Jozef Varga
The author has taken up a difficult task of describing at this site the touchy topic of mutual relations between the white majority and Gypsy minority in Slovakia, in situation when even the most justified criticism of the minority is doomed to be accused of racism and prosecuted. The borderline between truth and demagogy is namely rather thin and such a risk cannot be excluded.
The author considers any form of racism a violation of the most fundamental human rights and decisively rejects it. On the other hand he is noticing that accusation of racism is becoming a means of fight of minority against majority, pursuing the goal of obtaining undeserved benefits for the former. This fight finds its parallel in the struggle of Roma political parties and groups for financial funds granted by the European Union. No wonder that under such conditions the members of the majority begin to be afraid of the representatives of the minority, which creates an absurd situation when the majority, supporting by its taxes the minority, is afraid of criticizing the misuse of its money for the purposes to which they were not meant – drinking away of family allowances is only one example to mention. The author is aware that such a situation is unbearable and that it is necessary to disclose publicly the real situation which politicians try to avoid due to personal career reasons using pseudohumanist arguments.
The site consists of the following parts:
Analysis of reproductive behavior of minorities discloses that the minority population grows exponentially whereas the population of majority is stagnant. Simple calculations reveal that this will lead to quick growth of the percentage of minority in the overall population. If this trend will continue unchanged, the present minority will become the majority within next 20-30 years. This fact by itself would not be a cause for major concern if the minority members would not differ significantly from the majority in their social and cultural structure. Unfortunately, the major part of the present day ethnic minority is entirely dependent on the financial help from the state budget to which it is contributing negligible share. If this tendency will not change (I am not saying it will not, I am just afraid of it), this will mean that the tax load of diminishing majority will grow with the only aim: to feed the ethnic minority. Since the way of life of present day minority does not even suggest that it is going to take care of itself, I denote its memebers as parasites, because their mere existence is essentially dependent on the taxes obtained from the majority taxpayers. (The notion parasite should not be understood as abusive, I am using it just as terminus technicus since I was not able to find a better term.) In the following I draw attention to the fact that such situation is not tenable for a long time without the growing tension between the majority and minority and I am sketching my view – maybe too pessimistic – of the possible future conflicts of the type of civil war. I see the main cause of such an outcome in irresponsible reproductive behavior of the present minority which intentionally breeds as many children as possible, since the family allowances, although low, are nevertheless proportional to the number of children. That is why in concluding I am appealing to the government to accept decisive measures which would stop such dangerous reproductive behavior.
The members of the ethnic group in question were for centuries called Gypsies. Only in 1993 they started, by their own decision, to call themselves Roma in their own language. I do not consider changes in the Roma language (as yet not officialy codified) for binding upon Slovaks and therefore I am sticking to the original Slovak name. In this respect I am arguing against the views of the organization "People against racism" and describe my personal experiences with living in the neighborhood of several Gypsy families.
The accusation of racial discrimination is a very serious one and cannot be abused to fight people who require nothing more than indiscriminate and strict observation of generally hold norms of civilised behavior by all its members. That is why I am explaining in detail that the criticism of socially repellent behavior of the majority of Gypsy population does not represent automatically hatred of them and that without the change of critisized behavior one cannot expect any improvement on their living standard, their success at the labor market, nor equal opportunities at finding appropriate employment.
I am not denying that Gypsies are sometimes being subjected to intolerance and I definitely condemn such acts. But Gypsies themselves do not show too much tolerance of the majority population either. Varied forms of their criminality convincingly witness this. They are also spending the money furnished to them from the meagre state budget in the form of social welfare services and family allowances, thoughtlessly and irresponsibly for bying needless consumer products. In this sense they are in fact committing a collective theft: the money, collected from taxpayers, are namely being given to them in good belief that they will be spent to feed, cloth, upbring and educate their children.
