Throwback Thursday: Bridging the Past to the Present to Combat Discrimination & Hate Speech

Old Town Market Place, Warsaw

by Michael Williams, HIA Fellow

Day 1: I arrive down the aged, stone streets to our group hostel in Warsaw’s captivatingly beautiful Old Town. After exploring what will be our home for the next month, some of my American compatriots and I journey down the maze of these same winding streets of revived medieval architectural splendor to the core of the neighborhood – Old Town Square. Passing through this magnetic public space that attracts Poles and tourists from far lands alike to its effortlessly elegant gathering center, my premature, self-guided tour of Warsaw is punctuated by a presumably poor young boy in dirty and worn clothing who stops me to ask for money. Immediately, his unexpected and persistent begging for money sharply disrupts my utopian exploration of my first time on the European continent, forcing me to awaken to a more holistic, “down-to-earth” reality of my surroundings. This moment shapes my first encounter with one of the Roma people of Poland and part of the context influencing discourse around their presence, perception, and discrimination in Poland and all of Europe.

In honor of HIA Polska’s focus on social media activism to counteract hate speech, I yield to the ever-popular weekly social media posting theme of Throwback Thursday (typically denoted on social media content by the hashtag “#TBT”) in which active participants post content of an occurrence from the past. The picture and description above set the tone for my #TBT pick this week. While only in the first week of our program, our discussions this Thursday on “the Other” – in terms of LGBTQ, Romani, and immigrant populations in Poland – sparked reflection on the striking moment I experienced with the little boy upon my first day in Warsaw. Noting his darker, caramel-colored skin that stood out amongst the white Poles that surrounded me in the square, as well as his clearly impoverished status, it was an educated guess that led me to identify him as member of the Roma ethnic minority – an assumption that my Polish comrades confirmed as likely true.

Dr. Małgorzata Kołaczek; Association of Roma in Poland

In between our conversations today with guest speakers on the state of LGBTQ and immigrant populations in Poland, our group gained further understanding on the condition of the marginalized Roma citizens through dialogue with Dr. Małgorzata Kołaczek of the Association of Roma in Poland. The itinerant Roma, or Romani, people (sometimes known by the antiquated and politically incorrect term of “Gypsies”) have possessed a strong European presence ever since their migration from northern India to several parts of the continent nearly 1,000 years ago. Now about 10-12 million people in size and predominantly residing in Eastern European nations and Spain, they comprise a small sector of the Polish citizenry having arrived and settled in Poland between the 15^th and 20^th centuries and with about 30,000-50,000 inhabitants currently residing here.

As we HIA fellows bridge the past to the present in our research and discourse this month, we are informed of how the history of this small, foreign migrant community is one full of strife as much it is full of its rich culture. Not only have the Romani consistently experienced struggle and discrimination with integrating into the respective societies in which they have settled in, they were victims of persecution during the Holocaust and World War II – in which 500,000-1.5 million of them were murdered on the basis of racial and ethnic inferiority that similarly led to the plight of Jews. And today, Roma people are still sometimes considered the “scapegoats” of Polish societal problems or the victims of discrimination and hate crimes as one of the most targeted groups for hate speech and even physically violent attacks. The challenge of integration that is often met with a lack of cultural competency and acceptance in their European host countries leads to ignorance and poor misconceptions that fuel negative stereotypes and prejudice – the foundation for fear of the “Other” and a mindset of hate. Their high unemployment rates and traditionally migrant nature encourages the conflation of Roma culture with a culture of poverty; they are mostly portrayed in the media and understood in society as impoverished, manipulative, thieving, the perpetrator of micro-aggressions, and thus, undeserving of full respect and Polish citizenship.

Such a reality incites many pressing questions essential to our fellowship’s aim of uncovering the root of hate speech and ways to combat it: Are the Roma positive, active members of Polish society? In what ways have interpersonal interactions or media portrayals of the Romani been mere exercises of freedom of speech or accurate depictions based off of fulfilled stereotypes? To what extent can social media activism assist a group that remains to be exclusive and still lacking full integration into a nation-state that is over 94% ethnically white Polish and seemingly moving beyond issues of race left behind in the ruins of a Holocaust past?

Warsaw Old Town

Ultimately, we as fellows cannot attempt to answer questions for which there is no true arbiter of positive social and cultural performance in a society; nor can we responsibly and ethically make judgments, conclusions, or recommendations for a people or culture in which none of us are part of. What we can do is continue to approach our learning, discourse, and eventual social media activism projects as multi-partial and fairly as possible by first seeking understanding for the case of the minority, which is often neglected. As we bridge theory to practice, the universal to the local and the past to the present, we must look or “throwback” to history to inform the context in which we approach the forms of hate and discrimination spewed towards LGBTQ, Roma, and migrants in today’s social reality, rather than taking these occurrences at face value. It means that I do not judge my encounter with the poor Roma boy on my first day as the fulfillment of a stereotype that serves to justify the slander directed towards his ethnic group; but instead, I allow my perception to be colored with as comprehensive and holistic representations of a people as possible to combat the ignorance that too often leads to hate. For the sake of equality and justice, this means addressing hate speech from an informed and responsible position that centers the dialogue on those who the growing phenomenon harms the most.