Opinion: Does the killing of a Black man in the United States have a message for Czechs?

Five years ago a respectable and “well educated” acquaintance brought our dirt-covered twin toddlers home from the playground.

“They’re dirty like gypsies,” the kind lady lamented.

I was worried I would burst into flames if I waited too long to respond.

When my children were out of earshot, I asked my sons’ escort why she had used a racist slur. The well-traveled woman looked utterly baffled. “It’s just something people say. My parents said it. I never thought about it,” she replied.

“How do you think a Romani child hearing you say that would feel about herself?” I asked, using the preferred adjective for the ethnic group that comprises roughly two percent of the Czech Republic’s population.

“What would her self image be? What would her mother think?”  I continued. The victim of my inquisition shrugged her shoulders.

“How about a dirty Jew? Would you say that?” I queried, making her even more perplexed since she was aware I was Jewish.

“Please do not ever make negative comments about any ethnicity or nationality in front of my children. Roma children are not dirtier than my own. And also, dirt is good!” She gladly agreed and went back to being an excellent source of linguistic and emotional inspiration.

And that was that. But not really.

Because the world reckoning with racism in the wake of George Floyd’s gruesome knee-in-the-neck killing by a white policeman in Minneapolis has resulted in a lot of allyship. People are justly horrified by police brutality and are taking a deeper look at racism in their own midst. Sort of.

Often, instead of reflecting on explicit and implicit prejudices within their culture, some prefer to compete in the racism Olympics.

You can’t talk about racism in our country because LOOK at your country! We win, you lose!

On the other hand, the wanton political incorrectness of the Czech Republic means you can meet someone with a Ph.D. and prestigious job who will openly declare his disdain for Roma because he claims they rely on state welfare to survive.

But wait, you say, how have the Roma, who came to Europe about 800 years ago from the Indian subcontinent, had fewer opportunities if there isn’t government-sanctioned racism?

Either Hitler was right, and there are genetically inferior “racial” groups, or the Czech national, regional and local governments need to do a much better job of helping Roma get the education they deserve.  There is little middle ground here.

Yes of course Roma parents are responsible for their children, but after centuries of exclusion and poor education, why is it so hard to imagine that they need extra support in getting a level playing field?

I have heard it all before, “Roma have a different culture, they don’t care about education, their behavior is anti-social. They steal, they do drugs. They destroy their homes, they don’t want to work. It’s the parents’ fault.”

In 2019 I was discussing elementary schools with a well-off resident of Vinohrady. She wanted to make sure her child “didn’t go to a school with a bunch of Roma,” which was an obvious indicator that the school was of the lowest possible quality.

And that brings us back to the racism Olympics with the U.S. vs. the Czech Republic.

It’s a draw? Or maybe we can deduce a lesson from this parable, which I usually claim someone once told me but I think I might have made it up.

The police come to a man’s door and say, we are here because you beat your wife. His response?

“Don’t bother. My neighbor beats his wife twice as much as I do, you have the wrong man.”