Diary of a Romanian Racist in Transition. Episode 6
(this is a translation from Romanian, partially with AI support)
In 2018, Robin DiAngelo published White Fragility, a book I read “in spite myself.” I was reading and could feel my racist core reacting, shouting at me at certain moments: “That’s not true! We’re not like that! She’s exaggerating!” My good fortune was that I had heard my heroine, Dr. Brené Brown, say that she knows a book is good and that she needs to read it when she feels like throwing it against the wall. Robin DiAngelo touches many wounds and holds up a mirror in which we can only heal if we dare to look. Her book, along with Nova Reid’s The Good Ally, brings up the idea that we, white people, have not really climbed down from the white horse we ourselves placed us on.
If we pay attention, like truly pay attention, and if we are honest, like truly honest, we will feel within ourselves, in that place only we can access inside, a sensation of being “above” when we engage in actions related to antiracism or inclusion. This is the trap. This is where we must stop, look directly at that point within us, and ask: what does this truly mean about me?
Nova Reid recounts in her book how, after the killing of George Floyd, she was flooded with messages, calls, and questions, pressured to speak about things that deeply hurt her. As a racist by upbringing, I know what this looks like from the other side: we feel “enlightened,” eager to understand what lies behind racism, behind ideas that (at least on the surface) we claim to want to understand about people of color, about those who are different. But we do not pause for a moment to consider that, by asking them to tell us, we are asking them to return to trauma, to testify to experiences that bring pain, shame, marginalization, discrimination. Why would we want to reopen their wounds when today we can learn from countless available sources?
To ask a Roma person about slavery, to try to learn from them why “majority” people have certain sayings, to ask them whether they prefer to be called Roma or Gypsy, is to provoke the pain of “a thousand cuts.”
Imagine you experienced a traumatic event. Perhaps someone assaulted you on the street or in the stairwell of your building. Would you want to recount that event dozens of times? Would it not be as if you were reliving it each time?
Dr. Gabor Maté speaks about Trauma with a capital T and trauma with a lowercase t to distinguish between events that affect us generationally and those that occur in daily life but also leave their mark. In the case of the Roma population in Romania, we are speaking of multiple Traumas with a capital-T: five hundred years of slavery, the Samudaripen (the Roma Holocaust), deportations, to name just a few, and thousands of daily traumas with a lowercase t, in the ways they are marginalized, viewed, subjected to dehumanization and racism. Dr. Maté explains very clearly that capital-T Trauma remains in the body as long as it is not healed. In a situation where there are no clear reparations for the years of slavery, where voices still claim that the Roma Holocaust did not happen because those in the camps were there for being criminals, thieves, as long as there are no acts, artifacts, or meaningful attempts at repair, capital-T Trauma remains, sinks deeper, and hurts more and more. Why would we want to ask someone carrying such a wound how it feels to have it?
Of course, it is commendable to want to learn. And since the spring holidays are approaching, here are a few resources:
Podcast:
Obiceiul Pământului (in Romanian)
Museum:
The Virtual Museum of Roma Culture (also mostly in Romanian but there are videos and images that speak)
Book – in English:
The Roma: A Travelling History — Dr. Madeleine Potter
Theatre and Events (hopefully YouTube can help with translations):
Giuvlipen
The Great Shame
Connect 