{"id":1488,"date":"2013-10-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-11T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/%20rroma.org\/11-10-2013-too-much-political-correctness-or-a-trivialisation-of-poverty-and-exclusion\/"},"modified":"2022-08-04T11:43:04","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T10:43:04","slug":"11-10-2013-too-much-political-correctness-or-a-trivialisation-of-poverty-and-exclusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rroma.org\/fr\/11-10-2013-too-much-political-correctness-or-a-trivialisation-of-poverty-and-exclusion\/","title":{"rendered":"11.10.2013 Too much political correctness or a trivialisation of poverty and exclusion?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Woker (2013) \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tcriticises the excessive political correctness in the use of terminology for \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\texample when referring to the Rroma minority, a terminology which complicates a \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\ttransparent view of the current debate. With the name \u201cRoma and Sinti\u201d in \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGermany, the Sinti are presented as a separate group from the Rroma, although they \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tare part of the Rroma as a whole. By this institutionalised political \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tcorrectness \u2013 according to Woker \u2013 one makes it more difficult to detect and \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\trespond to problems with the minority: \u201cThere \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tis a tendency , somewhat premature to suspect a deep-rooted antiziganism. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tInstead to recognise the real existing problems as such and to recognize and \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\trespond to these with social policy measures, authorities and the media often \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tescape into a politically correct vocabulary to prove at least their good \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\twill.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Woker fails \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tto recognise that this recognition is precisely the very real problem. Are the \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tso-called poverty migrants from Romania and Bulgaria, which are negatively represented \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tin the German media and are usually identified as Rroma, poor and uneducated \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tbecause they are Rroma? Woker comes close to this conclusion. At the end of his \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tarticle, Woker cites Mappes-Niedieks\u2019 book \u201cPoor Roma , bad Gypsies\u201d, a book \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\twhich makes a clear separation between cultural characteristics of Rroma, who \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tare anyhow very heterogeneous,\u00a0 and \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\ttheir ascribed identity from intentional non-integration, nomadism, illiteracy, \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tor culturally related delinquency. Therefore, the crucial question is not \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\treally the one of political correctness, but the one on how the conditions that \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tlead to poverty, lack of education, and exclusion are brought into relationship \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\twith an ethnic origin. In Germany there are many well-integrated Rroma who do not \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\twant to recognise themselves as Rroma just because of the one-sided focus on \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tproblem cases. In this case, to trivialise political correctness just means to \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tplay down stigma. One thus must ask the question whether it is not highly \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tproblematic to ascribe a cultural identity to people, an identity which is the \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tresult of the exclusion of the majority society. Political views on culture need \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tto be recognised as being politicised and need to be critically questioned.<\/p>\n