ABSTRACT
For centuries, both Romanian Roma (Gypsies)2 and African Americans have occupied a problematic space in their respective societies: They have been a negative other on which the majority could throw most of their fears. The Roma and the African American problems have had a common cause: enslavement of an outsider group coupled with visibly racial otherness. For both groups, the legal status of slavery ended in the mid-nineteenth century, and since then, both groups have had to fight for full emancipation and full respect in their societies, which they still do not enjoy. Even if these two communities have grown in different historical environments-the Romanian rural society lacking strong democratic traditions and the U.S. highly industrialized society having a democratic tradition-attempts at solutions are strikingly similar: mutual efforts both by the minority and the majority for fullest emancipation at all levels of society.
