I am mixed, my mom is Roma my dad was not. And, to be honest, being Roma sucks. There isn’t a month to celebrate. There are no scholarships. I have never felt represented in TV shows. Most Americans don’t even know they hold racist beliefs against us. My family gas lights itself because of justifiable fear. Europe is unsafe. On top of that there isn’t even a festival anywhere near me where I am able to celebrate my heritage and culture without fear.
It’s not like other ethnic groups don’t have stuggles, I am not comparing, it is just people assume it is fun to be Roma. They assume some of the mystical myths are true and I attend a wizard school or something. They don’t know about the generational truma, the epigenetic disorders or the institutional racism. They think it is a magic fairy tale.
I don’t benefit by being Roma. Fighting for Roma Rights puts me at risk. If I speak out I risk my reputation, my creditablity and my safety. If I hide, like my family, I hide who I am. I hide history. I turn a blind eye to injustice. There is no winning.
My family denies our heritage and does their best to hide it. My family members are not thieves, we are not fortune tellers, we are not con artists, therefore they feel they can’t be “Gypsy.” They want nothing to do with the stereotypes. They want everyone to know we are like everyone else, therefore we are white. That’s what they think we need to tell people. I was not allowed to dress in double braids with a center part. I was told not to wear long skirts in public. I was told don’t get a tan. I was told no hoop earrings. Anything that was associated with our culture was expressly off limits. Our traditions were taught to us behind closed doors.
Growing up I asked about our heritage. They told me we are “dark german.” We are the German’s with dark hair, olive undertones, big noses, and wide faces. We are the Germans who are handyman or “tinkers.” We are the people who weave baskets, make marionettes and create toys. My “german” ancestors lived in caravans.
This was the way they kept us safe. For decades there was a police training course villifying us. The FBI has a list of us. There was an LA gas station banning us just a few months ago. This isn’t ancient history, this is now.
I don’t even think my great grandparents even told my grandparents much. My grandpa’s father told my grandpa and his siblings they were American. They spoke English and farmed like good Americans.
We don’t pass as typical germans. When my mom was born the hospital assumed she was a native. Growing up no one looked like my mom, my grandpa or my grandma. Our traditions didn’t fit with white German culture. I have been told I look “exotic” my whole life. I have been asked where am I really from. I look like Disney villians. But than again, some people also tell me that I just “look white.” People like to guess my ancestry, or sometimes just assume. My favorite was a taxi cab driver asking me if I was Irish and Israeli.
In elementary school I knew something was fishy when we had a heritage week at school. I found pictures in the school library of Germany and German people. None of the people in the photos looked like me, no one looked like anyone in my family. The food they talked about wasn’t familiar. The clothes were not familiar. The traditions were not familiar.
The tragic twist was when I learned we are German. Sinti are German Roma. When you live in a place for centuries it becomes part of you. And in the centuries Roma were in Germany there was some mixing. Germany is my family’s homeland.
Racism and genocide drove us away from our homeland. Those who remained died, they were gunned down by the Nazis. The survivors were forced into poverty. My family came to the US with other Roma before the genocide. They hid with the white Germans. They became German, not Sinti.
I didn’t know that as a child. I learned the word Roma from an article on Roma in the US. It all made sense. My family made sense. The more I learned, the more I connected to other Roma the more I understood about myself. Our traditions made sense. I felt more whole.
I didn’t learn about the lived experience in a library. I really learned about being Roma when I lived in Western Europe. I was a young adult, and despite all the times I was asked “what I was,” or told I looked “exotic,” I assumed I was white. That my pale skin would mean that’s what I was. I didn’t think about my olive undertones, or how I tan easily. I didn’t think about my dark curly hair or my dark eyes. And I didn’t realize how wide my cheekbones were, or the general shape of my face and head.
I didn’t know that many of them knew I was Roma by looking at my face. I didn’t always realize the behavior directed at me was racist either.
I went to a job interview once where they hid their staples or anything that wasn’t tied down when they saw me. The ladies hid their purses and valuables. When I went into a nicer store by myself (without a local European friend) my bags where often checked when no one else’s were.
Once at a grocery store there was a lady wearing a traditional head scarf for a different ethnicity that was acting strange and the cashier checked her bag. The cashier apologeticly used me as an example of how it was the woman’s behavior not her ethnicity as to why she checked her.
I was shouted at and called racist german and French slurs I didnt understand by men multiple times. An older gentleman said the young woman who robbed his house was like me, only from Romania.
After a job interview the receptionist called me because she had whistle-blown because I was the ideal candidate but they didn’t hire me and that it was illegal, she wasn’t going to tolerate prejudice. I didn’t understand at the time.
When my mom came to visit me, we found empty restaurants who told us they were full, yet sat other American tourists right after we walked away.
And then a European friend let me know, yes, many people did notice that I was part Roma. After I moved back it took me a while to process that.
I did dna tests on my family members. The different companies give wildly different results. Some show larger bits of South Asian DNA, Persian DNA, Middle Eastern DNA and DNA from Turkey, some show smaller amounts. They also show DNA from every corner of Europe. The only reasonable interpretation is that we are Roma.
But my family denies it. I don’t speak the language. My family stopped living in caravans before I was born although my grandfather still remembers some members of his family living in Vardos. I don’t have a good solid claim on my own ethnicity. I experienced racism first hand, yet I can’t publicly speak to that experience. I am not Roma enough for some.
Don’t get me wrong, there are advantages to passing as white, and I am part white, but I am also a minority. I have also experienced racism because I am Roma. And that sucks. That is complex and messy. That isn’t something you see on your TV.
-Celeste West is of mixed Romani heritage and holds degrees in Anthropology and Design.
American Gypsy Trúpa 