Book Talk: The Permanence of Anti-Roma Racism by Margareta Matache

Join CFD and author Margareta Matache for a discussion of her recent publication, "The Permanence of Anti-Roma Racism".
About this Event

The Permanence of Anti‑Roma Racism: (Un)uttered Sentences offers a sustained, uncompromising analysis of how this racism has been imprinted on the body politique, making it lawful, thinkable, and ordinary - typically without being named as racism at all.

​Margareta (Magda) Matache offers a new, sharply critical Romani perspective on the history of anti‑Roma racism, tracing it from the earliest projects to exploit, K*ll, or expel Romani people in the late Middle-Ages to contemporary politics of control and violence. She shows how, across geographies and political systems and regimes, the protectors and manifestations of anti‑Roma racism have reinvented themselves - adapting to new economic, political, social, cultural, and ideological contexts, while remaining a constant force in Romani lives.

Furthermore, The Permanence of Anti‑Roma Racism insists that anti‑Roma racism cannot be understood in isolation: it must be read alongside global and local racisms and broadly structures of oppression, and relational to patriarchy, classism, and ableism.

Written by a Romani Romanian American scholar with a background in grassroots, organizational, and policy advocacy work, this book offers new conceptual tools for understanding and measuring anti‑Roma racism and its continuities. It is a fundamental resource for anyone seeking to confront Europe’s violent past and present—and to imagine more just futures for Roma and for racialized communities.