"A gypsy is like that" this thought, whether silent or spoken out loud - lies behind thousands of episodes of racism that are always happening to gypsies. ".they were born like that" ".the same thing happened to us"; ".for them it is another matter". Only thinking like this, can many things be justified.
But when we hear such things, we should stop to reflect: this is where discrimination begins.
Gipsy camp, Rome
"They" are not like "us": this is racism; "they" are something else:they are gypsies.
Without exageration, we have all had thoughts like this at least once; the problem is that many think like this every day. Just thinking like this, we can calmly accept things that otherwise would keep us awake at night, would scandalise us or at least make us think twice.
How can we accept that in the sixth richest state in the world dozens of babies die of the cold or are burnt fleeing from the cold?
How live with the idea that many of the places where these babies live are like shanty towns in the third world where they may even be bitten by rats? How can we think it normal for a mother to be separated from her small children, expatriated and sent back home, while her children remain here, with who knows whom?
How can we not ask such questions, knowing that in our midst there is a minority which lives on the average 25 years less than us?
How accept that periodically our means of information and politicians launch campaigns and proclamations against "them" which smack of Nazism?
How not be scandalised by the fact that many gypsy babies still do not attend school, or finish school , by the frequent retort "there is no place for him"?
There is only one explanation: we consider "them" to be different.
But this is not all; one of the most absurd things is that everyone thinks they know them and are able to talk about them and malign them.Readers of newspapers, analysts, sociologists, anthropologists, pediatricians, health worksers, mayors, and those who have had more than they can take, have all had some experience , seen a situation ,"know" and feel able to pass sentence confidently.. One has met a person, another a child, one has observed a situation, another has been robbed, another says"they have told me ."
Result: everyone talks abut them, and judges them with great assurance. It is discomforting: even "good" people, who at times defend them, or do not wish them any "harm", speak of "the gypsies" (in general) starting with a personal minor experience. All experts.
But how is it possible to generalise about gypsies? Inspite of the fact that they constitute a minority, they make up a microcosm - with many different groups, nationalities , religions, habits, trades-.
Gipsy camp, Rome
If we take just Italy, how can we speak indifferently of "gypsies" lumping them all together, whether descended from families settled in the penisula since 1400, or immigrants arrived two weeks ago from Romania (descendents of families that up to 1800 were slaves, and who then passed through the period ofCommunisim of Ceaucesecu to the new "democracy")?
How group together in one category families that live in popular houses, in private houses, in villas, in the fields with light and water, in shanty towns like those of the third world, on river banks or in grottoes?
What about the Rom Korakané Bosnian muslems with the Camminanti Sicilian Catholic Italians?
And how can we fail to distinquish the Kaulia with a dark complexion coming from Irak (via France), from the "pale" Polish gypsies present in Norhern Italy?
Any sensible person can reply no to these questions . But many can still speak of "the gypsies" (including all "the categories" mentioned above and still others). And they do.
Why such irresponsibity? The answer is simple: "they" are different, the gypsies are "a world to themselves".
And just for this reason ,attitudes, words and and kinds of behaviour are tolerated, that even go well beyond the law: torch-light processions against gypsy settlements, road blocks, demonstrations ; the word nomad or gypsy is freely associated with others like thief, shit, rapist, trickster, etc..
Are all the gypsies in Italy good? Certainly not. But, unfortunately , we live in
an age when being good is not much in fashion. So much so that now in it is fashionable to use the expression "do gooder" in a derogatory sense (but did they not teach us that as children that we should be good?) Among gypsies there are certainly some (though not the majority): that have problems with the law (usually theft or receiving stiolen goods, hardly ever crimes against the person). But we could not possibly mean that in the country of the Mafia and widespread organised crime, of deaths from stones thrown from a flyover, of sexual violence inside the home, of kidnappings and crimes ad hoc, that in this country it was possible to pick out one ethnic group that " contains" delinquents.
So, why so such animosity against the gypsies? Surely because there is need of a scapegoat. I cannot put up with orgainsed crime that manages building contracts, nor with corrupt politicians who pocket bribes, so I let fly at the poor gypsies. But not only: the truth is that all this can happen because at bottom we do not consider them equal to us.
In fact, if we were able, just once, to put ourselves in their shoes, to think of their babies as if they were ours, things would change. We should not be able to put up with such an absurdity.
"A world apart" is the title of a film on Apartheid in South Africa which twenty years ago struck a generation of young people born and grown up in a free democratic country like ours. This gave us a shove to commit ourselves to see an end of an absurdity. remote from us. Then I would not have believed that years later that same title should serve to describe an actual situation in Italy.
