The first time I ever saw a roma it was a young lady at the checkout in front of me who was obviously just learning how to do the change of a fifty swindle. Her trainer appeared from nowhere and rescued her by interrupting and asking some dumbass question about some item he'd pulled off a shelf and then they both left
Pretty certain and I met a few after through my work.
She was strikingly pretty in the roma way (like a very fair Indian person) and was dressed in the roma style.
Our town of 20,000 people went from zero to several hundred roma at that time.
It's always a little surprising when you're talking with someone from Europe and they seem to have pretty reasonable views about the world and then somebody brings up the Roma and hoo boy the mask comes off.
I know this is hard to believe but there are actually groups of people who are worse than other groups of people.
I know, it boggles the mind sometimes.
It's a cultural difference. Roma have all the freedom and obligation of adjusting their culture and fitting in, but they don't do it, do they?
You can't change your skin color and is not responsible for it and should wear it proudly, but you can definitely fix your culture, AND THEN wear it proudly.
Hmm, not sure I can agree, but for the sake of argument, I assume that you don't think every member of said group is bad? Or every member of a 'better' group is good? That would be a very bold argument, which would require remarkable proof.
Any time any person on the internet says "this group has this property" and they are not talking about math or other pure-logic topic, you can and should assume they do not mean literally "absolutely every member of this group". This statement included. It would a very bold argument that no one makes, but many people frequently counter-argue against. It's extremely common to see people get themselves worked up arguing fervently against claims no one made.
Keeping this rule in mind will save you and everyone else in the discussions from a long, frustrating, pointless arguments from extremes and semantic nitpicking.
The same is often true of any bigot; they're not usually the frothing skinheads so many seem to expect. I have a friend who's in his late 60's, extremely bright man, friendly, funny, and I would have said not racist. Then one day after I've gotten to really know him, and we're driving to a restaurant and the conversation turned to (then first term) Pres. Obama. He said something that I'll never forget, because it was said without a hint of malice, almost sad regret.
"You know those jungle-bunnies aren't like you and me."
That's what he really thought. I've seen him interact with people of all races and he's open and friendly and sociable, but at the end of the day, that's how he sees black people.
In my experience, a lot of bigotry is just that; you get to know someone to the point where they feel comfortable with you, and then you find out what they really think of people. The exception of course is that when "everyone knows" something, you don't even need to get to know that person well.
In large swathes of the world, and Europe in particular, "Everyone knows all about" the Roma. Dig a bit deeper and they "know all about" the Jews.
While I've seen a lot of racism against Romas and Muslims, it seems to me that at least in France they're not racist against Jews...
Not that that excuses racism whatsoever, just an observation that the new hated minority that's used as scapegoat is not the Jews anymore but instead the Muslims.
But, yes I've heard equally horrifying things from people who seem otherwise smart and friendly. Just go to Japan and listen to when people talk about black people... Go to Europe or the US and listen to what people say about muslims... Racism is everywhere and it's not only frothing skinheads, it's normal respectable members of the society and that's what scary.
As to the Roma, well, I haven't had much experience but there was a Roma kid in school for a few months and I got along well with him... So, at least anecdote-wise on my side, I haven't had bad experience with Romas.
Now, it's been my experience that while different groups have differences in cultures, the difference between individuals of a given group is bigger than the cultural differences due to belonging to a given group.
So, for example, after living in both Japan and China for a while, I have certain heuristics that let me expect certain behaviours from a Japanese person compared to a Chinese person. But, those are heuristics, they are not absolute truths and they are often wrong for a given person. So, even if Japanese people tend to be more polite than Chinese people, I've met quite a few rude people in Japan and I've met quite a few very polite people in China...
Nothing sends a conversation down the path of, "I hate Hitler, but he did do a couple of things right", like when you bring up the Roma.
My mom and dad got harassed by some Roma in Spain and my dad, as he puts it, might have just killed one of them if they did not let go of my mother. I think that is only time in my life I have heard my dad speak of doing any harm to another human being.
And Roma conversation is just easy way to get that out. The same is true for feeling about Jews, Arabs, Indians, Asians, Mexicans and African-Americans. You just need to have enough of white crowd and enough of beer.
In short we are all bigots and racists by default. I accept that I'm bigot and I'm working hard not to be. And that is not easy.
