The Imagined Backward and Downtrodden Other

Abstract

The Roma, commonly known as Gypsies, have always been a people who do not fit neatly within traditional notions of, and conversations about, minorities. The group consistently makes the news in European contexts, where discourses range from the typical other to advocacy claims for their rights and to rectify human rights-type discrimination. Yet in the US context, the Roma are typically less visible in the news. An analysis of newspaper articles published in the United States between 2010 and 2015 finds that the Roma are talked about as downtrodden, political cause for intervention, or as a marginalized other who need salvation. In the context that American news has largely ignored the plight of the Roma, has deemed the population to be an invisible stranger, and has continued to bolster historic stereotypes, this study concludes that US news misses the opportunity to connect the problem of the Roma to current political and popular discourses about immigration, and confines their reporting to dominant ideology and (continued) rhetorical colonization of the other.

KEYWORDS:

• discrimination
• foreign news
• Gypsy
• human rights
• newspapers
• other
• Roma
• US press

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The Roma are called many names in various countries. Some use tribal names (such as the Romanian Căldăraşi), others adopt wider group names (such as the British Travellers), and yet others opt for “Roma” (or “Rroma” in Romania), used in national and international discourse and regarded to be the politically correct term at present. “Roma” is most often used in reaction to the commonly used “Gypsy,” with its linguistic variants of “tsygane” (the German “Zigeuner,” the Hungarian “Cigany,” the French “tsigane,” or the Romanian “ţigan,” to name a few); it is for this reason that I use “Roma” throughout the article to refer to the Roma and the Gypsies covered in the US press, and “Gypsies” where necessary to illustrate a distinction found in texts.

2. Jobbik is a far-right, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic party in Hungary, which at the time of the publication of this news article was the third largest in the parliament. By 2015, it was ranked the second largest (Frayer 2015).

3. Although not the direct focus of the analysis, it is worth mentioning there has been substantive critique to funding and humanitarian aid that is granted as a favor, with an agenda (see Plaut 2016; Polman 2010).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Adina Schneeweis

ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0969-4785