On the trail of banal racism: a Gypsophile genealogy of Romaphobia

ABSTRACT

Based on a concern to study historical forms of racism that usually fall under the radar of histories of racism that focus on the peak moments of regimes such as Jim Crow laws in the United States, Nazi racial politics and the apartheid system in South Africa, this article proposes a definition of the concept of banal racism to be applied in situations where the explanation of racism involves long-standing cultural phenomena and social practices rather than legal norms and official policies. A dialogue is established with concepts borrowed from the social sciences, such as “cordial racism,” “prosaic racism” and “benevolent racism,” to underline the banality (in Arendt’s sense) of these forms of discrimination and social hierarchisation, which can entail a high degree of violence compatible with their declared innocence. Together with the conceptual proposal, a case study is presented as an example, in which the racist undercurrent underlying the Gypsyophile discourse of three Anglo-Saxon travellers who visited Spain between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries is analysed.

KEYWORDS:

• Banal racism
• benevolent racism
• romanophobia
• gypsyism
• national identities

This article proposes a conceptual framework for understanding the notion of banal racism, a term that draws metaphorical inspiration from Hannah Arendt’s renowned formulation on the banality of evil. Keeping this evocation in mind, the following pages present a historiographical study of the concept that builds on the notion of banal nationalism created by Michael Billig. It is further enriched with ideas adopted from the neighbouring notions of cordial racism, prosaic racism and benevolent racism taken from the disciplines of sociology, pedagogy and psychology. This paper contends that a precise definition of the concept of banal racism is essential for the historical study of the processes of racialisation and racial discrimination beyond the paradigm that has differentiated between “strong” and “mild” racism. An alternative approach is particularly necessary for situations in which racial difference has not been legally and politically formalised. This paper subsequently applies the proposed conceptualisation to a specific case study that endeavours to trace the genealogy of anti-Gypsy racism through a critical analysis of the discourse of three Anglo-Saxon observers who, as self-proclaimed admirers of the Romani people, journeyed throughout Spain in search of their company between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries. The articulation of philias and phobias is revealed as a central mechanism of banal racism.¹

Banal nationalism, a concept essential to the study of racism

Research on racism has a long-standing tradition in anthropology, sociology, political science and other disciplines, including history. While this article, due to its limited extent, does not aspire to document the state of the art, it nevertheless begins with the critical observation that the most widely employed explanations about the genesis and evolution of racism tend to encourage a gradually escalating linear view of this phenomenon supported by three ubiquitous examples: discrimination against people of African descent in the United States, Hitler’s Germany and South African apartheid.² This vision underlies typologies that have great classificatory and clarifying potential: analytical approaches differentiating between “strong” and “weak” or “mild” racism, discerning between the history of racial ideas and that of racist practices, or separating pre-modern cultural (and religious) racism from the scientific (biological) racism of the 18th century onwards have undoubtedly led to advances in this field of study. Typologies of this nature, however, frequently obscure historical realities of much greater complexity.

In this respect, a series of relatively recent works that have approached the study of the notions of race and racism from a profound knowledge of the history of the Iberian world in the Modern Age propose a new interpretative paradigm that, in my opinion, ought to broadly influence both studies of race in general and those dedicated to the contemporary history of racism. This is particularly true given that the three apogees mentioned above occurred during this period. The work of Jean-Frédéric Schaub proposing a “political history of race” provides the theoretical foundations for this (Schaub 2015). As Schaub explains, the distinction made between pre-18th century racism (defined as pre-modern, religiously and culturally motivated and supposedly milder than what would come after) and racism in its modern incarnation (defined as scientifically and biologically based and harsher in its discriminatory effects) is nonsensical. For instance, legal frameworks such as the statutes of blood purity, which were enacted in 15th-century Spain and enforced by extension throughout the Iberian world, substantiated the social common sense understanding that culture (and religion) was transmitted hereditarily and organically, that is, biologically. The legitimising discourse thus employed both scientific and spiritual arguments, an approach also present in 20th-century racism, notably Nazi racial policy, which utilised the arguments and lexicon of the science of the time alongside others of a mystical, genealogical or even religious nature whenever they suited its purposes.

The approach adopted by historians such as Bethencourt (2013), Amelang (2013) and the contributors to the collective volume edited by García Arenal and Pereda (2022) eschews a teleological perspective on the history of racism and instead draws on the insights gleaned from the Iberian world during the 15th and 16th centuries. The works of these authors reveal, like that of Schaub, that the cristiano-viejo discourse of blood purity was suffused with beliefs that even at that time closely linked the transmission of culture to biological inheritance, a belief that fostered the emergence of socially discriminatory practices predicated on race. The bodily fluids of blood and milk were “poderosos símbolos que modelaron y transformaron la realidad social en un proceso de profunda y continua racialización, al establecer una fuerte analogía entre reproducción de organismos y reproducción de la cultura.”³ This discourse on lineage was not confined to the Western world, as Niremberg (2022) has demonstrated by comparing Christian medieval Spain and the Almohad Caliphate; neither was the analogy between the biological reproduction of organisms and the reproduction of culture without historical precedent. As Niremberg argues, it is both possible and imperative to break with the progressively escalating linear view of the development of racism in order to identify the catalysts for its emergence in specific historical contexts as a result of particular combinations of social relations and political intentions.

I believe it is important to heed these warnings when studying racism in the 19th and 20th centuries, a historical period in which nationalism – a powerful and plural force – is especially evident as one of the main political levers used to instigate racial discrimination but in which, perhaps precisely for this reason, we tend to overlook the forms of racism that are less formally institutionalised or that do not have a direct genocidal effect. The legacy of the Holocaust presents an obstacle in this regard as it obscures other forms of racism whose cultural underpinnings can be so entrenched within society that, on occasion, they render policies of ethnic cleansing both logical and justifiable. Failing to acknowledge the manifestations of neo-racism embodies an attitude of indefensible benevolence towards post-Holocaust societies (namely contemporary societies), under the assumption that the gravest challenges are now behind us (Hering Torres 2007). As historians, it is our duty to study racism beyond periods when racial discrimination is enshrined in legislation, institutionalised or becomes genocidal. There are less visible or clear-cut types of racism that, moreover, have become part of the basic cultural grammar of Western societies and, as a consequence, have acquired the capacity to condition the daily life of racialised groups through stable systems of discrimination.

As a historian located in Spain, a country where a congenial discourse on racial amalgamation has prevailed (a stance politically endorsed in the early 20th century by the nationalist-Catholic right and later entrenched by propaganda under the Franco regime), in my research on the history of the Romani people I have found myself in need of analytical tools to help me understand the striking paradox of the realm of the Gitano being elevated to national symbol while, simultaneously, the Romani-Gitano population endures secular racial discrimination.⁴ Spanish anti-Gypsyism shares many traits with Romaphobia as a racist attitude (both historical and current) palpable throughout the Western world.⁵ In this dual local and transnational context, it is also noteworthy that since the 19th century this racism has not so much been based on broad legislative discrimination as on a wide array of diverse social practices. These practices do however occasionally allow for a certain appreciation of this minority, particularly in regard to the recognition of their artistic ability. My interest in the more banal forms of racism does not diminish the gravity of those extreme instances of anti-Gypsyism intended to eradicate the Romani people, such as Spain’s Great Round-Up in the 18th century or the Nazi genocide in the 20th century. Rather, my intention is to explain them accurately.⁶

The idea of transforming the metaphor of banal racism into a more precise category of historical analysis falls within these coordinates. My proposal is fundamentally based on the adaptation of the concept of banal nationalism developed by Michael Billig (1995), interpreting it in light of a series of studies on racism from the perspective of the social sciences, notably the work on Brazil coordinated by Turra and Venturi (1995) and published under the title of Racismo cordial. Billig’s formula has already been productively employed by historians of nationalism, as it makes visible and explains a type of everyday nationalism that usually remains off the radar in the study of nationalist movements and regimes. As this sociologist has pointed out, beyond “strong,” explicit and politically belligerent nationalism there exists a banal nationalism made up of practices and symbols that seem largely neutral in terms of combative assertion of national identity but nonetheless daily remind individuals of their belonging to a particular national unit and their distance from others. Billig observes that our lives are filled with elements that unintentionally rekindle a nationalist sense of communal belonging, ranging from the use of definite articles in language (saying “the” economy when referring to the national economy, and so on) to weather maps, flags that permanently fly above public buildings, and many other prosaic reminders of national identity.

