Abstract
This core analytical chapter firstly examines how the ethnicity and race of minority students are openly thematized and negatively framed in peer relations during breaks. Secondly, Roma freestyle dance and hip-hop rituals are depicted as performances in which the ethnicized subcultural identities of Roma rappers are accentuated. The author discusses the different impacts these rituals have on the position of minority students in two different classrooms and demonstrates the contextual variability of ethnicity. Thirdly, intersections of ethnicity with gender are elaborated; ethnicized gender is in some contexts coded as a positive feature, while it is strongly problematized in others. Finally, Obrovská shows how the ascribed “otherness” of Roma teens becomes a subject of exclusion as much as a means of self-assertion.
This chapter is based on the article previously published by Czech Sociological Review: Obrovská, J. (2016). Frajeři, rapeři a propadlíci. Etnografie etnicity a etnizace v desegregované školní třídě. Sociologický časopis/Czech Sociological Review, 52(1), 35–78. https://doi.org/10.13060/00380288.2016.52.1.242.
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Notes
- 1.
Students in one classroom in the Czech educational system take most subjects together.
- 2.
The findings of my research presented in the following chapters do not support this postulate, which was quite widespread among the schoolteachers. I do not discuss the class teacher’s assumption in detail here, as I have published several texts analyzing teachers’ narratives about educating students from ethnic minorities, including Roma students, elsewhere (see Jarkovská et al. 2015a, b). Most of the studies carried out, however, disprove the common assumption among teachers that students, especially the younger ones, do not thematize the ethnic or racial differences among their classmates (an approach which is often labeled in the literature as “color blind” or “color innocent”) (see, e.g., Park 2011). Devine (2011) attributes similar statements by teachers to the “we-have-no-problems” approach characterized by the individualization of racially motivated incidents.
- 3.
- 4.
All students mentioned so far come from socially disadvantaged families. The parents of most Roma students are unemployed. Nikola lives only with her mother, whom the class teacher sees as incapable of “handling her children.” Nikola takes extra classes in the afternoon offered by an NGO, together with many of her Roma classmates.
- 5.
Hip-hop style is not embraced exclusively by Roma youth, yet they tend to worship it much more than their majority peers. Recently, the Czech music scene has witnessed the popularity of several Roma rappers, who thematize their experience with life in excluded localities and with ever-present stigmatization. Besides a personal statement, Roma hip-hop, with its video clips full of expensive cars, clothing, and gold necklaces, offers the symbolism of success and the possibility to distance oneself from a “socially disadvantaged” status (Radostný 2008). According to Bittnerová et al. (2011), pop culture fulfills a mythical role in the discourse of young Roma, as it sanctions certain cultural schemas, and thus, brings emotional satisfaction.
- 6.
The term “Gadjo” is used by Romani people to designate a person who is not a member of their community. In case we consider, using the typology of Ogbu and Simons (1998), the Roma boys to belong to a so-called involuntary minority, then we can expect cultural inversion manifested by the rejection of symbols related to the dominant culture (Mercado 2001). Fordham and Ogbu (1986) have stressed that African Americans in the United States see school as a “white” institution. If the majority culture is associated with oppression and racism, then identification with educational goals (being on time, studying in the library) represents “acting white.” Analogically, some Roma students perceive school as a Gadjo institution.
- 7.
Even if, like Gregoriou (2013), I understand some gender practices as symbolic transferants and mediators of ethnicity, the ritual I describe must be seen not only as an expression of gendered auto-ethnicization, but also as ethnicized handling of global cultural sources with the aim to differ (Prieur 2002). Identities built along cultural signs produced by globalized consumer culture (brand clothing, music, etc.) do not need to have anything in common with the traditional culture of some ethnic groups, and yet they are part of their social identities (Allard 2002).
- 8.
As V. Turner (2004, p. 96) explains, “In a liminal period, the subjects of rituals have unclear qualities. They are going through cultural sphere that has no attributes of the previous or the successive state.”
- 9.
CR7 is a nickname for and the abbreviation of Cristian Ronaldo, a world-famous football forward, playing for the Spanish FC Real Madrid and for the Portuguese national team.
- 10.
I was able to observe this pageant once, when the “Miss” was being elected. The festive occasion was framed as a contest for the “smartest, brightest, and most charming girl,” the choosing of which involved a traditional fashion show. The fact that physical beauty was at stake was underlined by the accompanying body-building show, in which a perfectly formed abdominal “six-pack” and bulging arm and thigh muscles were shown off by a former student now coached by the owner of a local fitness center, who was a member of the jury.
- 11.
