Equal and More Equal: Ethnic Communities and Polish Public Policy 1989–2018

This chapter discusses public policy in Poland since 1989 relating to the following ethnic communities: the Karaims, Lemkos, Roma, and Tatars (all of which have official status as ethnic minorities), the Kashubians (whose language is recognized as a regional language as defined by the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages), and the Silesians, whose bid for recognition has been a source of political dispute for over two decades. These groups are characterized by a desire for the legal recognition of their separate ethnic status via inclusion in the official list of recognized minorities in the law on minorities, inclusion of their ethnic identification in the population census, the introduction of instruction in the ethnic language in public education, and so forth. Above all, official acceptance enables community members to receive financial aid from the state and to access the rights of minorities (including education in the native language, access to radio and television, etc.). The essay argues that the legal system is of fundamental importance for the protection of minority rights, ethnic self-definition and official recognition. Indeed, the shift from unrecognized group to legally established community might be called a “political-administrative rite of passage”. Analysis of their legal position contributes to understanding how the system created in the past quarter-century for the protection of minority rights in Poland (and more broadly, in Europe) cannot cope with transformations in the ethnic consciousness of groups that fall outside simple rules of ethnic taxonomy and nationality.