In established and recognised nations, the nationalist label is currently applied preferently to “others” – separatists, liberation movements, emerging forms of nationalism–- who explicitly champion a nationalist agenda in a manner deemed by proponents of the established national identity as fanatical or irrational while ignoring, if not outright denying, their own nationalist programme. According to Billig, the “hidden nature” of this unacknowledged nationalism renders it especially perilous as it eludes the critical attention of scholars and the public yet constitutes the naturalised cultural roots of a national identity that, in certain circumstances, may be articulated in an exclusionary and belligerent manner.

Considering Billig’s work from the perspective of an interest in the history of racism proves highly productive: many of the traits that this sociologist attributes to banal nationalism and, consequently, his interpretations of this phenomenon, can be transferred to this other field of study. For instance, try reading the following sentences from the Introduction to Billig’s book and replacing the terms “nationalism” with “racism,” and “nation” with “race:” “Because the concept of nationalism [racism] has been restricted to exotic and passionate exemplars, the routine and familiar forms of nationalism [racism] have been overlooked. In this case, “our” daily nationalism [racism] slips from attention. There is a growing body of opinion that nation [“race”]-states are declining. (…) But a reminder is necessary. Nationhood [racial identity] is still being reproduced: it can still call for ultimate sacrifices; and, daily, its symbols and assumptions are flagged.”⁷

Some of Billig’s observations provide ample food for thought when attempting to place the concept of banal racism within a historical framework of understanding. The first issue to consider is the hidden nature of a non-conscious social predisposition that is often disregarded, forgotten and even repudiated. The assertion by the ostensibly law-abiding citizen, “I am not a nationalist,” bears a clear parallel to the proclamation, “I am not racist,” by those of us who have adopted the political principles of post-Holocaust societies. This sociological amnesia that Billig refers to in relation to nationalism can be linked to one of the key observations made by Turra & Venturi in their study of racism in late 20th-century Brazil: the denial by the subjects interviewed of having racial prejudices even while admitting they used expressions with clearly racist connotations. This is a manifestation of an attitude that the researchers qualify as cordial racism, that is, a superficial courtesy masking discriminatory attitudes. Conducting a comprehensive set of interviews in which Brazilians were presented with a series of commonplaces of their culture demonstrated the widespread acceptance of tropes such as “a good black is one with a white soul.” According to these authors, the reason why such statements were not perceived as racist was attributable to the belief that interracial cordiality was a fundamental part of Brazilian national identity. The incongruity regarding the acknowledgement of the discriminatory effects of these attitudes was vividly illustrated in the statistical correlation presented by the study: 89% of Brazilians acknowledged the existence of racial prejudice towards black and mixed-race people in their country, but only 10% of them admitted to harbouring racial prejudices themselves.⁸

Billig’s second observation on banal nationalism, which can be applied to the historical study of racism, is the commonplace nature of the practices upon which it is constructed. Its cultural vehicles are not explicitly nationalist (read racist) symbols or proclamations that emerge as part of the official discourse at critical points in time. Rather, they are prosaic elements and apparently politically neutral spaces, such as language, which persistently marks the boundary between “us” and “them;” jokes, which trivialize the creation and maintenance of difference; sport and educational spaces, which daily celebrate community, and so on. Once again, Turra & Venturi’s research supports the transfer of Billig’s ideas to the study of racism since, as indicated, the cultural foundations that demonstrate the extent of Brazilian society’s cordial racism include popular sayings, jokes, taunts and commonplaces about racial traits and abilities, to name a few.

The study of racism from the perspective of fields such as pedagogy can be of great assistance in this regard. Drawing on the work of Philomena Essed (1991), Quintero Ramírez (2017) has written of a prosaic racism that is clearly identifiable in teaching in Colombia. The phenomenon is evident in the widespread social acceptance of racist expressions in jokes and taunts that are as hurtful as they are familiar and ubiquitous but which are predominantly considered “harmless.” In order to complete the cycle of banalisation, those who hold these types of prejudices often accuse those who dare to question these forms of expression of being intolerant. Just as the banal nationalist denies their nationalist belligerence, the banal racist is often blind to their own racism and may even accuse the victim of racism of having racist reactions.

Banal racism is not a mild form of racism, as no racism can be mild. At this juncture, invoking Hannah Arendt through the choice of the term “banal,” as Billig also does, is integral to the argument presented here. The mundane forms of racial differentiation, identification and discrimination all carry a high charge of symbolic violence that, moreover, manifests itself in experiences of daily suffering. Consider the educational sphere, where “becoming black” is one of the earliest experiences in childhood when, according to Quintero Ramírez, socialisation and racialisation occur in tandem; or adopt the perspective of bell hooks in her reflection on the inability to imagine, from a position of whiteness, the suffering caused by the mere possibility of unconsciously racist remarks from co-workers or classmates in an interracial setting.⁹

The triviality of the cultural foundations of this kind of racism closely resembles that of banal nationalism. And it is equally misleading. While discrimination may not be articulated in an explicit and decidedly ideological discourse, it nevertheless insidiously infiltrates everyday assumptions and representations. This has the sociological effect of naturalising an exclusionary identity to which social critique is consequently blind. National identity, Billig points out, is taken as given in established hierarchical positions that, unless under threat, do not need to engage in formal nationalist discourse. The same happens with racial identities that do not have to be consciously considered as such because they align with the official imagined community and are not experienced through the suffering of discrimination.¹⁰ These racial identities are taken as occurring naturally even though the members of the society in which they emerge (do not consider themselves) racist.

This is precisely the context of the case study presented in the second part of this article, which argues that the articulation of two seemingly opposite attitudes – philia and phobia towards a culture associated with an ethnic group – can stem from the same racial logic and fuel the mechanism of racism. On this point, and from a psychological perspective, the concept of benevolent racism also helps us to understand how, historically, seemingly positive appreciations of the traits of an ethnic minority can originate in (and perpetuate) discriminatory racial representations.¹¹ This paradoxical combination becomes part of social common sense through trivial depictions and everyday practices that compellingly naturalise racial hierarchies through their seemingly harmless or even benevolent treatment of racialised subjects.

