April 8 is called Worldwide Romani Day, marking Romani communities’ survival and resistance by centuries of persecution. The date commemorates a historic assembly of activists in 1971 exterior London. They adopted a Romani anthem, generally known as “Gelem, Gelem,” and the Romani flag depicting a inexperienced area, a blue sky and a crimson wheel on the heart, to create a way of nationhood for the Roma folks, scattered internationally.
For Romani folks resembling myself, the xenophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric of current years in Europe and the USA is nothing new. Our story is that of so many migrants and oppressed peoples and communities of colour. Worldwide Romani Day acknowledges the methods through which we make lives, construct worlds, resist — for ourselves and for everybody — inside these histories of marginalization and exclusion. On Saturday, we have a good time that coming collectively, but in addition the methods through which our particular person identities — and notions of what it means to be Romani right this moment — can evolve.
Romani persons are Europe’s largest ethnic minority. We’re descendants of individuals who moved from the Indian subcontinent to Europe a millennium in the past. There are an estimated 10 million to 12 million Roma in Europe, with thousands and thousands extra making up Romani diasporas in North America, South America, Australia, Africa and Asia. Romani migrants have had a presence in the USA because the colonial period. Bigger waves of immigration started within the 1860s, from England, Jap and Southern Europe, and continued into the twentieth century.
Romani communities have contributed to European tradition, from music and dance to medication and horse-breeding. Regardless of this lengthy presence, Romani teams have been subjected to centuries of slavery, pogroms, segregation, violence and genocide. In the course of the Holocaust, tons of of hundreds of Romani folks have been victims of genocide, murdered by the Nazis and their allies. Some international locations have additionally enforced assimilation of Roma, together with restrictions on utilizing the Romani language. Over the previous 20 years, Romani folks have confronted racially motivated violence, discrimination, college segregation, evictions and expulsions in place resembling Romania, Eire, Turkey, Hungary, Macedonia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, France, Greece and now in Ukraine.
We have a good time April 8, 1971, as a defining second of standing up and talking out. It’s half of a bigger activist historical past the place Romani folks advocated for rights and claimed a Romani identification that was transnational, primarily based on shared Indian origins, language and tradition. This coming collectively of Romani and non-Romani activists in protection of rights was a declare to belonging, a recognition of ethnicity, of peoplehood and half of a bigger wave of actions for civil rights and nationwide liberation that stretched throughout the globe.
The legacies of these activists’ assembly additionally embody using the phrases Romani and Roma to call ourselves, our folks, instead of the G-word, the exonym that had outlined us for thus lengthy, and the acknowledgment that we share a typical language, Romanes or Romani chib, and a typical tradition. These components — the anthem, the flag, the understanding of ourselves as a folks — are additionally a part of the making of a nationwide narrative encompassing who we’re, our shared historical past and our shared future.
And but, my very own Romani identification is one that’s constructed on variety. Folks can — and may — determine as Romani, as considered one of us, with out negating the a number of methods we will be Romani: with the multiplicity of our language practices, cultural formations, gender and sexual identities, religions and sophistication.
I’m a feminist, not a nationalist. I really like the “Gelem, Gelem” anthem and have taught it to my daughters. The flag is gorgeous. I grew up talking a Romani dialect. I consider that Romani persons are a transnational minority who share a typical historical past and a typical future. However I additionally know that when any group constructs its personal nationalism and nationwide myths, these are constructed on patriarchy, on sustaining energy and hierarchy, on erasing variety and effacing distinction.
Our Romaniness — our romanipe — contains the robust neighborhood of girls who raised me; it contains my daughters, cousins, sisters and my ancestors who proceed to maintain me. It contains varied accountings and tales about who we’re. Whether or not we’re girls, queer, poor, disabled, we’re nonetheless Romani. We should always refuse exclusion and embrace the altering, makeshift and contingent methods of being Romani.
For this reason my celebration is about coming collectively to have a good time our neighborhood, stunning cultural practices, language, sense of solidarity — of yekipe —the love that has sustained us all through.
On April 8, 1971, Romani and non-Romani activists got here collectively in a makeshift, contingent means, in a boarding college exterior London. They got here collectively as a result of the prepare dinner on the boarding college was a Welsh Romani man who satisfied the headmaster to open its doorways to a gaggle of Romani folks from throughout Europe.
That coming collectively was in remembrance of these we had misplaced within the Holocaust; in mourning for the group of kids who had simply died in Birmingham, in central England, after their caravan had been set on fireplace in an act of racist violence; and in protest for our houses that had been taken away, for our youngsters who had been denied education, for our historical past that had been suppressed and for our folks, whose lives had been marginalized and threatened.
There may be nonetheless a lot work to be finished to advertise Romani rights, to show Romani historical past and to make sure that Roma are accorded primary human rights. Far too little has modified. Folks nonetheless must struggle for a voice, a spot. We proceed to make a house within the U.S., in Europe, globally, collectively and alongside different marginalized communities.
For us, our survival is proof of our energy, our historical past, our future. Survival is resistance, and resistance is survival.
Ethel Brooks is a professor of girls’s, gender, and sexuality research and sociology at Rutgers College, New Brunswick.
