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, kill, 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.
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Why this book matters now
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Names and frames anti‑Roma racism as a structural technology of power and control.
Provides a clear, historically grounded account of anti‑Roma racism as an organized and enduring system of oppression and , not just a collection of unrelated prejudices, discrimination, hatred, violence, and inequities.
Centers one of Europe’s oldest racisms.
Brings anti‑Roma racism and its genesis into the core of conversations about European history, modernity, democracy, justice, and human rights, where it has long been marginalized or erased.
Connects past and present.
Shows how centuries‑old logics of exploitation, exclusion, violence, and dehumanization continue to shape contemporary policies, institutions, and everyday life for Roma individuals, families, and neighborhoods.
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Bridges scholarship, storytelling, and activism.
Combines theoretical rigor with insights from Roma advocacy work and lived experience, offering language and frameworks that are useful to scholars, movements, families, and policymakers.
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Links Roma struggles to global debates.
Places the history of anti‑Roma racism in dialogue with global histories of racism, casteism, colonialism, and resistance, contributing to broader efforts to rethink justice and solidarity in the twenty‑first century.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
The Relics of the Old Vodița Monastery
Personal archive Margareta Matache, July 9, 2023
Photograph showing the ruins of the old VodiÈ›a Monastery in the foreground, with the new monastery visible in the distance. This place is historically important because VodiÈ›a is linked to the earliest known written record of Roma enslavement in Wallachia. On October 30, 1385, Voivode Dan I gave all of VodiÈ›a’s properties, including enslaved Roma families, to Tismana Monastery. The document notes that VodiÈ›a had held these enslaved families since the time of Vlaicu (Vladislav I) and may have “endowed slaves” from its founding in 1342.
Erratum: The photograph of VodiÈ›a Monastery was labeled Tismana Monastery (p. 75) in the first print of the book. This correction couldn’t be resolved during production, but it will be included in future printings and translations.
Praise for The Permanence of Anti‑Roma Racism: (Un)uttered Sentences
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“Margareta Matache’s magisterial book on the complex dynamics of vicious anti-Roma racism and the rich history of Roma resistance is powerful and profound! In fact, she has written an instant classic that creatively and persuasively brings together theory, history, politics and personal lived experience in a unique and unprecedented way! And as a Black freedom fighter, she is my genuine comrade and colleague!”
- Cornel West, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Professor of Philosophy & Christian Practice, Union Theological Seminary
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“This new book is comprehensive and covers vitally important ground for researchers, instructors, and students. It is a very timely publication, especially considering the political environment we are now in with laws being proposed in several states to ban discussion of race.”
- Jacqueline Bhabha, Director of Research, FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University
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“This book will remain with the readers, and it will also encourage them. Neatly arranged in 15 headlines, it acts as a faithful guide to accountability.”
- Suraj Milind Yengde, W.E.B. Du Bois Senior Fellow, the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University
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“This book will no doubt become foundational for scholars in multiple disciplines, from sociology and history to law, public policy, and human rights. But it also holds significance beyond the academy. It is a text that speaks to Roma communities and their allies, to policymakers, educators, and activists—anyone concerned with equity, justice, and the honest reckoning with the past.”
- Angela Kocze, Assistant Professor of Romani Studies, Chair of Romani Studies Program, and Academic Director of the Roma Graduate Preparation Program at Central European University
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"This is the book our ancestors have been waiting for. It would be an understatement to say it deserves wide readership—it belongs in the canon of European literature. Matache’s work reveals the complex facets of state-sanctioned Romani subordination, its subsequent erasure and its continued misframing. In this book, she reclaims the narrative—and it could not be more timely."
- Alexandra Oprea, Romani Feminist Scholar and Attorney​