To pose a specific and somewhat provocative question: What harm could there be, one might ask, in the use in Spain of the Flamenco-dancing Gitana as a national symbol if it serves to celebrate a recognisably Romani culture? The answer is that the harm lies in the fact that the sublimation of a racialised form of art has gone hand-in-hand with historical amnesia: few Spaniards are aware that in 1749 an order was issued to arrest every Romani-Gitano in the country, to separate the men from the women to ensure the biological extinction of the “species,” to detain children and the elderly alongside the rest, to seize their property to defray the costs, and to employ the detainees as forced labour for the remainder of their lives.¹²

By the mid-18th century, an incipient Gypsophila had started to grow within Spanish society. From well-known authors – like the many devotees of Cervantes and his Gitanilla, Preciosa, part of the world’s literary heritage – to anonymous aficionados of Gitano song and dance, this minority was treasured, for its primitivism and artistic expressiveness, as the exponent of a unique way of being in the world.¹³ This delight in the exotic was nonetheless compatible with much of society accepting and contributing to the imprisonment of their Gitano neighbours when so decreed by the Crown. Banal racism underpins genocidal racism: if the catalyst that triggers the legal and institutional persecution of a racialised minority is a specific political agenda (in this case, the Enlightenment biopolitics practised by the Spanish Monarchy), then the condition that makes it possible is a social milieu rife with depictions of racial difference.¹⁴ To continue with the chemistry metaphor, at certain junctures in history the predominant racial imagery of the day precipitates. The key to these acts of racial persecution lies not only in the particular political agenda promoting them, but also in the cultural processes through which a racist social common sense is created and primed.

In the following section, I will explore an aspect of this issue by applying the concept of banal racism to the analysis of the discourse of three observers of the Romani people. These individuals, who professed admiration for the Romani way of life, played a pivotal role in the creation of stigmatising stereotypes of this minority that have exerted a long-lasting influence. Philia and phobia intricately intertwine here, fuelling forms of banal racial discrimination that, though initially targeting Spain’s Gitano-Romani, eventually became transnational. On one hand, although these Anglo-Saxon observers were merely passing through Spain, they nevertheless decisively shaped perceptions of Gitanos within the country; on the other, their position within expert circles and international academia as scholars of the Romani people gave them the authority to extend their representations of the Gitanos to other Romani communities worldwide, making the Spanish Romani the epitome of the people in general.

Now is the moment to introduce George Borrow (1803–1881), Irving Brown (1888–1949) and Walter Starkie (1894–1976), three foundational figures in the genealogy of expert knowledge on Spain’s Gitanos and, more broadly, on the Roma worldwide.¹⁵ Three men, three English speakers, three adventurers, three scholars … Many threads connect them, starting with the fact that the latter two had the advantage of reading (and practically plagiarising) Borrow, who undoubtedly deserves to be recognised as the pioneer on this Gypsophila trail of anti-Gypsyism that I propose to trace back to its source.

George Borrow: an amateur ethnographer of enduring influence

The man who would become the most famous Gypsylorist of all time “discovered” the Roma as an object of study while in Spain on an evangelising mission for the British and Foreign Bible Society, one of several trips he made between 1836 and 1840.¹⁶ Armed with a rather superficial knowledge of English and Russian Roma, extensive readings and an uncommon ability for languages, it was during his time in Spain that Borrow had most direct contact with this minority. This provided him with sufficient material to publish The Zincali; or, An Account of the Gypsies of Spain (1841), which became the source of his prestige as an expert in the study of Romani customs. Almost simultaneously, his literary career began to flourish after receiving the advice of Richard Ford, the author of a successful travel guide to Spain. Ford encouraged him to abandon the erudite tone of The Zincali and recount his experiences in the country in a more personal and engaging manner. Borrow thus wrote The Bible in Spain (1843), in which he narrates his adventures (including a stint in prison) with novelistic flair and an air of mystery, portraying himself as a missionary bearing the torch of civilisation amidst “the darkness which envelopes Spain.”¹⁷

With this new literary approach, Borrow revisited the “Gypsy” themes with a view to positioning himself in this publishing niche as not only an expert but also a friend of this mysterious and misunderstood people, thereby closely linking the two roles. Works such as Lavengro (published in 1851) and The Romany Rye (published in 1857), which were dedicated to the English Roma, would later earn him the admiration of the Gypsy Lore Society, the institution that would demarcate the scope of Romani Studies for decades. The figure of the Romany Rye, a kind of knight-errant friend of the Gypsies, became the archetype of participant observation for successive generations of scholars committed to the conservation of Romani culture or, more specifically, what they defined as “authentic” Romani culture from their position of academic authority. Moreover, in addition to his growing influence among philologists, ethnographers and folklorists of various kinds, “through Borrow, for the first time, an unprecedented broad public came to read about them [the Gypsies]” (Willems 1997, 96).

Borrow’s Spanish narratives are an essential starting point for critical analysis of his discourse and one that helps us understand how the author’s declared sympathy for the Romani people could be articulated through a series of enduring stigmatising representations. His first work on the subject, which was dedicated to Spain’s Gitanos (as was, to a lesser extent, The Bible in Spain), already contains many of the explanations that were later sustained regarding the origin, character and way of life of the Roma. It also exhibits the strategic deployment of knowledge and authoritative devices that made his claims so convincing. Borrow’s narratives therefore constitute a key moment in the genealogy of a specifically anti-Roma banal racism because they allow us to document appropriations from the past and weigh their re-signification in the cultural and scientific context of the 19th century. In this latter regard, Borrow’s Spanish texts especially clearly reveal the racial hierarchy that was evident to a Briton of his time (specifically “an Englishman,” as tellingly stated in the subtitle of The Bible in Spain). Thus, the Gitanos could be explained both as members of a particular transnational “race” or “caste” and also by their inclusion at the heart of other peoples considered backward in comparison with the English, namely the Spanish in general and the Andalusians in particular, the latter being described as “an indolent frivolous people, fond of dancing and song, and sensual amusements.”¹⁸

As can be inferred from this depiction, when Borrow visited Spain the country was already becoming a popular destination for romantic travellers seeking “authenticity,” exoticism, sensuality and the sensations typically associated with the Orient at this crossroads between Europe and Africa.¹⁹ As an author, he prided himself on his realism and on not being misled by appearances or idealisations. Indeed, in his discourse he establishes a notable emotional distance from the subjects described and employs a marked and apparently realist writing style. However, his observations on the “Gypsies” not only reproduced stereotypes appropriated from Cervantes’ La Gitanilla and other writers of Spain’s Golden Age, but also borrowed typically romantic portrayals by authors like Pushkin. In turn, his writings decisively inspired others such as Mérimée, creator of Carmen, whose role in establishing the stereotypes attached to Spain’s Gitanos was fundamental (and beyond the scope of this paper).²⁰

In this context, it is indisputable that Borrow’s works contributed to the sexualisation of “Gypsy” womanhood, a key element in the process of exoticisation and racialisation of the entire Romani minority. Despite the realist bounds of his ethnographic style, he nevertheless attributes a palpable erotic appeal to the women he describes, linking this attraction to both their unique beauty and remarkable attitudes: “wild and singular as these females are in their appearance, there can be no doubt, for the fact has been frequently proved, that they are capable of exciting passion of the most ardent description, particularly in the bosoms of those who are not of their race.” Although Borrow refrained from the licence taken decades later by his successors Brown and Starkie, his descriptions nonetheless emphasise the wild and bewitching attractiveness of these women (“their forms, their features, the expression of their countenances are ever wild and Sibylline, frequently beautiful, but never vulgar”) and insist on their natural voluptuousness (“girls might be seen bounding in lascivious dance in the streets”).²¹

