|
|
Anti-Gypsyism
- a definition
By Valeriu
Nicolae
“Rarely
does anyone stop to say what it is and what is wrong with it.”
Kwane
Anthony Appiah on the use of racism
The
purpose of this paper is to develop a definition of anti-Gypsyism. I
will start by giving an example of anti-Gypsyism in
Romania
.
On
October 25, 2005, in the flat of an ethnic Romanian man in
Bucharest
, police discovered the body of an 11-year-old Roma girl who had been
raped, killed, and cut into hundreds of pieces. A Romanian newspaper, Adevarul, published the news on October 26. Had the victim been
Romanian and the murderer Roma, and bearing in mind the country’s long
tradition of racially-motivated pogroms, one can only speculate as to
what bloody manifestations of collective punishment might have been
meted out as a consequence. The Hadareni atrocities of 1993 serve as a
grim reminder of what can happen (Pro Europa, 2000). The evening of
October 26, a talk show on the Romanian TV station OTV included two
items related to Roma: one concerning the rape and murder of the Roma
girl, and the other about a fight involving Roma. During the broadcast,
several commentators suggested that the murder was related to the fact
that Roma parents are unable to take care of their children. Comments on
the fight involving Roma included the suggestion from a caller carried
live on TV that “Gypsies should be shot dead.”
Currently,
no recognized or widely accepted definition of anti-Gypyism is
available. This definition builds on a previous one published on the
site of European Roma Information Office (ERIO, 2005) I argue here that
anti-Gypsyism is a distinct type of racist ideology. It is, at the same
time, similar, different, and intertwined with many other types of
racism. Anti-Gypsyism itself is a complex social phenomenon which
manifests itself through violence, hate speech, exploitation, and
discrimination in its most visible form. Discourses and representations
from the political, academic and civil society communities, segregation,
dehumanization, stigmata as well as social aggression and socio-economic
exclusion are other ways through which anti-Gypsyism is spread.
Anti-Gypsyism is used to justify and perpetrate the exclusion and
supposed inferiority of Roma and is based on historical persecution and
negative stereotypes. Despite the fact that anti-Gypsyism fits academic
descriptions of racism, until very recently the academy/ academics in
writings/ discussions/ analyses of racism have by and large ignored or
simply paid cursory attention to the plight of the Roma, and have not
made much effort to theorize/analyze the discrimination faced by Roma.
Dehumanisation is pivotal to anti-Gypsyism: the process through which
Roma are often seen as a subhuman group closer to the animal realm than
the human realm. Even those rare cases of seemingly sympathetic
portrayals of Roma seem to depict Roma as somehow not fully human, at
best childlike. Roma are in the best cases described as free-spirited,
carefree, happy, and naturally graceful. All these characteristics are
frequently used to describe animals. Here I outline a definition of
anti-Gypsyism, showing that the phenomenon has profound similarities
with the complex of phenomena called racism.
Neo-Racism or Differentialist Racism
Many
authors regard the latest manifestations of racism against different
minority groups in
Europe
as what Baker (1995) and Taguieff (2001) call “differentialist”
racism. Seen by both authors as a form of racism focused not on
biological but cultural differences and what its perpetrators call
“natural preference” for a specific “cultural” group this form
of racism promotes the incompatibility of cultures and has similar
results as biological racism. According to Rorke
(2006) this is “a profoundly more dangerous, more insidious form of
racism, it has a longer shelf life and can infect the mainstream of
political thought and action with greater ease than biological
racism.” Proponents of differentialist/new racism consider that
biological racism was fatally discredited with the defeat of German
Nazism and in the wake of the Holocaust. However, when it comes to Roma,
biological racism is alive and well; dehumanisation is still central to
the anti-Roma discourses. Rorke also considers anti-Gypsyism to be
“protean and polymorphous.” This complements what Rorke wrote in
1999:
Although
anti-ciganism remains
well-nigh ubiquitous, like most forms of prejudice it is neither static
in terms of its content, nor is it somehow spread evenly across the
polities of the European continent. Within different states prejudice
against Roma is either less or more pervasive, more or less overt,
manifests itself to differing degrees and in very specific direct and
indirect forms against Roma, and takes it bearings from the flows and
eddies of wider political developments.
Recent
surges of anti-Gypsyism in Europe (Nicolae 2006) and, in particular, in
England
and
Italy
are explained through cultural clashes rather than biological heredity
but the effects are the same as we are witnessing violent social
conflicts (
Slovakia
,
Romania
,
Hungary
) and dissolution of social bonds.
