Time to make a change!

“We may have all come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

This is one of my most favorite quotes and also shows what I am going to write about. By this essay I will try to show you the problem and why it is important to solve it, why it is important to “jump the borders and boundaries” in our society.

I have lived in the second biggest city called Košice in Slovakia. This city is well-known in Europe because of many monuments like St. Elisabeth's Cathedral but also because of minority called Roma. For the last few months I have been interested in this problem. I have read many statistics about living in Slovakia. The question was, if people are satisfied to live in this country. Most of the answers where the same as I expected, they are not. For example they are not satisfied with corruption, political scandals but with Roma question as well. They are not satisfied because when they want to take care of their families they have to work every single day at least 8 hours. But do the Roma have to work everyday for living? NO!

Our state pays a lot of money to Roma for living. Every year they build them many houses, so they do not become homeless. The reason why people do not like it is that Roma do not appreciate it. They do not care if they destroy their houses because they know state will take care of them. Citizens are not satisfied with this fact because they think it´s not right when Roma just laying at home doing nothing, because they know that state will take care of them that´s why this act bring our state to high increase of discrimination for the last few years and also there is media, which plays main role for this discrimination in our country, it shows what people want to watch because of audience. Media shows only bad things about Roma everyday like what they stole, who they killed but they do not shows Roma people who can inspirate another Roma and tell our society there are not just Roma laying at home but also Roma who try to change their lives because they do not want to live like the other. For the last few weeks I haven´t seen anything special telling us how good these people are . It´s almost impossible not to think like that under the big pressure of society and media. Media make some kind of “barrier” in our society which guide us not to be in surroundings with this minority, because of it´s influence. That´s why I´m able to see people locking their car doors when group of Roma is just walking around. I´m able to see discrimination while I´m going to school by bus. If some group of Roma board the bus, no mather how they are dressed they are immediately checked by driver if they have the bus fare or not but when some “white” guy board the bus he´s not checked. That kind of behaviour has bad influence on kids so they become the same as people seeing in their surroundings. So it´s absolutely normal to hear about some bullying, discrimination in the schools and I realize we should do something abut it.

I do not see problem in Roma, I see problem in government and media. I´m sure you ask yourself why, why did I say that? Let me explain it. Roma just do things which are allowed to do and our government just tolerates this fact. What has to be done is that there has to be some rules including this problem, Roma wouldn´t do that, because they would know if they did it, they´d be responsible for this acts. That would be something like threat. The level of criminality made by this minority will be lower, I guess in the future and also if they won´t do that increase of discrimination would not be so high. Media will not have many chances to show people how bad this minority is. I just think we should “jump over this barriers” and realize that this problem did not start because of Roma but because of government and media and if we really want to fix our relations with Roma we should think about it.

Dominik Zelizňak