It is true that this second attribution could be counterbalanced by Borrow’s allusions to the importance of chastity in Romani family life and gender relations. However, this attitude – which a proponent of the Bible could interpret as a merit – is instead described in terms of ethnographic curiosity, informing his readers about the custom (Lacha) and undergarments (Diclé) with which mothers enforce it on their daughters before marriage. The stereotype of lascivious Gypsy womanhood, presented as sexually available and dangerous, is not mitigated; rather, and at most, it is tempered by the threat of male violence that accompanies it: “No females in the world can be more licentious in word and gesture, in dance and in song, than the Gitanas; but there they stop: and so of old, if their titled visitors presumed to seek for more, an unsheathed dagger or gleaming knife speedily repulse those who expected that the gem most dear amongst the sect of the Romas (…).” Thus, Borrow’s readers and re-inventors were free to choose which parts of this depiction to keep and which to discard.²²

Something similar occurs as regards their fidelity to their spouses: Borrow affirms that the women display profound loyalty to their men, indicating that they are capable of following them to jail and making any sacrifice on their behalf. Their selflessness, however, is often reduced to the rank of primitivism by the ingratitude of their husbands who, according to Borrow, live off the proceeds of their wives’ begging when not mistreating or outright abandoning them. In passing, the author explains to the reader how these women make a living, describing it in the level of detail of a dedicated scholar: the more well-off peddle smuggled goods door-to-door or mend and resell used clothing, while the poorest survive by telling fortunes, swindling the naïve on the promise of succour and poisoning livestock in order to sell a cure. For these latter activities, he provides names in the Romani language (Bahi, Hokkano Baró, Drao), a device that endows him with the authority of direct knowledge.

While these are certainly far from respectable lines of work, Borrow combines his critique with recognition of the skill, determination and courage of these women, towards whom on occasion he expresses open admiration and remarks on the aristocratic bearing that elevates them above other mortals. “One great advantage which the Gypsies possess over all other people is an utter absence of mauvaise honte; their speech is as fluent, and their eyes as unabashed, in the presence of royalty, as before those from whom they have nothing to hope or fear.” Adopting his customary documentary technique, he gives names and entity to his general anthropological observations: in the latter case, he recounts the story of two Gitanas in Madrid with whom he had established a friendship, Pepita and La Chicharona. The pair directly petitioned the Queen Regent at the Royal Palace for the release from prison of the former’s son (the latter’s husband). Supposedly imposing in their superiority as mistresses of the occult, they intimidated her with their arcane arts: “I looked at her so – said Pepita – and raised my finger so, and Chicharona clapped her hands, and the Busnee believed all I said, and was afraid of me.”²³

Rather than feeling fear, these formidable women instilled it, a fear that was founded, according to Borrow, on their hatred and contempt for all those who were not of their race. This was attributed to their passionate disposition that, as inherent to their primitive nature as their eroticism, readily predisposed them to violence. The anecdotes that, recounted as true-to-life examples, lend credibility to this image are countless. One such tale is the marriage proposal that Borrow claims to have received in Spain from a young Gitana (and which he repeats in Lavengro years later, suggesting it is likely a fictional literary device). In this particular case, the matchmaker, who was also the young woman’s grandmother, assured him that begging in the street would earn her granddaughter more than enough money to support him and that they would later feast her success before departing for Africa to live with the “Moors:” “we will give a banquet to all the Busne in Mérida, and in their food I will mix drow, and they shall eat and burst like poisoned sheep.”²⁴ Through stories such as these, the stateless condition of a population generally ascribed to lack any national or religious loyalty is incidentally illustrated.

Romani men were claimed to share that same inclination towards violence and the rejection of those who did not belong to their “sect.” Despite this depiction as barbarians and innate criminals, Gitanos, as observed by Borrow, are also generous, resolute and occasionally admirable. For instance, “the Gypsy Antonio,” who accompanies him on his travels for a couple of chapters in The Bible in Spain, is portrayed with a certain respect for his fortitude, self-discipline and physical stamina, even if these are employed in the commission of criminal acts (or what is tantamount to the same, working on the “affairs of Egypt,” a reference to the mythicised origin of the Romani diaspora). The evangelist likes to present himself as comfortable in the company of Gitanos, among whom he makes much of being accepted. He even suggests that, once the moral failings of this people are taken into account, their sociability becomes more amenable to him than that of most Spaniards. “I felt myself much more at home than with the silent, reserved men of Spain, with whom a foreigner might mingle for half a century without having half a dozen words addressed to him,” he tells us, for example, when describing an evening spent in a humble Gypsy abode where dinner, albeit meagre, was enriched with liberal amounts of wine, song and guitar.²⁵

Borrow frequently explains that the special connection he has with the Roma lies in his linguistic ability, insisting that knowledge of their language is the key that unlocks access to this elusive community. Indeed, he elevates his philological skill to a decisive indicator of his expert status, presenting himself as a learned scholar who can thus partake in what would not be accessible to others. Accordingly, he often imbues an encounter with the Roma with an air of mystery, which in turn serves to reinforce his authority. For instance, when recognising a cloaked man passing him in Badajoz as a Gitano by his physiognomy, he recounts: “I touch him on the arm (…); I said a certain word, to which, after an exclamation of surprise, he responded in the manner I expected.”²⁶ The devices he uses to reaffirm his cognitive authority range from the advantage of direct contact with his study subjects to a meticulously crafted technique, in the form of a realistic tale of the field, grounded in concrete examples, adopting the tone of an insider, recounting dialogue and using terms taken from the “native” language.²⁷ However, as Willems has shown when analysing his sources and methods, his work is in fact “the result of naive ethnography, uncritical use of sources, selective perceptions and romantic conservatism” (Willems 1997, 130). The Caló Dictionary and the Gitano poetry that conclude The Zincali are solid proof of this.

Notwithstanding, his depictions of this minority were accepted as veracious and proved convincing both to the public and to those who followed his trail in the field of Romani studies. In my opinion, the fact that Borrow aligned his descriptions and arguments with the racial theories that became increasingly widespread in the second half of the 19th century was one of the reasons for this success, as his claims about the anthropological nature of the “Gypsies” were easily assimilated as part of the social and scientific common sense of the day. Thus, by drawing on the ideas about race of J.C. Prichard, Gobineau and other contemporary authors, Borrow contributed decisively to the racialisation of the Romani people.²⁸

In this latter sense, his work affirms the existence of a distinctively Romani physical appearance – recognisable by experts such as himself – characterised by dark skin (“almost that of the Mulatto”), hair “black as coal, and coarse as the tail of a horse,” enviably white teeth and a “peculiar cast of countenance, by which they may, without difficulty, be distinguished from all other nations.” Similarly, it also asserts the racial nature (and thus both collective and hereditary) of a series of cultural and attitudinal traits that would come to define the Roma worldwide. “The striking similarity of their pursuits in every region of the globe to which they have penetrated” serves to describe the occupations of the Roma as universal and timeless: witchcraft and deceit for the women, theft and horse trading for the men.²⁹ It does not seem to concern him that he thus contradicts his own narrative, in which he has introduced with the eye for detail of a well-informed ethnographer the variations among different communities of Gitanos in Spain according to their wealth, various local traditions, the nascent advance of literacy, or the effects of changes in legislation over time. Racial logic brusquely sweeps away diversity to instead establish clarifying classifications. The comparison he casually draws between Jews and Roma reveals a socially shared view of race that equates both minorities as diasporic peoples reluctant to mix with the “gentiles.” Borrow adds, from his position as expert that, even so, the two races should not be confused as they maintained several essential cultural differences.³⁰

