Racial Discrimination in the Czech Republic-by guest author

Today's blog post is written by a guest author, Amy, my daughter who graduates from high school in two days. Her final exam in World Literature class was to write something that addressed a problem and could bring about change. She picked racial discrimination in the Czech Republic.

Note from Amy: This is meant to be maybe a magazine article, that partly had someone go and watch these things happen to these two people, but mostly looking at it from the characters point of view. It was written to draw awareness to the problem of racial discrimination in the Czech Republic. I think by telling this story from people’s point of view instead of just telling facts will help readers relate to the people in the stories and understand the situations theses people go through better. Both of these stories are based on real life stories similar to them.

She wakes up to the chill of wind blowing through the cracks. Fall is coming, and it’s almost time to move. The government gave her three weeks to get out, before they demolished her house. House is a relative term for what it was. The government knew it wasn’t a real house, it was a shack that was falling apart and could collapse any day. They wanted that land for a strip mall, and this way they’d be doing good for people too, getting them out of that dangerous situation. But they only cared about the strip mall. They didn’t offer her any other housing, nor did they give her any idea where she might be able to live.

“What is that banging?” Tereza thought, as she drowsily pulled herself out of bed. They were here. They barged in, and started shouting.

“What are you doing in bed? Why are your things not packed up?” They peppered her with questions. She shrugged her shoulders. She knew they were coming and she was refusing to move.

They started throwing things outside and yelling at her to hurry. It was 8:05 and they were supposed to have the shack demolished within half an hour.

By now her baby was awake and screaming, but they didn’t want her to attend to him, they wanted her to help them.

She pulled at her things, and even pounded one of the workers on the back, tears streaming down her face, but it did no good. A social worker sent over to make things official was calmly telling her it was going to be ok, trying to get her to calm down. But it did nothing, because she knew this woman wasn’t going to give her any help beyond telling her everything was fine.

“How will it be fine? What are you going to do for me?” she yelled.

“Now we’ll try to give you a little money so you can buy yourself some good food hmm?” the other woman replied, with a big smile.

“That’ll do a lot of good” Tereza thought.

She was getting frantic now. Everything she owned, which wasn’t much, was now quickly being moved to the back of a truck. They had to get everything away from the demolition site.

She was sitting on the floor wailing, with her baby in her arms. The social worker was trying to hold the baby but she pushed her away.

When everything was out, everyone stopped for a moment to look at Tereza sobbing, as if this shack was a castle to her. They knew what they were doing was wrong, but they told themselves it was better for her too, to not be in such horrible living conditions. But they didn’t think through that maybe not having anywhere to stay was worse.

Two workers eventually came over and pulled her up by her arms, and the social worker took the baby. They put a piece of paper in front of her and told her to sign. She refused, but the other woman said that she would not get any money if she did not sign.

So she did, with trembling hands, and then she stepped back, stepped back to watch her home get demolished to the ground.

The social worker asked her if she had any family, and although Tereza had a sister, she said no. Her sister had eight children and did not need two more mouths to feed.

She was dropped off at a hostel, and given money to pay for the night, but not much else.

“Now things will get better, I’ll work on getting you a new home, the government will help you”, the social worker said, but Tereza knew that was a lie. The government would see this case, see she was Roma, and drop it to the bottom of the list, and after a few months of trying, she knew the woman would give up. Her pay wasn’t high enough to bother with cases that don’t get anywhere, and no one cared about the Roma.