The
interpretation of racism based on cultural differences fails to take
into consideration social psychological research carried out in various
countries (
Spain
- Pérez, Chulvi and Alonso, 2001; Pérez, Moscovici and Chulvi, 2002;
Chulvi and Pérez, 2003;
Britain
and
Romania
: Marcu and Chryssochoou, 2005). This research has revealed that, unlike
other minorities, the Roma are perceived as being closer to the animal
realm than to the human one. In
Romania
for example, while the prejudice against the Hungarians was expressed
(Marcu 2005) in terms of negative human attributes (e.g., hypocrite),
prejudice against the Roma was expressed in terms of negative animal
traits (e.g., wild). Given the existing high level of contact
between the majority population and the Roma, it is clear that
dehumanisation is not based on misconceptions or ignorance on the part
of the majority population. Instead, dehumanisation of the Roma appears
to be a legitimising myth that serves to justify the majority’s
abusive behaviour towards this minority.
The
pogroms against Roma in
Romania
at the beginning of 1990s that resulted in over a hundred burned houses
and tens of victims, as well as the frequent attacks by skinheads, are
often justified by public opinion makers, intellectuals, and mass-media
through presenting the Roma victims as a subhuman species (Nicolae
2006). Dehumanisation of Roma and other ethnic groups has a long
historical pedigree and made the mid 20th century genocide
easier to perpetuate and neglect. Refusal to acknowledge or outright
denial of the Romani Holocaust has helped preserve the marginalisation
of Roma Holocaust victims (Nicolae 2005) and the existing status quo
that places Roma in the position of non-citizens or pariahs.
Many
academics underline the superficiality of differentialist racism. For
example, Balibar (1991) writes: “the neo-racist ideologues are not
mystical heredity theorists but realist technicians of social
psychology.” According to Balibar, it is only at a superficial level
that differential racism “does not postulate the superiority of
certain groups or peoples in relation to others but ‘only’ the
harmfulness of abolishing frontiers, the incompatibility of life-styles
and traditions.” His point is particularly relevant in the case of
anti-Gypsyism, as behind the talk of difference between the majorities
and Roma, old notions of hierarchy remain intact as proved by the polls
in
Europe
(see OSCE report, Anti-Gypsyism in European Mass Media [2005],
Annex1). Unfortunately, there seems to be no doubt in the minds,
actions, and policies of the majorities which life-styles are modern and
civilized and which are not.
As
already shown, anti-Gypsyism manifests itself not only through racial
categorization, which postulates the inferiority of Roma, but mainly
through straight-forward dehumanisation of Roma. Anti-Gypsyism,
therefore, can be defined as a form of dehumanisation, because prejudice
against the Roma clearly goes beyond racist stereotyping whereby the
Roma are associated with negative traits and behaviour. Through
dehumanisation, the Roma are viewed as less than human; and, being less
than human, they are perceived as not morally entitled to human rights
equal to those of the rest of the population. Other authors describe
this as delegitimisation (Bar-Tal, 1989; 1990) or moral exclusion (Staub,
1987; Opotow, 1990).
The
failure by European states (e.g.,
Italy
and
Netherlands
) to accord official recognition of group status is quite different in
intent and outcome to dehumanising racism, but is in my opinion an
institutional dimension of anti-Gypsyism. Neither
Italy
nor
Netherlands
officially recognize Roma as national ethnic minorities, despite
recognizing other national minorities.
“And
yet, though there are no races, racism certainly exists!”
Jacquard
and Pontalis (1984)
The
concept of racism is a relatively new. According to Zack (1996), The
Oxford English Dictionary dates the earliest appearances of the term
“racism” to the 1930s. However, in practice, racism was at the basis
of exclusion and violent conflicts since long before. A series of
theories find the roots of biological racism (racism based on
an essentialist notion of race, which links itself to nationalism and to
the state) much earlier than the 19th century
theory of Arthur de Gobineau, considered the father of biological racism
and the first to write about distinct human races in his publication Essai
sur l’inegalite des races humaines (1853-55). Zack (1996)
considers that “modern concepts of race derive from eighteenth and
nineteenth century pseudo science that rationalized European colonialism
and chattel slavery” (p. 3). Like Zack, Williams (1995) believes
racism preceded the theories of Gobineau and argues that racism was
created to justify the enslavement in
Africa
. Kant is also seen by Zack
(1994) to have contributed to the creation of European concept of racism
as he drew on Aristotle’s theory of essences of natural kind where he
thought barbarians to be natural slaves. Probably the earliest
introduction of racist concepts is found in Plato (2002), who wrote in The
Republic that there are people “constructed of intrinsically
inferior material” (p. 39). In 1940, Ruth Benedict defined racism as
“the dogma that one ethnic group is condemned by nature to congenital
inferiority and another group is destined to congenital superiority”
(p. 21).
