“Inhale inspiration/exhale wonder/remember Right Now is all you have/constantly ask yourself/How can I make this now/The best now it could possibly be.”

-Christopher Johnson, “All I have in life is right now”

On an overcast and drizzly morning in late March, I found myself back at my alma mater, sitting through a five-hour conference with a roomful of people I didn’t even know. Still, we ended up having much more in common than I could have ever imagined. Plus, it was our chance to motivate one another to keep fighting against the never-ending pestilence called discrimination.

At that point in time, all I wanted was answers. I wanted to know what was being done about one of the most common, overlooked, and worst forms of discrimination that could ever exist.

Like all good journeys, it was going to take some serious probing out there in the world, and inside of me, to get anywhere with this, as I would soon find out.

Making some noise

At first, I was looking for a large movement or an ongoing demonstration with the whole nine yards: megaphones and marches to rattle everyone awake in the neighborhoods, and large poster boards screaming, “Let’s end the war among brothers” or “It’s time to love the diversity in diversity.”

That fantasy was crushed once my disappointing two-hour Google search ended. Even though I did come across several blog entries and essays from other people who had gone through the same thing as I did or even worse, there was still nothing MAJOR being done about it.

So I set my sights on the next best thing: on-campus advocacy groups. I’ve always heard they were a good resource for students that want to get involved and be informed on social issues, and I knew just where to go.

It felt strange calling up the Unity Center at Rhode Island College since I never did when I was there as a student. Ironically enough, it was the first place that came to mind, and I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try.

As I dialed the number to speak with Director Antoinette Gomes, I wondered what I was getting myself into. But it was too late to back out once she answered the call.

I was nervous, but got to the point. “Good afternoon, my name is LuzJennifer Martinez. I’m a freelance writer and alumni of Rhode Island College. I was looking to see if there is a group, event, or movement that the Unity Center knows of that addresses the issue of intra-racism.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

My heart sank. Was she offended already? Who did I think I was, mentioning something so negative to the director of the Unity Center, a group which focuses on bringing people together, not on what keeps them apart?

I didn’t think the term would be so loud and full of such weight when I said it, but it was like a crack of thunder just outside the window.

“Intra-racism. When people within an ethnic group or race discriminate against each other.”

“Yes, we come across that issue a lot and although there aren’t any specific events or groups to address it, there are some things going on,” she said.

Oh! Her response wasn’t incredulous; she just hadn’t heard what I had said. As a matter of fact, she didn’t even sound angry; she seemed to be thinking about what I was telling her.

The following night, Gomes said they were going to be showing a Neo-African film about the new narrative of being African American.

She also told me the Unity Center holds a diversity week on-campus every October, which I remembered from when I was an undergrad. “There’s a student organization on campus called L.I.F.E., which stands for Live, Inspire, Fight, Educate. I can give you their contact information if you’d like,” she added.

A week later I dialed the number L.I.F.E President Mariama Kurbally had forwarded to me through email, feeling much more confident than before. She explained that while the organization focuses on diversity as a whole, it does consider “the different parts to it.”

There are aspects like race relations (or “brown” and “black” relationships), that make diversity far more than just a “black” or “white” issue. She agreed with Gomes by saying that in many of the discussions and events hosted by L.I.F.E., intra-racism is always mentioned.

“Next month, we’re having our Diversity is a way of L.I.F.E conference, where we host sessions rather than one big convention. We usually talk about gender oppression, defining racism and intra-racism, to give people the tools to deal with it,” she continued.

Kurbally said she would get in touch as soon as everything was worked out, and I couldn’t wait to find out more about it.

From writer to attendee

The next thing I knew, I was sitting at the first focus group planning meeting of the conference at the Rhode Island College Student Union with a pen and notepad handy. Aside from meeting both Kurbally and Gomes in person, I got a better sense of what L.I.F.E was all about.

The organization was founded by Kurbally in 2008 with the mission to “promote individual development and improve the overall quality of life in a multicultural community,” by “giving its members a holistic understanding of pertinent social issues, empowering individuals through education, increasing awareness, and striving to create strong leaders within our communities from various backgrounds.”

I also met some of L.I.F.E.’s other officers and supporters. There was Vice President Malinda Bridges, Secretary Sandra Chevalier, Anthony Bailey, one of the conference presenters, and lastly, an L.I.F.E. member and R.I.C. undergraduate student whom, if I’m not mistaken, I remember being called “Tunde.”

Everyone sat at a square table, discussing details of the event like what time one information session would be held over the other and which activities to include throughout the conference. Kurbally filled in a tentative schedule on the dry erase board in the room, while I scribbled away on my yellow notepad.

I also found out that there would be a full one- hour session exclusively about intra-racism and it was all I could do to stop myself from grinning pathetically at the paper in front of me. About 10 minutes later, Hannah Resseger, a local spoken word poet and Rhode Island College graduate, walked in with Christopher Johnson and his daughter.

Johnson, another spoken word artist, was scheduled to perform his poetry during the conference and the conversation shifted into how he would go about it within the available time frame. In the end, some of the details were still not finalized, and the discussion shifted on to how the conference would be announced to the public. But before that, Kurbally asked us for some feedback.

“Does anyone else have any input? How about you guys, did you have any questions?”

She was talking to those of us who hadn’t said a word up until that point, but the comment still caught me by surprise. When she looked at me, I shook my head and looked down at my yellow pad. I felt bad for seeming indifferent, but I didn’t want to interfere since this was their conference.

I thought my job was to reflect back on how the event would address an issue of diversity like intra-racism. Yet, seeing the interest in what I had to say made me realize this was going to be different.

It was going to take more than just note-taking and listening; I was going to have to put down my pen and paper and get involved.

Finding common ground in diversity

The conference was scheduled to begin at nine a.m. in the Alger Hall building on the Rhode Island College campus with a breakfast and check-in. I arrived at 10:30 a.m., promising myself not to write a single word down until after the event. Thinking I would be able to quietly slip in without being noticed, I found myself waiting outside the electronically locked door of the high-tech classroom everyone was gathered in.

While I stood there hoping for someone to notice me, I felt like a student who was late for class and had missed the most important part of the lecture. The feeling intensified when I plopped down into a blue chair to join the circle of about 35 people with name tags stuck to their shirts.

They weren’t all college students either. There was a mix of parents, working adult professionals, high school students, and even a couple of professors I recognized from around campus not too long ago.

Everyone was sharing their impressions about some images they had just seen on a large screen depicting acts of hate throughout history. It was part of the first presentation of the day, from Rhode Island College alum Anthony Bailey, called “Connecting to Difference.”

I had arrived just in time for the final interactive activity, which brought us all to our hands and knees. We had 10 minutes to write out our answers to 15 personal assessment questions on large poster size sheets in black marker.

After that, we were told to hang them up along the walls and boards of the spacious room. Once I got the separate ditto with the questions, I huddled down over the large paper on the floor.

By the time I looked up from my answers, most of the walls were already covered so I settled for one of the easels lined up on one side of the room.

Bailey surveyed the rows of papers with different handwriting taped to the wall.

When we finished, he said, “Now I want you all to go around and silently read the answers from as many other people as you can, except your own. When you read a statement or answer that you agree with, put a check mark and your initials next to it.”

We made our rounds, with everyone’s shoes shuffling slightly as we moved from paper to paper. You could hear muffled whispers buzzing in the air.

“Oops, sorry!”

“Here, you can read it now, I’m done.”

All along, I was preparing myself for the sight of my paper with nothing but the answers I had written. I eventually started focusing on the responses from the other posters and found some statements I related to.

I love GOD and my family, check, JM.

I like learning from other people, check, JM.

I want to make a difference in the world, check, JM.

