Janos Kalas, a Hungarian Gypsy with dark, brooding eyes, tells the American woman that he's tired of the schoolyard taunts. "Oh, just another Gypsy," the other kids say, waving him away.
Sitting in a Gypsy community center in Budapest's worst neighborhood, the 15-year-old spoke Sunday about being ostracized by students and treated unfairly by teachers because he is a minority. The American woman, Hillary Rodham Clinton, shook her head sadly.Minority children make the same complaint in America, she said.
"I always tell them that if they give up on their education or feel bad about themselves because of what somebody else says, then the person who is doing it to you wins, and you lose," the first lady said.
She paused so an interpreter could pass on the advice, then waited for Kalas to make eye contact. "And I don't think you look like a loser," she said.
It was the kind of moment Hillary Clinton tries to create at each of the roundtable discussions conducted almost daily on her seven-nation European trip.
Though the exchanges create precious little news and loads of platitudes, they do allow the first lady to discreetly send a message to her host country.
Support non-governmental organizations, she said in Slovakia. Pass laws to support women, she suggested in Poland. Take care of your minorities, she told Hungary.
The meetings also are relevant to problems in the United States. The first lady told the Gypsies that American minorities face similar obstacles.
"Solving the problems of intolerance, discrimination and the marginalization of certain minority groups in a democratic society is an important test as to whether a democracy is living up to its stated ideals," she said.
At least twice on the trip, she has cited church burnings in America's South as an example of intolerance.
Gypsies, who first arrived in Hungary in the 13th century, are the largest minority in the nation. An estimated 500,000 Roma and Sinti, as Gypsies prefer to be called, live in Hungary.
About 26 percent of Gypsies are unemployed, as many as 15 percent have no primary residence and only seven percent of those over 18 have finished primary school. Life expectancy is 50 years for Gypsy men and women.
But life is looking better for the minority group. A press center opened late last year to inform the public about Gypsy-related events, a Roma Civil Rights Counsel Office opened in 1995 and various educational initiatives such as all-Gypsy schools are underway.
Hillary Clinton's discussion mostly involved adults, but the few children in attendance made the most emotional points. Szabina Berghaffer, 13, told the first lady that the five members of her family live in one room.
"I would like to live in a larger house," she said.