Well I wouldn't go that far - that the problem is only in the institutions and "white attitudes". Even the more educated Romani people themselves admit that the problem is on both sides. As long as the majority of Romani remain apathetic with the excuse of the society being "racist" anyway, then there is only so much you can do.
Not that the system isn't flawed.
A part of this tragedy is how early the segregation starts. I just read a statistic today that Romani children who attend kindergarten for two or more years are 30 % more likely to get a job than kids who attend for a year or less. Unfortunately, sending your kids to kindergarten is not a priority for many Romani people - a) because the majority will always be white, that with only 3% Romani living in the country, so you're essentially sending your child into a potentially "unfriendly" environment, and b) because kindergarten costs money - not much, it's perfectly affordable if you have a job, but if both parents are on social support, then it can be a problem.
So then you have kids who start primary school, but they're incapable of even the simplest things - they can't tie their shoelaces, they barely speak the language, they don't know numbers and can't read the basic letters, some don't even know the basic hygiene, some are disruptive of the lessons just to stick it up to the establishment. And if you have one kid like that in your class, then you can work with him, but if there is more of them, it becomes a problem. So if you have a class of thirty kids with four Romani children from socially poor background, they might fall behind pretty fast. And then they get send to "special schools" for kids with light mental disabilities, which effectively destroys their chances for a high school education and they're pretty much screwed for the rest of their lives. (This is by the way one of the "wonderful" legacies of communism - but to explain how that ideology screwed up this country would be a long tirade. Gah.)
So this is obviously not okay, and there has been a lot of debate about the "special schools". Over the past ten years, the amount of children sent there has dropped by 40%, so we are getting somewhere... slowly. Also the number of university students have rised - according to "Romea", which is the closest thing to an official Romani organization in Czechia, the number of Romani university students have gone from two(!) to over three hundred during the past few years (which is still only 0.1 % of all the Romani people in Czechia...). There have been government programs created just for this; special scholarships for Romani students which have met with partial success. Also most Czech universities are free (you only pay for your schoolbooks), so that should make it easier for people from poor background to get education... but it's still easier said and done, and if your parents don't have a certain level of education, you're that less likely to obtain it yourself, no matter if you're white or Romani.
The biggest issue though is the poverty.
Of course everyone gets a social support, but there is a frightening percent of people who are in debts that they have no way of paying... they owe money to the mafia, they rent flats from loan sharks (who are often Romani themselves) and barely scrape to get by. This of course leads to the very high crime rate between Romani people – if they can’t get a job due to the lack of even the most basic education, they understandably turn to less legal means; theft, robbery, prostitution. There have been some new laws passed that should make it that harder for the loan-sharks to extort people like this, but again it will take time.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2015-04-18 04:13 pm (UTC)Not that the system isn't flawed.
A part of this tragedy is how early the segregation starts. I just read a statistic today that Romani children who attend kindergarten for two or more years are 30 % more likely to get a job than kids who attend for a year or less. Unfortunately, sending your kids to kindergarten is not a priority for many Romani people - a) because the majority will always be white, that with only 3% Romani living in the country, so you're essentially sending your child into a potentially "unfriendly" environment, and b) because kindergarten costs money - not much, it's perfectly affordable if you have a job, but if both parents are on social support, then it can be a problem.
So then you have kids who start primary school, but they're incapable of even the simplest things - they can't tie their shoelaces, they barely speak the language, they don't know numbers and can't read the basic letters, some don't even know the basic hygiene, some are disruptive of the lessons just to stick it up to the establishment. And if you have one kid like that in your class, then you can work with him, but if there is more of them, it becomes a problem. So if you have a class of thirty kids with four Romani children from socially poor background, they might fall behind pretty fast. And then they get send to "special schools" for kids with light mental disabilities, which effectively destroys their chances for a high school education and they're pretty much screwed for the rest of their lives. (This is by the way one of the "wonderful" legacies of communism - but to explain how that ideology screwed up this country would be a long tirade. Gah.)
So this is obviously not okay, and there has been a lot of debate about the "special schools". Over the past ten years, the amount of children sent there has dropped by 40%, so we are getting somewhere... slowly. Also the number of university students have rised - according to "Romea", which is the closest thing to an official Romani organization in Czechia, the number of Romani university students have gone from two(!) to over three hundred during the past few years (which is still only 0.1 % of all the Romani people in Czechia...). There have been government programs created just for this; special scholarships for Romani students which have met with partial success. Also most Czech universities are free (you only pay for your schoolbooks), so that should make it easier for people from poor background to get education... but it's still easier said and done, and if your parents don't have a certain level of education, you're that less likely to obtain it yourself, no matter if you're white or Romani.
The biggest issue though is the poverty.
Of course everyone gets a social support, but there is a frightening percent of people who are in debts that they have no way of paying... they owe money to the mafia, they rent flats from loan sharks (who are often Romani themselves) and barely scrape to get by. This of course leads to the very high crime rate between Romani people – if they can’t get a job due to the lack of even the most basic education, they understandably turn to less legal means; theft, robbery, prostitution. There have been some new laws passed that should make it that harder for the loan-sharks to extort people like this, but again it will take time.