Soon it was time to read our own papers again, and I was shocked to find a modest sprinkle of checks, initials, and even smiley faces on mine.

We all returned to our seats in the circle so Bailey could conclude his presentation.

“Even though we are all different, we harbor similarities, and that’s how we can connect to one another,” he said.

Memories, rhymes, and tears

James Montford, Director of the Bannister Art Gallery at Rhode Island College, was next in line to present a session. But before that, Hannah Resseger popped up out of her seat and made her way to the center of the circle to recite a poem.

She stood quiet for a second before hurling into an emotionally charged performance that answered the timeless question, “Who am I?” Throughout the introspective narrative, you could feel Resseger fighting as a performer and protagonist against the preconceived labels inflicted on her by others.

It perfectly depicted the inner turmoil of when you are told who you are as a person of a particular group or culture, even if you don’t relate to it. I sat enthralled, watching Resseger’s afflicted enunciations and animated expressions as she jumped from identity to identity in despair, anger, and resignation.

All the while, I re-lived the indirect accusations of how I was neither American enough to pursue my independent ventures nor Puerto Rican enough to be passionate about what was rightfully mine.

I bit my lip but couldn’t stop my eyes from welling over. Montford sat almost directly across from me on the other side of the circle and his face blurred for several seconds.

I looked away in embarrassment, feeling surprised and frustrated I had reacted that way. But I wasn’t the only one who would be emotionally moved at the conference.

Montford’s “When You Feel Difference” session began with some group sharing. To the people who were sitting to his right, he said, “I want you to tell us your earliest memory of when you first felt different.”

A Hispanic teen described how when he was little and newly arrived from his country of origin, he sat in class one day feeling very sick and was unable to tell the teacher in time because of the language barrier.

When it was her turn to speak, a young Latina woman started describing something about her childhood but was so soft-spoken I couldn’t hear her.

As soon as she shared her memory, she burst into tears and remained visibly upset for about five minutes. I couldn’t stop looking at her, and wondered what it was that had affected her so much throughout her life.

When there were about 4 people ahead of me to speak, Montford reversed the directions of the activity. He asked the people sitting to his left and on to describe their most recent memory of when they felt different.

A young couple next to me said they felt different being the only ones married among their peers. Just a couple of chairs to my left, Christopher Johnson replied that he didn’t really have an example of recently feeling different because he has always considered himself to be so.

“I think that if I didn’t feel different, I wouldn’t feel right. Who wants to be all the same? I like being unique and being me,” he said.

Jay Chattelle, another spoken word artist who runs the Rhode Island Poets (RIP) venue with Johnson shared another perspective with the group. He said being at the conference was his most recent experience of feeling different because he couldn’t relate to everyone else’s perceptions on what difference was all about.

In a response to an email that I sent him after the conference, Chattelle gave some more insight as to what he meant by his comments that day.

“Being different to me is recognizing we are all the same. With everyone’s erg (sic) to be different and stand out, it’s a shame when we are the ones not taking responsibility for our actions. We are the ones that have to make change and we should start with ourselves,” he said.

At the conference, Rhode Island College Professor of Anthropology Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban also made a good point. She said we were taking action by simply being there to educate ourselves to be aware of diversity in our lives, as well as by learning from others and sharing our experiences.

“We are taking the time to be here and address it,” she said.

The power of words

After lunch, everyone settled in for some more poetry, this time from Christopher Johnson. As soon as he started, I couldn’t believe how fast he recited the intricate lines and wondered if he was free styling or had written it all down before hand.

He performed about 5 poems that all flowed beautifully to create different sentiments and tones. One of them called “Two angels” had a strong walk-a-mile-in-their-shoes effect and another one called “All I have in life is right now” was full of some refreshing philosophical insight. Of all the poems, the second one spoke directly to me the most, especially about discrimination and how to approach it:

“A friend of mine once told me/”there are a plethora of personality types in the world/One fact of life/meeting assholes is unavoidable”/Assholes have one purpose, to shit/they will shit on you with no regard simply because that’s who they are/But an asshole is positioned low on the body/meaning you have to be lower than an asshole to be shit on by one/so the trick to avoid being shit on/ is to never allow yourself to be lower than the asshole…”

As the words flung out of Johnson toward the audience, the message hit me in the face like a cup of cold water. Of course! The key to attacking discrimination is to remain above it so it can never attack you. What the poem said to me was that nothing would ever be solved if you allow yourself to be “lower than the asshole” by either discriminating back or being submissive to it.

And sadly, the problem will always be around since we are bound to encounter assholes, as Johnson said. But we can make the most of now by deciding to stand up and fight against it through awareness and empowerment. The poetic explosion continued with Resseger, who recited another poem called “Matriarch.”

Again, her interpretation had a theatrical element to it, where Resseger took on the burden and pain of the protagonist and channeled it through every word and line. It was the perfect segue into the next presentation from Rhode Island College Psychologist Dr. Saeromi Kim, where we got to tap into the root of our feelings about bias and discrimination and how we react to it.

The majority of Dr. Kim’s “Emotions” session not only made us aware of the different feelings we encounter during moments of conflict or prejudice, it gave us an idea of the triggers which can bring them to life.

Kim even took it a step further by making us aware of the internal biases we harbor within ourselves and how they develop. We participated in an exercise called “both/and,” where we referred to one personal characteristic and then acknowledged its opposite or conflicting pair through a sentence.

Kim explained how that can keep you from focusing solely on one aspect of yourself, which eventually causes you to discriminate against the other. She wrote out an example in dark red ink on an easel.

“I am both ashamed of the privilege I’ve had when I was growing up and proud of what I accomplished on my own,” she said.

Soon after Kim insightful presentation, we all got into an interesting discussion lead by Anthony Bailey about “understanding privilege.” By then, the group had shrunk considerably, which only made the conversation more intimate and candid. We discussed what the term ‘privilege’ means and eventually concluded it all depends on how you look at it.

The concept can either have a positive or negative connotation to it, which, therefore, makes it a diverse and complex issue in itself.

Speaking out

It was just after two p.m. when it finally sunk in just how long we had been there. My eyes were getting pierced by the artificial brightness in the room and my legs hurt from crossing them so much.

And when would the intra-racism session start? While we were waiting for the next presentation, I tapped Bailey on the shoulder and asked him.

“We may not get to it since the speaker had a timing conflict and couldn’t make it,” he said.

I felt deflated but somehow didn’t lose hope that at any moment, the presenter would get there. I stayed hopeful during Dr. Maria Lawrence’s beautiful Native American style prayer, which celebrated diversity and asked for it to thrive and prosper.

The reality finally set in that the intra-racism session was a no-go when Dr. Lesley Bogad arrived in time to give the last presentation of the day about “Identities across differences.”

She was joined by two student representatives from the Advanced Learning and Leadership Initiative for Educational Diversity (A.L.L.I.E.D), a one credit class at R.I.C. dedicated to motivating students from underrepresented groups to pursue educational careers.

During the presentation, they talked about how A.L.L.I.E.D. also provides academic and cultural support to students so they can become teachers. As much as I didn’t want to, I had to go home in the middle of the session to prepare for an out of state trip I had the next day.

I shut the door behind me, leaving the small group clustered in front of a large screen with terms and phrases. That day, they taught me it doesn’t take a multitude of people causing a commotion through big demonstrations to make change; change can happen when we decide to expand our own knowledge on a cause and pass it on to the next person.

The conference also showcased the power and validity of on-campus groups like L.I.F.E., which are committed to heightening people’s awareness of diversity while encouraging them to celebrate it. Most of all, attending the conference really put into perspective for me my experience as an ethnic American who has dealt with intra-racism.

