Jelena Savic

To address the violent character of the working conditions of Roma musicians in continuity with the traditional Othering of Roma in Europe, and the difficult unaddressed legacy of Nazism, I would propose Gadjo ignorance, a type of white ignorance (Mills 2008), cannot be a sole explanandum of the violence against Roma musicians in kafana. In fact, I claim that on Gadjo standards of affective economy, the suffering of Roma is an understood precondition for the successful performance of the emotional labor of Roma in kafana. Also, it is induced at the spot if the previous suffering is not engaged in a satisfactory way by Gadjo people visiting kafana to get drunk next to alcohol on whiteness, Gadjo superiority, privileges, and Roma suffering.

In the context of decolonial and left criticism of human rights, in this text, I deal with the processes of empowerment of Roma women in Serbia in the last twenty years within the framework of the women's and feminist movement. Although Roma significantly enriched and marked these areas during centuries of coexistence, their systematic exclusion from social and political processes can be seen in the continuity of the modernist legacy of WWII, in which, according to some estimates, up to half a million Roma men and women perished, stopping the processes of political, economic and cultural development of this transnational European minority (Mirga 2015). As the eternal European Other, Roma men and women encounter Orientalization, racism, and classism. In this context, Roma women additionally face the violation of women's human rights, and an alliance with the women's and especially the feminist movement in Serbia would be expected. However, this movement,  early class-defined, transitionally subjected to a capitalist regime specific to the Western Balkans, follows the global development policies of poverty when addressing the issues Roma women face. Moreover, in accordance with the phenomenon of global white supremacy (Mills 2003), it remains Gadjo (non-Roma), colonial, Femi-Christian, and anti-mahala, deeply rooted in the traditionally present idea of Europe, and especially Serbia as a post-Yugoslav country with the experience of non-alignment, as a place without race and racism.

Canonical analytic epistemology often turns vibrant social subjects, such as social movements, into the silent objects of observation about which knowledge is only to be produced (Chesters 2012). The Roma movement, including the Roma women’s movement, is no exception in this sense. In the field of science, marginalized subjects, women, and especially women of color, often
served as nameless and speechless objects, bodies of systematic scientific research about whom racist canonical knowledge was produced for the purposes of
exploitation (Fausto-Sterling 1995; Stepan 1986). As feminist antiracist theoreticians reveal, colonial, objectifying and racist practices in knowledge production persist in many ways (Grasswick 2011; Roberts 2015). Political questions of recognition and redistribution bear upon Roma women in academia, politics, and policy, making it a significant obligation for us to choose with care epistemic approaches and politics of knowledge production, including politics of remembrance, that is, history making (Fraser and Honneth 2003). I argue in
this chapter for the self-reflective practice of academics, activists, and the ones who find themselves in-between, those who operate under power structures of the frequently challenged and problematized coproduction of knowledge about Roma people (Surdu 2016; Vajda 2015).

Kako do sada ne postoji adekvatno pracenje efikasnosti i efektivnosti sprovodjenja afirmativne mere upisa Roma i Romkinja na visokoskolske ustanove koja se prakticno
sprovodi vise od deset godina, dok broj upisanih do danas ne prelazi brojku od 1573, cilj istrazivanja je bio da se utvrde postojece barijere pri koriscenju ove mere. U ovoj studiji
slucaja primenjena je deskripitivna metoda i na prigodnom uzorku koji su cinile tri korisnice ove mere 2014/15. akademske godine koje su prva generacija studentkinja u porodici. Koriscena je tehnika polustruktuiranog intervjua. Istraţivanjem je potvrdjeno da ispitanice
percipiraju kombinovanu barijeru nedovoljne informisanosti, kao i institucionalne barijere u vezi sa nacinom sprovodjenja mere, narocito netransparetnost u sprovodjenju, zatim i njen
kompetitivan karakter kao najvece prepreke koriscenju mere. Rezultati istraţivanja se generalno mogu uklopiti u postojeci teorijski okvir o klasnim, rasnim/etnickim/nacionalnim i
rodnim barijerama pri studiranju “tradicionalno podzastupljenih”, tj. iskljucenih studenata i
studentkinja. Nalazi istrazivanja pokazuju da je afirmativnu meru potrebno uciniti efikasnijom i prositi njen obim kako bi se izbegla dalja reprodukcija nejednakosti izmedju
pripadnika i pripadnica vecinskog i manjinskog stanovnistva, kao i nejednakosti unutar romke/ih zajednice/a.

Kljucne reci: afirmativne mere, barijere u obrazovanju odraslih, jednake mogucnosti, kriticka teorija rase, mikroagresija, nacionalizam, pravo na obrazovanje, rod, rodno zasnovano nasilje, seksizam, siromasštvo, uspesne Romkinje, visoko obrazovanje Romkinja

The notion of white privilege showed up as a useful analytical tool of race relations in the American context providing valuable theoretical and policy grounding for the advocates of the rights of black, brown and other racialized people (Mills 2015, 218; McIntosh 1988). Investigating the European context, and following Mills' idea of global white supremacy (Mills 2003), I propose European Gadjo supremacy as a socio-cultural-economic-political model of Gadjo domination as a foundation of European Gadjo privileges. These privileges are demarcated as a modality of white privileges and defined as "invisible package of unearned assets" (McIntosh 1988, 278) Gadjo people acquire by the contingent fact of their birth as Gadjo in Europe. The non-exhaustive list of European Gadjo privileges in different areas of life is offered.

In this essay, I introduce the work of the Serbian folk singer Vida Pavlović (1945-2015), often called the-queen of Roma music‖, who is one of the most published artists among the major names in the history of Roma folk music in Serbia. Although not the author of the lyrics, Pavlović often referred to her songs as autobiographical, as-my children‖, and the music she performed as the-music of pain and sorrow‖. Singing in Romanes and Serbian, and famous for the intensity of audience response to her interpretations, Pavlović depicts the world through Roma eyes and provides some of the most universal, intricate and emotional expressions of the deepest and the most sensitive aspects of Roma reality. Here I briefly present Pavlović's biography and, relying on kafanologija and blues epistemology, I propose the-Vida effect.‖ This phenomenon manifests the powerful humanizing influence of Roma folk production as a relational way of knowing, a tool of survival allowing understanding and universal transposability of meaning based on the experience of oppression and hope, deserving further attention from researchers.

Based on the case study I offer a snippet, the short capture of the present state of the Roma women’s movement in Serbia through the perspective of the resource mobilization theory. Through the four semi-structured interviews with leading activists, which I consider as generational representatives, I look upon the historical direction of the movement which is for now constituted as a part of non-governmental sector of Serbian civil society. I present different definitions of Roma women’s movement activists, its feminist and grassroots character, leadership models, its positionality within the political arena, and register the taboos related to the internal power politics, racism across movements, and class divisions within the movement. I conclude that in the context of overall stumbling of the civil society, Roma women’s movement is declining, but that this is an opportunity for qualitative change which might have been needed from the start.

The notion of white privilege showed up as a useful analytical tool of race relations in the American context providing valuable theoretical and policy grounding for the advocates of the rights of black, brown and other racialized people (Mills 2015, 218; McIntosh 1988). Investigating the European context, and following Mills’ idea of global white supremacy (Mills 2003), I propose European Gadjo supremacy as a socio-cultural-economic-political model of Gadjo domination as a foundation of European Gadjo privileges. These privileges are demarcated as a modality of white privileges and defined as “invisible package of unearned assets” (McIntosh 1988, 278) Gadjo people acquire by the contingent fact of their birth as Gadjo in Europe. The non-exhaustive list of European Gadjo privileges in different areas of life is offered.