“It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

I have read this quote and gotten into deep thought regarding it. National minorities in Serbia, in addition to rights guaranteed by the Constitution to all citizens, also have additional rights that allow them to decide on certain matters related to their culture, education, information, and official use of the language and script, in accordance with the law. In this article, I want to share my personal experience, to be precise, experience with national identity, vulnerability, and law.

As I already mentioned once, I want to emphasize again how national minorities in Serbia are treated well and are given complete rights to be who they are. As in any country in this world, there are people who treat other people differently (read: treat badly) just because of their origin, mother language, national identity, religion, skin color, etc. To be honest, I never experienced any issues with people treating me badly because of being different nationality than the country’s main one. If they were treating me poorly, it would be because of some other causes. But, not so long ago I had a very intriguing situation. Everyone who knows me is aware that I am Rusyn, and so do my coworkers. One day I was working together with one of my coworkers, and we had a pleasant day until one of the delivery girls we knew walked in into our workplace. She was in a bad mood, so she started offending us without any reason. And since she didn’t feel that was sufficient, she punched the girl who was working with me. Before that, when we were talking about something, she told me:

“We Serbian people say it like that, and I don’t know how you non-Serbian do”.

After she punched my coworker, both my supervisor and the main boss came and called the police. When the police arrived, everything went according to protocol and the three of us had to give our statements, which were supposed to go into detail. Both my coworker and I mentioned in our statements what she told me, and the reaction my boss and the police had surely surprised me. I was prepared only to be the witness in favor of the colleague, and I didn’t know that they will pay so much awareness to me. But, both my boss and the police took that insult about being “non-Serbian” too seriously, because it is an insult based on nationality which is according to our law and rights sensitive topic. To be honest, I was not very touched by her words because I found the whole situation absurd. I don’t think our authority, court, and the whole problem-solving policy in this country work as they should, so suing someone and getting into confusion like that isn’t worth it at all. You will only lose money, time, and nerves, so I prefer the “on-the-street” type of solving problems. In one moment they were talking only about my insult and forgot about the girl who was slapped. I couldn’t even believe it. Now, I am waiting for the call to the court and the trial.

This situation brought me to more thinking about our situation. Are we even aware of how much moments like this are important? Are we aware of daily small situations which are allowing us to be who we are? I feel this is similar to if someone calls someone ugly, pale, too skinny, or obese and if that would not be allowed by law. Do we even see how people are trying to protect us? And then, some of us don’t even care. Some people gave their best to get this law to keep us away from getting extinct. We set limits and borders for ourselves. Psychology says (and it is probably scientifically proven) that people are getting drawn to do something that is expressly forbidden or illegal. We have the full right to be who we are, and if we do not have that right, there is a high chance of people going into rebellion and protests. Are we aware of the freedom we have? Maybe we will start being aware of it in the worst case – when they take it from us.