This paper reviews the research findings and policies regarding the conditions and educational needs of the Roma population in Europe. It examines assumptions, possibilities, and setbacks of translating and appropriating US-American academic discourse on race into the debate across the continent. The central task for researchers, policy makers, and educators is to recognise the continuing significance and changing meaning of race and to argue against the colour blindness and the replacement of the concept of race by other, supposedly more objective categories such as class or nationality. We need to think of the emancipatory possibilities that the language of race and racism could have for the Roma who have long enough been treated as the ultimate European scapegoats and yet dismissed as a "social problem". (Contains 1 note.)