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Hiding Identity

One man taking part in the conversation at the slava claimed that the reason he was not upset by the two films was that he believed nobody would associate their content with him because nobody (in the non-Gypsy world) knew that he was a Gypsy. In fact he found it amusing that the gadjé were so excessively ignorant of true Romani identity, a state of affairs he was actually helping to maintain by intentionally hiding his identity as a Rrom. I know of very few Rroma who weren't warned as children to keep their ethnicity to themselves outside of the community. I was reminded repeatedly at home that telling gadjé what I was wouldn't help me and would almost certainly have the opposite effect. I was told the same thing by my dissertation supervisor, Dr. David Dalby at London University; and by Professor Edgar Polomé who took me under his wing when I was a new faculty member at the University of Texas many years ago. I mention their names certainly not to be vindictive, for both were very good to me and I gratefully acknowledge that, but I do so to emphasize that I have heard this all my life, even from people who had no idea how painful and confusing a message was being sent, and who thought in all sincerity that they were offering good advice. That hurt doesn't diminish with adulthood, but the anger it engenders does begin to assert itself. On my mentors' parts, their own negative stereotypes and their desire to help my career were the motivating factors; but on the part of my own family, and of my friend who said (in effect) that he didn't care about antigypsyism because he could pretend to the outside world that he wasn't a Gypsy, we must be dealing with an institutionalized response to a racism so deeply rooted that it prevents people from acknowledging their own ethnicity for fear of the consequences.

His response was atypical in one respect. In his case, he didn't care about antigypsyism because he could hide his ethnicity. In most cases, however, Rroma care very much about antigypsyism while having to hide their identity. I have another friend, a successful businessman, who asks for all Romnet transmissions to be forwarded to him but who is quite unwilling to be subscribed on Romnet himself or to participate, for fear that his identity as a Rrom be revealed in some way. This man is a tireless collector of anti-Gypsy press cuttings, and lives with a frustration which has no outlet.

Ownership of Identity

For a very tong time, Gypsy identity has been in the hands of the non-Gypsy specialists, especially politicians and academics, whose ideas about who and what we are have given sustenance to the Gypsy Image. The words of a Native American activist, speaking about academics in particular, apply equally well to the Gypsy case:

They invented culture. They need culture so they can get PhDs and gain power in universities. And people who have that kind of power control culture, because they control the definitions, the symbols and the masks they’ve constructed about culture (13).

Folklorists and anthropologists select those aspects of their subjects which appeal to them; while ignoring others, for a number of reasons, creating a new, more easily manageable identity — less threatening, or else simply one more attractive or "exotic." The extent to which this selectiveness can place the expert in the position of bystander is well illustrated in a study by Lepselter (14); in an analysis of the topics covered during a ten year period embracing the Holocaust (1937 to 1947) in The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, the leading publication devoted to Romani Studies, she found that the contributions dealt with, inter alia, "Welsh and New York Gypsy life, Hungarian Gypsy fiddlers, linguistic work on the Spanish Gypsy dialect and Polish Romani vocabulary." She goes on to ask

Why would professional Gypsiologists (maintain ... ) an essentially apolitical journal at such a crucial moment in the lives of their sub- jects?. . . Scholars of Romani culture did not, or could not, vigor- ously protest the fate of those they studied and befriended. They did not engage in political critique which might have led to action (15).

A much more recent example of the real Gypsy experience taking second place to what interests the gypsiologist is found in a statement by Claus Schreiner, who would seem almost to welcome anti-Rroma racism if it meant that the Gypsy music he loved so much would be enriched as a consequence:

... lately a new wave of Anti-Gitanismo has reportedly again raised its head in Andalusia. If so, it might prove beneficial for gypsy- Andalusian flamenco... for pressure creates counterpressure which could well lead to a revitalization of flamenco from within (16).

It has always been the case that non-Gypsy specialists have attempted to control and define Romani identity. When Gypsy behavior has asserted itself in ways contrary to the specialists' expectations, it has been seen as a shortcoming on the part of the Gypsy. Thus Paspati could say that "works published in Europe, several of them even by authors who wrote down what the Gypsies dictated to them, are often inaccurate because of the stupid ignorance of the Gypsies." Doris Duncan, writing about the difficulties of analyzing the Romani verbal system, attributed this to the fact that the "major problem is that no Gypsy really knows what a verb is"(18). Ivanow was equally frustrated by his Gypsy informants, and also blamed his own linguistic shortcomings upon them: "It is very hard indeed to obtain from the average Gypsy any adequate linguistic material; their stupidity is sometimes beyond all description" (I9). A Czechoslovakian spokesman defended his government's programme of taking Romani children from their families and placing them in foster homes, by saying that it was "the Gypsies' fault, for refusing to let their children be civilized"(20).

This situation has become so well entrenched because until recently it has never been challenged. Because of a history which has excluded Rroma from access to the educational skills necessary to combat prejudice, and because of a culture which placed restrictions on functioning too intimately in the mainstream, the Gypsy Image has taken on a life of its own, and real Romani populations have been administrated and studied through the filter of that image. There is another, more disturbing political aspect to the created identity, reflected in the increase in post-Communist Europe in the presentation of the Gypsy as illiterate, inarticulate buffoon. Such characters — played by non-Gypsies — appear in variety shows on television in Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and elsewhere and, like the "black and white minstrels" of l9th century America, help maintain a status quo in which Rroma are figures of fun, and therefore non-threatening. Martin Croghan has written about this technique in an article about the artificial "stage Irish" dialect of the British music halls, which he shows to have been intentionally created by those in power who have used it as an indicator of ignorance and submission on the part of its speakers as a political weapon to sustain the popular conception of the Irish as a deviant population (21). It has only been in the past few decades that Rroma have been in a position to resist the manipulation of identity on the part of government agencies. Up until then, in the face of such vigorous nonresponse, such agencies, as well as journalists and writers of fiction, have been able to continue with their legislating and romanticizing and demonizing entirely unhindered. While Rroma are now beginning to speak out against antigypsyism, we have a long way to go before our voice is taken seriously. When the publisher of a book of children's verse (22) was asked to remove a poem called "The Gypsies are coming," with its accompanying illustration of a hag-like Gypsy woman with hooked nose, earrings and scarf carrying a sackful of stolen children over her shoulder, the only concession was that subsequent editions changed the word "Gypsies" to "Googies." The illustration remains. When a British comic (23) was asked to remove a cartoon strip entitled "The thieving Gypsy bastards" it replaced it with the sarcastic "The nice honest Gypsies," keeping the offensive cartoon characters. Manufacturers of the "Gypsy Witch" card game (24) refused to rename it on the grounds that it was one of their best selling items; they weren't worried about any possible legal action. The producers of the two films mentioned earlier didn't even bother to respond to a single request for fairness and accuracy from Romani organizations, at least six of which wrote to them while they were still in production.

In order for things to change, the Gypsy Image must be deconstructed, and a more accurate one put in its place - in the bureaucratic structures as well as in the textbooks. For all his peculiar observations about humanity (25), H.G. Wells was right when he said that "human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."

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