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Reasons for the Existing Situation

When journalists writing a Gypsy-related story for their newspaper or magazine telephone me for background information, I routinely fax them a reading list, and ask them to call me again once they've made use of it and have specific questions to ask. I make the point repeatedly that they cannot hope to understand the contemporary situation of Rroma unless they see it as the present-day end of a continuum reaching back into history, and the reading list I send them emphasizes this. For unless the unique problems of the Rroma are understood in this context, no attempt to analyze or understand those problems will ever be successful.

Antigypsyism and the Popular Image of the Gypsy

Elsewhere (9), I attempted to analyze the reasons for the prejudice which exists today against Rroma, and listed seven: (i) the association of Rroma with the Islamic takeover of parts of the Christian world; (ii) color prejudice, specifically the association of darkness with sin; (iii) the exclusionary nature of Romani culture, which does not encourage intimacy with non-Rroma and which as a result creates suspicion on the part of those excluded; (iv) fortune telling, which inspired fear but which had to be relied upon as a means of livelihood in response to legislation curtailing Romani movement and choice of occupation; (v) the unchallenged function of the "gypsies" as a population upon which mainstream notions of immorality and lawlessness can be projected, and which thereby serve to define that mainstream's own boundaries; (vi) the fact that Rroma have no territorial, military, political or economic strength and are therefore easily targetable as scapegoats because they cannot retaliate, and (vii) the fact that the ‘gypsy’ persona has an — again unchallenged — ongoing function as representing a simpler, freer time, a representation which becomes more and more attractive in an increasingly complex and regimented world.

Various of these factors have combined over the centuries and in different places to become part of the fabric of the Western world view. People who never met a Gypsy in their lives are nevertheless able to provide a fairly detailed picture of how they think Gypsies look and how they live. Their mental image, partly negative and partly romantic but mostly inaccurate, is the result of the response to a Romani identity which has become institutionalized in the Western tradition to the extent that it has become part of its cultural heritage; and the racism directed at Romani populations is intrinsically a part of that heritage, and so is not recognized for what it is. Just as no one would question the fear of trolls or goblins, or argue for their rights, the fear of Gypsies likewise goes unremarked. Although trolls and goblins are not real and Gypsies are, and although trolls and goblins are never encountered but the six million or so Rroma throughout eastern Europe are highly visible, still it is the Gypsy Image of storybook and film, and not the real population, that people think of.

This reidentification of Gypsies as "images" in the cultural fabric underlies the rationalization by a Greek Orthodox priest after he criticized the United States for its racial intolerance. When the person talking to him (10) pointed out that Greece was similarly bigoted towards its Romani minority, the priest replied that prejudice towards Rroma in Greece didn't count; it was a different thing entirely because they were only Gypsies. This kind of shocking moral insensitivity on the part of a representative of the Church may surprise us, but it is nothing new. The Eastern Rite, the Catholic and the Protestant churches legislated against Rroma for centuries; the priest was merely reiterating an attitude rooted in tradition.

Once ideas become institutionalized, they may never be challenged, and misinformation can easily become the established "conventional wisdom." This is particularly true in the case of Rroma, about whom the most bizarre things have been written and presented as fact. These range from such wild statements as those claiming that Gypsies originated on the Moon (or in Atlantis), that Gypsies have an intrinsic horror of water and washing, or that Gypsies have no native concept of obligation or danger or ownership, to such self-serving ones as those which have maintained that Gypsies don't feel pain, or that they enjoyed slavery, or that they have no interest in organization, education or leadership. The most-often cited Hungarian "expert" on our people for many years has been József Vekerdi, whose article on "the Gypsy problem" in his country is based wholly on this "conventional wisdom"; it begins

The Gypsies' ancestors began leaving northwest India probably about the seventh century AD. They are characterized as robbers, murderers, hangmen and entertainers. These professions were prescribed for them by the rules of the Hindu caste system. Thus they belonged to the so-called ‘wandering criminal tribes’ of India and were obliged to lead a parasitic way of life. Among the numerous outcast groups; they occurred the lowest rung on the social scale (11)

But the Romani origins assumed in it are quite wrong, and the time of the exodus out of India is off by four centuries. His acceptance of this false history is everywhere reflected in the scorn which characterizes his writings, and one must wonder whether his scholarly approach would have been more charitable had he known the true history of the Romani people. Racism is everywhere, but when it is expressed in the academic domain, to which policy-makers turn for their information, it acquires tacit institutional acceptance.

Despite the usually quite evident physical differences distinguishing the Romani minority from the surrounding population — most obviously physiognomy, habitat and dress — and the less obvious but hardly hidden factors of language and culture, it has generally been the case that administrations have classified Rroma in terms of social behavior rather than by ethnic or racial distinctiveness. This is again the result of attitudes becoming ingrained before notions of "race" began to take shape in the l9th century. The glaring exception to this was during the Nazi era, when it was specifically racial considerations which provided the rationale for attempted genocidal obliteration.

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