Have you ever thought that if all these reasonable people from Europe have the same opinion about the Roma, then maybe there's some reasonable facts that you are not aware of?
In Germany a Roma-Clan got infamous three years ago for the "Enkeltrick". Around a hundred related people, cousins and so, sieved through telephone books and phoned people with old-fashioned names. They also used division of labor, some people just boringly searched for targets and then gave the phone numbers to sweet talkers and con artists. When a senile person answered, the Roma claimed they were their grandkid and needed lots of money! There is a medical emergency! Or a gangster will do harm if they don't pay debt! Help me grandma! The old people were then talked into getting their live savings from under the pillow/bank and hand it over. They stole millions by ruining people and last year the head of the clan was finally caught in Poland.
He pulled that of so long and eluded police because of parallel structure. A morality which is beholden to the family and clan, not to the outsider community.
It's always a difficult subject and I feel bad if I'm ever called a racist, but there's no rational way for me to think counter to the things I saw.
I'm absolutely 100% sure I saw something many times. My friends did, my neighbours, people online. I see stats, racks of books and legions of NGO's working on it.
And then some guy on HN/reddit calls me a racist and calls it a day. Call me out when I advocate expulsion, forced education or murder, don't call me out when I say there's a problem and we all need to work on it together.
The reason why this is the case is that most people who live in Europe in the vicinity of traditional Roma communities have experience that reinforces those biases. Say, being pickpocketed, or being spat at after you refuse to give money to a beggar.
The biases themselves may well be overgeneralized and racist in nature, but the experience is quite real, I assure you. And I don't see any solution to the discrimination problem that doesn't involve fixing that experience.
I think you're missing the context of what people are complaining about. If it's actually the Roma people, I agree that's just racist. But usually what they mean is the culture Rome people live in. Do you think it's unreasonable view that kids should receive education? That young girls should not be given away into arranged marriages? That wifes and children should not be sent out to beg and steal in city centres? That the community is sometimes happy to receive support, but doesn't want to give back to the surrounding society?
If there are whole mini-towns with communities behaving that way and teaching that to their kids, I'm against it, and don't think that unreasonable. It doesn't matter who they identify as. Roma people can't change who they are. But they can change how they live.
I hate to say it, but if I were one of the groups that had a hard time in Europe circa the 1940's, I'd be packing my bags too. There's a reason that so many Jews got the hell out of France in the last few years. It might be paranoid, but we've all seen how far the alternative gets you.
France has had a rising antisemetic sentiment along with the defacing of Jewish cultural sites, along with a sharp increas (think double) over the last year or two of hate crime against Jews.
What do you think, what specific demographic group in france is most visible in antisemitic sentiment, defacing of Jewish cultural sites and hate crime against Jews?
I don't know? I'm just giving a reason why the Jews are getting the hell out of France as requested. If you want to conjecture about what demographic might be doing said antisemetic acts, I would love to see sources because I genuinely don't know! (I'm not French nor have I researched this topic extensively so I would be more than happy to receive education on the full context of antisemetism in France)
This is what the Prime Minister of France, Manuel Valls, thinks about that demographic (in "Is it Time for the Jews to Leave Europe", a 2015 article in The Atlantic [0] by Jeffrey Goldberg):
Valls is deliberate and—unusual for a French politician of the left—blunt in identifying the main culprits in the proliferation of anti-Jewish violence and harassment: Islamist ideologues whose anti-Semitic and anti-Western calumnies have penetrated the banlieues.
Again, he's the Prime Minister -- and on the left to boot -- so, one would imagine him to be credible on this issue.
But while this demographic is the most visible, there are other ingredients in the stew -- the paragraph cited above continues with Valls' thoughts on this:
But he goes further: France’s “new anti-Semitism” is also the product of what he understands to be a malicious sleight of hand on the part of Israel’s enemies to repackage anti-Semitism as anti-Zionism.
“It is legitimate to criticize the policies of Israel,” Valls said. “This criticism exists in Israel itself. But this is not what we are talking about in France. This is radical criticism of the very existence of Israel, which is anti-Semitic. There is an incontestable link between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Behind anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.”
Frequently, Valls said, anti-Zionists let the mask slip. It is impossible, he said, to ascribe the attacks on synagogues—at least eight were targeted in France last summer—to anger over Israel’s Gaza policy.
