[ALBSA-Info] Hyphenated Macedonians?

[Kreshnik Bejko]

Hyphenated Macedonians

Slav, or not?
Aug 16th 2001
>From The Economist print edition

“Slav Macedonians”, most of the world calls them. Just “Macedonians”, say 
they

Get article background

IS IT “derogatory”, “insulting”, indeed “racist”, to use the phrase “Slav 
Macedonians” to distinguish that sort of Macedonian from those of 
ethnic-Albanian culture? Yes, say some angry readers of The Economist: we 
are plain “Macedonians”, and that's that. That's the name we give ourselves, 
use it.

But, hey, the ethnic Albanians are citizens too, aren't they—Macedonians, 
that is? And, alas, journalists have to distinguish one community from the 
other, and with clarity, not ambiguity. Why not like this? Lots of 
newspapers do.

Maybe, reply the angered Macedonians, but they shouldn't. Lots of people 
used to call Afro-Americans “niggers”. Would you feel entitled to do that?

Certainly not, this paper would reply: it's a poisonous word. But “Slav” is 
perfectly honourable: ask the 19th-century Russian Slavophiles or the 
creators of 20th-century Yugoslavia, the land of the south Slavs. And, 
applied to Macedonia's majority, it's accurate: their culture is manifestly 
Slavic. So why not?

Because we say not, reply that majority. You say it's inoffensive, but it 
offends us. You're denying our ethnic identity, and our idea of our own 
history

One reason for the discord is cultural. In Central and Eastern Europe, it is 
still common to speak of, say, “Poles” as distinct from “Jews”, even when 
all are Polish citizens; in Britain or France or the United States, the 
equivalent would sound and probably be deeply racist.

For Slav Macedonians, this way of thinking is melded with concerns peculiar 
to their own bitterly contested part of the Balkans. One is to affirm the 
existence of a historically distinct Macedonian nation, a nation extending 
far beyond the borders of the new Macedonia; and the more vigorously Serbs, 
Bulgars and Greeks deny this claim—Greece even objects to the new state's 
calling itself Macedonia at all—the more determined those who make it are. 
Another aim, to some Slav Macedonians, is to imply that their 
ethnic-Albanian fellow-citizens don't really belong—an implication, they 
remark, which many Albanians readily accept.

So what should western media do? The BBC has yielded to the complaints of 
Slav Macedonians, arguing from its principle of calling people what they 
call themselves, and “given how raw this story now is,” as an internal memo 
said in May, “and the BBC's profile in covering it.” The BBC believed that 
it could yield without compromising clarity. Its World Service almost daily 
proves it wrong, talking in one breath of “Macedonian” and “ethnic-Albanian” 
parties, and then, eg, of the latter objecting to the ethnic make-up of the 
“Macedonian” police. Meaning what?

Few are with the BBC. The New York Times refers to “Slavic Macedonians”, Le 
Monde to “Macédoniens slavophones”, El Pais to “los eslavos”. But the 
Corriere says “i macedoni”. The choice is not easy in Germany: its cultural 
tradition is Central European, but history has taught where distinguishing 
“Germans” from “Jews” can lead. The Frankfurter Allgemeine and many other 
newspapers speak of “die slawischen Mazedonier”.


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