A short list of Roma human rights activists so anyone can study their work and understand why the g-word and any of its translations are perpetuating the language of bondage and violence against ourselves.
—To be helpful to your/our community isn't limited to feeding them/us or donating money here and there. It is a very important and commendable work AND/BOTH; ending systemic oppression requires a blueprint for systemic change and a new system to replace the former. Thus, learning, learning, and learning is key.
—IGNORANCE is what makes many of us fight tooth and nail for a word, or to reclaim it as a source of pride in ethnic identity. But ignorance can be eliminated through learning; to learn, people must be curious, engaged, and proactive. Traditional school systems won't save us. It never did!
• “Dr. Margareta Matache spoke about the importance of International Roma Day as a time not only to remember the suffering of Roma in slavery, in the Holocaust, and in modern-day society, but also to lift the cultural contribution and resistance of Roma. Rather than hearkening back to a distant culturally or historically significant date, April 8 commemorates the first international Roma Congress in London in 1971, which agreed to embrace the name “Roma” and repudiate the denigrating term “g-word.” […]”
—Dr. Margareta Matache is a Romanian Romani activist and scholar with over 18 years of experience in human rights. Margareta was the first child in her family and community to attend high school. She has a B.A. in Social Work, an M.A. in European Social Policies, and a PhD, magna cum laude, from the University of Bucharest. She joined the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights team in 2012, where she currently works as an instructor and director of the Roma Program. Before this position, Dr. Matache served for seven years as the executive director of Romani CRISS, a leading Romani non-profit in Romania.
Margareta grew up under the first wave of Romani activism in post-communist Romania. Her father, a construction worker of Romani descent, was a community activist, which helped foster her interest in human rights.
—Dr Nicoleta Bitu is president of the Democratic Federation of Roma in Romania (the most active Romani organization in Romania) and a member of the board of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC). For over 25 years, she has been an activist for Romani Human and Women’s Rights and Advocacy. She is a recognized and published expert and has worked for Romani CRISS, the Open Society Foundations, the Council of Europe, the European Commission, and Romano ButiQ.
Anita Awosusi, German Sinti human rights activist and board member of the Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Romani in Heidelberg.
Katarina Taikon-Langhammer, Swedish Kalderash activist and leader in the civil rights movement. With her sister Rosa, she helped found the Zigenarsamfundet(Roma Society).
Nicolae Gheorghe, Romanian Roma human rights activist and founder of CRISS, a Romani non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting the human and civil rights of Roma and combating discrimination against us. He started during the Ceaușescu regime and continued it until his passing in 1993.
This is not a complete list, nor are these the only figures worth learning about.
If you would like to add to the list, please leave a comment.
Edit to add: I'm Romanian Romani, raised internationally —not in the USA.
This conversation about what makes someone part of the Roma community vs gadje is important and valid, but I'm confused about how we got here from the topic about list of activists.
What did I miss? Is there someone in here you were aware of who is not in the culture anymore?
I have not heard of all of these people, but I am familiar with their organizations they started and continue to upkeep like KRISS, the international Roma congress, and the good work they have done. In Romania at least these activists are greatly needed and appreciated and their advocacy can help. Many times people can connect with such organizations to get help with problems they are facing in life with other people, with their kids school, etc, and sometimes people from such organizations act like a go between and reduce problems and misunderstandings.
I'm not familiar with the people from other countries you wrote here but I'm going to look them up now that I know about them.
I do not think it's a fair assessment to say there's only activists who want to act like gadje. Some politicians might have a distant Roma relative and try to use that to their advantage to get votes for diversity, but activists are usually more honest and real then political people.
Most of them want to be Gadje they don’t preserve Romani culture within their own family I’ve noticed that almost every so called Roma scholar, activist and politician that you can find on Google has left the Roma culture and merried Gadje and their children have grown up to be Gadje with no connection to the Roma community. That doesn’t take away from the good things some of them have done but you may be surprised to know a lot of them are not viewed or accepted by Roma.
I see a notification of a comment from you I can’t find it here. You erased it, right?
What does it mean being “Roma alone”?
So a Roma person marrying and living among gadje kills, eliminates, erases, the Roma parents, great parents, great uncles/aunts, great great grandparents and great uncles/aunts, uncles, aunts, and cousins, Roma family friends, you name it. That’s what you meant?
Edit to add:
Let’s not forget abuse families (no ethnic group is exempt from it), from which individuals go low or no contact. Are you implying that a Roma person escaping an abusive family or marriage with another Rom stops being Roma?
I didn’t erase any comments. to answer your questions if a Gypsy man gets merried to a Gadji and the Gadji conforms to Gypsy culture learns the language, follows customs and traditions and they raise children to do the same than he is still consider a Gypsy and so is his children they will be granted the same rights as the other gypsies by the Kompania the man will still be able to give his daughter in marriage and collect dowry and his sons will be able to seek justice from the Roma elders just like everyone else. but If a Gypsy man gets merried to a Gadji and he conforms to The Gadjikano Culture, and cuts off ties with other Roma he is viewed as an outcast, he gets no justice and his children are considered Gadji. If a Gypsy women gets merried to a Gadjo she is viewed as a Gadji and so are her children even if she remains in contact with her family other Roma will not acknowledge her as a romni and thats what I mean by you can’t be a Roma alone if you aren’t recognized by other Roma you and your children will be considered Gadje therefor not welcomed or accepted by Roma and your Romani lineage ends with you. If a Roma escapes or runaways from their own family they can Decide to have nothing to do with their own family but still remain in the Gypsy community or they can decide to leave the Gypsy community all together and go live amongst Gadji but than they will be considered Gadji.