When they chant passages from the Quran which are specifically about the end of days and the slaughter of Jews and chant the names of "famous" battles where entire Jewish communities were slaughtered yeah you can say its specific.
There are no general-purpose slurs that I know of, so xenophobes/misanthropists do use plenty specific hate speech.
Like, an American xenophobe hates all foreigners. But he is going to call a German by a slur against Germans, and maybe mock sauerkraut and make snide remarks about WWII. A Frenchman, he'll use French slurs and insult France. He doesn't just call them "dirty foreigners" and mock their foreign-ness.
You could be right, I'm just curious if it runs deeper than what we see on the surface.
ISIL, for example- hates Jews, Christians, Yezidi, Shias, liberal Sunnis, Mexicans, reporters, women, America, Europe, Israel... so rather than "antisemites" I'd describe them as jingoist/xenophobic/etc
Considerably, sadly most westerners don't understand nor they want too.
Those are about as subtle as the "from the river to the sea" chants you see at anti Israel protests and the nice caricatures of trees and rocks with Arabic text bubbles that lovely children hold up as signs.
Liberals think it's cute, you explain to them what it means they are phased for about 30 seconds and go back to chant.
Vast majority of antisemitism, or vast majority of antisemitic crimes? Not to put too fine a point on it, but Jewish people are not exactly unaware of how the vast majority of the Islamic world views us, talks about us, and would very much like to treat us. We're also not likely to think that just because they're the loudest, they're somehow the only ones either.
It's a bit like the trouble Americans seem to be having with racism, in that a whole generation of kids was taught that racism looks like the KKK or Jim Crow Laws. Far more prevalent and insidious though, has always been the deeply held belief that people know you only talk about among 'like minded' individuals. That way of thinking is much older than the KKK; it gave rise to the KKK. You can kick down an organization, but you can't do the same to a mode of thinking.
Antisemitism in Sweden is almost exclusively found among the Muslim immigrants.
Politically the left is a bit blindsided in the Israelic-Palestinian conflict, but that is another issue, as is the strongly secular society's discomfort with all deeply religious groups, including (very) orthodox Jews.
Sentiment is hard to quantify, and not necessarily signaled by anything as obvious as defacement of a cultural site or hate crimes. The latter is often the province of the angry, young, and poor. The former is for everyone around the dinner table, over drinks, and isn't so obvious.
Of course it's better to blame a cultural predilection on some foreign group, right?
The same reason why many Jews have left Malmö in Sweden [1] by now: the rise of anti-Semitism which goes hand in hand with the rise of Islam as a power factor in these places.
“There’s a lot of prejudice against Roma in almost every country in Europe,”
For example, I've seen a few of them around ticket machines in Bologna railway station, Italy - trying to extract some forgotten change from the machines or harrass it off passengers.
Can I call this not prejudice but actually a mature judice? 'cause I've never seen anybody else do it.
You get to have prejudices when you behave like that.
> For example, I've seen a few of them around ticket machines in Bologna railway station, Italy - trying to extract some forgotten change from the machines or harrass it off passengers.
I've directly witnessed lots of white Americans do lots of horrible things, in many cases horrible things I've never witnessed people of other ethnic backgrounds doing.
If I then decide that white Americans as a whole are horrible people who do those horrible things, its still prejudice -- I am prejudging individuals based not on nothing but their ethnic similarity to people I've witnessed doing bad things.
If Americans start to come to other countries and behave obnoxiously, those countries definitely have rights to kick them out and prevent any more americans from coming.
While I interpret both as signs of overconfidence, there is a difference between talking to loud in public and throwing trash on the streets of your state supplied house.
I think the point is how much does the behavior of one American tell us about how a second, separate American, will behave?
On an individual level, not a lot. So it would be lazy to bake-in prejudice based on a single bad experience.
At the same time, prejudices (pre-judgements) of particular populations is common sense and statistically logical. For example, from a random pool of 1000 Swedes and 1000 Saudis you could guess with a fair deal of confidence which group has the more enlightened view on women's rights.
