Zuzana Kumanová: Will this end the stereotypes? What official adoption of the definition of antigypsyism means for the Romani community
In both the Czech Republic and Slovakia, recently-adopted definitions of antigypsyism (anti-Romani racism) are now meant to aid with the creation of public policy. Over the last 30 years, when creating conceptual materials on this issue in both countries, we have learned that one of the main obstacles to progress is such anti-Romani attitudes based on negative stereotypes and latent racism.
When the first concepts for Romani community integration were elaborated in the 1990s, we never would have predicted that three decades later we would still be running in place. Even when we manage to take a step forward, it is followed by half a step back.
The barrier to progress is the prejudices which appear at all levels of society. Unfortunately, it is true that we are not all equal.
Let’s return to the definition of anti-Romani racism, though. The non-binding, working definition of this idea that was adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) has been adopted at the executive branch level in the Czech Republic and at the legislative level in the Slovak Republic.
IHRA is chiefly dedicated to strengthening support for education about the Holocaust in general and research into how it is remembered around the world. It is an international organization with 35 state members and many observer countries.
It is possible to say that IHRA is like a small United Nations for the subject of the Holocaust, which is why its output is relevant and its adoption at the executive level of a state does represent a certain kind of obligation. One of IHRA’s subjects is also the Holocaust and its Romani victims, which it refers to as the genocide of the Roma.
It is certainly worth considering this terminology in and of itself, but that belongs to a different discussion, including a discussion about the Romani term Porajmos, which is also used to refer to these events. In the Slovak Republic, the working definition of anti-Romani racism was adopted as a resolution of the National Assembly on 27 September 2022 at the initiative of Romani lawmakers Peter Pollák and Jarmila Vaňová.
From a Slovak media perspective, that initiative did not resonate much and essentially has yet to gain any ground as part of the creation of public policy, although a chance for that is coming with the revision of the Action Plans stemming from the Strategy for Roma Equality, Inclusion and Participation to 2030, which is the basic government document defining Roma-related policy. The National Assembly of Slovakia did adopt the working definition fully, including its commentary, without taking any Slovak specifics into account, which could be a problem when it comes to applying the definition in practice.
In the Czech Republic the definition was adopted as a resolution by the Government of the Czech Republic on 8 April this year, i.e., on the occasion of Roma Day (International Roma Day). The media response in the Czech Republic was quite strong and it can be assumed that the initiator of the resolution was the Czech Government Commissioner for Roma Minority Affairs, Lucie Fuková.
In the Czech environment, the definition of antigypsyism is being worked with, but the Government has only adopted the core of it, which reads: “Antigypsyism/anti-Roma discrimination is a manifestation of individual expressions and acts as well as institutional policies and practices of marginalization, exclusion, physical violence, devaluation of Roma cultures and lifestyles, and hate speech directed at Roma as well as other individuals and groups perceived, stigmatized, or persecuted during the Nazi era, and still today, as ‘Gypsies’. This leads to the treatment of Roma as an alleged alien group and associates them with a series of pejorative stereotypes and distorted images that represent a specific form of racism.”
The definition is apt and essentially describes what Romani people are struggling with in Europe. It is good to realize that this is frequently exactly about exclusion on the basis of alleged characteristics, stereotypes which are framed by the culture of those doing the framing and by their perception of “otherness”.
The insertion of a reference to the “cultures and lifestyles” of the Roma is slightly counterproductive. I understand that at the European level those who created this definition needed to also include groups such as British Travellers in this definition, but given our realia today, this reference to the “culture and lifestyle” of the Roma doesn’t hold up.
The coexistence of the Roma with majority societies in the Czech Republic and Slovakia has created a situation in which what we present as the “culture” of the Roma in a traditional sense is itself associated with the majority society to a significant degree. Centuries of coexistence have caused many customs in non-Romani and Romani parts of the same locality to be quite similar, while in another part of the same country they may not be practiced at all by either non-Roma or Roma.
Today there no longer exists a unifying factor such as “Romani culture”, something that all Romani people would perceive as an identifying factor. Rather, we are heading in the direction of perceiving Romani identity itself as being what connects us.
The same applies to the Romani language, and given its history, it is also necessary to say that a large number of Romani people do not speak it and are able to perceive it just at the level of a symbol that connects us. What is even more problematic is the inclusion of “lifestyle” as part of this definition of antigypsyism (anti-Romani racism).
It is clear to everybody that there is no “Romani lifestyle”. We can speak of strategies for survival among people living in generational poverty, but we cannot ethnicize a lifestyle.
In reality, this is exactly about a notional search for a justification of asocial behavior as a genetically- conditioned, inborn characteristic of the Roma. Despite all of these reservations, the adoption of this definition is important if it will start being used in the concepts of public policies or if it will initiate the creation of more categories given the specifics of one or the other country.
I think that in both of these countries we still lack a basic philosophy of how to approach Romani people even 30 years after the change of the regime. Support for Romani people as a national minority is super as an achievement of the Velvet Revolution, but it still lacks a concept for how to approach people living in generational poverty, for whether the ghettos and the settlements should be renovated or whether a strategy should be sought for dispersing them.
It is true that different concepts for integration can exist in parallel. Awareness of anti-Romani attitudes and the avoidance of stereotypes might help that effort.
