Working Papers in Sociolinguistics<\/em>, Hancock quotes Nick Dimas, a Ludari Roma originally from Greece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey avoid the school system like the plague. While most other U.S. minorities are boycotting, busing and organizing to obtain better education for their children, the Roma are, by any means at their disposal, keeping their children at home,\u201d wrote Dimas.[30]<\/a> He argued that the practice maintains the cohesion and solidarity of the group by limiting the influence of non-Roma teachers on Roma children, preventing identification with non-Roma histories or heroes in the literature of the dominant culture, assuring that Romani will remain the individual\u2019s first language (so that he or she will mostly speak with other Roma), limiting moving into the dominant culture via the occupational route, because limited literacy assures only menial, low-paying jobs, and discouraging marriage to non-Roma partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe older generation feels that too much outside education dilutes the identity and can even be polluting in a spiritual sense. Too much involvement in the non-Romani world can debilitate you and can affect you socially,\u201d Hancock told the Voice of America<\/em>.[31]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the same article, a Roma man identified only as John said, \u201cSomebody told me once that we can be Gypsies, but we [have to] be American Gypsies. You know, we don\u2019t have to stay in the culture. We can be Americans and we can still call ourselves Gypsies. But without the culture, we\u2019re not Gypsies. That\u2019s the only thing that\u2019s holding us together.\u201d[32]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n This tension between assimilation and integration, between cultural survival and destruction, will continue to be played out in countless towns and cities across the United States. And young Roma may find different paths through the maze of identity and ethnicity than their forebears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cristiana Grigore is a young Roma woman from Romania who today studies on a Fulbright scholarship at a university in Tennessee. She says most people she\u2019s met in the U.S. don\u2019t know anything about the Roma. \u201cThey know about Gypsies, but not as a real ethnic group, real people. They see it more like a Halloween costume, a role that you play once a year,\u201d she told Voice of America<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Grigore said the cultural diversity she found here prompted her to talk publicly and unashamedly about her Roma identity. Coming out as Roma was safer in the U.S. than in Romania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt took me 20 years to talk about my ethnic identity, so imagine how strong the negative stereotypes are,\u201d said Grigore, who reports that her ethnic heritage has been an asset in the U.S. \u201cWhen I talk about me as a Gypsy, people are like, \u2018Oh that\u2019s so cool.\u2019 You know, it\u2019s like my life is suddenly more interesting.\u201d[33]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n About the author: The Rev. Paul Jeffrey is a United Methodist missionary and senior correspondent for <\/em>response, the magazine of United Methodist Women.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n [1]<\/a> http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/world\/europe\/old-attitudes-resurface-in-greece-inside-the-roma-camp-where-maria-the-blonde-angel-lived-8897530.html<\/p>\n\n\n\n [2]<\/a> http:\/\/globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com\/2013\/11\/04\/time-to-drop-the-roma-myths\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n [3]<\/a> http:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/news\/world\/high-profile-stories-of-children-expose-europes-anti-roma-prejudice\/article15200641\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n [4]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [5]<\/a> http:\/\/hereandnow.wbur.org\/2013\/10\/24\/who-are-roma<\/p>\n\n\n\n [6]<\/a> http:\/\/world.time.com\/2013\/10\/23\/europes-roma-face-witch-hunt-after-reports-of-child-snatching\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n [7]<\/a> http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/11\/28\/world\/europe\/mystery-of-missing-mushrooms-leaves-french-blaming-roma.html?_r=0<\/p>\n\n\n\n [8]<\/a> See \u201cRoma in Berlin,\u201d July-August 2013 response<\/em>, pp. 28-34.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [9]<\/a> Interview with author, November 2013. Rodemeyer participates in a yearly summit of United Methodist-related Roma ministries. The most recent was held in Varna, Bulgaria, in November 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [10]<\/a> http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/10\/18\/opinion\/scapegoating-the-roma-again.html<\/p>\n\n\n\n [11]<\/a> http:\/\/www.spiegel.de\/international\/europe\/hungarian-journalist-says-roma-should-not-be-allowed-to-exist-a-876887.html<\/p>\n\n\n\n [12]<\/a> http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2013\/jul\/23\/french-mp-hitler-kill-travellers<\/p>\n\n\n\n [13]<\/a> http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2010\/10\/11\/AR2010101105815.html<\/p>\n\n\n\n [14]<\/a> http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/llwlc<\/p>\n\n\n\n [15]<\/a> http:\/\/www.amnesty.org\/fr\/node\/35420<\/p>\n\n\n\n [16]<\/a> Here & Now op. cit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [17]<\/a> Interview with author, November 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [18]<\/a> http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/10\/20\/world\/europe\/france-says-deportation-of-roma-girl-was-legal.html<\/p>\n\n\n\n [19]<\/a> http:\/\/www.bt.com.bn\/opinion\/2013\/10\/23\/roma-row<\/p>\n\n\n\n [20]<\/a> http:\/\/world.time.com\/2013\/08\/21\/roma-in-europe-age-old-discrimination-worsens-in-tough-economic-times\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n [21]<\/a> In its report on the project to United Methodist Women, Church World Service highlights one participant, Duda Giltena. She\u2019s 34, has seven children and came to Belgrade a decade ago from Kosovo. She and her family first lived in a house made of cardboard but in 2008 moved into the Zemun Polje neighborhood. They built a house on land they don\u2019t own and pirated electricity from nearby power lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI had to leave school in the second grade because my family moved around a lot, but I always wanted to learn, so I tried again later. Three times I went to first grade, and then I finally gave up. My parents were uneducated and they didn\u2019t recognize the importance of schooling their kids so they didn\u2019t send us to school. Their excuse was poor living conditions, difficult financial situation. And this was all true, but along all of these realities my parents were simply not interested in finding ways to educate us, they handed their and our lives to fate without any will or desire to change things around them. Or at least try. But this is not just my story but the usual way children were brought up. So, when the time came for me to get married, I wedded a man whose life path was very similar to mine: we never went to school, we didn\u2019t know how to read, write, count\u2026It was a daily struggle because I couldn’t read. Even reading street signs to know where I\u2019m going was difficult. And it\u2019s hard to find a job if I can\u2019t fill out the forms or even read job ads,\u201d Giltena said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2011, Giltena enrolled in CWS’s literacy program for adults carried out in several Roma settlements in Belgrade. From Monday to Thursday students study primary level subjects, and on Friday evening they have a class on life skills. \u201cI was one of the first women to enroll in the program. I couldn’t wait to start learning, most of all to learn to read and write. My teachers were praising me, which only encouraged me to gain more knowledge and do better in my studies. When I learned to read and write, I went out and found a modest job, but it was the first job I ever had in my life. I worked in a bakery in the Zemun Polje settlement. For the first time in my life I was working, I was employed, I had an income and I felt accomplished and proud that I am able to contribute and ease the life of my family,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Giltena stopped attending classes in early 2013. Her family situation worsened. Her husband left her alone with children, and she was forced to quit her job. She\u2019s now struggling to take care of her seven children alone and has no time to attend classes. \u201cI only have two more grades to finish, seventh and eighth. The children are keeping me busy now. My two youngest sons need constant care and attention, I cannot afford to leave my home and they are too young to go with me. I am still hopeful however that I will be able to finish the primary school. I don’t want to quit for the fourth time,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CWS and its local partners are working to additionally help Giltena finish two more years of education and get her diploma. She will be offered a continual learning support in the form of individual classes and support at her house and help with assignments, language learning, and studying. Hopefully, with this kind of tailored support, Giltena will be able to finish her education. Although she is currently going through the toughest and most challenging period of her life, Giltena still wishes she is able to finish her education because, she said, she wants to be \u201cthe primary teacher of her children. I want to be able to teach them, read to them, and help them do their homework. I want them to believe that going to school and learning is important.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A photo of Giltena appeared on page 28 of the May 2013 issue of response<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [22]<\/a> For a personal account of a visit to this community, see http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/roma-redux\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n [23]<\/a> Interview with author, November 2012. Included in https:\/\/vimeo.com\/56844753.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [24]<\/a> http:\/\/fullcomment.nationalpost.com\/2012\/09\/25\/bernie-m-farber-et-al-hating-the-jew-hating-the-gypsy\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n [25]<\/a> http:\/\/www.voanews.com\/content\/for-roma-life-in-us-has-challenges-119394819\/163156.html<\/p>\n\n\n\n [26]<\/a> http:\/\/www.radoc.net\/radoc.php?doc=art_f_bias_mediaresponsibility&lang=en&articles=true<\/p>\n\n\n\n [27]<\/a> http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2012\/jul\/28\/american-gypsies-reality-roma-lives<\/p>\n\n\n\n [28]<\/a> See \u201cWho is Roma? In Bulgaria rising racism provokes many to change identity,\u201d May 2013 response<\/em>, pp. 20-25.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [29]<\/a> http:\/\/content.time.com\/time\/nation\/article\/0,8599,2025316,00.html<\/p>\n\n\n\n [30]<\/a> http:\/\/www.radoc.net\/radoc.php?doc=art_g_education&lang=en&articles=true<\/p>\n\n\n\n [31]<\/a> voanews.com op. cit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.kairosphotos.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/serbia-2012-jeffrey-roma-281-950x707.jpg\")
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