An interesting topic that tends to result in well reasoned, respectful, and enlightened points of view. /s
But you don't go around and think "this is an American" and "oh, here is another American, she will act the same as the guy before". Instead your internal heuristics notice more markers like age, gender, clothing, dialect, socio-economic status and class. An older person in a suit will be approached differently by you than a drunk redneck/ghettokid/punk/hells angels, even when they are the same ethnicity.
There are patterns on Roma people. They don't integrate locally, that's why they're all the same.
The same thing is by Albanians who emigrate, if they keep their local culture they mostly ~suck (really, ask ANY Albanian). ~Most Roma people don't integrate therefore they suck (their original culture does).
Americans integrate locally (redneck, bible belt, etc) and are different between states/cities/etc.
So I really try not to be judgemental and I feel a bit bad saying this, but I don't have a single good thing to say about Gypsies and I've never met someone who has. At least about the ones you see in the UK.
They are a huge problem in the city where I went to University, constantly draining police resources to deal with petty crime. Everyone I've talked to in front of house roles absolutely hated dealing with them as well, if not stealing they always seem to find hair in something and so get a refund or a discount.
Where I grew up they caused huge problems when they moved camping ground, draining council resources and never clearing up after themselves. They left huge piles of litter in the most beautiful countryside spots.
There are around 200,000 migrant Roma in the UK, with another 200-300,000 people who meet the broader Council of Europe definition of "Roma". Irish travellers are the main other itinerant group; estimates suggest that there are around 25,000 Irish travellers in the UK.
All of this data is fairly vague, because itinerant people are inherently difficult to survey. There is only a single census category for "gypsy/traveller", so that's of little help. Many indigenous British travellers do not identify themselves as being Roma and have unclear origins, further complicating the situation.
> Edit: And I don't like the 'well you must be racist if you think this' comments here.
You've raised the issue in a well-reasoned manner which largely avoids being gratuitous. Your discomfort at saying this suggests that you would otherwise prefer to view the Roma as decent people, and there is little to make one doubt you'd be happy to afford them the rights and dignities which all of mankind deserve.
Others here have presented the case in far nastier ways and their comments have gotten the predictable flag / kill treatment.
To my mind, the most crucial issue is education. Travellers have both practical barriers and negative attitudes towards education, leading to the lowest literacy rates of any demographic in Britain. A majority of traveller children do not complete primary education.
Given the immense importance of education in the modern world, it is inevitable that travellers will be economically and socially marginalised. Illiteracy poses a near-impassible barrier to engagement with mainstream society.
Significant effort has been made in the UK to engage traveller families in education, but to no avail; school attendance and educational attainment is actually declining among traveller children.
Unless this impasse is broken, there is little hope for travellers.
Em I think you are failing to distinguish between Irish Travellers (Gypsies, often called Pikeys in the UK,) and Roma.
Not to say that elements within either group haven't been responsible for some of the things you mention, or that there aren't any similarities. But in general they are very different groups with a different relationship to "regular" society in the UK (and Ireland for that matter.)
I'm going to take the moral stance here that even if you actually are making a factually correct statement of fact it is wrong to make prejudiced / racist comments. "Roma are __", "black people are __", "Mexicans are __", it looks like you're playing a racist version of mad libs to the wide-eyed people listening to your hate. And no, I don't give a damn about your personal experiences with ethnic group X, Y, or Z.
I think it's more like if I said "90% of Narnians are bankers and bankers statistically give less to charity; here's the data supporting each statement" or "Kilrathi are statistically 47% more likely than Dothraki to end up in jail", they may be factually-supported statements, but they can be reasonably interpreted as having deeper meanings than just the numbers.
The facts themselves aren't racist, but the things I'm expecting the reader to infer from them are.
Think of a Venn diagram, with one circle being "correct statements of fact" and another circle being "racist comments". The two circles intersect, that is all, and my claim is that "I am making a statement of fact" is not sufficient to claim "I am doing nothing morally wrong".
Legally correct, but irrelevant. Defamation is not the only thing which is wrong, and there is also a wide gulf between "legally wrong" and "morally wrong".
I'll defend your right to make racist comments with one hand while I call you out for making them with the other.
So intellectual honesty is wrong because of the 'racist' brush? You can paint anything you want with that.
This is the anti-intellectual America that I fear. Decisions made based on PC doubletalk. Folks discredited and ignored because they don't talk the official line.