One time I was called the "quiet Puerto Rican," a seemingly innocent label that can be a precursor to a million other silent accusations. I’m the snobby one who would rather listen to alternative rock instead of Reggaeton, read a book than cook a meal, and speak English instead of Spanish.

The truth is I grew up listening to salsa, speaking Spanglish (a mixture of English and Spanish), and living off of my mother’s delicious ethnic cooking. So what exactly made me less Puerto Rican than the rest? Is it because I don’t live up to every expectation of what being a Puerto Rican woman is?

On the other hand, not everyone is like this. I’ve recently met people of my race while working for the Spanish press who are not so critical. They notice my accented Spanish but appreciate the fact that I’m trying. They understand the language barrier, reassuring me that I speak Spanish much better than they speak English.

Most importantly, they accept me as one of their own and encourage me to always embrace my Hispanic identity. And I have been doing that, just in my own way. If there was anything the conference also taught me, it was to never allow the indirect criticism from others to make me question my identity as an ethnic American.

No matter what, I am Latina and always will be Latina, and as long as I know that, it doesn’t matter what others think. As an advocate for diversity, I shouldn’t perpetuate the cycle of discrimination by being hateful toward people of my race. I love my culture and there’s no reason for me to be hostile to anyone regardless of what some people have done to me.

Just like everything in life, there are always going to be critics who question who you are; it’s just a matter of turning negative energy into positive motivation to make the world better with the little bit of knowledge that you have.

It won’t happen overnight and it won’t be easy, but I am committed to taking action. And thanks to the L.I.F.E. organization and those who attended the conference, I now know I am definitely not alone.

LuzJennifer Martinez

"Ladies, ladies!" A tall black man calls out to the two girls swishing down the sidewalk in short skirts. "Reggae bar, right here, come with me!"

The girls stop and turn toward the man. Behind them, the neon signs of nightclubs buzz. People of all accents and colors stream past, laughing and joking. "You got free drinks?" asks the brunette. Her face is round, her accent American. In her heels, she’s almost as tall as the man.

"Free entry all night!" says the man, throwing an arm around the girls’ shoulders and tugging them toward the bar.

The two young women don’t budge. "You got free drinks? For girls?" the brunette asks again. "We only wanna go if you got free drinks."

"Don’t worry, baby," the man says. His voice is deep and rich, the vowels rounded by a faint accent. "For you, it’s the first drink free. For a beautiful woman like you."

She remains skeptical. Her friend, a thin girl with wild, curly hair, takes one of the bar’s advertising fliers from the man. "Yeah, it says that here," she points. "It says, ‘First drink free,’ see?"

The brunette relaxes. The man, Danny Lekson, grins. The girls allow themselves to be led toward the bar, located on the fourth floor of a Tokyo highrise. The elevator doors close with Danny crowded between the two girls, his smile visible a second longer than theirs.

Nearly 40 years old, Danny Lekson works as a street caller – a man who pulls customers into bars – in an area of Tokyo called Roppongi. By day, Roppongi is a testament to Tokyo’s cosmopolitanism. Art museums, business offices, and luxury shopping plazas sparkle like jewels in the city’s international crown. But as dusk descends, the district transforms into a notoriously seedy meat market, where American military men prowl for willing women and international businessmen blow off steam at all-you-can-drink strip clubs. Danny works as one of the dozens of Nigerians who line the streets at night, shucking fliers and tugging the sleeves of passersby, pushing bars with cheap drinks and easy women. To the ex-pats who frequent the area, the group of tenacious Africans is "the gauntlet," a column of men whose solicitation, some say, borders on harassment.

Roppongi, with all its foreign faces, is an anomaly in a country that has traditionally prided itself on its unique, homogenous culture. For decades, Japan refused to open its borders to foreign influence until the American navy wrenched them apart in 1854. Today, at roughly 1.7% of the the population, immigrants are a tiny minority in the country. But as birth rates drop and the work force grays, many Japanese are calling for efforts to increase immigration. New people with new skills, the thinking goes, are needed to sustain the competitiveness of the world’s second largest economy. But the government has made it clear that Japan is not throwing open its gates to the huddled masses just yet. In the wake of Japan’s soaring unemployment rates during the recession, the country is seeking skilled, specialized immigrants.

The men who work as street callers, most of whom are Nigerian, are seen by some to be the exact opposite of the kind of immigrants Japan desires. Nigerians have always represented the largest African population in Japan, and their numbers have been steadily increasing every year. In 2007, the population consisted of 2,523 legal residents. "Roppongi is now virtually a foreign neighborhood," the governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, complained in 2006. "Africans – I don’t mean African-Americans – who don’t speak English are there doing who knows what."

Often, other foreigners are no more sympathetic. One American, a ten-year resident of Japan, sees the street callers as banished criminals of shadowy provenance. "Those guys in Roppongi, they’ll cut your throat for a dollar," he said. "They all used to be in Nigeria carrying machetes on the street. And most of them can’t go back. That’s like being the worst guy in prison, getting kicked out of Nigeria."

Simon Ewuare, a 29-year-old Nigerian who came to Tokyo seven years ago, doesn’t dwell on such comments. To be successful in Japan, he tells newcomers, you can’t "think about if they hate you or not. Put it out of your mind."

A soft-spoken man with small town manners, Simon covers his solid frame with brand new Rocawear jerseys and bleach-white Nikes. But he wasn’t always so stylish. As a young man, he did, in fact, carry a machete back in Nigeria – but it wasn’t on the street, and it wasn’t for long. As the eldest son of a well-off cocoa farmer, Simon was expected to apprentice under his father and eventually take over the business. But the thought of spending the rest of his life cooped up in his family’s little village made him want to run far away. So he did. In his late teens, he ended up in Benin City, a coastal capital known as the home of some of Nigeria’s most esteemed universities. With a cousin, he started a transport business. Soon, one semi-truck multiplied into five, all busy hauling goods across the hills of Nigeria.

By the age of 22, Simon had become a self-made businessman. He began wondering what he could do abroad. "I actually got a visa to America," he says, with a trace of pride. "But I talked to some friends there and they said, ‘It’s so hard here, the money’s not good here.’ So I talked to friends in Japan. They said, ‘Come here, it’s good here.’"

When Simon first arrived on a three-month sightseeing visa, he was taken care of by relatives and friends who had come before him. The African community in Tokyo is tightly knit. In some cases, it’s as if entire swaths of villages have been uprooted and transplanted: brothers live together; cousins work together; and friends who used to attend the same primary school back in Nigeria go out drinking together. In an exceptionally lucky break, Simon knew a Japanese man who had worked with his father in Africa and who agreed to be his guarantor, a person or company required by Japanese law to be responsible for an immigrant who desires certain kinds of residency or work permits.

Danny Lekson, the bar caller in Roppongi, was not so lucky. After his three-month sightseeing visa expired, he stayed. Despite the risk of detainment and deportation, he’s not the only one who has made such a decision. At any given time, there are estimated to be more than 91,000 immigrants living in Japan on overstayed visas. Visa-related arrests make up a significant percentage of the crime that foreigners commit in Japan, and contribute to statistics that, compared side-by-side with the crime rates of citizens, make it look as if foreigners are much more dangerous than Japanese natives. Though the numbers are endlessly contested and re-interpreted, many people agree that excepting visa-related offenses, the crime rates of foreigners and natives are nearly equal. For five years, Danny lived in Japan without a visa, hopping from factory to factory. Before emigrating to Japan when he was 28, he had studied international relations and had worked as a journalist. Spending hours stamping sheet metal and walking on eggshells around bosses who could deport him at his first mistake was not the life abroad he had envisioned.

