Has Europe Found the Enemy?

The division between the rich and the poor becomes an abyss… Consumerism consumes all questioning…Consequently people lose their selfhood, their sense of identity, and then locate and find an enemy in order to define themselves. The enemy - whatever their ethnic or religious nomination - is always found among the poor. 

John Berger, Bento's Sketchbook

Bury me standing…

is the title of a book by Isabel Fonseca written about twenty five years ago. It describes the life of the Roma people living in many areas of Europe. It is a stark read about a stateless people who for centuries have been despised, degraded, maltreated and marginalised. About twelve million Roma live in edge cities and towns of the European Union. They have been victims of slavery, segregation, ghettoisation, forced integration and even sterilisation. During the Second World War the Nazis exterminated more than half a million in concentration camps and gas chambers. Yet, their plight has never become centre stage because it was not taken up by mainstream politics and media. They only make headlines when expelled from one or other member state of the European Union. Indeed, the reporting of recent incidents by some sections of the media would indicate little concern for past horrors committed against them and less concern for their present situation. With nobody to champion their plight they have remained invisible, like African slaves during slavery, native populations in occupied countries during colonialism, and travelling people in Ireland in the past. 

The "discovery" of a blond and blue-eyed child in a Roma community in Greece in the past week started a witch hunt that reached Ireland. Children who looked different from their parents were taken into custody by the police and health authorities on the assumption of being different-looking from their parents. While the authorities may have been following the letter of the law and childcare procedures there seemed to be a lack of native wit and understanding about the survival culture of those who are poor, look different and on the margins of society. 

What were the comments of people on seeing an Amer-African child playing in a dusty, suburban street of an Asian city in the nineteen seventies? Surely, he would be seen as "out of place". Nevertheless, if the neighbours on the street saw people apprehending him because he looked "out of place" they would have sought an explanation. Is the blond and blue-eyed child in the hills of Jamaica being cared for by her black grandmother also "out of place" if one didn’t know where her forebears came from? What evidence other than ethnic difference is needed in order to take a child from its minders? Are the foreign children adopted by Irish parents also "out of place"?

Many ethnic groups in Europe over the centuries have been, and some still are, where the Roma are today. The dominant powers created their enemies. Enemies were and still are those who are different be that of race, colour, creed, belief, culture, ethnicity or just poor and unemployed. The enemy has become a staple of European identity. The tendency is to define national identity by the dislike of others rather than what we like about ourselves. Having used such criteria the tendency then is to demonise, pushing them onto margins of invisibility while feeding the public mind-set with images of fear creating an atmosphere of xenophobia and racism.

The images spun about the Roma and poor people in general are negative similar to those used in colonial times in the suppression of native people. Sadly, Europeans have re-imported to Europe the worst characteristics that they perpetrated against natives in colonial times. The attempted extermination of the Jewish people, Roma and others is evidence of the ethnic cleansing committed abroad against native peoples from Columbus onwards. So, racist attacks and the recent incidents committed against the Roma should surprise nobody.

Marginalised people are not savages as those who were different in the past were described. These people were described as bereft of any semblance of good nature. They were described as "savages" that needed to be "civilised." A good example of this is the letter of a certain Rev. Edward Hudson to Lord Charlemont in 1798 about his plans to civilise the Irish.

Rev. Hudson wrote, "I hope to make our savages happy against their will, by establishing trade and industry among them," adding with considerable distaste, that many "traces of the savage life" could still be detected in the population…the same laziness and improvidence, the same unrelenting ferocity in their combats, the same love of intoxication, the same hereditary animosities, handed down from generation to generation." (Richard Gott, Britain's Empire)

In describing those who are different in such derogatory language one robs them of good nature, love, nurturing and enterprise. Once dehumanised it is easy to demonise them. However, oppressed people in these situations nurture dignity, grasp at hope like a weed competing with concrete, persevere without cynicism or pessimism.

They are the informal economy, in most instances living in squalor performing jobs that the luxury section of society despises. Poverty and discrimination have been implanted in their DNA. But, given all that, they have little difficulty in reaching out to others with hospitality in similar situations. They are as suspicious of bureaucracy as they are of criminal gangs that have shaken them down over centuries. So why should they approach or register in such offices that they suspect are acting against them? In their lives a tendency of silence is a protective crust. Informal relationships are common within marginalised communities. Often parents share their children with grandparents or childless family members. 

European history is pock-marked with horror as a result of the way it treated minorities and those living on the edge. Can a new Europe offer the Roma and those on the fringes equality of access to basic human protections? How can Europeans protect the strongest if they fail the weakest?

 …because I have always been on my knees. - Roma proverb