I disagree with the idea that you can paint anything as racist. Ideas can be expressed in many ways. Yes, I agree that it's a problem when people get discredited and ignored because they don't talk the party line. However, when I came into the thread it didn't look like a "party line" issue, it looked like a thread full of people sharing stories about how awful Roma are. That has nothing to do with intellectual honesty, it's just wallowing in hatred.
The thread appears to have changed since then. The early comments were garbage.
There is a wide gulf between "morally wrong" and "not allowed", and there is another wide gulf between "don't make racist comments" and "don't talk about it at all".
I’ve heard horrifying stories involving Roma, but also Mexicans and black people. I’ve told those to other Roma, Mexicans, and black people. One of those group has described those are perfectly normal and in line with the values of the group; the other two were generally horrified.
The family house was entirely ransacked while my grand-mother was still in there (alone that night). They took everything, precious heirloom, her mother’s Resistance medal; she was woken up by them tearing apart the pipes off the wall. She begged them to not run with the heating pipes, otherwise she’d die of cold. They threw her into the staircase, where she broke her hip and a rib; she begged for help, but they wished her a long and tortuous death.
She stayed there until the morning, when my aunt found her, and we didn’t had any details until weeks later: as I alluded to, most of her friends had died because there were in a Resistance network with her mother and her. Giving water to the stereotypes that Hitler defended was something she could not accept to do. But the thing is: most people in her village met with the same fate that night or the one after, and had less qualms, so we put two-and-two.
I got myself beaten down at the ATM by a group of five; they stole my maximum cash-out, and when one of the group was caught, a 6’2” guy with muscular physique, he claimed that he was 12 and could not go on trial; he had no proof of this because he was a nomad and had a constitutional right not to show ID. He was released immediately, and went on to attack the waitress at the corner bar, at the same ATM. That made national news.
A couple weeks after that, I was at a TEDx event, and a Roma representative was defending their actions, wondering what kind of back-ward neo-nazi could imagine something so hateful as Roma stealing. They just had a “different perception of property, that’s all”. That stroke me as candid, so I wanted to tell him my stories, genuinely to explain: you talk to some Romas, but others… they are not like that.
You know, a version of: racists don’t like dealing with gang-bangers, you talk about Childish Gambino… We need to explain how the same childhood can lead to different path, try to pick the right one.
Nope. Not that guy. He openly said it was my fault that my grand’mother died (she’s alive, and fairly well for a 97 years, although she walks with a cane) and that I was wrong to let her alone (my grand’ mother hates my father, I have no idea why, and always insisted we never lived with her; she likes me, but I suspect that’s because I look like my late grand’father). I asked if he though it was normal to tear people’s house away, when their lives depended on basic comfort. He clearly responded that I had a narrow view of property, and that these guys were far more skilled than I was at recycling things.
That guy was not a fringe in the Roma community, but the highest level representative to the national government. Other people at TEDx described barbaric episodes, and he kept insisting that we wrong, showing open contempt for people who were still shocked by a loved-one being attacked, maimed, for precious heirloom stolen… He was repeatedly using “gadjo” as an insult. It was sickening.
If I say something like, "I've repeatedly seen people finding out that they have been pickpocketed after interacting with a group of people dressed in traditional Roma garb and self-identifying as Roma", does that satisfy your sensibilities?
You have kinda placed yourself in that position by trying to draw the line, though. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to do, but you can't both do it, and be ambiguous about where it's at, at the same time.
Also, you know how they say that one should listen to people's experiences, and that tone policing it a way to shut down inconvenient discourse and secure one's stereotypes? That's very much true, but it cuts both ways. If a black guy told you that he's seeing a pattern of dismissive and hostile behavior towards himself from white people, would you consider that a racist observation? I wouldn't, and I'd believe him, too. And that doesn't translate to "white people are bad", either, but there is clearly a cultural aspect in there that cannot be ignored. Such aspects exist in other interactions, though, and the oft-repeated assertion that they are only relevant when the victim belongs to a disadvantaged social group doesn't have any rational basis.
It was really not my intent to put myself in that position. It was my hope that I would encourage people to think for a moment before commenting and swapping stories about how awful Roma people are.
I think I was just seeing a flood of unconstructive racist comments before they got flagged.
> “The stereotypes of them panhandling and engaging in petty thievery just stir up these prejudices.”