His salvation came at a Shinjuku club, in the form of an attractive Japanese woman named Yayoi. The two hit it off, and eventually, she agreed to marry him, despite his illegal status. The couple walked down to the local municipal office and announced their intentions. "How it works is, they take you to one room, and make you sign a paper about getting deported," says Danny, wearily rubbing his eyes. "And then you go into another room, and you sign a paper that says you are on probation."

The marriage loophole is a route to legality that many overstayers have taken. "They want to marry us," Danny says about the dozens of Japanese women who have African husbands. "I don’t know why." He pauses. "If you want to stay, there is almost no other way."

For Danny, marriage did not work out so well. After a few years together, his wife petitioned for divorce while he was visiting family in Nigeria. They no longer speak, but their seven-year-old daughter, Olucha, is a reminder of their time together. According to Danny, Yayoi refuses to let him see Olucha. In another long-standing point of contention between Japanese and foreigners, Japan affords foreign parents almost no custodial rights in the case of mixed children. Although Olucha lives just a few train stops away from Danny, he can’t remember when the last time he saw her was. Every time they talk on the phone, her English ability has faded a bit more. "They paint her with their native food and language, you know," he says. "I speak to her in English. She understands. But sometimes I call, and she doesn’t understand."

In a bar owned by his younger brother in Roppongi, Danny introduces me to his friend Michael, a 32-year-old dressed like a member of the ’80s hip hop group Run-DMC, in a black fedora and a snug leather jacket. Michael also works in Roppongi, where he says he makes about $45,500 a year as the manager of a strip club. He’s reserved but polite, and sits at the bar chain smoking. When I ask what town he’s from, he says, "Igbo," naming the second largest tribe in Nigeria.

Michael, who came to Japan three years ago, is married to a Japanese woman and has a two-year-old daughter. He shows me a picture of her on his cell phone: a delicately featured girl with skin the color of rain-soaked suede, staring up from the screen with eyes as bright as her smile. Michael’s interest is piqued when he learns I work as a kindergarten teacher at a Tokyo international school (where, for the sake of comparison, the average teacher earns about $9,000 less than Michael). "It’s all in English? They learn English?" he asks. "How much does it cost?" I tell him it’s $7,500 a year (later, I realize it’s more like $14,000 a year). He nods slowly, considering the price. "That’s ok, I can do that," he says. "If it’s in English." While Michael works, his daughter stays home all day with her mother, who speaks Japanese. Michael speaks English. He and his wife get by with the few words they can speak of each other’s language. But when Michael talks to his daughter, she can’t understand a word he says.

Simon, the well-dressed cocoa farmer’s son, was also married to a Japanese woman. Though they didn’t have any children, their relationship also ended in divorce. From the beginning, he says, her family did not accept him. "Her father took me [aside] and told me that it would not last," he says. But he wasn’t concerned; that’s how fathers are. "Even my own sister, she married a Nigerian man, but our father didn’t like him. But then later it’s ok, he’s accepted." His wife’s father didn’t end their marriage, but the couple’s differing goals did. She wanted to move to Norway, an idea that puzzled Simon. "Why do I want to go to Norway?" he asked her. "I am already a foreigner here, why do I want to go be a foreigner in Norway?"

Simon had a reason for wanting to stay in Japan. With the freedom of a sponsored visa even before he met his wife, Simon had been able to attend a Japanese-language school for two years while working nights at a restaurant. He had become confident enough in Japanese to begin thinking about doing what he did best: starting his own business. Just as he had turned to a cousin in Benin City to learn the transportation trade, he turned to a cousin in Tokyo to learn the clothing trade.

If Roppongi is where clothes come off, then Harajuku is where clothes are bought. The area, made famous overseas by Gwen Stefani and her Harajuku Lovers clothing line, is the heart of Tokyo’s reputation as a fashion free-for-all. Its main artery is Takeshita Street. On any given day, Takeshita Street is crammed with Japanese school girls and foreign tourists gawking at stores selling gothic Little Bo Peep costumes and vinyl sexy nurse outfits. To Simon, it was the perfect place for his shop: It was where people went to spend money.

Simon set his sights on the hip hop clothing business. The baggy style of urban America found a following among Japanese youth in the late 1990s. As fashion and rap music became increasingly intertwined, "hip hop shops" began sprouting up all over the city. For the Japanese trendsetters who could afford to pay $300 for a pair of sagging shorts, the presence of black employees made the shops’ image all the more authentic.

But Simon did not want to be a mere employee. He wanted to be the owner.

He had had only brief exposure to the intricate business customs of Japan, observing what he could while busing tables and chopping vegetables at the restaurant where he worked. His Japanese ability was far from fluent. And he was a foreigner. But he held tight to something he had learned when he arrived as a teenager in Benin City, as an immigrant on a ticking tourist visa in Tokyo, and as the unwanted son-in-law of a Japanese bride: "In the beginning, everything is difficult."

The first obstacle was securing a location on Takeshita Street. As one of the most heavily trafficked areas in the city, it was prime real estate. With the "gift money," security deposits, and advance rent that Japanese realtors demand upon signing a lease, the shoebox-sized space he had his eye on would cost nearly $60,000 upfront. But money wasn’t the problem. Simon paid in cash, wiring the money from an account in Nigeria where he had saved his profits from the semi-truck business. The problem was getting the realtor to take him seriously as a client. "They see you’re a foreigner, and they say no, they want to skip you," he says. He went about finding Japanese people who were willing to be paid to act as the face of his business. "You get some of their own people and push them forward, and then it is ok."

To Simon, this kind of adaptation is not a big deal. "A lot of foreigners complain," he says. "But Japanese are good people. In Nigeria, too, there are different groups of people. Everyone is different." In Simon’ home country, conflicts between the northern Muslims and the southern Christians have persisted for years, sparking riots every few months that kill hundreds at a time and displace thousands. If all he has to do to reach his goals is let the Japanese find comfort by dealing with other Japanese faces, then he is more than willing.

After only a couple of years in the clothing business, Simon was successful enough to open a second store in Tokyo and bring his brother over from Nigeria to staff it. Though he ducks his head bashfully when asked how much his business makes – "We only just met!" he says, practically blushing – he can afford to pay the $2,700 monthly rent on his Harajuku location, the $28,500 he says he pays each of his three street callers, the $45,500 salary his brother earns as a store manager, along with dozens of other expenses, and still have enough money left over to save for his next venture: a filling station in Nigeria.

The money that can be made by young, ambitious immigrants in Japan is seemingly endless. In some cases, it’s enough to lure them from other foreign countries. Michael, the father of the two-year-old who can’t understand him, previously tried his luck during a four-year spell in Switzerland. But conditions in Japan are better, he says. The most he could ever hope to make in Geneva was only $26,000 a year, almost half of what he makes now in Tokyo.

To some foreigners, especially those from developed countries, the entrepreneurial activities of the Nigerians indicate greed. "They don’t care about the culture of Japan," says one English teacher. "They’re only here to make money." But Danny Lekson says foreigners from rich countries don’t understand the circumstances behind his financial ambitions. When "an African makes money," he says, "it’s not for me alone. There are so many people looking up to me. So [$2,700 a month as a factory worker] is enough for me, but there are still problems back home. My nieces and nephews need pocket money in school. I have to pay for so many people back home." In Nigeria, Danny owns three homes. All of them house his extended family members.

Traveling across the world to be the main breadwinner for a dozen or more family members takes more than courage and a sense of adventure. It takes money. The average price of a one-way ticket from Lagos to Tokyo is around $1,500, and in the world’s most expensive city, charges pop up like inflatable boxing toys. Danny Lekson and Simon Ewuare both come from relatively well-off families in Nigeria. In a country where only slightly more than half of the children attend even elementary school, both men attended high school. Danny even went on to earn a four-year university degree. Talking about people like Simon, who attended a language school while working part time for two years, one Senegalese man says, "Any time you see Africans studying in Japan, they come from rich families."