This is because, according to this perspective, culture is biologically inherited. The resulting racism is at times so evident that it is difficult to consider Borrow a standard-bearer for the type of banal, concealed or denied racism under analysis here. Thus, for instance, he says of a small boy clinging to the neck of a Romani woman who, visiting homes in Seville, promises good fortune to their inhabitants but “in reality” curses them: “though tender of age it looks wicked and sly, like a veritable imp of Roma.”³¹ Despite this, his interest in studying the “true Gypsy” – understood as a representative of a primitive lost race and an exotic way of life in danger of extinction – gave rise to an image of him as a friend and defender of a misunderstood people. This benevolent portrayal was fed by his discourse but also, and above all, by his later mythification by others. The fact that Manuel Azaña translated the works of “Don Jorgito” into Spanish at the behest of institutional figures of the stature of Alberto Jiménez Fraud and Francisco Giner de los Ríos is as telling as the fact that Borrow is still cited in Romani circles today as a positive exception to the lack of mainstream interest in the history of this people in Spain.³² Irving Brown and Walter Starkie, two scholars who at the beginning of the 20th century revisited Borrow’s “Gypsy” route with the aim of deepening their knowledge of the way of life of this minority, in both cases doing so from the position of explicitly stated affection for the Romani people, contributed decisively to this.

Two Gypsylovers following in Borrow’s footsteps: the crossing paths of Irving Brown and Walter Starkie

About a century after Borrow had journeyed the roads of Spain, two of his most diligent readers likewise sought in the observation of the country’s Gitanos a means of addressing the anxieties of modernity. The first of them, Irving Brown, an American translator of Blasco Ibáñez and a scholar of Romance languages at Columbia University, indeed recognised that “the discovery of Borrow’s Gypsies of Spain had given me the Romani fever.”³³ This fervour was of such intensity that the avid traveller prepared by learning Romani and sunbathing inordinately to darken his skin in the hope he would thus pass among the Spanish Gitanos as the American “Gypsy” he fantasised about being.³⁴ Upon his return to the United States, he continued to emphasise this profile in his writings and published several other works in which he either described the way of life of the Romani in North America (Gypsy fires in America. A narrative life among Romanies of the United States and Canada, 1924) or revisited the longed-for revelry of the flamenco juerga in Spain (Deep Song. Adventures with Gipsy song and singers in Andalusia and other lands, 1929).

Brown was profoundly influenced by his reading of Borrow in preparation for his initiatory journey. Many of the judgements and prejudices that shaped his experience as a participant observer are derived from the work of the British author. He largely adopted his predecessor’s methodology, writing in an ethnographic style on the distinctions among the various Gypsy communities he encountered on his travels. In this regard, his observations on what he considered to be the (excessively) assimilated “Gypsy” population in the Triana district of Seville versus the purity of the strict maintenance of tradition by those in Córdoba appear to be taken directly from Borrow. Similarly, the comments on the dedication to horse trading and the possibility of finding wealthy men among them are reminiscent of Borrow’s work, as are his reverence for the natural pride and fearlessness in the face of authority exhibited by the women. Brown likewise takes great pride in having been accepted into “the inner circle of the shyest and most exclusive of races,” boasting both of his ability to assimilate and his expertise in the field. Thus, for example, he recounts how, received in the Albaicín district of Granada by some Gitanos, he offered his handkerchief to the lady of the house as a gift: “As it happened, this was the act of a true Romani and gained the sympathy and approval of all the Gypsies there; for, as among most primitive races, an exchange of presents on meeting is a not uncommon custom.”³⁵

While Brown certainly replicated many of the earlier stereotypes, he also breathed new life into them. His discourse updated depictions of “Gypsyness” in the context of the contemporary cultural crisis and the rise of the new strains of intrepid manliness emblematic of the interwar period.³⁶ Thus, he contributed to the creation of powerful portrayals of femmes fatales and rugged men. He also shaped the imagery in the most literal sense, as Brown carried a camera with him on his journey through Spain and published the photographs to underscore or summarise his written observations. He failed to realise that his fervid descriptions and occasionally admiring judgements of the Roma – always placing them in the flattering context of dance, song and juerga – contributed to them being seen to have a largely atavistic racial character. The themes of closeness to nature and fierceness mark his most enthusiastic descriptions: “First one then another danced with all his strength and passion.
A girl of nine or ten, after slipping to the floor exhausted, continued the movements of the dance -the inner urge and the fiery spirit still unquenched. Nor were they less prodigal of their actions and emotions when merely watching. They were all impelled simultaneously by the same feelings as the dancer; they threw back their heads, or bit their knuckles in an inarticulate effort to express their fierce ecstasy. The graceful creatures were like palm trees in a tropical hurricane.”³⁷

The repeated confinement of the Roma to the subordinate realm of entertainment (as a spectacle performed to be observed and enjoyed by others) is a recurring theme in Brown’s work, in which – unrestrained by the self-imposed limits of his Victorian predecessor – he emphatically sexualises and exoticises the women. Mixing participant observation with literary references, he refers to Spanish Gitanas and Romani women from other parts of the world as one and the same, as when describing the undulating body of a Slavic adolescent (“her garment of many colors revealed a lithe, smoothly undulating body. Underneath the flimsy cloth her round breasts stood out as firm as a bronze statue”). His visits to the flamenco cafés of Barcelona and Seville are embellished with images that appear to have been taken directly from early silent cinema, such as Lubitsch’s Carmen of 1918, released in the United States as Gypsy Blood in 1921. Thus, for example, he describes “two women who were walking along with erect, lithe bodies and swinging step.” Their demeanour resolute, and draped in Manila shawls whose fringes swayed to the rhythm of their hips, they eye the customers as they pass between the tables. The observer, satisfied, asserts that he recognises them unequivocally as Gypsies by “the flash of the smile and the knowing gleam in the eye” and, consequently, addresses them in Caló to gain their trust. At other times, his references betray the influence of the works of the Romantics, as when he adopts Liszt’s words to speak of the irresistible seductiveness of these bewitching women with panther-like movements, “the terror of tutors, mothers, and wives of the Russian aristocracy.”³⁸

Brown thus re-imagines the Gypsy woman as an object of male fantasy, drawing on earlier accounts and adding his own observations viewed through the filter of the cultural repertoire of the early 20th century, a time when the crisis of 19th-century gender models and concerns about the “new woman” intersected with a renewed transnational fashion for Gypsophila that extended from the theatres of Paris to the stages of America. This heightened the exoticism of the Romani, a people who from the outsider’s perspective appeared primitive, as is further evidenced in Brown’s discourse on “Gypsy” men. In this respect, he draws literally upon statements by Borrow and other preceding writers, while also reworking them from the standpoint of preferences that reveal the new fissures opening up in the dominant gender and emotional norms. In any event, and whether to entrench prior stereotypes or to breathe new life into these depictions, Brown attributes to Romani men a series of manly racial and collective traits.

Thus, they are stoic and endure adversity, as Borrow had already reported. Like him, Brown also asserts that they are violent and jealously protective of their women (although he speaks admirably of their tenderness as fathers). He insists, above all, on the passionate and consequently volatile character of the Roma: “I have seen two Gypsies ready to spring at each other like wolves – and an instant later the arms that were extended to strangle would be about each other’s neck in an embrace. Their keen sensibility and complete self-expression is that of the child and the artist.” This last characteristic, that of expressiveness, even comes to be appreciated as the embodiment of affection, in the form of embraces and kisses between men, revealing the need for emotional refuge from the established order: “Gypsies, being unsuppressed, often do this; while Anglo-Saxons are afraid to show their kindliness – and thus it is wasted.” ³⁹ However, his admiration is riddled with metaphors – wolves, children, artists – that emphasise a state of anthropological and cultural primitivism that keeps Romani men in a kind of natural and permanent childhood.

