Encountering the Ethnic Stereotypes about the Romanies
Encountering the Ethnic Stereotypes about the Romanies

Summary/Abstract: The author has put forward the hypothesis that positive and negative stereotypes and prejudices are the very core of ethnocentrism. His main idea is that the ethnic stereotypes are a form of symbolic or cultural segregation. Their better understanding is one of the necessary presumptions for multiethnic and intercultural society. The Romanies are "the European pariahs" and "our Blacks"; there are many very different stereotypes and strong prejudices against them that, regarding the historical continuity as well as their territorial spreading, range from extremely negative to extremely positive ones. The author considers the most characteristic of them, in both the diachronic and the synchronic perspective. Their investigation explains in an interesting way the relations between Them and Us. Some recent studies have shown that the Romanies are most frequently described as gifted for music, vigorous, hospitable (positive heterostereotypes) as well as as noisy, quarrelsome, dirty, lazy (negative heterostereotypes). The positive Romany autostereotypes imply that they are gifted for music, hospitable, religiously and ethnically tolerant. Such tolerance is extremely important for multiculturalism. Many stereotypes are not enough empirically based. As for the Romanies that we personally know, there are no negative stereotypes. One environmental action in the Novi Sad area has shown that it is not the Romanies who are dirty but their living conditions. All the Romanies are not poor; rather, there are rich Romanies, even the richest in the settlement, but the majority of them have impoverished more than others (as is the case of Romania).

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