Despite Danny’s education and Simon’ ambition, both of them are just anonymous faces in the crowds of Nigerian street callers that some characterize as nothing more than brutal thugs. Last year, the American Embassy issued a warning about partying in Roppongi after a string of incidents involving tainted drinks and stolen credit card information. Foreign users of an online forum about Japan immediately fingered Nigerians as the culprits. In one of the tamer comments, a user advised, "Avoid all Nigerians in any way, shape or form." Another described a scenario in which "a mate" followed a Japanese man to a bar, only to be confronted by an empty room until "out of the darkness half a dozen huge Nigerian dudes appeared" and demanded money. He lamented the injustice of the situation, explaining his friend was "an affluent hard-working professional who had been in Japan for over 10 years" while the supposed aggressors were "filthy african [sic] illegal immigrant [expletives] who had probably arrived on a plane from that [expletive] continent that very morning." To explain the lack of evidence connecting Nigerians to the drink-spiking incidents, users accuse the Japanese police force of indifference to crimes targeting foreigners.

Of course, not all of the foreigners in Tokyo are as obviously prejudiced as users of that message board. Wikitravel, the travel guide offshoot of Wikipedia that is updated freely by site users, blames the drink scams on seductive foreign females hired by disreputable bars rather than Africans working in the area. But all of the sources are right about one thing: crime does exist in Roppongi and, like every group in the area, the Nigerians have perpetrators among them.

One evening, a couple hours into his bar-calling shift, Danny and I walk into Don Quijote, the foreign-import emporium near his post on Roppongi’s main street. It’s the middle of allergy season in Tokyo, and Danny has had a raspy cough and itchy eyes all day. If it keeps up, it’s going to be a long night. As we walk into the store, Danny heads straight to the back, toward the medicine supplies. I linger near the entrance, distracted by a large display of makeup imported from America. After a couple of minutes, I scan the aisles for Danny, but he’s nowhere in sight. I choose a tube of mascara and wait my turn in the checkout line. As I receive my change from the cashier, my cell phone rings.

"Where are you?" Danny asks. I tell him I’m at the checkout, and walk a ways toward the back of the store, where he is. He comes toward the front. We meet in the middle. "You want me to buy you something?" he asks. He scans the area and offers the nearest, cheapest item, Japanese sweet potatoes roasting inside a heated glass case that cost a dollar each. "Here, you want a potato?"

"No, I’m fine," I said. "I already bought something, that’s why I didn’t see you."

"Oh, you bought something?" he asks, still scanning the area around us. "Ok, so let’s go."

Once we’re out of the bright store and back on the dark sidewalk, Danny opens his hand to reveal a tube of allergy-combating nasal spray. Maybe he bought it while I was looking at the mascara, I think, but I doubt it. He pulls a crumpled Don Quijote shopping bag out of his pocket and puts the tube inside. I wonder if he carries the shopping bag with him all the time, or if it’s shared among his friends.

I am surprised he is so trusting of me; earlier that night, it wasn’t the case. While we sat drinking and talking in his brother’s bar, an older Nigerian man had flung the door open and scanned the dark room. The moment he spotted Danny, the older man strode up to him. He had the kind of crazed eyes and ecstatic grin usually only seen with people high on stimulants, even though drug use is very low in Japan. He held a yellow plastic bag containing something heavy. He gave it to Danny, who peeked inside and then handed it off to another man. The man looked down at the object, raised his eyebrows, then stashed it behind the bar.

"What was in that guy’s bag?" I asked.

Danny barely hesitated before he answered, "Ah, some special wine, I think, some secret expensive wine."

A couple of minutes later, I asked Michael, Danny’s friend who had been interested in sending his daughter to international school. "Personal electronics," he said from behind his cloud of cigarette smoke. "A car stereo, I think."

It became slightly easier to understand how the governor of Tokyo, during an interview with the foreign press, could assert so nonchalantly that the presence of Africans in Roppongi is "leading to new forms of crime, like car theft."

Over on the other side of Tokyo, in Harajuku, Simon finds out his story will be told in the same article as Danny’s story. He is furious. "We are not the same people, I am not a Roppongi person!" he roars. Besides his rueful ruminations on Nigerian politics, it’s the only time he’s been anything but politely accommodating. "You say we are all Nigeria, but we are not the same! Even I, when I come here, even I am surprised about Roppongi!" But his anger soon fades to weary appeals: "Please, please, tell them I am not in that business, of the credit cards and this, it’s not for me. For me, you like the clothes, you buy them, if you don’t, you don’t!" He is, understandably, desperate not to bring any disturbance to his business: it is his future. He sees his life in Japan as an arrow aimed toward a secure, relaxed retirement in Nigeria. His profits have been bruised by recession-tightened fists, and he looks forward to opening an economy-proof petrol station in Africa. "I don’t want any trouble, I just want to do my business here," he says to me, pleading, "and then go home."

In The Fray Contributor

Waiting customers, mostly westerners who come to sip coffee at his cafe a minute, walk from the Tsuglag Khang, the Dalai Lama’s main temple opposite the god-king’s exile residence in the Indian Himalayas. Jamphel Sichoe comes from an immigrant background and knows what it is like to grow up with multiple traditions, having “chinky” little eyes which most ethnic Indians consider being of Chinese origin. Sichoe, 24, born in exile, works each day from noon till night attending to customers at his café. He wears an Indian dress, but in his mind are thoughts of his unseen homeland, Tibet.

Like all Tibetan shops, his cafe has a Dalai Lama portrait hanging on the wall, featuring a khata, a traditional scarf, as a holy gesture. During his long shifts, he stands managing the café, at times on with social networking sites on his MacBook. Though with each day’s hard work he finds himself restless – helping his Dad with English translations every morning, participating in various non-governmental organizations and Tibet support groups, organizing various human rights protests.

As the sun sets his old friends – Tenzin Chemi, Dolkar and Kalsang – come to meet at the café to sit around talking about their daily activity. Chemi and Kalsang were born inside Tibet but fled into exile with their family when they were 10 years old, following massive unrest inside Tibet. Both come from areas far inside Tibet, where technology and modern living are just dreams. Chemi and Kalsang are from Amdo province inside Tibet, while Dolkar and Sichoe are from Shigaste and Lhasa, in Tibet’s mainland. They all come from far corners of the large autonomous region now under Chinese rule. Chemi and his family crossed the border with the help of a guide and trekked through the mountains for more than a month before reaching Nepal, where he was kept in a Tibetan refugee center before being sent to the one in Dharamsala, the de-facto capital of Tibetans in exile in India.

They are the young guns of the exiled Tibetan community, educated to understand world politics and keeping up traditions, customs and religion in the midst of modernity. They talk about ethnic conflicts within the society; about disputes between the People’s Republic of China and their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama; about the unrest they hear about inside Tibet and its outlying areas. About solutions to the political divide between generations in exile. About the Free Tibet movement. About lives and grass root problems they face each day, living in a land that is not their own with many complicated factors – poverty, racism, political or oppression. About the brutal suppression their countrymen have faced throughout their lives. Solutions to Tibet’s problems seem hard to come by, and hope is fast receding with the 74-year-old Dalai Lama aging; Tibet’s problems almost too numerous to count. They debate in Tibetan, Hindi and broken English, at times speaking typical local dialects, as if they were Indians making fun of each other.

As they finish meeting, Sichoe thinks of the day’s most important work he needs to perform – working with Tibet support groups until late in the night. He’ll be organizing tomorrow’s event, and a lot of effort has gone into this organization. The date is March 10, and this year it will be the 51st anniversary of the failed Tibetan Uprising against the Chinese rule, marking 51 years of the Dalai Lama’s flight into exile with thousands of his followers, who left their homeland in search of freedom and the desire to live their lives as they see fit. They say they did so to avoid political oppression and religious persecution.

