United Press International - NewsTrack - Czech racist joke at election rally
PRAGUE, Czech Republic, Feb. 1 (UPI) -- Czech Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek is trying to downplay a racist joke made by a comedian at a campaign stop ahead of June elections.

The joke targeted the country's minority Gypsy population, whom polls show are commonly stereotyped by Czechs.

The BBC reports television comedian Jiří Krampol has been touring with Paroubek and called Gypsies thieves.

Paroubek allegedly smiled at the jokes.

He and a Gypsy musician regularly featured on Krampol's show defended the comedian and said the jokes weren't racist.

The jokes have since been deleted from the routine.

Polls show that Czechs believe Gypsies are lazy and won't integrate into society. A recent survey showed most Czechs don't want to live by Gypsies.

Jiří Krampol is a popular entertainer, famous, among others for a routine in the 1980s using a parody of vietnamese worker to lampoon the communist regime. I have no doubt, that he and many other Czechs, would not perceive a joke such as this racist. (I'm always reminded of the Czech judge who claimed that an attack on a Roma youth could not be racially motivated because, the Roma are technically the same race as white Czechs.) This is a problem because Czech attitudes to the Gypsy minority are severely discriminatory and xenophobic but at the same time there is a Czech tradition of anti-racism which is part of the Czech ethos (if not practice). That's why many people who exhibit racist behavior don't recognize themselves as doing so which makes any debate all the more difficult.