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News server Romea.cz. Everything about Roma in one place

Do Romani media make sense?

19 February 2015
15 minute read

Do "Romani media" make sense? Are such media outlets just components of "ethno-business"?

Does the "majority" know how to communicate with Romani people? Do members of the "majority" have any idea what Romani people believe, need or want?

Recently these questions were raised again in the Czech Republic by a scandal regarding the "Romano hangos" periodical (which news server Romea.cz covered here). Roman Krištof, former director of the Office of the Czech Government Council for Romani Community Affairs and co-worker with the Czech Government Agency for Social Inclusion, expressed his views on the scandal through his blog on Aktuálně.cz, and news server Romea.cz has now interviewed him, asking him to what degree a majority society can aid impoverished Romani people if they basically know nothing about them.

In his piece Mr Krištof wrote the following:  "In the Czech Republic, newspapers, museums and such are not, in the case of Romani societies (extended kinship groups) an expression of their internal needs (certainly not for information, as news is spread among Romani people in a completely different way than by writing articles in a newspaper). Rather, they express a need with respect to the outside world, they are a way to show the gadje (non-Romani) world around them that ‘We have what it takes! We can have our own newspapers too’… this is an effort to acquire symbols of success and display them to the outside world. Similarly, the shacks of Romani settlements are frequently equipped wth satellite dishes that do not transmit any signals to their occupants."  

Q:  This sounds rather hopeless from the perspective of communicating with these "extended kinship groups" – are you saying these people want to live their own closed life, that they do not want to open up to the "majority"?

A:  Naturally Romani families want to live their own lives and their own culture. Within the framework of traditional Romani culture – and in the case of the Czech Republic what exists here is basically the residue of the culture of settlements in Slovakia – there is no door for what you call "opening up" to the majority. These magazines are certainly attempting to create a door, but it’s as if you painted a doorframe on the wall of a shack and then tried to walk through it. You can’t open a door that’s just a painting. I don’t know why I should see that as hopeless, though.  

Q:  Does communication not work?

A:  Forms of communication and culture are dynamic phenomena, they develop in intangible ways. Only social engineers believe that "correct" interventions can influence the direction of their development. I would claim, on the basis of the available field research findings, that the so-called Romani press has not been comprehensible to the vast majority of Romani people here over the past 25 years and still isn’t. It’s the same in Slovakia. Sure, if there’s a photo of someone in their family, and if a copy makes it to them, then they cut the photo out and put it on the wall, but their comprehension of the texts in these media has been and still is minimal. This is illustrated in interviews with Denisa Havrĺová, the longtime editor of Romano Nevo Lil. The main producers of this press (frequently their Editors-in-Chief and founders) were and are gadje. They cannot, therefore, produce something that most Romani people might take up as their own – i.e., those in the poverty trap in the settlements and ghettos near urban areas. When it comes to the editors, they are either romantic collectors of folklore or proponents of anarchism, emancipation, human rights and other ideologies.    

Q: "Romani" newspapers and magazines, the "Romani" media in general, is generally therefore of no use, in your view

A:  Magazines and newspapers are like smooth screws that have just not gotten a grip inside Romani culture. One reason is certainly the oral nature of the transmission of information in Romani societies. This is very visible in the dissemination of Pentecostal Christianity among Romani people. During those gatherings, the oral basis of evangelism comes completely to the fore and is apparently primarily intended for oral transmission and storytelling, not for focusing on a written text. In general, there is a capacity to identify with the ethos of this kind of primeval Christianity among the most impoverished "settlers"! Here we can see how culture and its preferences flow where the culture wants (as Saint Augustine said of the Holy Spirit) not where the "culture-workers" would like it to go.      

Q:  Where do you believe they want it to go and where is it going instead?

A:  Instead of a conscious proletariat with revolutionary potential reading the Romani newspapers of these gadje or gadje-like editors in the evening, what persists here is an ancestral society that prioritizes networks of relatives and warnings about the end of the world and salvation… but these newspapers don’t have a similar story to tell their would-be readers. Do you think Romani people want to read stories about demonstrations, discrimination and evictions when they come home? Mainly, a large proportion of them "suffer" from functional illiteracy – which is to say, they know how to read and write, but they cannot understand the meaning of a text. If you don’t normally read, and if you don’t communicate in writing, then the fact that you learned to read and write in school atrophies and is practically unnecessary.

Q:  I’ll ask again:  Does that mean the "Romani" media are of no use?  