Closing the café at 9, Sichoe walks back home down the steep road lined with deodar. The sky is dark over the Himalayas, and there is a shiver of cold despite the fact that spring is almost here. At home his eldest brother’s family waits for dinner. His father is a highly religious person and is early to bed after the evening prayers. Sichoe rests a few minutes before watching news on the TV, news of security beefed up in Tibet’s capital Lhasa ahead of tomorrow’s celebration of the 51st anniversary. Chinese police have cordoned off the entire city. His niece Choezom, who is half his age, listens carefully to the family’s conversation. She studies in a convent school where most of the students are local Indians.

Soon Sichoe finishes his dinner with his family members, and with many things to do for tomorrow, he meets his friends who await him down the street from his residence, and from there they all go straight to the community hall. There is a meeting with fellow refugees to discuss tomorrow’s event. Some of them prepare by writing anti-China, Free Tibet and human rights slogans on cardboard for display at the tomorrow’s ceremony and during protest marches on the streets. Sichoe helps other refugees, mostly newcomers, to get excited about tomorrow’s event. He stays up until midnight helping his friends, and then he goes back home, hoping for a successful event tomorrow.

**********

The light comes up above the animated settlement on its little ridge overlooking the Kangra Valley, and chants from the temple carry on the morning breeze. A gong sounds as the sun comes up above the snowcaps. The day has come that every Tibetan awaits: March 10. The morning before he goes out to attend the ceremony, Sichoe prays at his family’s prayer hall. Like many other Tibetans, he does the kora – the holy walk around the Dalai Lama’s residence and temple.

Thousands of Tibetan exiles and their supporters, most of them dressed in traditional silk and wool robes, gather in the compound of a Buddhist temple to hear the Dalai Lama and other senior leaders of the Tibetan government-in-exile on the eve of the day marking 51 years of exile. The crowds include hundreds of Tibetan children dressed in school uniforms, Tibetan nuns and monks in orange and maroon robes, and other young Tibetans with “Free Tibet” and Tibet’s national flag painted on their faces.

In the speech the Nobel Peace laureate blasted Chinese authorities, accusing them of trying to “annihilate Buddhism” in Tibet. His message has an impact in the refugee community that has made a visible effort to keep Tibetan culture alive – its language, crafts, and the practice of Tibetan Buddhism. Soon after the Dalai Lama’s speech thousands of Tibetan monks and youths march through the streets, shouting pro-Tibet slogans and praying for the Dalai Lama. The demonstrators, including those who followed the Dalai Lama when he fled Tibet and their children, all pledge support to their spiritual leader.

Indeed, new generations remain devoted to the cause. There have been no signs that Tibetans in exile here will give up their hope of returning to their homeland in freedom. And many are confident they will ultimately achieve their goal. An elderly Tibetan in the crowd says, “Don’t let anyone steal your dream. It’s our dream, not theirs. As long as there is no enemy within, enemies outside cannot hurt you.”

For the first generation immigrants, the image of the homeland remains quite vivid in the mind’s eye, despite planting firm roots in their new homes over successive generations. The images may gradually recede, but Tibetan people living in exile still hold firmly to the notion of freedom and rang btsan, or self-determination, hoping that their country will be given back to them some day. In fact, living in exile has only strengthened the resolve of Tibetans to regain their homeland.

Hundreds of Tibetans from different walks of life stage a massive protest rally, which starts from the main temple and culminates at a local bazaar. Huge presences of Tibetan protestors on the streets lead to traffic chaos. Since he has eagerly awaited this day, Sichoe joins the massive protest as well. Wearing the Tibetan flag over his back and marching down the steep roads from Mcleod Ganj down to the Indian bazaar in Dharamsala, he shouts slogans, appealing to world leaders to listen to their plight. The event climaxes in a candlelight vigil, with participants holding banners with slogans like “Stop torture in Tibet” and “China stole my land, my voice and my freedom.” Young radical groups shout anti-China slogans and call for rangzen, or full independence, for Tibet.

In the last 51 years, India has attracted many Tibetan refugees with its image of a slow pace of life and a peaceful lifestyle for refugees of all nationalities. This exiled community has created a new Tibet away from Tibet – a Tibet 2.0 — that aims to be more modern, more visible and more internationally connected than the real, existing Tibet over the border. There are over 12,000 exiles living in the valley; most reside in the suburb of Dharamsala known as Mcleod Ganj.

Sichoe’s father fled into exile in 1959 just after the Dalai Lama. Once in India, he lived with his family in Darjeeling and Mysore until 1981, and later in Madhya Pradesh in central India until 1990, quietly serving as a lama for the Tibetan community in exile throughout that time. Sichoe was born in Chattisgarh, an Indian state, but soon his family moved to Dharamsala to be closer to His Holiness, the Dalai Lama. He went to school at the Tibetan children’s village where all Tibetans get educated, mostly funded by support organizations. Sichoe believes he’s living in the world’s most successful refugee community, but this wasn’t his peoples’ aim. Many refugees feel they have no purpose and meaning in life. The pain of being an exile is that you do not belong where you stay, and you cannot return where you belong.

For Sichoe life in Dharamsala is a positive, multicultural, and diverse experience of everything from “shanty” to Bollywood, which he enjoys. Still, though, there is sadness. Sometimes he forgets he’s a refugee, but at the end of day he remembers. He believes that China thinks every Tibetan in exile is a criminal, and he wonders if he is.

The night after the candlelight vigil, Sichoe, drained of energy, returns home. The buzzing town is full of travelers and Tibetan shops remains closed all day to commemorate the event. At home his family prepares the special dinner when all members of the family will sit together, eating, before the short prayer. Tibetan dishes fill the evening after the day’s hard work, with soup bowls, mutton momos, tingmo, the Tibetan bread, rice noodles, chicken and thupka all served at the table in a small room and presented with Tibetan Thangkas.

After the special dinner, Sichoe helps his family clean the room while others collect the plates to wash. His niece Choezom enjoys time with Sichoe, sharing with him her day’s activities. Tired, Sichoe wishes all a good night and walks to the front of his room. As he enters his room he sees one of the cardboards he prepared the night before, on which he wrote “China: respect human rights in Tibet.”

*******

Sichoe wishes to return to his homeland as a Tibetan, not a Chinese. India is the best country for refugees, but it’s not the same as being a citizen of his homeland. Sichoe’s homeland Tibet is a plateau region in Asia. Often referred as “Roof of the World,” Tibet is the highest region on earth. During Tibet’s history, it has existed as a region of separate sovereign areas, a single independent entity that is now under Chinese sovereignty. Approximately 6 million people live across the Tibetan Plateau, and about 150,000 live in exile, who have fled from modern-day Tibet to India, Nepal, and other countries.

However, for Tibetan refugees, the picture is quite different. They left their homeland in search of freedom and escape from the Chinese dominance over the region. With 51 years in exile, most refugees and their children have been forced to resettle throughout the world. The Dalai Lama’s seeds of compassion are helping young refugees to settle and maintain their ethnic culture.

Tibet is extremely hard to reach, but China’s recent development has connected it to the world, despite it being hemmed in on the south by the Himalayas and on the north by the almost equally high Kunlun Mountains. The terrain is inhospitable, since the plateau itself is about 15,000 feet above sea level. The climate is harsh, with violent swings of temperature between night and day at all times of the year. It is well-known as the “Third Pole of the Globe.” The world’s highest summit-Himalayan, which strides across the boarder between China and Nepal, claims a height of 8,848 meters above sea level. Lhasa is the administrative capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region in the People’s Republic of China. It is located at the foot of Mount Gephel. The city is the seat of the Dalai Lama, the location of the Potala and Norbulingka palaces having names in World Heritage Sites, and the birthplace of Tibetan Buddhism. The Jokhang in Lhasa is regarded as the holiest center in Tibet.

