Diary of a Romanian Racist in Transition. Episode 1
(this is a translation from Romanian, partially with AI support)
“How I have transformed!” “I know so much now!” “How far I’ve come!”
This was going through my mind a few months ago, reading a book I had discovered on LinkedIn and which, for one reason or another (nothing is accidental, right?), I had immediately ordered. The book is called A Good Ally and it is written by Nova Reid. It is more than a collection of information about racism, white fragility, or “microaggressions.” It is a workshop-in-a-book meant to help us distinguish between pretending to be an ally (in supporting a minority) and truly being one.
It wasn’t the first book I had read about racism. During the pandemic, like many others, I first watched with curiosity and then with growing indignation the live killing of George Floyd. Perhaps like many of us, it was the first time I wondered: what’s the deal with this racism thing? (Between us racists, that very question is often the first sign that you live in privilege: if you haven’t had to confront racism, it means you belong to the “majority race.”)
Through Ibram X. Kendi, Ruchika T. Malhotra, Tarana Burke, Dr. Brené Brown, Glennon Doyle, Amanda Doyle & Abby Wambach, Elif Shafak, Ocean Vuong, and many, many others, I came to understand that yes, I am racist. And in full acceptance of this part of my identity, I took my first step toward antiracism.
At the foundation of everything I have built since then (built, dismantled, and rebuilt) stands the definition of antiracism given by Ibram X. Kendi in his book How to Be an Antiracist:
“The opposite of ‘racist’ isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘antiracist.’ What’s the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racist hierarchy or racial equality. One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people (a racist perspective) or locates the roots of problems in power and policies (an antiracist perspective). One either allows racial inequities to persist or confronts them. There is no safe space of ‘not racist.’”
So let me begin at the beginning. I am Cătălina, and I am a racist. I am also in transition toward antiracism. It’s not the first time I’ve said these words about myself and, generally, those who hear me rush to contradict me: What? You? Don’t say such things about yourself! I know they mean well, but I also know that the truth always sets us free: the moment I understood, beyond any doubt, that I am racist (because I was born, raised, and educated in a racist country and systems that perpetuated racism), only then could I begin to take real steps toward antiracism.
And I would love to say that this happened while I was reading all those authors mentioned above. That period was useful, too. As long as I can remember, I tend to run. Into thoughts, into fairy tales, into stories I tell myself, into daydreams. In the last decade of my almost five decades on this earth, I have run into reading. My better half has been telling me for years that I run where it doesn’t help because “I read from foreigners.” What do they have to do with what’s happening here, she says. And although I understood her point, my calling was there, often across the ocean, where the standard in personal development is set for me and where I felt I belonged (at least mentally) more than in Romania.
And I learned a lot. A LOT. I built a foundation of thinking that carried me from the shame of being intrinsically a racist and judging from privilege by default, into transformative vulnerability through the work and talks of Dr. Brené Brown. I navigated completely unknown worlds in Elif Shafak’s books. I resonated with Glennon Doyle and her wife, champion Abby Wambach, when they went to the edges of the world to bring voices forward and show us we can do hard things. And it took trying emigration to understand that, in my soul, I am Romanian.
It is not accidental that only a few months after returning home from a difficult and deeply instructive relocation to Denmark, finding myself in front of an English-language book teaching me about racism — yet still not fully recognizing myself in its spirit (even wondering why I kept reading it) — from all this distillation of years and years emerged a question that opened a new world of learning, pain, and the unknown.
It all began in a moment of great personal pride: I was reading Nova Reid and going through her questions and exercises meant to help white people overcome fragility and become true allies to Black people, oppressed and marginalized for centuries — and I felt… superior. Elevated. How much I know! Look, I’m not racist anymore! Done. Finished!
The universe has always been ready to poke me. And at that very moment, it sent me a question: Listen, but what if instead of Black people (with whom you’ve clearly resolved everything… at least theoretically), what if you thought about… gypsies? (This is the only time you will find this word written in a text created by me, unless quoted; there is no point in writing “Roma” now — I wasn’t thinking that way at the time.)
That moment was like a portal. I fell through a vortex back in time, into my childhood, and all those “innocent sayings” started ringing in my head:
If you’re not good, I’ll give you to the gypsies!
Why are you drowning like a gypsy at the shore!
Let’s not “gypsy-fight”!
Hey, what a gypsy you are! (meaning dirty, a cheater)
What is this gypsy mess here! (as if dirt was a Roma invention)
A Gypsy is always a Gypsy! (meaning a trickster)
I would be lying if I said I immediately felt called to learn more. That shame of ignorance wrapped around me and I threw myself into a crusade. Not at all. As in many other moments in my life that proved to be turning points, curiosity was the key. I asked artificial intelligence what resources existed about Roma people. And the rest… is history.
This post is a translation from my only piece of writing in Romanian on this blog. I wrote it intentionally in Romanian first. Because I hope it will be read especially by my fellow Romanians. I do not intend to change the world with a blog. I intend to cast different bait in the hope that it will catch somewhere and that each of us will change a little of our own world. We deceive ourselves if we think things change from the top down. Never. This is a trap we often indulge in so we don’t have to act: What’s the point? What can I, one person, do? What difference can I make?
You, one person, can change yourself. You can open your mind with curiosity, you can learn, you can bring new information into it and let it digest in your mind and, especially, in your soul. You can let it transform you.
I started with the first episode of Obiceiul Pământului, an exceptional podcast produced by DoR. I encourage you to start there – it is unfortunately only in Romanian. But the recent work of Dr. Magda Matache is in English, published at Routlege.
As Margaret Mead said: “Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
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