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

Romani high school student faces prejudice daily

22 October 2012
3 minute read

Sára (17) has three brothers and three sisters. Currently a student at the High School for Management and Law in Brno, she loves to sing and would like to go into business once her studies are finished. Recently she spent several weeks in the USA, where she gained experience and was exposed to ideas she wants to make use of in her work with children in the Roma community. In other words, this intelligent young girl has already come a long way. She is also Roma.

I first met Sára at the IQ Roma servis non-profit organization, where she attends singing lessons and contributes to the magazine Romano VIP. What is surprising is how much charisma radiates from this young person and how much ambition she has. She sees herself in the future as an entrepreneur, but she would also like to become more involved with events inside the Roma community. She intends to focus primarily on working with children, providing them with activities that will not only help them spend their time in quality ways, but will help develop their personalities. She also has even more daring plans: In the future she would like to contribute toward bringing the Roma community and the majority society closer together and erasing mutually held prejudices and social barriers.

Even though Sára is full of youthful optimism, she is all too painfully aware of the complexity of the situation in which the Roma minority finds itself in the Czech Republic. Even at her young age, she has already directly experienced racially motivated discrimination. As she says, “I believe Czechs are not used to people who are visually different from the majority, for example, those who have a different skin color. They treat such people with suspicion, if not racism. This doesn’t just concern their attitude toward the Roma, but towards foreigners as well.” Sára has noticed this backhanded behavior towards those who are different on the basis of her own negative experiences: “Sometimes when people do not know me they judge me according to my appearance, they behave differently toward me, let me know I am different.” However, Sára rises above these experiences and accepts life as it is.

A person living as part of a minority, whether ethnic, racial or religious, experiences the world from a different perspective than those who live as part of the majority society. Members of minorities experience concerns which those who have not undergone such experiences can hardly imagine. There are the moments of unpleasantness when someone on the street yells abuse at you because of your appearance. There is the feeling of menace when you pass by a group of men with shaved heads. Do you not know these feelings? For Sára, it is an everyday experience to be carefully watched in stores by staff who think she might steal something, or for her fellow passengers to avoid sitting next to her on the bus.

Despite all this, Sára is not giving up and is pursuing her dreams. She draws her enthusiasm from the motivation she got from her stay in the USA, where, as she says, she realized that if others can achieve their desires, she can too.

This article was originally published in Romano hangos 5-2010 at http://www.srnm.cz

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