Címlap English Martin Luther King, Jr's testament for Romani people

Lovaricko shibako grizhipe

Kiadványaink

Radio Romano

Archív

Csatka

Közös Út Baráti Kör

Blog

Névjegy

Gindima

Tumencaj muro dyi sagda. Te na bisterdyon pa jekhavreste, zhikaj e luma luma avla,..

http://rfgy.blog.hu/

Portré

Rostás-Farkas György

CTMT videók

GTranslate

Rólunk

Martin Luther King, Jr's testament for Romani people PDF Nyomtatás E-mail
Írta: Administrator   
2013. február 28. csütörtök, 06:18

This piece was composed as an introductory contribution to a debate about Martin Luther King, Jr in Prague that was convened by the American Center and the Slon publishing house, which has released the first selection of Dr King's works in Czech translation.

When I was invited to this debate, I accepted without hesitation. As a Romani woman, an activist, and a person for whom the question of Romani emancipation and integration are important personal topics, Martin Luther King, Jr and the movement for the rights of African-Americans in America are, in their own way, a model for me.

I was glad to make use of the fact that during the 1950s, black people had to give up their seats on buses to white people and see signs reading "for Whites only" everywhere (which I think rather proves the tragedy of the situation in which their community found itself in relation to the majority), but today, several dozen years later, America has a "black" president. This is, for me, an example and a motivation to believe that the fight against racism makes sense. It's a wake-up call from which all Romani people can take inspiration to be influenced by the actions and works of the figure we gather to discuss today.

This positive but simplistic motivation is being applied to two completely different situations, that of African-Americans in the United States during the last century and that of Romani people in the Czech Republic and in Europe today. We can find differences between these situations at many levels - economic, historical, societal and many others.

To be brief, the American historical level includes the past of slavery and OPEN RACISM, manifesting itself in hate crime, segregation, the impossibility for blacks to acquire better educations or make the same money as white Americans in similar positions, etc. This is all symbolized by a rather clear situation and clearly defined roles. It clearly shows who is oppressed and who made the historical error.

The situation of Romani people is completely different. From an historical perspective, they were never forcibly removed from their homeland. Despite the fact that they left it long ago, the travelling way of life was natural for them for centuries, partly determined by the fact that their professions were connected with that lifestyle, and partly because they also were forced into their wanderings on the basis of decrees and laws issued by the towns and regions that pushed them out or banned itinerancy.

As a nation, Romani people have been dispersed around the entire world for centuries. Their situation is not that of one region or state, but differs from border to border. While Romani people in the Netherlands or Spain live rather integrated lives, Romani people Hungary today are facing a strong wave of OPEN RACISM. Those tendencies are manifesting themselves today in the Czech Republic and Slovakia as well. (Recall Tomia Okamura's presidential campaign and his openly racist, populist approach toward "solving the Romani question').

In Slovakia Romani people live in settlements that no one would ever voluntarily visit, to say nothing of imagining what it is like to be born there or to have to live in them. You will not find any such settlements in Bohemia. Here Romani people live segregated away from others inside towns and villages.

An important difference is also the fact that African-Americans in the USA were united in their protest. That is not happening among Romani people and cannot happen. There are enormous pressures and no communication between various Romani groups. The most excluded group is that of the Olah Romani people, or the Vlax as they are called by other Romani groups. The Olah do not consider the Rumungre - the "rest" of us - to be real Romani people because in their view the Rumungre are too integrated and therefore not their equals. They speak a different language - that is also another important level of difference - and follow their own rules in a very closed community, to say nothing of their ancestral differences and differences in family structures. In such a situation it is very hard to build a united movement for emancipation or freedom as we know it from the USA.

As for the side of the society-wide CONTEXT - African-Americans were openly segregated. Racism today is spawned differently, from tendencies that are repressed. European society declares itself to be multicultural, and this aspect is supported in all the states of Europe. African-Americans had to fight hard in the USA for something similar, through actions such as the Montgomery bus boycott, etc.

This declared, open tolerance is primarily a source of great frustration for a certain type of people. This is related to the economic crisis, to the enormous role of the media (which I refuse to demonize, however), and it is also related to something as petty as opportunities for the repressed to make jokes about Romani people. I often hear it said that one must watch what one says about Romani people in order to avoid an immediate charge of racism.

The openness of our society also involves obscuration, and the murkiest of those hidden places are exactly those where frustration transforms into hidden or open hatred based on denouncing ethnicity and race. It is, therefore, a paradox that from such completely different contexts and different roots, a situation should arise here that is very similar to that faced by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Allow me to speak briefly about the tendencies shared by the African-American movement for freedom and the Romani movement for emancipation. When I read Martin Luther King, Jr's works, I am fascinated by the general applicability of his opinions. They can be very easily applied even today, and there are many of them. Permit me to quote some examples from his essay "A Testament of Hope":

"The police must stop acting like an occupying army in the ghetto and start protecting its residents."

