by nik@nite

I come from the American Deep South where racism is alive and kicking, literally. Where I come from, neo-nazism ensnares small groups of kids with a misplaced sense of community, empowerment, and pride. A music subculture exists to fan the flames of these incensed, lustful separatist feelings. 

Early on I came to know that "skinhead" meant a person who hates minorities; or more specifically, "non-hetero, non whites." Subgroups feeling the brunt of this hatred are blacks and gays. Strangely, the skinhead boys I knew in my teens were usually the most likely to get wasted and make out with me. I think this has something to do with my fearless disposition and my willingness to keep things secret. I knew that certain concerts that my hetero friends could go to were off limits for me, which was devastating at the time because I love the energy of live music.   

As we grew up, it became more apparent that I was indeed a homo and I became embarrassing to these early teenage skins. If the boys didn't grow out of it, usually their discriminatory feelings intensified.You could easily tell how dangerous a person was by the colour of their shoelaces.Alas, like you, I now live in Prague. This city is no exception to hard-core racism.  Many of my Czech friends have expressed their distaste for "gypsies" and Asian folk. But what I find most intriguing is a racist culture that exists within the gay community: gay skinheads.

I wondered about the shaved heads of a group of boys that hang out in my favorite gay pub.  I befriended one of the boys immediately out of a mutual music interest.  We'll call him Petr. Petr seems to be the leader of the group of boys.  Eventually I got around to asking him about his hair (or lack thereof) and he confirmed my suspicion that he is a racist. Never one to be afraid to ask questions, I inquired as to whom exactly he hated because, in comparison to my background, Prague is the most bleach white place I've ever lived.  The general consensus is that "gypsies" are bums that mooch off the system, have lots of kids, and don't work. Asian people are taking all the jobs and selling rip-off name brand products.  Taken aback by this blatant nonsense pouring out of the mouth of someone I call my friend, I drunkenly said something clever like, "What about gays?  You're gay.  Do you hate yourself?" Petr didn't have a response.

In my job here I encounter mainly Czech people. There doesn't seem to be much difference between how the group of gay skins feel about minorities and how some of my more bigoted Czech clients feel.  The only group expressing distaste for gays are teenage Czech boys, and even this is rare. I've only been called "teplos" or "bouzerant" one time on the metro near Haje. That's only one time in a year as opposed to nearly daily where I come from.

Gay skinheads don't only exist here in The Czech Republic. Several months later I met a group of older men on a romp from Great Britain. Same shaved heads, same general apparel...or uniform. The fact that these men were skins was rather obvious. One of them had a t-shirt on that said "White Is Better." I thought a brief discussion with these men would be pertinent to this article so I ordered them a round.

Many a pivo later I asked these British men the same questions. Who do you hate and why? The list of people to hate in Manchester was far more extensive than Prague, as one can imagine. Manchester has far more minorities than Prague. One big difference I found was that these skins disliked other effeminate gay men. The reasoning being that girly gays ruined their image and that they were all just faking their femininity anyway. Czech gay skinheads prefer a faggy fag whilst Brit skins do not. Czech skins are somewhat masculine, Brit skins are not. What can I say...they're British?

In comparison with the American South, the Czech Republic is probably less racist.  Southern racists generally don't have any logical rationale behind their hatred, at least none that would make sense to anyone sober. The Czech racists seem to have a slightly more plausible, yet still inane excuse: there weren't minorities here for so long, people don't know how to react to them now that the country has opened up to the world.

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