Danger! Educated Gypsy extract
Table of Contents
Section One Introduction
1 Djabravoki
2 Family tales
3 Talking back
Section Two Introduction: History and culture
4 The Hungarian student Vályi István and the Indian connection of Romani
5 On Romani origins and identity
6 Gypsies, gad?e, languages and labels
7 Romani religion
Section Three Introduction: Language standardisation and education
8 The standardisation of the Romani language: an overview and some recommendations
9 The schooling of Romani Americans: an overview
Section Four Introduction: Image
10 Duty and beauty, possession and truth: the claim of lexical impoverishment as control
11 George Borrow’s Romani
12 The concocters: creating fake Romani culture
13 Gypsy Mafia, Romani saints: the racial profiling of Romani Americans
14 The ‘gypsy’ stereotype and the sexualisation of Romani women
Section Five Introduction: Holocaust, racism and politics
15 Responses to the Porrajmos (the Romani Holocaust)
16 The consequences of anti-Gypsy racism in Europe
17 Our need for internal diplomatic skills
Extract from Danger! Educated Gypsy
Taken from the Foreword by Dileep Karanth
Ian’s involvement in the Romani struggle began at about the same time that he became a student. Although he had grown up in an urban Romani household, he was not politicised. But then several incidents occurred in Britain’s West Midlands that warranted brief mention in the Evening Standard newspaper, and they so upset him that he felt moved to become involved. In the first, a Gypsy man needed to pull his trailer off the road because his wife was going into labour, but was ordered to move on by the police. When the man refused he was driven away and thrown into a prison cell where he was badly beaten by the same officers, his pregnant wife and small children having been left alone on the side of the road. In a similar incident, both of the parents were taken into custody, leaving the children by themselves in the trailer. a paraffin lamp was knocked over and a fire spread that resulted in the death of all three Gypsy children. This was during the 1960s, when the police would contract professional teams using bulldozers, axes and other brutal means to move people on, a phenomenon that Ian describes in his book The Pariah Syndrome.
Ian made contact with the Gypsy Education Council, through which he met three non-Romanies who were to have a profound influence on the direction his life was taking: Thomas Acton, Donald Kenrick and Grattan Puxon. They encouraged his participation in Romani advocacy and rights issues and he found himself playing a key role in the first World Romani Congress, held near London in 1971, where he first met some of the major figures in the Romani movement.
In the same year Ian left the University of London with a PhD, the first in Britain to be awarded to a Gypsy. It was in African linguistics, with a specialisation in Creole languages. As it happened, the University of Texas was looking for an expert in creolistics, and Ian was offered a job there while speaking at a conference in Washington DC in 1972. This was once again the result of his being in the right place at the right time – the original speaker invited to that conference lived in Hawaii and was unable to attend, so gave his ticket to Ian to go in his place. If Ian had not gone to Washington, he would have missed the offer. With his new doctorate, Ian had applied to over seventy universities for jobs, but had got nowhere. And here was an offer from one he had not even applied to. He had to borrow the money to fly to Austin.
As a new assistant professor at The University of Texas, Ian was taken under the wing of a senior faculty member, the late Edgar Polomé, who gave him the same advice, offered in good faith, that Ian had previously received from his supervisor at SOAS – that drawing attention to his Gypsy identity would hinder him academically. He consequently kept quiet about it until he received tenure – and hence job security – in his fourth year, a process which generally takes six years. He immediately began to compile the Romani Archives and to publish widely on Romani topics, both linguistic and sociopolitical. The Archives, which line the walls ceiling-high and are piled up on the floor of Ian’s office at The University of Texas, are now known as the Romani Archives and Documentation Center, and is the biggest collection of its kind in the world, though it has never been officially recognised by his university.
Despite these remarkable achievements, Ian has become a controversial figure in some quarters. His linguistic theories have come under attack, and his sometimes outspoken criticism of the non-Romani monopolisation of Romani Studies has alienated him from some of those specialists. But it has been his effort to bring the details of the Porrajmos, the Romani Holocaust, to popular and academic attention which has caused him to be viewed with the most suspicion. Can it be that his determination to uncover the truth of what happened to the estimated million or more of his own people has caused discomfort in some quarters? He provides a wonderful Romani proverb in his book We Are the Romani People: ‘He who is about to tell the truth should have one foot in the stirrup.’ In recent years Ian has found himself dropped from the US Holocaust Memorial Council (to which he had been appointed by President Clinton in 1998), the Anne Frank Institute and the Project on Ethnic Relations Roma Advisory Board. Why was this?
One of Ian’s most strident positions is found in Responses, which you will find in this volume, an essay which has provoked controversy and generated debate in no small measure. Ian is asking difficult questions here. Are Gypsies once again being accused of trespassing, of stealing the property of others? Have those age-old accusations now spilt over into the academic realm? Or is it the ‘overly nationalistic’ position that he and other Romani intellectuals espouse which raises hackles? Can it be that those non-Gypsy organisations which seek the assimilation and ultimate disappearance of Roma have no truck with him because he speaks instead of integration and self-determination? Is this the more profound truth that remains at the edges of the modern-day diaspora experience? Many European-based organisations, Ian argues, refuse to acknowledge the complexity of Romani history and the reality that Roma are a global people, and not simply a collection of disparate groups scattered throughout Europe.
If his scholarly views are perceived to be a threat by some intellectuals and scholars, then this is hardly a surprise. The ‘Other’ who ventures bravely in will always be a threat. The wheel of life turns, but it turns slowly. The most important fact to remember is that the wheel does turn. And the reader of this volume is free to judge Ian Hancock for himself – his views and the people for whom he speaks. This is an important step forward. Once, and it was not so long ago, the Roma were enslaved and their linguistic and cultural inheritances derided or ignored altogether. Today, both Roma and non-Roma are freer to read and debate, and come to better informed conclusions.