We cannot perceive all Romani people as a mass of "inadaptables". The police are incompetent to respond to differences within the community, to understand that when, for example, a group of Romani youths is fighting somewhere, it does not mean that all Romani people in the community are involved or that they approve. It is unacceptable for the police to believe such events are commonplace among Romani people and that there is therefore no need to rush to the scene.

It is also a fact that the police invade the homes of some families without knocking and without permission whenever they like. This, too, is reality today.

"This is not about a lack of work, but about a lack of meaningful work."

Romani people often face the fact that no one employs them, or if they do, it's "under the table". Walk down Cejl street in Brno on any weekday at around 6 AM and you will see men standing there waiting to see whether someone is going to offer them work that day or not. The women who work, for example, as cleaners in hospitals, hired by private firms, are often in the same situation.

The fact that Romani children are automatically enrolled into the "practical primary schools" makes them a completely unusable group as far as the future labor market goes. It is necessary to add that this stems both from external discrimination and malevolence towards these children and from their own parents' errors.

"Inferior education, deplorable housing, unemployment, inadequate medical care - all these are parts of the cruel oppression that is our heritage."

Here Martin Luther King, Jr. is listing all of the basic building blocks of social exclusion as we define them today.

"For people who lack cultural background and education there is less and less work to be had, contemporary poverty feeds on itself and there is no relief."

There is not much to add to this observation, except to say that poverty is an enormous problem of the Romani community and I am very bothered by the fact that some people have made successful businesses out of the poverty of others - of Romani people. Gaming rooms, pawn shops, those who lend money at high interest, overpriced residential hotels - most of these businesses are owned by the gadje. This phenomenon supports the deeply-rooted mistrust Roman people have of "whites" today.

It's not possible to draw parallels between African-Americans in the USA and Romani people in the Czech Republic in Europe, to look for differences between them, without looking inside these communities as well. Exploitation of the social welfare system is the most frequent reason the majority society in the Czech Republic is driven to frustration. Even though the amounts of welfare reported as supposedly drawn per month by Romani families and circulating on the internet are HOAXES, complete fabrications, it is a fact that the passivity of some Romani people during the 1990s and subsequent years has raised a new generation of people here who perceive a life on welfare as something natural.

To speak aloud and openly about these problems inside the community is something that is directly costing me rather a lot of energy. I face attacks from inside my own community for analyzing it. The general opinion is that one does not "wash dirty laundry in the street". Whether that is correct or not is a question for us to discuss and applies to everyone. For me, however, it is not possible to proceed without openness or a positive focus on the future.

The most crucial thing I would like to say here is that I, too, perceive a reality that Martin Luther King, Jr managed to capture in words very well, and in my opinion this reality the most important thing, the thing that is held most in common between both African-Americans in the USA in the last century and Romani people today. This is not a question of economics or social status. (Which is also why integration programs fail, as they primarily address precisely the social situation.) This is a spiritual question, or if you will, a psychological one, and it comes from the collective unconscious of the nation, from a feeling of inferiority, of a lack of acceptance, of enmity toward those who are accepted, toward the whites. This was very well described by Klára Samková in her book "The Pscyhology of the Romani Question". As one wise Romani woman says, whoever has not experienced discrimination should not even presume to talk about it.

Here I would follow up on what Professor Erazim Kohák said:  The main difference between the situation of African-Americans and Romani people today is that Martin Luther King, Jr was a spiritual authority. He drew his strength from his faith, and that was accepted by his movement.

Today it seems that civil society and the development engineering of the world around us are not helping. It's not enough, not enough to overcome the centuries of persistent, subconscious feelings, the deep essence of this problem. Just as a tax adviser would have a hard time resolving your spiritual problem, so the economic advisers in the nonprofit organizations will have a hard time resolving this problem for Romani people. (Despite the fact that their work is meritorious, very often quite demanding, and deserves appreciation).

This is where, for me (as a person who perceives the spiritual aspect of reality in a different, not directly religious way), the main overlap lies, this is the source of the permanence of the works of Martin Luther King, Jr and their legacy for the Romani tendency toward emancipation and integration. Without spiritual leaders, integration will not succeed. Without understanding and working with this aspect, success will never be achieved. In the words of Christian teaching, forgive, and you shall be forgiven.

http://www.romea.cz / Alica Heráková, translated by Gwendolyn Albert

 

 
Copyright © 2024 Kethano Drom - Közös Út. Minden jog fenntartva.
A Joomla! a GNU/GPL licenc alatt kiadott szabad szoftver.
Fordította a Magyar Joomla! Felhasználók Nemzetközi Egyesülete
 

Tehetség

Örökségünk nyomában

PTK roma tananyagok

Emlékezet

Portré

Közös Út a Facebookon

Mottó


„A cigány kultúrának intézményekre van szüksége...
Én ezt egy kulturális autonómia intézményrendszerén belül képzelem el, amely nem szavakból, hanem láncszemként egymáshoz kapcsolódó intézményekből állna.”

***

Részlet Orbán Viktornak  2008. április 11-én elhangzott beszédéből.


 

Civilhang

SZEMlélek

Galéria