09.04.2014 “Roma stereotypes enforce racism”

Mappes-Niediek (2014) explores the intimate integration of poverty and Rroma, which are too often used interchangeably in the discussion on the minority, and prevent a critical inquiry about the reasons of poverty: “If somewhere beggars appear, it is sufficient to be written in the newspaper: those are Roma! – and no one will ask what their mendicant existence has to do with the social conditions in their country of origin or even with the euro crisis. The ethnic name replaces a rational explanation. Even if no one mentions the name, it is always present in the backs of their heads. But even if we avoid to call the Roma by name, we do not eliminate the clichés. We have just made them irrefutable.” Mappes-Niediek, on the occasion of the international Rroma-day of April the 8th, calls to talk about the reasons for the impoverishment and defamation of the Rroma, and to not just apply a politically correct vocabulary. Otherwise one trivializes poverty and promotes the stereotypes, and thus racism. Mappes-Niediek criticism is legitimate, but his statement, that the Rroma represent both an ethnic group and a social class, is problematic. Although it should not be negated that there are many Rroma living in great poverty, but one discredits with this statement all those Rroma who live integrated and belong to the middle or upper class. It is therefore questionable whether one fosters the social integration of the Rroma, if one defines them as an underclass: “In reality, the Roma in Europe have never completely become a nation, but at the same time always remained a social group, a underclass. That they were always both, never crossed ours, the majority’s mind. Firstly, until the 20th century, the “Gypsies” were just a “roving rabble”. Then they were, definitely since the Roma national movement of the 1970s, a “nation” as the Germans, the French, the Danes – a nation however that did not succeed, for whatever reasons, to organize itself like the others, and therefore secretly always was considered inferior by the majority.”