"The Romani question will not be solved until the Roma find their Martin Luther King." Czech academic criticizes former dissident's remark
The mass held on Sunday at 14:00 in the Church of the Most Holy Savior in Prague was also a mass for the late Karel Holomek, an activist of Romani origin who was one of a kind. Tomáš Halík was the celebrant and he remembered Mr. Holomek as a friend of his. Mr. Holomek could hardly have hoped for a more dignified intercessor from the Catholic Church. Moreover, the mass was held in the ceremonial space of this church which is located right at the Charles Bridge. Despite all of that, the religious ceremony was a great disappointment to me personally.
Professor Halík opened his remarks by mentioning not just his own friendship with Mr. Holomek, but also his witticism from many years ago that “The Romani question will not be solved until the Roma find their Martin Luther King.” I can still recall how angry that remark made me the first time I heard it roughly a decade ago.
How can this intelligent person use that phrase, “solve the question“, in relation to Roma when we know that euphemism was used in relation to the Jewish and the Romani people to refer to their genocide? The formulation of the Jewish or the Romani (in those days, the “g*psy”) “question” arose in the 19th century as a xenophobic concept that presumed the Jews or the Roma were creating a “problem”, that they had no place in society, did not belong there, posed a certain danger to it or even a threat.
What does Martin Luther King have to do with this? Not only was he murdered, but he did not in fact bring racism to an end in the USA, whether it be the racism that becomes visible when it takes on the form of physical violence, or whether it be structural, systemic racism. Apparently Halík likes something about the core meaning of this witticism, but what that is escapes me.
Halík’s perspective on the critical situation of many Romani people in our society was also apparent from the prayer he led at the end of the service, when he asked God for aid with “elevating” the Roma and for them to acquire educations. The Roma are, therefore, at some sort of lower level and it is necessary that they be brought up to our non-Romani level and be civilized. Halík’s paternalistic position violates two of the basic rules of the ethical treatment of discriminated, marginalized groups:
1. The basis for correcting relations with communities which are being discriminated against is to acknowledge their dignity and equality. A civilizational narrative from a position of superiority just intensifies their abject position.
2. The perpetrator is responsible for discrimination, not the person being discriminated against. It is frustrating to see how accusations against those who are subjected to our oppression repeat themselves in history into the present in different contexts in parallel. This is the basic topos of the anti-Jewish, anti-Romani, anti-refugee and other xenophobic ideologies. Romani people, in the midst of their everyday experience of racism, including their own fears of physical assault, are constantly being instructed on how they should behave, what they allegedly are doing (or not), or, in the case of Halík’s remark, about the kind of leaders they should have, in order for us non-Roma to even begin taking them seriously.
The barrier to correcting this relationship stems from the behavior of those of us who are not Romani. It is about high time that we ask not just God, but the Roma themselves for their forgiveness and that each of us starts with ourselves by consciously distancing ourselves from the anti-Romani stereotypes which are so deeply rooted everywhere in our society and which are accepted across society irrespective of our own educations or high academic and political positions.
Kateřina Čapková is an historian who initiated the creation of the Prague Forum for Romani Histories in 2016 at the Institute for Contemporary History at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, which she has led since its inception.
