Racist tropes about Romani people persist even in supposedly progressive places like Canada—and these tropes must be fought because they pose real dangers to people, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Margareta Matache.
In a Feb. 22 opinion piece in Al Jazeera, Matache, lecturer on social and behavioral sciences, said that myths persist about Romani criminality. She noted that this myth was used during the Holocaust to justify genocidal violence against the Romani people.
Matache described a study she conducted with colleagues from Harvard’s FXB Center for Health & Human Rights and the Canadian Romani Alliance that examined daily indignities faced by Romani people in Canada. The study found that Romani people in the Greater Toronto-Hamilton area—home to Canada’s largest Romani community—experience racist actions such as insults, jokes, or questions based on stereotypes. Such day-to-day stings “not only irritate and hurt but also wound one’s self-worth and wellbeing,” Matache wrote.
Racist tropes about criminality and other negative attributes can lead to other harms, Matache added, such as the normalization of state and non-state violence against Romani people.
“It is crucial for our global community to stop weaponizing racist tropes and slurs and using ethno-racial insults or jokes against Romani people and racialized groups,” Matache wrote. “Allowing such harmful narratives to persist poses actual risks for real people.”
Read Matache’s opinion piece in Al Jazeera: Allowing racist tropes about Romani people to persist is dangerous
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