Romania in the Eyes of America

The image of your native country is a subject you can’t ignore, no matter your passport or how many years you spent away. How Romania is regarded nowadays affects millions of Romanians living abroad.

The majority of our co-nationals living in other countries are working hard and earning honest money. They are appreciated by their employers, and their children have excellent results in school. At the end of each working day, these Romanians read or listen to news about their country and congratulate each other for choosing the hard road of working abroad. It is painstaking, because their thoughts wander to their loved ones back home as they ponder the offensive questions they are asked by foreigners: “Is it true that some Romanian families used to sell their children for international adoptions?” “If you’re a tourist, is it dangerous to walk the streets of Romanian cities?” “You’re all, in fact, gypsies, aren’t you?”

These are just a few of the frequent confusions made by westerners when it comes to our country. Surely, the people are not responsible for such “news” reaching them or for the fact that Romanians’ rare performances in sports, art and science are thrown away in some invisible corner of a newspaper.

Apart from the inefficiency and indifference of authorities in Bucharest to building a country brand, there is also the fervor of some of our co-nationals to attribute to our country some imaginary flaws, as if we didn’t have enough already. For example, the subject of Romanians being homophobes was strongly fueled in the West by irrelevant, opinionated locals who claim to have found the undeniable “proof” of the national intolerance to gays in the recent manifestations from the Romanian Peasant Museum (Muzeul Ţăranului Român). Clearly, some picture themselves as being smarter than they actually are and, moreover, a lot more “trendy” than the rest.

But why be surprised by analysts when, even about Schengen, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs says one thing and the president another? The only thing that can free us of our strong habit of messing up and embarrassing ourselves is another King Carol I. This historical constant is actually very sad in the sense that we are not capable of cleaning up our own backyard and that we always have to turn to outside “referees.”

It’s fairly obvious all the way in North America, which has a higher consideration of Romania than good old Europe. This could be also because not everyone has the opportunity of flying across the Atlantic. The criteria for professional and academic selection were and still are more rigorous, and the Romanians living there are doing more for their country’s image than the flock of diplomats whose positions were given based on politics. On the other hand, Romania’s negative image, recently “via Germany,” puts a toll on all those who are fulfilling their national duty. The political ostriches might as well reflect at least on that, while they stick their heads in Romania’s moving sands.