There is no question regarding the racialising logic and effect of this discourse on the Roma: they are a different “race,” select because of their rarity but nonetheless untamed. Their far eastern provenance is often emphasised. Since he speaks of races lower down the evolutionary scale, the writer sees no incongruity in including in a book dedicated to Spain’s Gitanos a chapter on Tangier and the “Moors” that recounts his trip to North Africa: the peripheries explain each other. Against a motley but nonetheless vivid backdrop of ethnographic observations, certain customs are lauded while others are deemed more characteristic of animals than humans. The strongest argument Brown makes in favour of the Romani eloquently summarises the benevolently racist mindset that has long influenced society and culture “People have often asked me, ‘What good are the Gypsies, anyway?’ One might reply by asking, ‘What good are the red-birds, or the purple ragweed that grows along the roadsides?’ Apart from their contribution to the world by just being, and by inspiring writers and artists for hundreds of years, Gypsies have kept alive and helped perfect to the highest degree the folk arts.”⁴⁰ As can be seen, naturalistic comparisons underpin the positioning of “Gypsies” as passive objects for the inspiration of “true” artists, including in that role their value as vessels of folklore, the humblest art of the people, a notion loaded with ethnographic connotations at that time. In fact, one of Brown’s purposes for travelling to Spain was to collect and classify “authentic Gypsy” songs, “a tribute to the very popular Journal of The Gypsy Lore Society that inspired a second generation of Romany Ryes to seek and record vanishing folk customs outside Great Britain” (Charnon-Deutsch 2004, 143).

Several years later, and following the academic path laid out by Gypsylorism, another Anglo-Saxon intellectual embodied in Spanish Gitanos both his aspirations for scholarly acclaim and his yearnings for a lifestyle different to that of his society of origin. Walter Starkie, who held a professorship at Trinity College Dublin and was a scholar of Spanish culture, gave definitive form to a strand of Gypsophila that nevertheless encapsulated racist judgement and discrimination. His contribution was to formulate an explanatory paradigm that, by making cante jondo – within the debate on flamenco – a significant symbol of Gitano identity, would strongly influence later scholars. With his observations, made from the vantage point of his declared admiration for what he interpreted as inherent Romani sociability, he placed the Roma within the narrow confines of a nature made for leisure and juerga freed from the imperatives of bourgeois productivity, a nature heavily laden with sensuality, revelling in the liberty of stateless nomadism and refractory to formal law. In short, he portrayed them as anti-modern heroes, a perilous endeavour given that Starkie’s fascination with the Roma ran parallel to the rise of fascism in Europe. An admirer of Mussolini himself, he later declared in favour of Franco’s coup in Spain and found stable employment during the dictatorship as head of the newly created British Council and lecturer at the University of Madrid. Meanwhile, he was celebrated by a long list of persons of note in the 1940s (from the Duke of Alba to Camilo José Cela, Manuel Machado, Ramón Menéndez Pidal and Jacinto Benavente, among others).⁴¹ He is perhaps the best example of a benevolent racist to traverse these pages; certainly, his fame as a friend of the “Gypsies” still endures.⁴²

Starkie made repeated visits to Spain and two of his works were travelogues that revolved around his time among the Gitanos during the Second Republic: Spanish Raggle Taggle (1934) and Don Gypsy (1936). Later, during the Franco dictatorship, he published In Sara’s Tent (1954).⁴³ Often presenting himself as a vagabond wandering the roads with his violin as his sole means of support, always ready for adventure and seeking Roma company, Starkie employs devices learned from Borrow and others and refined through the filter provided by Brown. Like his predecessors, he places his own linguistic ability at the heart of the trust he claims to earn among the Roma; speaking Romani to surprise and win over the subject of observation was a common ploy for Gypsylorists. Nevertheless, despite being given the nickname “the Irish Borrow” and contributing to the republication of The Bible in Spain, he also settled a few scores with the father of Gypsylorism: according to Starkie, Borrow did not fully understand the Roma and generalised excessively in his observations; meanwhile, he presents himself as truly knowing them, as capable of bridging gaps beyond the reach of others and recreating himself as the antithesis of the romantic tourist.⁴⁴

Indeed, Starkie’s travels were driven by an even more rebellious desire for adventure than that of his predecessors. While both Borrow, in his way, and later Brown had sought among the Gitanos a means of escape from the various normative frameworks of their respective societies, Starkie was moved by a very specific rejection of the paternal authority that had pre-planned his academic destiny. He thus wished to be consumed by what he himself described as “el virus del vagabundo gitano” as he explored alternative life paths.⁴⁵ Although he travelled to other countries, it was in Spain – whose imperial glories he had studied admiringly and which he conceived of as traditional and devout – that he found a place where he could reconcile his tastes and identities. It is therefore unsurprising that he felt comfortable under the Franco dictatorship, having paid no attention in his early visits to the changes under way in the country during the Second Republic.⁴⁶

In a double essentialist pirouette, in this eternal Spain the Roma appeared to him the best representatives of tradition, in the sense that they themselves were, in his view, an unevolved race, frozen in time. His conviction – or perhaps indolent attitude to anything other than the revels of music and wine – translates as an uncritical reiteration of ethnographic tropes about Romani lifestyles taken from Borrow, writers of the Golden Age and other scholars of his own day, such as José Carlos de Luna (who revived the idea of the African origin of the Spanish Roma). Thus, his pages are filled with well-worn tales of the clothing designed to impose chastity (Diclé), the tricks used to deceive the Busné (such as the Hokkano Baró) and the snatching of children (blond ones, naturally).⁴⁷ Starkie had thoroughly mastered the “realist account” practised by Borrow, and in his narrative he dons the mantle of authority conferred by moulding extracts of informants’ phrases to fit his own discourse, enunciated from a position of cultural superiority.

Realism becomes lascivious when he describes women, for whom he constructs a sexual and exotic charge that exceeds even that of Brown. Dance is the preferred terrain for this sexualising fantasy. In Don Gitano, for instance, he observes a young woman from Sacromonte in Granada, describing her as “alta, graciosa, con una piel marfilina; la cara un óvalo perfecto; (…) cabello negro y rizado, y negras y marcadas cejas, (…) un par de ojos centelleantes, labios rojos y sensuales, hoyuelos en las mejillas,” “en suma, una gitanilla diábolica.” According to Starkie, her bewitching nature has an incendiary effect on whomever watches her dance, a fact she knowingly exploits for monetary gain. As an expert wary of such wiles, he not only resists her implorations, but asserts: “creo firmemente que era tan virgen como cuando nació, aunque encendiese la sangre con frenética tentación.”⁴⁸ Alabaster skins, hypnotic gazes, sensual mouths, bodies sparkling like flames, sensual animalistic movements … all frequently characterise Roma women in scenes narrated from the perspective of an Orientalism that provides him with a wealth of imagery of “priestesses” and “female Pharaohs.” The femme fatale of the turn of the century is here rewritten in an exotic Roma lexicon.⁴⁹ Taking refuge in this fantasy, Starkie attributes the sexual initiative to her and portrays it as something with which a man is confronted (“no soy ningún Perseo para resistir la fascinación de semejante Medusa,” paradoxically reversing the consequences of the act of observation and explanation through which he has turned Roma women into passive subjects of his imagination.⁵⁰ Women who, moreover, as soon as they cross the threshold between youth and middle age, become ugly, wrinkled witches and, as such, repugnant to him.

