Social Cleavage in Hungary—Magyars and Roma

By: Noah Buyon

March 23, 2016

When I first heard a Hungarian spit out the word “gypsy,” I almost started to laugh. Almost. It’s one of those words—not unlike “Negro”—that would seem comically antiquated if it wasn’t freighted with old-fashioned prejudice. In the United States, “Roma” has long since supplanted “gypsy” as the accepted identifier for a member of this ancient community. But if my experience in Budapest serves as any indication, “gypsy” is thrown around in Hungary with a kind of abandon that would be unheard of back home. Thanks to my American sensitivity towards matters of ethnicity and race (it really does appear to be an especial American sensitivity), part of me flinches every time I hear it.

I don’t mean to paint all Hungarians with a single brush here, nor do I wish to suggest that any Budapester I’ve encountered who says “gypsy” is bigoted. Without wading too deep into the waters of cultural relativism, I can safely say that I’m hardly in a position to cast judgment on a society I’ve known for just over a month. But it suffices, I think, to characterize the relationship between the Magyars and the Roma as fraught at the macro level.

The Roma—or gypsies, depending on whom you ask—immigrated to Hungary in the fourteenth century, ahead of the invading Ottoman Turks. If you trace their lineage far back enough, you can locate their ethnic origins on the Indian subcontinent. (Parenthetically, one of my Hungarian history professors told me that “gypsy” is the preferred term here, even among the Roma population, because “Roma” only refers to a single tribe within the larger and relatively atomized umbrella of Romany-speaking peoples. Romany is a close relative of Kashmiri.)

For comparison, the Magyars arrived in what’s now Hungary in 895 CE-ish, a full four centuries after they left their ancestral homeland in the Ural Mountains. Over 700 years of cohabitation haven’t erased the differences between these two peoples—if anything, this long shared history has hardened the attitudes each holds vis-à-vis the other. The outside observer, however, might have a tough time detecting this fundamental cleavage in Hungarian society at first, because those same 700 years have seen these two groups converge phenotypically. At the risk of sounding crass, I would have trouble telling a Magyar and a Roma apart—not that that’s something I seek to do… I asked some of my ethnic Hungarian friends if they can make out the distinction; they replied that they can and they do.

It’s perhaps telling that no one really knows how many Roma live in Hungary. Officially government estimates range from 400,000 to 600,000; unofficial estimates go as high as one million. What is certain is that, in a country of just 10 million people, the Roma constitute the largest minority by a long shot. Some are integrated into broader (yet still relatively homogeneous) Hungarian society; many, whether by choice or constraint, haven’t. The eighth district of Budapest, located not far from my dorm, is home is to a concentrated Roma population. A friend who toured apartment complexes there for her Urban Sociology course couldn’t help but notice how run-down many of the buildings were. The comparison to the American ghetto came to mind. I was warned by some program staff to avoid the area at night.

In my history coursework, I’ve become acquainted with the “Jewish question” that vexed Europe’s nation-states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The term, though historically grounded, has always made me kind of queasy. It insinuates that European Jews were a “problem” to be dealt with. Maybe you can imagine my surprise when one of my instructors in Budapest dropped the phrase “Gypsy question” in conversation when I asked him about Roma in Hungary. He went to explain that Roma don’t want to work, that they don’t plan for the future, that they have trouble escaping their clannish way of life. “I wish I could give you a less pessimistic picture,” he concluded.

Complicated doesn’t even begin to describe the Roma-Magyar relationship, and there’s no way I could do it justice in so few words. I’ll say this: a Hungarian once told me that Americans are “obsessed with race.” The implication seemed to be that by recognizing difference, we Americans create division. I wish I’d said something in reply.

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