Racial tension in the Czech Republic

[Winner]

It is one of those self-perpetuating vicious-circle problems which are very hard to deal with for any country, including the most advanced ones in terms of multicultural outlook and economic resources available.

In the Czech Rep. specifically, you have two mutually supporting forces at play: 1) the unwillingness of many in the Roma(ni?) community to adapt to and accommodate the majority culture; 2) the resulting dislike and prejudices among the majority population.

General attitude towards the Roma(ni?) ranges from scepticism (at best) to overt racism (at worst). Against that you have a vocal alliance of public intellectuals, NGOs and human rights activists who are trying to re-shape the public perception of the Roma(ni?). Recently I was doing some translation work for the Museum of Romani Culture here in Brno (which is a pretty rare institution of this kind in Europe); people who work there are hard at work trying to bridge the gap between the Roma(ni?) and the majority, but they constantly encounter problems on both sides of the issue.

As an individual, I have my share of pretty negative experiences with Roma(ni?) individuals. As a college-educated person I am trying to separate those from my intellectual understanding of the issue.

Concerning far-right groups, the Roma(ni?) issue is the greatest tool at their disposal. In general, Czechs are not xenophobic people. If you tried to get them to support your fringe neo-Nazi group by railing against the Vietnamese, Ukrainians, Slovaks, Poles, Germans, Jews or the other minorities, you'd be ignored into oblivion. They gain some support chiefly in areas where there is a lot of tension between Roma(ni?) inhabitants and the rest, i.e. north-west Bohemia and north Moravia where Roma(ni?)-inhabited slums have developed in the post-industrial wasteland left over from the Communist era. The locals feel the authorities are not addressing their security/welfare needs and as a result they tend to join with the far-right groups in a sort of protest hoping to wake the authorities up and make the problem register on the government's radar.

 

[warpus]

Maybe this is a naive view, but it seems to me that cops don't treat Gypsies in the same way that they might treat another Czech citizen. For example, when a Czech citizen strips his apartment of copper by removing piping, wouldn't he eventually be charged in some way? Some sort of a criminal charge?

And maybe I am wrong, but it seems that whenever Gypsies do these anti-social things (or whatever you want to call them.. anti-society?), people just shrug "Oh, that's just their lifestyle" and nobody gets punished.

1. Am I wrong about all or any of this?
2. Why not start enforcing the law a bit more? Would this lead to other issues?

 

[NovaKart]

This is old news. I don't know much of anything about the Czech Republic but I've heard about problems with the Roma community there before. I don't really understand how any of this would suggest an absurd rumor about sending them to Ukraine and considering the hysteria shown over acceptance of homosexuality in western countries this all seems like a pattern of using people's base prejudices to wound them up.

 

[Winner]

@warpus:

Pointing to double-standards is very typical for any debate about the Roma(ni?) issue.

I'd stress that the issue is by far predominantly a social one, with 'racial' connotations only stemming from the social conflict between a poorly educated underclass often living in poverty and squalor and the middle class unwilling to make more contributions to lift the living standard of the underclass.

Simply put - if people see poor uneducated people who often steal or vandalize their dwellings and many of those are Roma(ni?), they make a link between being Roma(ni?) and being a member of this underclass. Both groups then naturally tend to segregate themselves, thus perpetuating the problem.

Example - in my city, Brno, there have been attempts to "de-segregate" schools, i.e. to spread Roma pupils among schools with non-Roma(ni?) majority to foster integration. What the authorities have found was that non-Roma(ni?) parents would pull their kids out of the class if there were more than ~5 Roma pupils due to a fear this signified a lesser quality of education for their children ("the gypsies would slow them down").

Conversely, the lack of adequate support for their children's study achievements and more generally the scepticism towards "white" education system makes Roma pupils under-perform from the 1st grade onwards, which in turn means very bad prospects for a good secondary education (most never graduate high school) and a negligible chance of getting to a university.

There are programmes for supporting Roma(ni?) children in various ways, including study assistants who help the kids with homework and various after-school activities to integrate them better with their peers, but this requires money and patience; needless to say, few local politicians will win votes by promising to throw yet more money at the Roma(ni?) problem.

 

[warpus]

I've got a solution: make it so that every single student has to wear a mask. That way you won't know who's a gypsy and who isn't

By the way, is gypsy an offensive term? Do Gypsies not like being called that?

 

[Winner]

I've got a solution: make it so that every single student has to wear a mask. That way you won't know who's a gypsy and who isn't

By the way, is gypsy an offensive term? Do Gypsies not like being called that?

Nowadays it is considered offensive if used by a non-Roma(ni?) for a Roma(ni?) person. Kinda similar to a certain word in English the Blacks often use when speaking to each other, but it's a big no-no if a white person uses it. Less offensive though.

 

[Kyriakos]

The same month, in Plzen, Far-right activists organized a protest against the minory.

http://rt.com/news/czechs-arrested-roma-demonstration-955/

Everything turns to crap in Czechia. For example in that pic one of the neo-nazis used to have a decent career as a referee in Italy and the Champions League


@Winner:
Cool story, Brno.