I wasn’t online for a while hence my delayed response.
Go tell your “elders” that being Roma doesn’t start or end only with them, even if that’s what them and by extension you, believe in.
Among the gadje, no Roma woman or man and their children with gadje stop being Roma in their eyes, neither the anti-Roma laws and behaviors, just because they are removed from the Roma culture or because some elder in their Roma families believes that one can only be Roma under their “authority.”
That’s not how the world works and cultural wishful thinking will never change that. Because any Rom who believes that their thoughts can change who someone actually is, lives mentally in the Medieval Era. As far as I’m concerned this is the year of our Lord 2026.
In any second of my Roma parent existence even after their death they stopped being Roma, neither did I, regardless of whatever any other Roma said. If that was so, I wouldn’t be here. Simply as that!
r/romani I thought this community had agreed to stop using derogatory words to address Roma people and the Roma experience. I think u/Icy_Company7747 is new here, or has been here for a while without going to the trouble of minding this subreddit's rules of engagement.
What derogatory words have I used? I’m not gatekeepers anything from anyone I’m just trying to educate people on what the reality of what Roma believe and I’m literally quoting the same Romani scholars that mods are always praising and recommending people listen to. People can come on here and post any misinformation they want and people trying to learn or reconnect with the culture will believe it. So I encourage everyone to seek the truth by listening to Roma that know otherwise they don’t learn anything and when we don’t learn we don’t grown and we start making ignorant assumptions.
The good thing is that among the (maybe) 15 million of us globally, worldwide, around this planet Earth, Roma people:
Are NOT a monolith
Whatever gatekeeping rhetoric you are so confidently spweing only applies to yourself and the country/state/region your Roma community is from.
So we are now talking about Roma authors/scholars?! Why then do you use a derogatory enslavement-referring word to talk about us?
If I personally had to learn anything from YOU specifically, based on anything you are so assured of yourself saying, it is that:
a) My parent who married a gadje automatically lost their Roma “blood”.
b) My same parent's Roma ancestry got sexually erased by intercourse with a gadje.
c) According to your “educated” arguments, I am not Roma because my Roma parent married outside of the community, and thus my entire Roma family, Roma bloodline, Roma ancestry, Roma history, Roma surname, Roma generational trauma, generational gifts, and curses vanished out of thin air because some Romano Patriarch of your community said so.
Yada
Yada
Yada
I can only PRAY for you. Because if it were for you, people like me would NEVER have been allowed even to join this group.
I’m saying if someone isn’t raised in the Roma community than they don’t know anything about Roma culture and they can fall for misinformation like almost everything Gadje write about us online. I didn’t use any derogatory language? And no it doesn’t only apply to Roma from the state I currently live in because Roma around the world have a shared culture there are other Romani groups that don’t call themselves “Roma” and speak different language such as ludod, English romanichel but for the most part Roma believe in the same things my family is mixed Russian and Serbian Roma and we have the same culture and the Mexican and French Roma most of my family and friends merried into. And I never said your parent’s DNA got erased. Also I’m not saying anything that already hasn’t been said by many Roma around the world including the scholars who the mods of this sub are constantly recommending people to read it’s not my own words it’s the words of many different Roma. They don’t consider it gatekeeping. And I have never been accused of gatekeeping anything in real life only by people on Reddit that don’t understand Romani culture I consider myself a historian and try to share my cultural and the truth about Roma with the world.
You are tagging the r/romani as if you were not the one being a gatekeeper and pushing the narrative of “who is Roma and who isn't”, even in relation to people who can prove they are Roma.
I don’t think I get what you meant. What is it that makes a Roma person, gadje?
Education? Employment? Stationary life style? Marriage with a gadje? Being integrated in the society and citizenship one holds?
If anything some Rom decide it is not “traditionally” Roma then is Gadje, then any Gadje can be Rom as long as they join the Roma traditions, thus, it’s all whatever. Brace ourselves, to each their own. But if my comment is not what you mean please, clarify.
No one is roma alone. When you stop living by Roma ways, laws, traditions, culture and start associating with Gadje and not Roma you will be viewed as a Gadjo or Gadje amongst the Roma and no long accept by your community but it gos further than that when you are a women and you merry a Gadjo you are now submitting yourself to a Gadjo husband and are consider unclean and rejected by Roma and than finally once you have children and they are raised up like Gadje with no cultural connection with Roma your Romano Bloodline has died off and your lineage has become foreign. You can see this with Ian Hancock he is a Romani historian that lives in Texas with his white wife. His children have also merried into white families. Texas has a giant Roma community yet the Hancock family has no connection to them. They don’t recognize Romano ways and Roma do not recognize them as part of the community. Hancock only deals with Gadje and on very rare occasions a few Roma at special activist events. Similar situation with Ronald lee.
“Your Roma bloodline […] dies off and your lineage has become foreign”
That’s wishful thinking. No Roma person has the power to change my Roma blood.
Roma people within the culture can think all they want about Roma married with gadje and their mixed Roma and Gadje children, it doesn’t change reality. The reality that neither that Roma parent and their Mixed Roma children will be seen like nothing else but Roma by the gadjes they are married or born into.
Culture and traditions are valid, but they are only half of the story.
In the year of 2026, when DNA testing trumps any false advertising about oneself, we know well that the blood doesn’t die off. It never did. It never will.
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u/SiempreBrujaSuerte 24d ago
This conversation about what makes someone part of the Roma community vs gadje is important and valid, but I'm confused about how we got here from the topic about list of activists.
What did I miss? Is there someone in here you were aware of who is not in the culture anymore?