The Czech Republic's Romani middle class

According to the journalist, Romani men and women are not just employed, they are also in business employing others – some have become doctors or lawyers, they are normally secure economically and their children are either already high school and college students or will be. The reporter for public broadcaster Czech Television made her observations in an interview for Jaroslav Miko’s Mikodrom.

Fridrichová has been involved with Romani subject matter since 2003, when she wrote her Master’s thesis. “I was studying in London, I did my Master’s in the field of human rights, and I wrote my thesis on the subject of the fate of the Czech Roma in their own country,” she said, adding that she chose that theme because she was interested in Romani people.

“The numbers I found at that time were terrible. It was a couple of years after the Matiční Street scandal in Ústí nad Labem. The statistics which existed back then stated that in some regions unemployment among Romani men was 100 %, which means nobody was willing to hire them. So it’s no wonder that a person in that situation would, for example, commit robbery, because if there’s no way to make money, one has to secure one’s needs somehow,” Fridrichová said.

The journalist believes the situation has improved significantly in the 20 years since she wrote her Master’s thesis. One of the main reasons is the rise of a Romani middle class.

“An awful lot of things have changed, and I see a middle class here which has been created during those 20 years among the Roma and which has established itself,” Fridrichová said, adding that in recent years many successful entrepreneurs, doctors, lawyers and other professionals have appeared among the Roma. She believes these people are role models for other Roma and aid them with overcoming discrimination and prejudice.

Fridrichová said that while the public mainly perceives Romani people as poor, her work as a journalist has led her to realize that a middle class of successful Roma exists which is contributing to changing that perception. “I recall how a couple of years ago a colleague of mine told each other ‘Let’s find Roma like that.’ I know it sounds strange now, but it wasn’t so common five years ago – yet we found them. We filmed an interview with a doctor who is Romani and a lawyer who is Romani,” she recalls her reportage about the Romani recipients of the ROMEA organization’s scholarships.

“Suddenly, in that reportage, Romani people were appearing who speak better than most Czech ‘patriots’. I got a lot of reactions both from the Czech community and the Romani community,” Fridrichová said, pointing out that white Czechs aren’t used to seeing Romani people who are doctors and who speak the Czech language at the absolutely highest level.

In the interview, Miko says that in some regions Romani children are still being segregated and have a harder time accessing a quality education, and Fridrichová agrees. “I’d say we still have several Romani generations here who only accessed special education and that limits them, it handicaps them for the rest of their lives,” she says.