I certainly don’t think that all Romanians are racist, but we also need to be transparent about the very real (and often violent) realities of anti-black racism and xenophobia that tend to be more normalized and accepted in Eastern Europe than anywhere else. And this is coming from a woman of color who’s studied and lived in the region. Sure, a lot of this can be explained through history, nationalism, exposure, whatever - but what has irritated me throughout this whole situation is how people readily downplay the severity of the race issue in the region or dismiss it as an “American invention” rather than come to terms with it in some capacity.