Read the following text

It’s a fine line between risky jokes and racist innuendo. Those who manage
to be funny while staying on the right side of that line are pretty smart.
Nevertheless, at a time when calls to reject that protean scapegoat, the Other, are
growing throughout the four corners of the continent, a little self-examination in
Europe might not be a bad thing.

Europeans all have some whipping boy or scapegoat, whether Romanian or

Albanian, in their everyday language. When the Italians say sei un albanese (you’re
Albanian) or sembri un albanese (you look Albanian) to someone, this means that they
are badly dressed, or, basically, dressed like a tramp. Spain has the same sort of
expression: rather than saying you don’t look too good, the expression is tienes más
mala pinta que un rumano (you look even worse than a Romanian). Idem in Poland
where co za Rumun (you Romanian) does a good job of expressing criticism. The
problem is that Europeans like to make amalgams and so do not always distinguish
between Romanians and gypsies. The French do not even know anymore whether it is
the Romanians or the gypsies who are reputed to steal from parking metres. In Italy, sei
uno zingaro (you are a gypsy) and sei un albanese (you’re Albanian) mean exactly the
same thing, and nothing too pleasant either.

Where did these language habits, shared by all Europeans, come from?
Romanian national security, a group of hackers who attacked the websites of two daily
newspapers, The Daily Telegraph in the UK and Le Monde in France, blame the media
for associating Romanians with gypsies (and who have gone on to associate them with
begging and stealing). On 15 April 2010 they replaced the homepage of Planète plus
intelligente (‘More Intelligent Planet’), a supplement offered by Le Monde, and of wine-
and-dine.telegraph.co.uk and shortbreaks.telegraph.co.uk, two sub-sites of the British
daily paper, with a Romanian flag followed by a text declaring resentfully that in
Europe, Romanian too often means gypsy. Thus, even in prestigious publications,
everyday racism can be present.

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 However, Romanian friends, take heart as you read: others are also affected by
this ordinary racism. Udawać Greka (pretending to be a Greek) for the Polish means
pretending to be unaware of something you know perfectly well. According to the
French, the Greeks are all homosexual, or so the expression va te faire voir chez les
Grecs (go and get a seeing-to by the Greeks) would suggest. They also eat a lot of
garlic according to the Germans, because Die Griechen – die riechen (the Greeks
stink). And if someone Spanish tells a girl pareces griega (you look Greek), this means
that she has not waxed properly. One might think that what brings Europeans together is
the need for a long group therapy session in order to know a bit more about the roots of
our own everyday racism.

www.cafebabel.co.uk;

1. Answer the following questions:

a) What is this text about?

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b) What do all the words and phrases in bold have in common?
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c) What is your explanation for this fact?
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d) What is your opinion about the therapy session suggested in the text?
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2. Find synonyms for the following words:

a) fine line (l.1) 1) _______________________________

b) risky joke (l.1) 2) _______________________________
c) innuendo (l.1) 3) _______________________________
d) protean (l.4) 4) _______________________________
e) whipping boy (l.7) 5) _______________________________

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2. What do the following words refer to:

a) who (l.16) _____________________________________________

b) who (l.20) _____________________________________________

c) they (l.23) _____________________________________________

d) others (l.29) _____________________________________________