By this point, it is no longer surprising that the satirisation of the romantic tourist, naive and easily deceived, can coexist with the author’s self-declaration of being a true sentimentalist, who consequently embarks on an eccentric quest for Mérimée’s Carmen as soon as he sets foot in Seville. He is helped here by the fact that he no longer differentiates between Roma and Andalusian women; the image of the cigarrera fuses and encapsulates them in the romantic stereotype. He describes how a young girl in a pink dress and wearing a rose in her black hair acts as impudently and full of self-confidence as if she were a princess. Of course, Starkie’s cigarrera, like Mérimée’s (and those of so many other re-creators of the image), has a devilish temper and violently confronts anyone who gets in her way, standing arms akimbo and furiously stamping her foot very much in the style of Lubitsch’s Carmen.⁵¹ Drawing on references from various literary and visual sources, Starkie offers us a dense summary of an entire tradition of stereotypes updated to accommodate several of the fashions of the day.

Thus, for example, his narrative maintains the physical characterisation of the Gitanos inherited from his readings, which is interpreted in terms of blackness, albeit that when describing the bewitching dancers their skin significantly becomes alabaster white to underline their sexual attractiveness. The dark colour characteristic of this ethnic group is likened to mahogany or walnut, or occasionally described as “olive;” it is accompanied by equally dark hair (like a raven’s wing or that of a “Red Indian”), and is complemented by an all-but impenetrable glassy, opaque gaze. There is also, as Borrow himself maintained, a particular “Gypsy” countenance. Ultimately, “los gitanos son los mismos en todo el mundo. En su vida habitual se muestran groseros, caprichosos y melancólicos, como si un velo oscuro cubriese sus rostros.”⁵²

The most comprehensive and influential act of racialisation, however, is constructed in a realm other than that of colour: it is in the cante jondo, a musicological discovery of the period, that Starkie finds the place most in tune with his own tastes to label and pin the Gitanos as precisely as an entomologist would. In 1922, Manuel de Falla had organised the Concurso de Cante Jondo contest in Granada with Federico García Lorca and with the support of a long list of artists and intellectuals. According to Falla’s own theory about this singing style, considered a relic in danger of being trampled by the advance of modern music, the Gitanos were its truest proponents because of their primitive nature and backward way of life, circumstances that had made them the guardians of this tradition.⁵³ Starkie had met Falla during his first visit to Spain in the 1920s, and his books demonstrate his intellectual alignment with this theory. Thus, the Gitanos are valued as bearers of an art with profound historical roots (they are described as minstrels who had perpetuated the old songs, adding their own “oriental qualities” to the melodies and dances); but they are also depicted as the passive vessels of this tradition: “el gitano no crea, perpetúa.”⁵⁴ In this framework, the best performers of this form of folklore are characterised by their untamed nature and primitivism: it is what makes them admirable. Thus, the men, according to Starkie, bite their song; “las palabras, tal como las cantan los gitanos, salen atropelladamente y acentúan el salvaje individualismo del romaní.” The women dance as if “possessed,” in an orgy of rhythms, improvising as nature dictates. For this self-proclaimed expert, this is what sets the authentic cante jondo apart from the more commercial flamenco, and he despises styles that do not have the same “wild violence.”⁵⁵ After a century of tourists and señoritos shaping the spectacle, Starkie and his epigones came to demand a new retrospective “authenticity,” completing the cycle of racialisation of the Gitanos in the subordinate space of revelry.

Conclusions

The trail traced by Borrow, Brown and Starkie, and their recreation of the devices of many other observers, had a decisive influence on the formulation of representations of Gitanos still prevalent today. Starting from a position of interest and sometimes admiration, and even living alongside them as participant-observers, they constructed images that attributed to the Gitanos a way of being derived from their supposedly racial nature. Since these representations are the product of the observers’ own vital and affective needs rather than a critical translation of the analysed reality, the resulting portrayals place the observed subjects in the confines of a space useful for the white male academic imagination. Irresistible flamenco dancers who reinterpret the femme fatale in contrast to the “angel in the house,” coarse and free men who escape the confines of ordered bourgeois manliness, unlimited time for leisure rather than liberal demands for productivity, a lifestyle defined by whim and improvisation rather than by the rationalising planning of time, nomadism as a way of shrugging off the ties of the homeland, and so on.

Furthermore, these fantasies not only served as a form of escape (both imaginary and practised) but also created a racialising discourse that has long weighed heavy on the Romani both in Spain and throughout the rest of Europe. This discourse summarises and fixes the physical characteristics attributed to the Roma transnationally while also endowing the attributed cultural traits with a biological, collective and hereditary nature. It is, moreover, a discourse that is clothed in epistemic authority: the resources of expert knowledge typical of ethnographic, folkloric studies and, more specifically, of Gypsylorists, lend these opinions a veracity that effectively conceals the inconsistencies, plagiarisms, uncritical affirmations and other poor scholarly practices. Enthusiasm is claimed as realism without considering its romantic and Orientalist logic. The impact of these three observers on other scholars, both local and foreign, of Romani life is substantial. To give just one example, F.M. Pabanó (pseudonym of Félix Manzano López), a criminologist who asserted the asociality of the Spanish Roma, persisted in using Borrow’s vocabulary in his Historia y costumbres gitanas published in 1915 (Charnon-Deutsch 2004, 201).

Beyond expert circles, the social spread of racist representations with benevolent aspects merits a broad research programme that critically studies everything from literature to cinema, photography, painting, tourism, theatre, sport and many other cultural vehicles and spaces that trivialise the discriminatory effects of racialisation by concealing them behind the veil of occasional admiration. The concept of banal racism proposed here can assist in the exploration of the past of present-day racist attitudes, doing so not only by directing the attention of historians to that wide array of seemingly trivial cultural practices but also, and most importantly, by enabling us to connect cordial or benevolent racism (typical of those of us who do not consider ourselves racist) with genocidal racism. We might thus understand how it was possible for Walter Starkie to see himself as a champion of anti-racism when protesting against the eviction of a Gitano camp in Barcelona in the 1950s, while remaining silent about the horrors of the Romani genocide under Nazism, of which he had first-hand accounts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Grant PID2022–140462NB-I00 funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ and by the EU - FEDER . The author also forms part of VOICES (RED2022–134,719-T).

2. For the 20th century presented as the climax, see Fredrickson (2002).

3. García Arenal and Pereda (2022, 13). For blood as a fluid demonstrating racial impurity in the case of Jews (as argued by, among others, Juan de Quiñones, one of the authors most active in stigmatising the Gitano minority in Spain), see Beusterien (1999).

4. For the scientific genesis of this discourse on racial mixing, is indispensable the study by Goode (2009). The depiction of the Gitanos in Sierra (2015, 2016, 2019).

5. Acceptable racism in McGarry (2017). In the context of Spain, and from a historical perspective, see García-Sanz (2019).

6. This article uses the Roma (Romani) endonym self-attributed internationally since the 1970s. It also employs the exonyms “Gypsy” and “Gitano.” The first is used as a historical concept and is always rendered in quotation marks (except in compound nouns such as anti-Gypsyism, where the quotation marks would hinder ease of reading) to denote its derogatory connotations, which are obviously not shared by the author. Gitano, meanwhile, is used in both its historical and its contemporary sense, given the Spanish Romani population’s self identification with this denomination.