 

[warpus]

Should we ask the mods to crack down on the g-word then, if it's considered offensive by the Roma? They don't tolerate the n word, why should they tolerate this one?

 

[Kyriakos]

FWIW, "gypsy" is derived from "egyptian", and is argued to be a name for those people since (supposedly) when they first entered a european power's land they settled in the Egyptian provinces of the Roman Empire.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Nowadays it is considered offensive if used by a non-Roma(ni?) for a Roma(ni?) person.

I wonder what they think of "Roma(ni?)" by someone who apparently supports their ethnic cleansing.

 

[Domen]

By the way, is gypsy an offensive term? Do Gypsies not like being called that?

According to opinion of one of Polish Gypsies (who is an actor - the photo shows him during the filming of "Papusza" movie):

http://www.pomorska.pl/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20131117/REPORTAZ/131119519

(here about Papusza):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronisława_Wajs

"Cyganie" is not offensive when you speak Polish
"Romowie" is not offensive when you speak Romani

He says:

If I speak in Romani, I say Rom. If I speak in Polish, I say Cygan. This is how we used to say for years. Cygan, Rom, this is one word in two languages - explains Mr Bosman. - And when they talk badly about us, what is the difference whether they say: you **** Cygan or you **** Rom?

As for "Gypsies" name - in fact we don't have an equivalent of this word.

In some English-Polish dictionaries, "Cygan" translates as "Gypsy". But in fact both names have different etymology.

The etymology of "Cyganie" is probably related to Ancient Greek word "Athinganoi".

 

[Winner]

Should we ask the mods to crack down on the g-word then, if it's considered offensive by the Roma? They don't tolerate the n word, why should they tolerate this one?

Because double-standards, welcome to the human world.

In English it's still borderline acceptable (even BBC uses it in parallel to Roma(ni?)), in Czech it would feel very inappropriate if our public-service TV anchor used the word "cikáni" to refer to that minority.

It's not on par with the n-word as for the depth of offence it causes.

 

[Wastl]

Nowadays it is considered offensive if used by a non-Roma(ni?) for a Roma(ni?) person. Kinda similar to a certain word in English the Blacks often use when speaking to each other, but it's a big no-no if a white person uses it. Less offensive though.

Actually, I think this depends on who you ask. I remember reading a report last year that dealt with this topic. The representative of Sinti and Roma in Germany (well, he isn't officially the representative, his group just claims that they represent them) is of the opinion that calling them gypsy (or Zigeuner in German) is an insult. When the journalist who wrote the article travelled to Romania, he experienced just the opposite, with a rather famous person of said group considering gypsy/zigeuner to be the only correct term, with Roma being an insult. He went on to suggest that those who stick to the traditional lifestyle and culture should bear the name gypsy with pride, with Roma being more of a term for those who left said path or turned into petty criminals.

I'd say it depends on who you are dealing with. The term gypsy is not automatically considered to be bad by those who belong to this group. As such, banning the word might actually insult some of the people. It's not as clear cut as with other words. Though if one lives in an area where the majority is insulted by one or the other, it would be best to adhere to their wishes.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I am not offended in the least. I am questioning your motives for opening this thread.

Moderator Action: I suspect them too. Thank you Winner for allowing the discussion to develop and proceed civilly in light of the threads origins.

 

[warpus]

Winner, I guess in the end what you get out of that is that there will always be somebody out there who is going to be insulted no matter what you call them.

And maybe one day we're going to be saying "g-word" ? Until then though I guess I'm going to Gypsy up my posts about Gypsies.

 

[kronic]

Immigration of gypsies is a relatively big issue these days in Germany. In some big cities, people are rather uneasy about their new neighbours, and city administrations are...well...faced with new challenges.

 

[caketastydelish]

I hope this isn't spam, but gypsy women are some of the hottest I've ever seen.

 

[Aleksey_aka_al]

That's because they are free people compared to those dull "free" sedentaries (which are free through TV/Internet only) .

 

[caketastydelish]

Sounds like a great culture to me.

 

[Winner]

Winner, I guess in the end what you get out of that is that there will always be somebody out there who is going to be insulted no matter what you call them.

And maybe one day we're going to be saying "g-word" ? Until then though I guess I'm going to Gypsy up my posts about Gypsies.

Look, the Roma(ni? - I keep writing this because I am still unsure about which variant is more correct in English) are not a homogeneous group. Even within Czechia we have several large Roma(ni) cultural sub-groups: the original Bohemian/Moravian Roma(ni) who were mostly wiped out by the Nazis in WW2, the Slovak Roma(ni), the Balkan groups, etc.

The issues of identity and names are notoriously complicated, as you surely know. I can only speak about what is standard/accepted in Czechia, and here "gypsy" (CZ: cikán) is considered moderately pejorative when used by a non-Roma(ni) person for a Roma(ni) person. Among themselves, they often use this term, though.