The recent Senate resolution celebrating Roma culture and heritage is a good start, but our work is far from done.
On December 8, the US Senate adopted a bipartisan decision resolution “celebrating the heritage of Romani Americans” and honoring the history, culture, and contributions of Romani people to human progress.
The adoption of the resolution – the result of years of activism and lobbying by the Roma people and our allies – was a crucial step in our long struggle to have Roma history and heritage officially recognized and respected in the United States. While there is reason to celebrate this important resolution, our work is far from done.
I was not born in the United States, but as a Roma living in the United States for years, I have experienced and witnessed the harmful consequences of the American public’s prejudice against the Roma people, their history and its culture.
I left Romania – where my people faced racism, discrimination, and institutionalized violence for centuries – and moved to the United States to attend Harvard University in 2012. Given wealth knowledge about racism in the United States, I assumed that I would enter an environment where I would be surrounded by people who are well versed in anti-Roma ideas and who know how to talk about their many manifestations.
I realized pretty quickly that my hypothesis was not correct. Several people I have met here, despite a nuanced understanding of racism, its ideologies and its manifestations, have casually mentioned the myth of “g*psy criminality” as fact or alluded to a “mode of life” specific to the Roma.
One day, while leaving a class, for example, a classmate asked me if my family had a “lifestyle” similar to that of the characters in the reality TV series Gypsy Sisters – the one of the American spin-offs of the very popular reality TV series Gypsy Sisters. British series Big Fat Gypsy Weddings. His interest in my culture was genuine, but like many of his compatriots, his perception of the Roma had been distorted by the transatlantic migration of anti-Roma sentiments and the amplification of harmful stereotypes on television.
In a 2020 study, my colleagues at the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights and I conducted a survey in collaboration with Voice of Roma, two-thirds of Roma Americans surveyed agreed that American television shows portray Roma people negatively. Indeed, shows like My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding present violence, vulgarity, and early marriage as Romani cultural characteristics. Episodes of these series have titles such as Birthday Party Turns into a Massive Fight, G*psy Truck Fight and even Mama Bear Attacks the Bride.
Not only do so-called “reality TV series” focus on Roma, but many American TV shows and films portray Roma as one-dimensional g*psy stereotypes. They falsely present us, as Roman-American filmmaker George Eli once said, “as mystical creatures, vampires, vagabonds, nomadic beggars, criminals, thieves or pickpockets.” In fact, not only do they misrepresent Roma culture as vulgar, inferior and violent, they also sensationalize it so that they can exploit it for profit.
These continued misrepresentations and sensationalism impact the daily reality of Romani Americans. One Roma we interviewed for the 2020 study told us that the school environment, in particular, “is much worse now that teachers can see My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.” “They think that our children are worthless, that they are not worth educating or protecting in school. » Other Romani Americans acknowledge that their children have suffered from racist portrayals of Romani people as subhuman or of Romani girls as overly sexual. They said many Roma children had dropped out of school due to harassment linked to their ethnicity and explained that such incidents had led them to advise their children to hide their ethnic identity and silently endure any prejudice anti-Roma people they encountered.
Of course, anti-Roma discrimination in the United States was not invented by reality TV executives. Today’s exploitative television programs only amplify deep-rooted prejudices and allow them to spread much further than ever before. Decades ago, in the 1964 and 1989 Change in Social Standing polls, American adults rated “g*psies” as having the lowest score.social status“. In fact, they rated Roma people lower, as well as Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, a made-up ethnic group called “Wisians.”
Of course, anti-Roma prejudice is not isolated. As is the case elsewhere in the world, cultural and racial prejudice against Roma justifies and reinforces deeply harmful discriminatory actions such as racial profilinginstitutional neglect and lack of respect for members of our communities.
So it is high time for a change. The recent Senate resolution celebrating the heritage of Romani Americans is a good place to start, but we need more. The exploitation of Roma culture and the dissemination of harmful Roma stereotypes in popular culture must be stopped. One way to achieve this could be to ensure that Roma people play leading roles in the writing, producing, directing and acting of television series and films. We need American policymakers to take meaningful action so that we can regain full control of our identity, our history, and our heritage – and so that we can finally feel like Romani Americans are valued and respected members. of American society.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