Scientific
or biological racism, based on 19th century theories of
biological superiority and inferiority of races, is largely seen as
compromised and no longer acceptable in political and public discourse.
However, in the case of Roma, we often still encounter virulent forms of
biological racism, both in political and public discourse (OSCE, 2005).
Long
before biological theories of race surfaced in
Europe
, Roma faced persecution. Banned from living in several European
countries, enslaved in what was then Romanian territory, accused of
playing a role in the killing of Jesus and often identified with
criminals (Lucassen and Willems, 2001), Roma have been continuously
rejected by the majority populations.
The
European Commission country reports often underline the structural
racism against Roma in countries of Central and
Eastern Europe
, yet some of those countries have already joined the EU and others will
join soon. Violence and acts of discrimination, including
state-sponsored rejection, which seem impossible for any other
minorities, are often occurrences in the case of European Roma. For
example, in 1998,
Great Britain
re-imposed visa restrictions on
Slovakia
in order to prevent Romani asylum seekers from having their case heard
in the
UK
. In summer 2001, the
UK
government established a “pre-clearance” of air passengers at the
Prague
airport, which served to single out Romani passengers and prevent them
from boarding airplanes destined to the
UK
(BBC,
2001). Also in April 2001, the
UK
government adopted a “special” border policy, singling out persons
belonging to seven named groups: Kurds, Roma, Albanians, Tamils, Pontic
Greeks, Somalis and Afghans, for “special” measures. Of these
groups, Roma and Kurds do not hold passports stating their ethnicity
(Roche , 2001).
European
Roma are not a homogenous group. Roma can range in appearance from
faired-skinned and blue-eyed to very dark-skinned and black-eyed, with
the two extremes often seen in the same community or even family. Roma
share many physical features with Arabs, Turks, Indians, as well as
Europeans. Roma in
Europe
follow a number of different religions: Christianity (Orthodox, Catholic
and Protestant), Islam (both Shia and Sunni), Judaism, as well as
atheism. Many Roma are unable to speak Romani. Even those who speak
Romani may have difficulties understanding each other as the various
dialects are quite different across
Europe
. Therefore, this measure, which was in place until 2004 in the
UK
, demonstrated a form of state sponsored discrimination against Roma
that somehow operated despite the fact that there is no sure way to
identify Roma. The policy cannot be logically based on any known
criteria of racial discrimination: appearance, skin colour, religion, or
language. The experience of the Czech reporters who proved that the
Czech Roma with a darker skin colour was stopped while his whiter
colleague was granted the permission to leave for the
UK
in 2001 suggests that this was in fact a case of imagined biological
differences between Roma and others.
Anti-Gypsyism
in the
UK
is not demonstrated only in state policy, but also through official and
popular sentiment. Jack Straw, in charge of British diplomacy until May
2006, is known for derogatory comments
targeting “travellers,” who he saw as good for nothing but
defecating at people’s doors.
“Should
we let Gypsies invade
England
?” was the title of a poll in January 2004. Around 20,000 people paid
to call in and tell readers of the Daily
Express that they were not going to put up with the “gyppos.”
The poll was part of a larger media campaign in the British press led by
tabloids which lasted for several months (ERIO, 2004). The government
reacted by starting talks about measures to restrict access for Roma to
the
UK
.
UK
Prime Minister Tony Blair said in the following days
in the House of Commons: “It is important that we recognise that there
is a potential risk from the accession countries of people coming in.”
One day later, accordingly, the Daily
Express echoed Blair, with banner headlines “Gypsies: you can’t
come in.”
The
ideas of Arthur de Gobineau are still widespread in
Europe
and salient when it comes to Roma. The fear of degeneration coming from
mixing of majority “races” with Roma is held by a majority.