A:  Most culturally and socially marginalized Romani people in the Czech Republic – and at least half of those whose numbers are known to us from demographic studies (see Kalibová) are marginalized – as well as those who are just marginalized economically (through exclusion, etc.) are not reached by the so-called Romani media, they don’t use it (we are discussing approximately 80 000 + 80 000 or 160 000 people). Somehow this media reaches only a couple thousand of them, who somehow evidently (?) correspond to those who also declare their Romani nationality in the census (12 600 I believe, per the most recent one). The problem is more general, though:  From the side of our institutions there is a complete lack of any insight into or overview of the actual cultural and informational needs of Slovak Roma in the Czech Republic.

Q:  Is it important to emphasize "Slovak" Roma in the Czech Republic?

A:  Yes, this is a fact forgotten by the media, but any culturological research must necessarily start from that basis. Most of the publicists who write so much about Romani people in the Czech Republic begin with a description of the situation of travelling gypsies during the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the First Czechoslovak Republic without taking more into consideration the fact that the Nazi genocide here was almost total and that the mere couple hundred surviving Roma and Sinti in Bohemia and Moravia could never have played a key role in the constitution of the situation now, and still cannot today – on the contrary, they have frequently became acculturated to the newly-arriving Slovak Roma.

Q:  Let’s return to the institutions and their lack of understanding…

A:  Take a look at the Government’s Romani Integration Concept, which has just been submitted for the nth time. The submission report states that this proposal was discussed at a round table in June 2014. It does not state what the outcome of that discussion was or who participated in it. The proposal pretends as if conceptually everything is in order with the very notion itself (the theoretical concept) of Romani integration, as if there existed a unified opinion on the part of those members of the public who are interested in it or among circles of experts on the process of social integration. Does there exist some sort of theoretical basis for the process of integration and "nation-building" in the modern world, or support for this process as a tool to solve social problems?  

Q:  If I understand correctly, you are saying the Government’s Concept hasn’t clarified even its own basic notions…

A:  Because this is yet another version of a Concept or Strategy for Romani Integration, it would be desirable to come to grips in a more responsible way with the fact that Romani people here do not self-report their nationality during the Czech Census. They do not report it despite the fact that no small amount of money was spent during the census to enhance outreach among Romani people in this area (more than one million crowns during the last two censuses). The repeatedly inherited ethnological, romantic link is to a Roma "historical memory" of the solutions imposed on them by Empress Maria Theresa and the so-called First Czechoslovak Republic. Another link is said to be to a memory of the Protectorate, but of course the people involved in that were Czech Roma, not the predominantly Slovak Roma who are in their third generation here now. On the one hand, "Romani spokespeople" are seriously listened to, while on the other hand we express doubts about their legal capacity and we question their sovereign will to not declare their Romani nationality in the census. This means the majority itself is determining who the Romani community is and how big it is. Where do we get the right to declare or label people Romani? Are the Roma themselves interested in this? It certainly suits their quasi-spokespeople. The Strategy itself states that we basically don’t know what we are supposed to demand – or rather, expect – from Romani elites in this integration process.      

Q:  It seems to me that there is no need to give such importance to the census. However, I understand that for you this is one documentary source that proves it’s just not that easy to talk about the "Romani nationality" or minority… 

A:  For a longer time now, many authors have been warning that it is evidently problematic to identify a generic concept of Romani communities together under the concept of "nationality" – which, on the other hand, is an idea the majority society accentuates and understands. Notions in the draft Strategy such as "strengthening the identity" of Romani people, the "self-realization of the Romani minority", "integration", "ethnic emancipation", etc., should be confronted with these facts. After years of integration work here, it is evident that such a road leads nowhere. The draft Strategy states, as its first strategic aim:  "Support for Romani people as a distinct ethnic minority". Is it actually in the interest of the Czech state to create, of its own free will (!?) a new, distinct, ethnic minority? Is it in the interest of the Czech state to do so in a situation where no solutions referring to Romani affiliation or Romani solidarity have ever yielded a positive result in the past? Does it make sense to do so after acknowledging the fact that none of the previous integration concepts have been successful and, if social advancement has occurred, it was as a result of individual effort? (See the research by Socioklub, o.s.). Do the Roma themselves want to emancipate themselves as a society that connects all their various clans? Is this succeeding anywhere else in Europe? Has anyone asked them what they want? What do they want?

Q:  You definitely have an hypothesis or opinion…

A:  I have one hypothesis:  The topic of the national emancipation of Romani people has become, since the fall of the Eastern bloc, a very favorite topic among those who promote a Europe that is as united as possible, i.e., with a centralized government in Brussels, and among those heralding the demise of the nation-states as they have existed to date. Any prophet worth his salt must fire up the cauldron of his vision, and the idea of a transnational Romani group with specific rights of representation and status looks like good fuel for that fire. They are talking about discrimination, about needs, about the need to give a voice to European Roma across state borders. They are talking about European Muslims in the same way – to bring these minorities as close as possible to the administration of a European "center". What’s more, they are mixing this together with migration, with rights to this and that, and with social exclusion. Of course they have money, they commission things and subsidize them. Demand always accelerates supply, so in recent years we have been flooded with reports and international initiatives aiming to produce a European Roma ethnicity.          