But Gypsy politicians either do not express their views concerning mutual interrelations between the "white" majority and Gypsies in a too cautious manner. In 2000, one of them defended mass thefts of potatoes by Gypsies all over Slovakia, by saying that "it is better when they steal than if they would murder !" This strange statement, appearing in newspapers and television broadcasts, had not been officially condemned by anybody in Slovakia – especially not by the organization "People against racism", whose sole preoccupation is to fight intolerance. In my view, this also clearly demonstrates that the majority of the society became used to unacceptable acts and views of Gypsies and is tolerating them. I consider this state of affairs for dangerous. The fight against "racism" cannot be limited only to fight prejudices of "whites" against Gypsies; it has to refer also to prejudices of Gypsies against whites! If this would not be so, we would implicitly state that only whites are those who have prejudices – which would be, however, a lie!
The living standard of Gypsies is mostly extremely poor. But if we ask whose fault is it, we discover that the Gypsies themselves are to be blamed. It all begins by the fact that many of them are illiterate despite compulsory and free eight year school education, since they largely avoid school attendance. It is then not surprising that not too many of them are trained in some craft, even less of them have secondary school education, but the cases of university graduates are extremely rare. No wonder that one cannot expect to find a qualified job without any education (it is presently difficult to find jobs even for university graduates) and there is not, and there will never be, any need for unqualified work. Many Gypsies live in settlements, where they do live in poor cabins. Sure, these huts are really pitiable. We would not live in them, but Gypsies seem to be quite satisfied with them. During 40 years of the Communist rule they were repeatedly settled into newly built appartement houses and they themselves were repeatedly breaking them down. If they really would feel uncomfortable in the huts, why would they do not keep the new flats clean and tidy? The answer is that their standards are different from ours, they feel comfortable in those huts!. If you hear them complaining, the only reason is that they wish to arouse your pity and so beg for some change. Why the rubbish dump at Košice Lunik IX district had to be cleaned by the Secretary of State Dr. J. Čarnogurský and why the Gypsies were watching him with folded arms saying "really, it was the high time to tidy up the dump"? Is the majority population guilty of this state of affairs? Is it breaking windows, doors, flats of Gypsies? And if someone states such facts frankly and publicly, is he nothing else than a racist and is he saying this only because he hates them? Are you not able to find a more natural explanation?
I am forcing myself into seeing the Gypsies with more kindly eyes than they deserve. That is why I have set up a hypothesis that it was the Communist system which is to blame because it had unlearned them to work by giving them lowly paid unnecessary work and thus taught them not to care of their destiny. I am not too much willing to believe in this hypothesis of mine but I am not a racist so that I do not want to believe that Gypsies are lazy and untidy "by nature".
Concluding I try to suggest how to help Gypsies, because the vision of Slovakia in civil war is getting me down. I am not able to suggest miracles, I can suggest only what I can imagine. I know that unless the Gypsies will learn to view their living standard as the result of their own endeavour, they will get nowhere. They will remain forever in misery and they may drive there the whole society with them. That is why I am feeling my responsibility for their fate and that is why I am not silent – which would be easier. But all the reasons are leading me to the persuasion and belief that the very first step to the solution is to stop the population explosion. If this will succeed then everything else will be a child's play because this will disrupt the vitious circle when children are bearing children, which they do not take care of, but they shift the care to the attention of the "state" – namely of the taxpayers. Smaller families will be better adapted to accept help in gaining social and cultural habits. Parents with less children will get used to view their progeny as the object of their interest and ambitions, they will be concerned about their school progress, education – simply about their future. Reduction of family size will create initial conditions for making Gypsies more cultural, will create conditions supporting their interest in their own future. Stopping the exponential growth will help Gypsies to become a cultural minority as any other and I believe that within 20 years after cease of population growth, the situation of Gypsies will be comparable to that of American Blacks after abolition of race segregation.
To illustrate the fact that I am not alone with my views, I am attaching a selection of internet contributions in Part 3 as well as Related links.
Keywords: Gypsy, Gypsies, Roma, demography, exponential growth, birth rate, fertility, racial discrimination, poverty, theft, mendicancy, alcohol, cigarettes, family allowances