The Prague Post Online: Opinion: Standing out

November 22nd, 2008

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Standing out

A personal account of racial discrimination in the Czech Republic
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January 9th, 2008 issue

By Lamis Khalilová

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Over the years, many people have embarked upon experiments to learn how others feel in certain situations. Human nature is paranoid — people don’t believe what they are told until they try it firsthand.

When men and women wear padded suits to understand what it feels like to be obese, they often find it hard to fit in, with many becoming loners, getting depressed and closeting themselves away from the world.

In other experiments, people painted their bodies a few shades darker to see what kind of treatment they would receive.

In my case, I didn’t need to dye my hair or change my skin color to see how it felt to be mistaken for a Romany, or Gypsy, person in the Czech Republic.

Being half-Czech, I have heard stories from my relatives about how the Roma have been a privileged group.

I have been told time and again the stories of Romany families building bonfires in some of the most historical Vinohrady buildings, when antique wooden floor tiles were dismantled and burned indoors, rendering apartments and building blocks uninhabitable.

I have also heard from older aunts whose children adopted Romany sons and daughters how they always heard “once a Roma, always a Roma” and worried what would happen if the child grew up to become a thief, disregarding any influence family surroundings and conditions could have upon such a situation.

When I decided to come here to live and go to college, it was a bold decision, but one that made complete sense. I grew up in an Arab country, visited Prague regularly on holidays and spoke Czech at home, but I didn’t quite feel I knew the country as well as I would have liked to. Also, living at my grandfather’s and studying at one of the oldest universities in the world didn’t sound like such a bad idea.

I arrived in Prague, still in my teens, coming from a country where teenage girls looked like they had just walked off the set of a Latin American soap opera (also known as a telenovela).

In that country, females wore thick layers of makeup, big hair, painted nails and lots of accessories. Those were the ’90s, and people just dressed that way.

However, being a few shades darker than the average Czech, I got a lot of attention while dressed in a similar fashion, and not necessarily for the right reasons. On the metro or tram, women would clutch their purses tightly when I walked by. They would stare at me and scrutinize me from head to toe. It was no different in shops.

I soon started reacting, feeling a need to fit in. Off came all the lip gloss; the big hair was tamed down and tied in a bun or braided; the rings all came off and I did what any woman would do — I hit the shops for some new clothes.

After explaining the problem to my mother, who understood, as always, and realized the cultural leap her daughter was making, she agreed to finance my makeover.

In retrospect, I think it was a subconscious decision. But, apparently, the more expensive the clothes, the easier it would be to fit in. So I visited the few stores available at the time (shopping here was very different than it is today) and picked out my new outfits. I replaced my stylish tracksuits with smarter gear. I toned down my colors and listened to various salespeople give me advice on appropriate attire.

It helped a little to fight first impressions, but soon, there were more troubles.

My Czech wasn’t perfect, and it gave me away: I was a foreigner. When I visited a café or restaurant with an Arab group of friends and spoke Czech, I noticed we were being handled differently than when I was with English- or Czech-speaking “white” friends. In those cases, things went more smoothly and the service was better.

Also, I noticed that the probability of being treated well dropped the further away I got from the center of Prague. This meant there were definitely no nights out at the locally famous pubs, but rather more nights eating at neat and overpriced tourist places. Safety and avoiding racist remarks came at a price.

Somehow, I managed to limit my movements in the city to the safe places: the Baroque hall at the Klementinum library, the university and a few other places on the same route. When a Sudanese student was killed in 1997 in a racially motivated attack, everyone panicked. The student community grew vigilant and many reacted.

All this time I had been so careful to try to not be mistaken for a Roma, when, in fact, it didn’t really matter. The realization that this could happen to anyone just meant that I spent more quiet evenings at home.

Then came Sept. 11, 2001, with more horror, more hatred, more destruction and lots of pain. Reading Arabic newspapers in a crowded metro became uncomfortable.

Soon after that, I got involved in human rights issues, which logically got me interested in the country’s Roma issue, xenophobia and hate speech, not to mention the inciting of religious and ethnic hatred.

These days, it’s deemed absolutely natural and socially acceptable to demonstrate on behalf of the monks in Burma or the prisoners of conscience in Cuba. But not many are too keen to demonstrate on behalf of the Romany women victim to forced sterilizations or against the racist derogatory remarks made by our top politicians, such as former Deputy Prime Minister Jiří Čunek, (a topic that would by far exceed the word limit for this piece) or Senator Liana Janáčková, a matter made worse by the fact that Janáčková had been a member of the Senate’s human rights committee.

What’s the result of these attitudes? What do political incorrectness and hate speech in a populist effort to win votes implicate? Take a look at the statistics.

According to research conducted by Amnesty International and the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, the Roma minority in the Czech Republic and Slovakia faces discrimination in access to housing, education, employment, health care and other services, as well as persistent prejudice and hostility.

The European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia found that Romany children were being taught in segregated classes in primary schools and were over-represented in special schools.

Clearly, placing Romany children in special schools for children with mental disabilities simply for being Roma is unsubstantiated and needs to be tackled by better governmental social policies.

The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Slovenia all have a history of placing Romany children in special schools. This exclusion starts with primary school and results in the further marginalization of the Roma community. In many cases, it is the primary factor for the ghettoizing process.

This summer, I was stunned to read a number of racist comments directed toward me, after my comments about anti-Roma sentiments appeared on a popular Czech server in an online chat.

What could trigger such an avalanche of hate speech from people comfortable in the virtual feeling of safety behind a monitor — but with traceable IP addresses?

Three things: I was photographed, I have a foreign name and, behold, I had the audacity to actually comment on anti-Roma sentiments and address specific incidents when comments made by our public figures have gone unpunished.

Today, I’m happy to say that I have shed my fear. I’m older now and choose the clothes in which I feel good. In the summer, I don’t shy away from hoop earrings. After that online chat incident, when many had a difficult time comprehending that I was Czech-Palestinian and some mistook me for a Roma, I realized that I have stopped going to great lengths to refute such claims or suspicions.

I have hope in the future that civil society has identified the problem. It is up to us to help our politicians and government address and solve it. After all, history has taught us that nothing lasts forever. As the Czech and Chinese proverbs say, hope dies last.

— The author heads the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at the Metropolitan University Prague, is a human rights activist and a member of the board of directors at Amnesty International Czech Republic.

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