Are Czechs afraid of purple?

16. 7. 2010 / Fabiano Golgo

But what makes his words alarming are warnings such as "If we allow the mixing of different ethnic groups, this will naturally produce problems such as crime and social deprivation. Society will have to be ready to tackle these problems."

As if all kids of mixed African and Czech couples will end up poor and criminal...

The reality is exactly the opposite: immigrant groups in Czech Republic, from the Vietnamese up to the Kenyans or Russians have actually prospered in comparison with a decade ago and have very often a much higher economic level than their Czech neighbors.

Unlike the widespread myth, there are only a couple of hundred Africans working in the shadowy business around cabarets, casinos and drugs in the center of Prague. Just that there are thousands of them living here, which means they are embedded within society's normal job structures, that is why it is not uncommon to have a black person in cashier at the supermarket or even, as my boyfriend found out, when he went for a routine health control check up in Prague, he was treated by a doctor from Africa, but who has lived and studied here for a long time. Is Mr Kapitán afraid that doctor's son will need state support or will become a gangster? How narrow minded for a man of his position...

Especially the African immigrants have been mixing with local Czechs and producing mulattoes whose mother tongue and only cultural background is Czech. And they are not suffering discrimination in school. The new generation of Czech kids have already grown up in a globalized mindset, they feel friends with people from all over the world within their Facebook profiles, unlike their parents, who discovered the world beyond Bulgaria and Croatia as adults, they have experienced travelling as a natural and easy thing to do. I have interviewed numerous kids from immigrant minorities and unlike in the 1990s, the new teenagers actually think their black or Asian classmates are hip. And the young Czech girls are more than often interested in having someone spicier than the typical local phlegmatic and crying baby type for a boyfriend...

So there is no threat that in a decade or so, when it will be common to see more than Tomio Okamura, Leila Abbasová or Ray Koranteng as Czech-speaking citizens of other skin color. What Czechs have a difficulty with are actual foreigners - of the type who don't understand well the language and don't integrate. Not with people who speak Czech as their native language and have Czech culture as their upbringing.

It is not the looks that bothers Czechs, but the behavior. Thus Gypsies are rejected for their diametrically different set of values and ways, plus even the different use of the language. For all that, it doesn't matter how many hundreds of years they know no other land as their own, they are still perceived as belonging elsewhere.

Youngsters with mixed racial backgrounds have been successful with the mainstream public in shows like Česko hledá Superstar or as reporters in the news, without any rejection from the viewers, which is also a sign that it is not the physical features that provoke discrimination, but a non-Czech behavior.

Purple skin certainly does not scare Czechs, as far as those who have it can pronounce "ř" without an accent.

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