Try Being in the Minority

I've devoted a lot of brain space over the past few years to historical issues of race and ethnicity. It is one thing to undertake this as an academic exercise, but it's something else altogether to actually experience it. My brief and benign experience as a minority was nevertheless an enlightening one.

As a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant being a minority isn't something that I do very often. In fact, the only time is when we travel to Russia. I'm an American and most people there are Russian. Obviously. It's a strange feeling to know that everyone on the metro is looking at you because you aren't like them. I dress kind of funny to them, I speak a different language, and I tend to make eye contact with strangers. This makes me different and it's a pretty vulnerable feeling.

But there is a perhaps more subtle minority group into which Sarah falls, if only just a little. She looks a little bit Gypsy. (Or, to be politically correct, Roma). There's a good chance that because of her prominent Bohemian ancestry and her dark, curly hair that she does indeed have some Roma blood in her. On our most recent trip one of the Russian ladies remarked to Sarah that she looked like a Gypsy--and upon further discussion, we realized we have never seen anyone else in Russia with Sarah's hair (aside from some beautiful Roma children). Apparently there are some stereotypes that go along with this: Roma are good at music and equally adept at stealing. We've been advised to watch out for them because you just never know. Sarah is good at music, but she's never stolen anything.

Many Roma have more pronounced ethnic features: dark skin, hair and eyes, and perhaps a distinctive style of dress. Being Roma in Eastern Europe certainly brings its share of challenges. It's interesting to me to travel halfway around the world and run into the same sorts of (unearned) stereotypes for racial minorities that we have here in the U.S.