Q:  Is it of any actual importance at all whether the Roma are a group, a minority or a nation when it comes to helping them in a reasonable way?

A:  It’s not important at all. You can help individual families, not imaginary communities. There definitely does exist good community work too, but it absolutely is not defined ethnically – it is defined by vicinity.

Q:  Can any Government Strategy focused on Romani people be effective and successful in principle?

A:  A Strategy, a conceptual material establishing aims and procedures, must be based on a definition of its objective. Romani people, the Roma ethnicity, Gypsiness,  if you will, evades such a definition. I believe that this evasion is the internal essence of the Roma ethnicity and that it should not, therefore, in principle, ever become the essence of any government documents. I would even go so far as to claim that a Government Strategy and the Roma ethnicity are concepts that are overwhelmingly contrary to one another. Roma ethnicity defies instruction. Of course many people, especially those who are technically educated, seek some sort of manual for it. All my life I have been persecuted by mechanical engineers. My father is a mechanical engineer, Karel Holomek is a mechanical engineer, Petr Uhl is a mechanical engineer… it used to be rumored at the Office of the Government that Uhl’s diploma thesis was basically an instruction manual for the construction of a device to roast chickens. This was evident from the first Concept he submitted to the Government – the gadget will revolve and the Romani people on it will be grilled until they are emanicipated and golden… but that just doesn’t work, not with any human group. Identity defies such tutorials.The struggle against poverty and social isolation, which is called social inclusion today according to the EU specimens, is another matter altogether. In that area, the creation of a Strategy is appropriate – but non-ethnically, because there is nothing ethnic about impoverishment. Maybe multi-generational impoverishment also produces a certain type of culture, but that is not Romani culture, for God’s sake!        

Q:  If I understand you correctly, the state to aim for should not be to raise up a "minority", but the emancipation of society as a whole – to aid impoverished, unemployed people in the ghettos, to ensure equal access to education for all children… simply to combat discrimination, inequality and poverty.

A:  Yes – you have named the target state in your question. Guarantee generally, to everyone, equal access. That’s what it’s about and it’s not easy. That should be considered a civic responsibility.

Q:  Can that work, however, if we do not understand Romani people, if we don’t know how to reach out to them, if we basically don’t even know who it is we are reaching out to?

A:  This is not about learning how to address them. The Roma are not living on some isolated island. We speak to every other person according to the degree of their social intelligence. We should mainly leave the Roma alone, not keep emphasizing all the time that this one or that one is an assimliated Rom, or authentically Romani, or half-Romani, one quarter-Romani, traditional Romani, etc. Academics can get involved in all of that in their work, but in public it just causes a mess.

Q:  You mentioned Romani elites, or rather, that the Strategy does not know what to do about them. What are we to expect of them? From what you are saying it seems to me that the desired or target state would be assimilation. Is this about the Roma being socially successful according to "gadje" standards?

A:  I view assimilation as a natural process. In reality it is always a two-way street, quite a few gadje have become acculturated to Romani people. There are even theories that a large number of Gypsies/Roma are people pushed to the outskirts of society into the niche of the outcast who absolutely are not of foreign or Indian origin… educated Romani people to a certain extent stop being traditional Roma (if they don’t task themselves with this). However, even educated Czechs stop being only Czechs. It’s not a tragedy.

Q:  We were discussing the "Romani media", so I have to ask your opinion of news server Romea.cz….

A:  Online servers specializing in just one topic have a future. If they last, then over the years they accumulate an indispensable information base that no one interested in that topic can seriously ignore. Look at [political marketer] Petr Dimun, he is establishing one thematic portal after another. The Romea server is intended for anyone who is interested in the topic of the Roma. Naturally, its main line is a human rights approach, which is why mainly people from various NGOs involved in Romani topics consider it "theirs". Most of them are gadje, right? However, many Romani people post to the online discussions at Romea.cz, and that provides a good insight into what those people are feeling. I think Pečinka wanted to do something like this in paper form [with "Romano hangos"], but that’s a lost cause. People need news reports daily, and they respond to them immediately – they don’t need a paper periodical in the style of a newspaper. Romea is certainly selective in its reporting, which just harms it, but the extent of its coverage is decent. Any business is either successful or not, and that goes for an ethno-business. This business has succeeded for Zdeněk Ryšavý [Note:  the co-founder and director of Romea, o.p.s.]. After Romea.cz steamrolled over the Dženo news server, it now has no competition here. If this Romani news server didn’t exist, I would have had to invent it.

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