For 2022 Roma International Day I decided to share here an interesting observation of a Roma guy from Ukraine that made me think about how Roma racism works and about a main issue of racist thinking, in general. As a gadjo (term in romanes that means nonroma) social worker I was interested to find out an opinion from the standpoint of a roma person to improve my approach techniques because I didn’t wanted to make deeper our cultural differences and one of my main goals was to build a trust relationship together for an efficient cooperation.

When I worked as a social worker in a Ukrainian Refugee Services Center, I was also working with Roma families from Ukraine. If the situation was difficult for all Ukrainians in this period the Ukrainian Roma people situation seems to me to be worse because the prejudices about Roma people were observable between Ukrainian refugees but also from Romanian people who have to manage the situation of a consistent Ukrainian refugees wave. In my work there I observed that people were used to see roma people in kind of system of discrimination that make nonroma sees Roma families as criminals who are looking to steal from other people or who take benefits from themself from a risky situation. A relevant example in this was the news about `Ukrainian Gypsyes who allegedly stole a Russian tank` or the behavior of Ukrainians transiting the center who began to protect their goods when they were close to Roma persons. Also I witnessed to conflictual discussions in which nonroma Ukrainians accused Roma Ukrainians that they are too noisy or they don’t clean enough the space, aspects that can be connected with some prejudices about Roma people who are perceived often as culturally (or/and biological) accustomed to quarreling and not taking care of the hygiene.

In this context of prejudices about Roma people from Ukraine, historian of Romani history in Central Europe Michal Mižigár condemned the racist “jokes” and racist coverage of Ukrainian Roma fighting against the Russian aggressor. Also other publications interested in human rights made raportages about the situation of Ukrainian Roma refugees in Romania.

During my work in the center I really appreciated the efforts of people to communicate with us despite our language differences. It was also the case of a roma guy who seems to be closest to me that I expected named me prala (a term in Romanes that means brother). He tried to tell me multiple times that I am roma even I answered every time that I am gadjo. After few days he explained me that:

In romanes language rom means human. We are all humans! Don't exist pure Roma blood, Roma people were travelers, they were traveling around the world, especially to countries like Romania and Spain and our blood has mixed over the time, we all are mixed, we don't know who has pure roots and who doesn't regardless of what ethnicity we are talking about. Our biological differences were invented in a specific historical context like the Nazism but it is not really relevant nowadays.

I told him that I agree with him but I think even if it is a good point we can observe that even those are obvious aspects, people still see fundamental differences between us that lead to discrimination sometimes. He continued to argue that:

This is happening because, for some reasons, people who have the power, our political leaders, don't want to admit that we are all the same, and that don't exist fundamental differences between us.

I think he had a really interesting observation that is also supported by many scientific studies. As the researchers say, and how it is understood from what that man said to me, we are not looking to diminish the cultural importance of ethnicity but to show that there are no relevant biological traits between people belonging to different races or ethnicities and no strict way of delimiting them because social life is often more fluid than we think it is.