Throughout history, racism has frequently been dressed up in religious and scientific arguments. Believers in polygenesis, amongst them Voltaire, trying to disprove the bible, claimed that God had created the various human 'races' separately, meaning that they should not mix. Apartheid's practical aspects were developed by the professors of the socio-psychology department at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.
There are no racial persecution laws in Hungary nowadays, and there are no governments that want to introduce them. Apart from a few extremists, there are no figures in public life who call for the races to be separated. Somewhat absurdly, even the racists themselves take offense at being labeled with this epithet. But now, and especially since a public foundation won a precedent-setting judgement against Miskolc City Council, there is increasingly talk of informal segregation or soft apartheid in Hungary. They mean that Hungarian primary education separates majority and Roma students.
Before lining up behind whichever viewpoint it is that appeals to our political sympathies, it may be worth acknowledging a few facts. There is no doubt that there are serious segregating tendencies in the Hungarian school system. But prejudice is only one of several causes of this - especially given that Hungary's Roma problem is very different from almost all other countries' minority problems. Whether it's Csángos or Catalans - most European minorities are demanding what we consider unjust in the case of the Roma - separate classes, even separate schools. This alone shows that we should consider it as more than a purely ethnic question.
The major complaint is that Roma children, because of prejudice, are placed in special needs classes. Now racism may well be a factor in this, but not the only one. Nobody denies that there is a gulf in standard of living between Roma and the majority.
Indicators of the Roma citizens' income, education, nutritional and health levels are an order of magnitude below those of the majority. And if this is the case, then it is reasonable to say without any prejudice that a malnourished Roma child, whose illiterate parents have not even completed secondary school, will clearly do worse than his well-fed classmate whose parents did stay on until 18. You have to catch up before you start to compete.
Prejudice is responsible for many bad things, but it can't be the excuse for everything. Some in the current government think positive discrimination is the answer. Those playing catch-up in special needs classes should be bumped up into the normal classes. But this only damages the people it's meant to help. This doesn't help the disadvantaged to catch up, it just reduces the average to their level. Which gives racist tongues new arguments, since they are always emphasising how the inferiority of the Roma prevents them from reaching the level of the 'whites'.