All young Tibetan exiles are torn between these two views of Tibet – one magnificent, the other horrible. For Sichoe his homeland is far from sight. He was born in Chhattisgarh, a state in India. His father is the 9th Jestun Dhampa, the most religious figure in Mongolia after the Dalai Lama. Khalkha Jetsun Dampa is considered one of the most revered teachers of the Kalachakra Tantra, the Tara Tantra, and Maitreya, the future Buddha. His incarnation was recognized, at the age of four, by Reting Rinpoche, the Regent in Lhasa, as well as other high lamas and the state oracles. His identity was kept secret due to Stalin’s influence and oppression in Mongolia. At the age of 25, he gave back his monastic vows, and then went to stay at Ganden Phunstok Ling, established by his predecesor Taranatha, until the age of 29 when the Chinese invasion forced him into exile, along with hundreds of thousands of Tibetans.

Then, in 1991, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the newfound religious freedom in Mongolia, many Mongolian monasteries sent their abbots, lamas, and ministers to India to discuss with the Dalai Lama, in Dharamsala, the possible location of the Ninth Khalkha Jetsun Dampa. It was at that time, through the Religious Office of the Tibetan Government in Exile, that the Dalai Lama gave the official stamp of recognition and acknowledgement of the Ninth Khalkha Jetsun Dhampa, the spiritual head of Buddhism in Mongolia.

Sichoe is grateful for the teachings he’s gotten from his father. For him he feels 60 percent Tibetan, 20 percent Indian, and 20 percent American. His country will be wherever he’s make his living.

Thousands of mainly young Tibetans have escaped to the small hill town of Dharamsala, which has turned people from poor, rural Tibetan areas with little education, business and few career prospects in China into professionals whose horizons extend around the world.

As home to the Dalai Lama, the Karamapa Lama, Tibet’s third highest spiritual figure, and other high-ranking lamas and monks, Dharamsala is the heart of Tibetan exile life, and its hills are adorned with Tibetan prayer flags. The town, where monks and nuns outnumber tourists, is also thronged with small cafes, bustling with activity as monks perform their daily routines and teach courses in Buddhism, while locals engage in community activities such as volunteering as teachers. The Tibetan equanimity is striking. The town is smaller than an average county town in China and possesses modest economic resources, yet there is a notable calm. Some of this may derive from the regular stream of new arrivals from Tibet. They have not risked their lives on tough journeys across the Himalayas to begin the next phase of their lives as refugees. Some want a better education, some want to become monks in monasteries, some just want a better life.

Recent Tibetan refugees even speak Chinese. A favorite pastime of the younger ones is spending time in Internet cafés, watching Chinese video-clips and chatting online. Tibetans making international calls to their relatives and friends on the other side of Himalayas often talk in Chinese. The young refugees are growing up defying easy definitions; the children of exile are slowly coming of age.

Sichoe knows time is running out, and even if he doesn’t go back, he’s ready to work and help his exile community. “I will work in the Tibetan government, may it be in exile or back inside Tibet, bringing more and more reforms is the need of the people,” Sichoe says. With a Bachelor of Arts degree from Delhi University, he’s talented, modern and has a Tibetan blood for struggle. He shares his thoughts about the life after the Dalai Lama, when Tibetans will have to struggle even more than they do today, but he’s ready as life moves on.

“Here, it’s like a confused cocktail of my citizenship – half Tibetan, half Indian and now with western culture rooting in us, it’s a blend,” he says. To go back to his homeland is his dream, like it is for many refugees. As each day dawns, Sichoe will walk the kora, and later he’ll help his father with English translations, then go back to the café at noon. For now, he sits on a stone overlooking the high mountains, dreaming of Lhasa.

Saransh Sehgal

Every day on my way to work I passed by them. They were sleepingon the cold floor in a corner of the train station: a mother; a father; and twoyoung children in between them. They were still there when I finished work.While I was on my way to a warm apartment, a hot meal and a nice hot shower,these parents would spend another night with their children on a freezingfloor. There had been quite some solidarity lately with asylum-seekers who wereforced to sleep on the streets. Most of them had found a roof above their headsfor the harsh winter nights. But not this family; they could not ask for asylumand a bed to sleep in because they already are European citizens. They areRoma, often called Gypsies or nomads, and are associated with negativestereotypes such as theft, domestic violence, and being slum-dwellers.

My first experience with the Roma was about five years ago when Iwas living in Valencia, Spain. To go to the beach from my place, I had to walkthrough a dodgy-looking neighborhood that seemed rather to be located in a poorEastern European country than in a developed country such as Spain. There weremany dogs and half-naked children on the streets. The women were often yellingand the men looked at me in a threatening way. I wanted to get out of there asfast as possible. During my time in Spain, many people warned me of the gitanos, who werepickpockets and would threaten me with knives. They never did, however, and Ibecame intrigued by this European minority that seems to be excluded from“European integration,” lagging behind while their fellow countrymen aregradually joining European middle class.

It is widely known that many Jews died in the Nazi concentrationcamps, but less known is that also about half a million Roma were gassed.Unlike the Jews, the Roma continue to face serious threats and discriminationespecially in Eastern Europe but also in Western Europe. In 2008, young Italianmen set Roma camps in Milan, Naples and Sicily on fire with Molotov cocktails.In June 2009, 65 Roma living in Belfast were forced to return to Romania afterracist attacks on their houses. These are just the stories that have made it tothe news.

The only stories I read or hear about the Roma portray them aseither criminals or helpless victims. Why does no one wonder who these peopleare and why they are one of the most hated peoples in Europe?

“They prefer to be called Roma. That is how they refer tothemselves. There is not even a word in Romani, their language,  for gypsy or nomad. These names weremade up by others,” Biser Alekov of the European Roma Grassroots OrganizationsNetwork sighs. “Actually, only a very small minority of Roma are still nomads.Most Roma have settled down.” 

The Roma have their origins in South Asia, from where theymigrated to mainly Central and Eastern Europe during the Middle Ages. Theydeveloped a nomadic lifestyle as a means of survival, earning money throughseasonal agricultural work, repairing items, clairvoyance and door-to-doorselling. At the moment, they are the largest ethnic minority in the EuropeanUnion, with about 10 to 12 million members. There is no exact number availablebecause many of them live and work illegally in other European countries.

The Roma have never had an easy time in the countries that becametheir homes. During the Nazi years, many of them were gassed in theconcentration camps and in the communist era, Roma women were forcefullysterilized. But the worst was yet to come. At least during the communist years,the Roma were sometimes given land or social support. After the fall ofcommunism, unemployment and poverty prevailed in the Roma communities. “Youcan’t imagine what poverty engulfed the Roma in my village. After 1991, Irented the village pub and was the only employed Roma. Nobody else had a job.The people began wandering around, looking for work in the towns,” Akif, a Romacurrently living in Brussels, remembers. Many Roma decided to try their luck inWestern Europe.

Since the Central and Eastern European countries joined the EU,the economic situation of many of their citizens is gradually improving. TheRoma on the other hand continue to face discrimination in education, housing,employment, healthcare and other public services.

Although it has been ruled illegal in many Eastern Europeancountries, the practices of segregating Roma children in schools or havingseparate classes for children with special needs simply because they are Roma hascontinued. In these “special” schools, they receive poorer education and havevery limited opportunities for employment or further education. In Slovakia forexample, 80 percent of children in special schools are Roma.

