Since this turned out to be one of my more polarizing takes: Let's talk about "unifying racialized features" among Romani.
When I pointed out that the average gadjo (and, honestly, most Roma) cannot identify a Romani person by appearance, that really pissed some of you off. Message received. You don't like that I brought this up. So, let me clarify what I mean:
All of the people in the above image are Romani. Do you see the same eye shapes? The same nose shapes? The same eyebrow shape, hair texture, skin tone, ect? How many of these participants could pass for another race in the United States? How many could pass for white?
The photos are all lit with very warm light (you can tell by the color of the white shirts), but there is A LOT of variation here. And these are activists! None of these people are trying to pass. Still not sure?
The people in this image are Romani, too, and at least three of them are related. They're visiting a memorial to the Romani victims of World War II. Note the variation in skin tone, nose shape, eye shape, hair color and texture.
This family is Romani. Specifically, they're Finnish Kale.
Everyone here is Romani, too. They are Bulgarian Roma children.
These are all Spanish Gitanos (I'm using that word because that's the word they're using themselves). They're celebrating Día Internacional del Pueblo Gitano, in Madrid.
These are the faces of Romanian Romani living in the same village. They're likely related, at least distantly. Can you choose which nose is the "Romani nose?" Which eye shape says "Romani" to you? Is the child with light, straight hair representative, or the child with black, curly hair?
Or maybe these two people look Romani? They're Brazilian Roma, and they make up 4% of the Brazilian population. (For reference, the Romani population in Romania makes up about 8%.)
Is this family representative of our race? They're Roma from Italy.
Four of the five people in this image wearing a t-shirt are British Romany activists. (The fifth is a Scottish Traveller.) But you knew that by looking at them, right? Or are they "not representative?"
Both Tayo Awususi-Onutor and Dotschy Reinhardt are Romani musicians and activists. Which one is representative? Whose features are Romani?
Why are we still pretending this exists?
I see people above who look like my brother, my mother, my aunts and uncles. But I also see lots of people that look nothing like us. Personally, I think that's wonderful! We are bigger than hair texture, more enduring than a nose shape or a skin tone.
The myth of the "Romani look" is not helping us. It gatekeeps our own people based on arbitrary facial similarities that do not exist. We live all over the world! We have for centuries! It would be impossible for most Romani to look alike. Don't buy into the white colonialist mindset that says, "These people are all alike because they are other." We are alike because we are Romani, full stop. We are more than that. We are better than that.