According to a 1999 poll, less than 1% of non-Roma Bulgarians can
imagine marrying a person of Romani origin (Nahabedian, 2000) In 2003, a
Gallup poll in Romania discovered that 93% of Romanians would refuse to
accept Roma in their families (IPP/Gallup, 2003). In a poll conducted by
Focus Institute in 1999 in
Slovakia
, 80% of the interviewees said that they would never allow their
children to marry a Roma ([Pisarova] Slovak Spectator). In an opinion
poll conducted among Slovenian secondary school students in 1993, 60.1%
said they would avoid any contact with Roma (Ramet, 2005). In a survey
conducted in 1986 and 1988 at Spanish schools, 70% of the teachers said
they would be upset if their child married a Roma (Calvo Buezas, 2001).
Park
(1950) writes that race relations “are not so much the relations that
exist between individuals of different races as between individuals
conscious of these differences.” The results of the polls quoted above
in
Romania
and
Bulgaria
(both with a Roma population of about 10%) seem to indicate that
anti-Gypsyism has been internalised by a good number of Roma, besides
the majority populations.
Opinion
polls in
Malta
,
Luxembourg
,
and
Denmark
show that anti-Gypsyism operates even in the absence of direct contact
with the Roma. Despite no social interaction, in conflicts and, in most
cases, in any form of contact, the majority populations reject Roma.
This reinforces my view that anti-Gypsyism is a racist ideology which
has strong similarities with specific forms of racism such as
anti-Semitism. Anti-Gypsyism often serves to justify the existing social
order whereby the Roma are permanently kept in an inferior social
position.
Anti-Gypsyism
is also reflected in the form of false consciousness on the part of the
Roma themselves. A significant number of Roma deny their roots in an
attempt to escape the social stigma associated with Roma identity. Most
of them, especially the professionally successful Roma, manage to hide
their parentage and eventually lose their ethnic identity and assimilate
to the majority that normally rejects Roma. This is usually not possible
for other groups facing racism and could be held as an argument that
anti-Roma feelings are not based on race or ethnicity, but on
stereotypes and historical prejudices against Roma. This is
well-reflected in the discrepancies between the estimated number of Roma
and the lower results of official censuses as reflected by the documents
of the Council of Europe (2002).
A
tremendous amount of energy is spent in justifying or legitimising
political, economic, and cultural exclusion of Roma. Prejudices against
Roma are based not only on race, but on a combination--unique in each
region or country--of religion, language, culture and physical
appearance. Moreover, Roma are identified based on neighbourhoods,
villages, regions or countries where they live, social class,
“specific Roma” professions, speaking patterns, clothing, and even
behaviour. This complex exercise of building negative stereotypes
directed at Roma based on whatever features are shown by the Roma in a
particular area is not typical of racism, which focuses on race or
ethnicity alone, as shown by a few key features such as skin colour,
language, or religion. In this way, anti-Gypsyism is able to adapt and
Roma remain targeted regardless of the changes they make in their social
status, living conditions, and practices, as long as they admit to being
Roma.
Ambalvaner
Sivanandan, director of
Britain
’s
Institute
of
Race Relations
, wrote in 1973 that racism was “an explicit and systematic ideology
of racial superiority.” By 1983, he had come to think that “racism
is about power, not prejudice.” In 1985, he related it to
“structures and institutions with power to discriminate.”
Anti-Gypsyism includes features from all of his definitions of racism;
however, it is not reduced to only those. Anti-Gypsyism is a very
specific form of racism, an ideology of racial superiority, a form of
dehumanisation and of institutionalised racism. It is fuelled by
historical discrimination and the struggle to maintain power relations
that permit advantages to majority groups. It is based, on the one hand,
on imagined fears, negative stereotypes, and myths and, on the other, on
denial or erasure from the public conscience of a long history of
discrimination against Roma. It ignores not only events where Roma were
killed with bestiality, but also any non-stereotypical characteristics
in the life of Roma. Prejudices against Roma clearly go beyond racist
stereotyping which associates them with negative traits and behaviours.
Dehumanisation is its central point. Roma are viewed as less than human;
being less than human, they are perceived as not morally entitled to
human rights equal to those of the rest of the population.
Like
any ideology, anti-Gypsyism can adapt as Roma remain targeted,
regardless of the changes they make in their social status, living
conditions, and practices, as long as they admit their ethnic roots.
Anti-Gypsyism has such contempt for reason, facts, and intellectual
debate that it requires little effort to justify its often ideological
contradictions and changes, a feature that links it strongly with
fascism.
*This text would have not be possible without the help of many
.Special thanks to Bernard Rorke, Afrodita Marcu, Hannah Slavik, Steve
Slavik my colleagues from ERGO, ERIO and OSI. For full references please
contact me at v.nicolae@diplomacy.edu
|