When a group of Croatian Roma decided to fight the practice ofsegregating Roma pupils, they managed to convince the European Court of HumanRights that this was indeed discrimination. Besides urging the Croatiangovernment to respect the principle of equality, the Court also awarded theseRoma pupils with $4,500 each. Yet, many members of the local Roma community didnot share the euphoria over this victory. They feared that the situation couldget worse for them after the court ruling.

Because of the high degree of poverty in Roma communities inEastern Europe, many live in deplorable conditions. Some feel they do not haveanother choice than to stay in illegal settlements. Once every so often, theauthorities forcibly evict the residents from their makeshift dwellings withoutoffering them adequate alternative accommodations. This of course drives themback on the streets and new illegal settlements arise faster than thebulldozers can destroy them.

It is extremely hard for Roma to get out of this vicious circlewithout a steady job. Saliha, a Roma woman from Bulgaria who came to work inBelgium explains: “Even with higher education, employers prefer Bulgarianapplicants without investigating your qualities. When they understand that youare a Roma, they stop to trust you.” Akif’s childhood dream was to become apolice officer. But when he applied after finishing secondary education, he wasnot hired, unlike his Bulgarian classmates. He was never given an explanationwhy. Tunde Buzetzky, facilitator for Decade of Roma Inclusion, confirms thatthere is strong discrimination on the labor market: “If your skin is darker,the available job is immediately gone!”

The lack of opportunities in the East convinced many Roma to moveto Western Europe. But with the growing numbers of Roma, anti-gypsyism grew inWestern Europe as well. In particular, Italy stands out for its anti-Romaattitude. In 2007, the government adopted increased “security” measures againstthe “nomad emergency.” Police was allowed to “collect data,” includingfingerprinting, exclusively nomads. Forced evictions without prior consultationor proposing adequate alternatives became more frequent. The strong anti-Romarhetoric from politicians and vilification in the media further increased thestigmatization of the Romani people, which resulted in various violent attackson Roma throughout 2008 and 2009. But in other EU countries anti-gypsyism isalso growing. Eurobarometer, a public opinion survey, has shown that nearly aquarter of all Europeans would feel uncomfortable living next to a Roma. InItaly this is half of the population.

Meanwhile, the European Union is trying hard to integrate Romaissues in its activities and many non-governmental organizations have taken onthe advocacy of the Roma. Unfortunately, all these efforts have not resulted insufficient progress. Grassroots Roma organizations strongly believe that themain reason why these policies have failed is that they were developed withoutthe participation of the Roma.

They might be right. The Bulgarian municipality of Sliven has thehighest percentage of Roma residents in the country and one of the biggest Romaghettos with 20,000 inhabitants. It works actively together with Roma NGOs,Roma experts, volunteers and informal leaders on education, housing, health andemployment issues. “This place used to be a terrible ghetto, now it’s good tolive there thanks to the inclusion of Roma in policy-making,” Alekov adds.

“Another important obstacle is the continued stereotyping. Romanipeople have been hearing for a long time that they are worthless. They havestarted to believe this themselves. Good role models are essential to motivatethem to fight for a better future for themselves and their children,” explainsBiser Alekov. He claims that it is only a small percentage of Roma that arethieves, prostitutes or beggars. “There are many Roma all over Europe that areleading or trying to lead a successful life just like other Europeans.Unfortunately many of them hide their Romani background because of the stigma.”

Alekov believes that if Europeans knew more about these Roma, theywould realize that they just want to have a decent job, live in their own houseand send their children to school, just like everyone else. His fellow Romaadvocate Buzetzky agrees that “although it would be incorrect to say that thereare no beggars or petty thieves among the Roma migrants in Western Europeancountries, most of the Roma migrants get legal jobs, send their children toschool and have a decent life. There are groups living in illegal camps underdreadful conditions. Indeed in these groups, some people may be engaged inpetty crimes.”

George Soros, whose foundation helps to improve the situation ofthe Romani people, writes in an article for The Guardian: “The keyto success is the education of a new generation of Roma who do not seek toassimilate into the general population, but deliberately retain their identityas Roma. Educated, successful Roma will shatter the prevailing negativestereotypes by their very existence.”

Fikret and Sevinch are such successful Roma. They moved to Ghent,Belgium, in 1998. Twelve years later, they own a house in a Flemishneighborhood, and have their own retail shop and construction company. Theyconsider themselves successful immigrants but stress that they had to work veryhard to get where they are today. “When we arrived, I started to work forTurkish women, to clean for them and to serve them. My husband began work onconstruction sites. After five years, we received Belgian passports, but we continuedto do the same job. However, we enrolled in language courses, because you cando nothing if you do not speak the language. Later I finished a business coursewhere I learned how to set up my own company, how to manage the retail shop,and what documents were needed. That helped me a lot,” says Fikret.  She explains that the main hurdles tolead a successful life for less fortunate Roma are that they do not speak thelanguage and that they do not know the local rules and regulations of thecountry they are staying in. They also often do not have the right documents tofind a legal job.

Mladen and Saliha came to Belgium from Bulgaria in 2007 to offertheir son a better education. They are both working as cleaners at the momentbut they have many goals and plans for the future. Mladen wants to open a smallrestaurant offering Bulgarian dishes and Saliha is looking for a job as a labassistant in the food or chemical industry. They do however still feel it isbetter to hide their Roma identity for some people out of fear of losing theirjobs.

They are not alone in this. Many of their fellow Roma keep theirethnic background a secret. They go through life as Bulgarians, Romanians,Slovakians or Kosovars. The family of Assen, who has been living in Belgium for18 years, has not yet explained to the grandchildren that they are not justBulgarians, but also Roma.

A Roma background should be something to be proud of. The cultureis very rich and goes back a long time. Unfortunately, there are many misconceptions.Begging for instance is not part of the Roma culture.  Biser Alekov says that “it is a big business and the peoplebehind it are considered as criminals by the rest of the Roma community.”

It is also commonly believed that it is part of Roma culture toforce very young girls to marry older men. Historically, weddings didtraditionally occur at an early age, between 14 and 16 for girls, but this ischanging among most Roma. Biser Alekov even claims that it is discrimination ifauthorities do not take action against the criminal act of forcing minors tomarry adult men. He claims that in these cases, the argument of “it is part oftheir culture” reinforces the stigmatization and marginalization of the Roma.

In fact, the Romani wedding is full of remarkable culturaltraditions. If the parents have not formally agreed to a wedding, the boy“abducts” the girl for a couple of days. When they return, the wedding iscelebrated. For the finale of the wedding ceremony, the young couple retires totheir room to consummate the union while the guests wait for the result: theblood traces proving that the girl was a virgin. These bloody clothes weretraditionally hung on a high place, so everyone could see that the bride wasrespectable. Today in most cases, only a symbolic form of these traditions isstill practiced.

Family and community belonging are very important to the Roma. Yourarely see old people in retirement homes. Instead, they live with theirchildren and grandchildren. When someone dies, his family stays at his side forthree days and three nights.

Roma still do not have an easy life in Europe. They arestereotyped as beggars and thieves and are not given equal opportunitiesbecause they are “Gypsies.” Once they have succeeded in overcoming the obstacles,they feel forced to hide their true identity. However, there is no need to betoo pessimistic, as Assen says: “Many will find their way. They will have towork hard on non-prestigious jobs, but if the parents do this work today,tomorrow their children – who are studying and complete local schools – willhave more opportunities. That’s how it was with other migrants, and that willhappen with us too.”

I sometimes wonder what happened to that Roma family Isaw every day in the station. One day they were gone. Have they found their wayand has someone offered them a place to stay? Or did they return disappointedto their home country?

Natalie Lefevre