CZECKING FROM ABROAD

Are Czechs racists towards the Roma people?

9. 3. 2010 / Fabiano Golgo

◄ Jiří Beer, 48, biologist in Toronto: "No, Gypsies are discriminated everywhere, you should see the way British newspapers write about them! Canadians are very politically correct, so we don't read the same attacks and vulgar names, but even though this nation is so tolerant towards foreigners, Gypsies are still looked at as petty criminals, as dangerous and dirty..."

► Ivana Marchlíková, 47, sociologist in Brussels: "We have a problem with accepting the free thinking Roma behavior, seeing them less for their race, more for their way of life, which Czechs find foreign. We tend to accept the Roma person who acts according to a specific set of norms we consider European, but we still have a long way to go until we learn that even their behavior is a reflection and reaction to ours."

◄ Pavel Novotný, 27, IT programmer in Australia: "We are not racist, Gypsies feed the image we have of them. It is difficult to not look at a whole race, I mean nation, I mean that part of our population that seems to be so different not only from us, but from what we understand as European. I admit that many Gypsies suffer for what they didn't do, for what some -- or many -- of their peers did, or do, but the reality is that the ball is on their side of the field, it is up to them to kick it, to show us that they wanna be part of our civilized society. Until then, we Czechs will be labeled racists".

Karolina Fuchsová, 28, student in San Diego : "We need more Gypsies in the media! What we need to do is what Americans did: put at least one Roma person in each soap opera, each TV series and news broadcasts. And one to present children's shows. If we will be used to their culture from a young age, we will not later see them as different... We will understand that being different is normal. What a paradox, no? It is normal if we are used to it. But when all we know and hear about Gypsies is when a crime happens or some relative says, without any worry of sounding racists, some horrible thing about them, as if they were all one and the same..."

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