Ethel Brooks overcame racism to become the USA's first Romani woman professor
Despite experiencing anti-Roma racism as a child, Ethel Brooks has made it all the way to the top of her profession. She now teaches at one of America's leading universities.
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00:00There were many times that my fellow schoolmates would say,
00:03oh, gypsy, go to the back of the class.
00:06Angry inside, hurt inside, and yet I'd never express it.
00:15Ethel Brooks has made it, despite racism.
00:19She is now a professor at one of America's top universities.
00:22Her mother, aunts and uncles were not allowed to attend school.
00:30And it wasn't because my grandparents sort of took them out of school,
00:33you know, the whole kind of stereotype is always,
00:36oh, Roma don't want their kids to go to school,
00:38but that the municipality said,
00:40oh, those gypsy children, they're not going to school anymore.
00:47Ethel's family has been in the US for 200 years.
00:51Her family earned a living trading horses between Europe and the US.
00:56There are an estimated 1 million Romani people in the US
01:00and around 12 million in Europe.
01:02They originally migrated from India,
01:05probably fleeing violence and for economic reasons,
01:08arriving in Europe sometime around the year 1000 AD.
01:17Although the Roma community is diverse,
01:19Ethel says there is one thing that unites them.
01:23It might not be like across every single family,
01:27every single community,
01:28but the ways in which we respect and care for our elders
01:32and the ways in which we adore our children,
01:35it was always about caring for each other and mutual support
01:39and really feeling like all of us are in this together.
01:45And in this together, like sometimes like against the world,
01:50because we know, right?
01:51We know what it means as Romani people
01:56to experience racism and discrimination and marginalization.
02:01Ethel also got this kind of support from her family.
02:04This was the family's trailer.
02:07They didn't have much money and studying was expensive.
02:10And my father would give up his needed medicine
02:15for the months that I had to buy books,
02:17which I didn't know until after he died.
02:20So my parents, you know, everything that they did,
02:23but particularly my mother,
02:24everything that they did was to kind of make sure
02:27that I succeeded in school.
02:31As a student, Ethel researched Roma history
02:33in the university libraries.
02:35But the books were full of stereotypes
02:37and were not really about Roma.
02:41She did her PhD and became a professor to change all that.
02:45I'd like to try to teach people
02:47and like to try to create knowledge
02:51that is fair and accurate and critical
02:57and supports not just kind of us, the Romani,
03:00you know, Romani, the Romani community,
03:03but marginalized people.
03:06Today, Ethel conducts research about Roma feminism
03:09and her own family history.
03:11She wants to combat the racism that still exists.
03:14There's a whole kind of thing about like,
03:16don't get your car fixed by these guys
03:19because they're gypsies
03:21and they'll like screw you over and make you bad.
03:24It's terrible.
03:24And I will argue with them.
03:27Racism against Roma has been around for hundreds of years
03:30and reached its peak
03:32during the Nazi genocide of World War II.
03:34Germany only recognized the genocide
03:36of the Sinti and Roma in the 1980s.
03:39Former U.S. President Barack Obama
03:41appointed Ethel to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.
03:45It was just so important on so many levels,
03:48not just for me
03:49and not even just for Romani people here in the U.S.
03:53or for Sinti and Roma kind of globally.
03:56A marking in history of saying,
03:58okay, actually here we are
04:00and we're finally able to recognize
04:03the kinds of losses that our people suffered.
04:09As a professor,
04:11she also tries to empower students
04:13who have experienced similar discrimination.
04:16So I guess I want to tell people
04:19and I want us all to claim our place in the world,
04:22to take our place in the world,
04:25to understand who we are,
04:27where we come from
04:28and how that makes us so powerful
04:33and that the very act of survival for us
04:36is something that defies the logic of history.
04:41It defies the trajectories that are understood by history
04:46and it's like, it's resistance
04:49and that we need to continue that.
04:51Like that resistance is something we can carry on
04:54that we take from our ancestors
04:56and that we give to our children.