This question explicitly brings the topic of ethnicity in the relations between students in the classroom. It can be objected that it is an initiated reflexivity that constructs a problem, which might not have been relevant for the majority boys at all until they are asked about it. However, the question came up as a result of the previous debate, in which the majority boys related to the classroom life as divided along ethnic lines.
- 12.
The tensions became tangible for me only after I had spent some time in the classroom. Like other divisions that permeated the relationships of students, the mixture of the desire to imitate and mutual rivalry between the majority and the Roma boys was from time to time made explicit by the class clown, Petr. During one lesson, a group of Roma boys, together with Petr and Leoš, moved their desks close to one another. A while later, a group of majority boys (Pavel, Jirka, Tomáš, and Karel) did the same. It was Petr who immediately reacted and told them not to copy what they had done (field notes, 14 June 2014).
- 13.
The group showed some intra-ethnic variability, however. For example, the Roma boy Mario was not as prominent in the Roma peer relationships as Marek or Filip, and he also responded differently to school duties. Mario usually followed the lessons, and once, I witnessed that he asked to be tested in a history class to improve his grade. He did not manage to improve the grade, but most teachers would see him as a student who cares. Roma boys in this class do not form a homogeneous collective free from internal differences.
- 14.
Student role is indicated in my research by reference to average grades. A below-average and weak position is thus related to lower performance in school subjects and low evaluation by teachers.
- 15.
Jarkovská, Lišková, and Obrovská (2015c) noticed during the ethnography of two ethnically mixed collectives in a fifth-grade and a ninth-grade class that building social capital can be an integration strategy for many migrant students, who try to fit in with the group through helpfulness or even servility. I apply this line of interpretation to the Roma student Ester, who had to cope up with her affiliation to Roma ethnicity, viewed in a negative way, in comparison to most of the fifth-grade minority students studied by Jarkovská and Lišková, who came from Russian-speaking countries or Vietnam. Consequently, her efforts to please and be popular were even more evident.
- 16.
The teacher distributed two different versions of the test among the students in the classroom by chance. Tereza wanted to have the same version of the test as Ester.
- 17.
Because I spent a lot of time with Tereza at the back of the classroom during my observations, I had an opportunity to talk to her often and hear her ideas and opinions. For example, Tereza was fond of tattoos and she would often show to me on her phone some tattoo patterns she liked. She mentioned several times that in the afternoon, she would visit a tattoo artist friend who would give her a tattoo. When I asked her the following day how the tattooing went, she always found some excuse. That is why I regarded her stories to potentially be an expression of her fantasies.
- 18.
Similar self-presentation strategies of Roma people towards majority members are not rare. For example, as Slezáková (2015) has shown in interviews with Roma workers, participants defined themselves in opposition to other groups of Roma, whom they characterized as “backward” in an effort to demonstrate solidarity with certain majority values. Other types of distinctions around which self-identification can be formed include, for example, the young vs. the old, the newcomers from Slovakia vs. the old residents. Yet another strategy can be a total denial of being Roma.
- 19.
In this regard, I would like to make clear that a “form of participation” in the class collective is not understood as an intentional action through which the actors follow certain goals. If I state, for example, that some Roma girls compensated for their weak position in the collective by taking care of their looks, it is a sociological interpretation of some patterns in their action, not a conscious project on the part of the girls themselves.
- 20.
- 21.
For example, every Monday, the ninth graders would clog the sewage in the washbowl and cause a flood in the bathroom.
- 22.
Working on one’s looks was not the exclusive province of the girls. The Roma boys in both classrooms, who often performed their rap identities, worked intensively on their style and when they were being photographed, they took great care to make sure that their peaked caps were turned at the correct angle. Here, however, style refers to other identities and to express these, the boys use their body as a means of showing power and resistance (Hebdige 2012), whereas the girls’ work on their looks usually focuses on confirming to standards of femininity.
- 23.
From the interviews with teachers, it was not possible to determine clearly whether Roma girls had ever won the main Miss of the Year prize. While some of the teachers recalled Jožka’s performance of Michael Jackson, which had secured him victory in the fourth grade, their memories were not so certain in the case of girls and their statements about the Miss of the Year title were not consistent. The school preventist emphasized that while Roma students repeatedly won the titles of Miss and Mister Congeniality, especially at times when the school was attended by a larger number of them, they were never awarded the main prize, except for Jožka. But a class teacher mentioned one Roma girl who was supposed to have won the main title in the past.
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Obrovská, J. (2018). Ethnicity in Breaktime Interaction Rituals. In: Roma Identity and Ritual in the Classroom. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94514-9_5
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