7. Billig (1995, 8). The words in square brackets are, naturally, my own.

8. Turra and Venturi (1995). “Negro bom é negro de alma branca” appears in the first of the twelve questions asked in the interview (14); percentages (13). For an overview of the intellectual history of proposals regarding miscegenation that apparently went beyond the paradigm of “whiteness” in the Portuguese – Brazilian context and their relation to similar attempts to nationalise a mixed race in Latin America, see Funes (2018).

9. Bell hooks (1992), especially Chapter 1: “Loving Blackness as Political resistance.”

10. The concept of imagined community is posited by Benedict Anderson and is further employed by Billig in his examination of banal nationalism. This concept elucidates how social inequalities within a nation are either reconciled or concealed through the construction of an all-embracing identity. Anderson (1983).

11. Based on the work on benevolent sexism: Glick and Fiske (1996). For several case studies on racist micro-discrimination, see Judd, Park, Ryan, Brauer, and Kraus (1995); Ramasubramanian and Oliver (2007).

12. For the first study of this generalised detention programme, see Gómez Alfaro (1993).

13. Aficionado entered into use in the 18th-century to refer to non-Gypsy admirers of the way of life and culture of the Gitanos, who were adopted in idealised form by purist reactionaries opposed to foreign influence. On the reinvention of Cervantes’ Preciosa and, in general, the discourse around Spain’s Gitanos, see the seminal work by Charnon-Deutsch (2004).

14. For the Enlightenment biopolitics practised by the Spanish Monarchy, see Vázquez García (2009).

15. The concept of expert knowledge is used here in the sense of epistemic community described by Haas (1992); also, Popa, Morsel and Backouche (2018).

16. Gypsylorism is a tradition of study of Gypsy culture and customs that originated in England towards the end of the 19th century. Subsequently exported to the United States, it became a model adopted in other European scholarly circles. See Mayall (2004), Chapter 6; Willems (1997), particularly Chapter 3.

17. George Borrow: The Zincali; or, An Account of the Gypsies of Spain, London, John Murray, 1841, two volumes. George Borrow: The Bible in Spain, or the Journeys, Adventures, and imprisonments of an Englishman, London, John Murray, 1843, citation on 59. The full citation: “there are many in foreign lands who lament the darkness which envelopes Spain, and the scenes of cruelty, robbery, and murder which deform it.”

18. Citation taken from The Zincali, Vol I, 54.

19. For the local formulation of the Orient in the sense proposed by Said (1978) see Smith (2024), Chapter 19. On the connections between romantic travellers and the local construction of the image of Spain, see Andreu Miralles (2016).

20. For the influence of Pushkin and the fashion for Russian choruses, see Willems (1997); for Mérimée’s inspiration, see Charnon-Deutsch (2004).

21. Citations taken from The Zincali, Vol I, 77, 130 and 43, respectively.

22. Mérimée, for example, was unequivocal in refuting the chastity of Gitanas and dismissing Borrow’s claims to be well-informed on this matter. Citation taken from The Zincali, Vol I, 77.

23. Busne, another word in Romani for the non-Roma. Citations taken from The Zincali, Vol I, 316 and 318.

24. The Bible, 53. For the repetition of the anecdote of the marriage proposal in Lavengro, see Willems (1997, 125).

25. The Bible, 47. Antonio appears in chapters IX and X.

26. Citation taken from The Zincali, Vol I, 220.

27. “Tale” in the sense indicated by van Manen (1988).

28. According to Charnon-Deutsch, Borrow’s own writings drew on those of the French travellers who penned “the discovery of the Romantic Spanish Gypsy.” These authors’ observations in turn drew on Gobineau’s ideas on racial purity and contamination and the relationship between phenotypes and the behaviours of different peoples that gained increasing attention in the mid-19th century; Charnon-Deutsch (2004).

29. For the citations referring to physical appearance, see The Zincali, Vol I, p. 133 and 159. For the “striking similarity,” see 53.

30. While the Jews have meticulously maintained their historical records and rabbinical scholarship, “the Romas have no history, they do not even know the name of their original country; and the only tradition which they possess, that of their Egyptian origin, is a false one, whether invented by themselves or others,” The Zincali, Vol I, 159–160.

31. The Zincali, Vol I, 134.

32. Azaña translated La Biblia en España in 1921 and Los Zincali in 1932, both texts that are still used in Spanish editions of these works. In his preliminary analysis of the former, he asserts that Borrow’s book is a precious document for the history of tolerance (La Biblia en España, Madrid, Alianza editorial, 1970: 21).

33. Irving Brown, Nights and Days on the Gypsy Trail, New York, Harper & Brothers, 1922, 10.

34. Baltanás offers a biographical sketch in the introduction to the Spanish edition of La senda gitana by Brown, I. (2006).

35. ibid., citations 7 and 5 (the underlining is mine).

36. For the alternatives to the interwar models of manliness, see Mosse (1999). On masculinity, flight from domestic order and their political implications, Tosh (2005).

37. ibid., 200.

38. ibid., 19–20, 33 and 15.

39. ibid., 21 and 88.

40. ibid., 24.

41. For biographical information, see Hurtley (2013).

42. Even in a recent publication, reference is made to the “respect” and “admiration” supposedly professed by ““los gitanos a los que se juntaba en sus andanzas, que lo habían aceptado como uno más entre ellos, que lo invitaban en sus cuevas y bajo sus tiendas y quedaban admirados por las notas sutiles y nostálgicas de su violín celta;” Paolo Caucci von Saucken: “Introducción,” in Matteo Biagetti, Walter Starkie, escritor, académico, peregrino, Edizioni Compostellane, 2010 (http://www.edizionicompostellane.com/download/Starkie_%20introduccion.pdf). This recognition is also referred to in mentions of him in the press; for a sample, see “Walter Starkie, el irlandés con alma de gitano,” Granada Hoy, 8 March 2015.

43. Spanish Raggle Taggle. Adventures with a Fiddle in North Spain, London, Murray, 1934, Spanish edition Aventuras de un irlandés en España, Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1965; Don Gypsy, Adventures with a Fiddle in Southern Spain and Barbery, London, Murray, 1936 and New York, Dupont, 1937, Spanish edition Don Gitano. Aventuras de un irlandés con su violín en Marruecos, Andalucía y en La Mancha, Barcelona, Pallas, 1944; In Sara’s tent, London, Murray, 1954, Spanish edition Casta gitana, Barcelona, José Janes, 1956.

44. For his relationship with Borrow, see Membrive Pérez (2014). For his critique of Borrow, see Casta gitana, 113; on the authenticity of his experience, see Don Gitano, 143–149.

45. Aventuras de un irlandés, 169.

46. For his political preferences and failure to notice the changes, see Charnon-Deutsch (2004, 144–145); on the image of Spain, see Fernández Gordillo (2022).

47. For a long elucidation on the significance of “una cabellera rubia entre tanto gitano negro,” see Aventuras, 38.

48. Don Gitano, 268.

49. Specifically on the image of gypsy women, see Berná Serna (2019).

50. Perseo and Medusa, in Don Gitano, 279.

51. Don Gitano, 395–396

52. Examples from Aventuras de un irlandés, 4; Don Gitano, 29 and 359; Casta Gitana, 95; for the reference to “Gypsies” being all the same, see Don Gitano, 280.

53. On the paradox that appreciating Gitano art confines its proponents to the stereotype of backwardness, see Llano (2017).

54. Citations from Don Gitano, 277 and Casta Gitana, 85.

55. Casta gitana … 90 and Don Gitano, 282–284.