> In Sweden, politicians are debating whether to ban begging, a tactic critics say targets Roma.
So, the stereotypes are true? From what I can tell, the Roma have a distinct way of life that they're seeking out, making them a bit different than socioeconomically transient groups that are struggling to integrate and succeed (i.e. various influxes of immigrants at different stages of US history).
I would say that the stereotypes are mostly true, in the majority or minority (whatever it is) that is visible.
I am sure there are a reasonably sized portion of Roma that do not live up to the stereotype and are treated unjustifiably bad, but that is not what is noticed.
I am also sure that the Roma have a really hard time living in Romania and Bulgaria.
However. During the recent 5-7 years or so, several thousands (25.000?) of Roma have semi-permanently migrated to Sweden, and there is now a beggar outside literally every super market, liqueur store or hardware store in Sweden. Wherever you go. Even in the smallest and most remote village.
Other than begging, many of them are making a living by stealing - mostly from elders, picking pockets or ripping necklaces, shoplifting, and to some extent prostitution - all of which has become a problem in some areas.
An unusually publicized event was that a Romanian Roma that got arrested for kicking a pregnant mother of two in her stomach when she challenged him when he was trying to steal a wallet from an elderly person.
As a side note, it was not reported that he was Roma because ethnicity is characteristically not considered "important" in Swedish media. If mentioned, Roma are euphemistically called "EU-migrants" by media, presumably because it is considered racist to single out an ethnic minority. As there are about 1,000,000 actual legal (working) EU-migrants in Sweden, it is actually rather misleading and confusing.
Sweden have a bit of a embarrassing history with our own Roma - we deported most of them to Finland in the 17th century, supposedly because they were a nuisance - and had a really hard line "integration" policy with the remaining few until 1975 or so, where many were sterilized, and many children were taken from their parents.
Because of that, and also because Swedes are generally very kind-hearted - the authorities have been very lenient with the newly arrived Romanian Roma, and although they are not really allowed to stay here for more than 3 months, it is not enforced at all. Slums have been allowed to be built, and families with children are allowed to live in circumstances that would immediately lead to an intervention from the social agencies if they were not Roma.
Only recently the tension has been rising, partly also because the 500.000 or so refugees that have come here during the same period.
The social welfare providers have been starting to refuse to offer schools (as they have done) and medical help, on the ground that they are not actually residents.
Talks and agreements have been made with Romania and Bulgaria, and some have been offered repatriation and economic help in Romania.
As a side note, the "indigenous" - mostly Finnish speaking Roma that moved "back" to Sweden from Finland are not faring that well either. A police register of more or less every single Swedish Roma living in southern Sweden was leaked to a newspaper a while ago which lead to a lot of media attention and accusations of racism.
The regional police was criticized by politicians and the politruk top brass, and was criticized in an internal revision, but it was also closed without further actions, as it also turned out that every single person on the list was either a recently convicted or suspected person, or closely related to or living with a recently convicted or suspected person.
So yes. Stereotypes seems to be true. There are strong cultural factors that seems to hard to change, and there are probably enforcing mechanisms but those that actually really suffers are the Roma themselves. If there is any violence, it's almost exclusively within their own group, and the economic damage is actually not that large.
> families with children are allowed to live in circumstances that would immediately lead to an intervention from the social agencies if they were not Roma
That's totally baffles me every time. Let real degenerates do whatever they please, but terrorize middle class families? That's what "social agencies" seem to do everywhere.
The story seems a bit "feel-good"-y. Many Roma don't have the resources for this kind of trip. They're among the lowest social classes in relatively poor countries (think average wage of less than $500 per month).
About discrimination... yes, there is a lot of it. It's a cultural thing. The traditional Roma culture is close to incompatible with modern societies: nomadic societies (in a world of property rights), arranged marriages for teens (as young as 12-14), a culture valuing "face" and prestige incredibly highly (think possibility of violent clashes for offenses). There's also a probably reasonable from the Roma point of view "moat mentality" where outside help is viewed with a lot of suspicion, based on past discrimination. Overall, a very hard nut to crack, this discrimination, for both sides.
A one way flight from Europe is North America is not that expensive ($300-$800), it's something even poor people are able to save up for and larger families are able to pool their resources together. The practice described in the article has been fairly common for well over a decade now, but previously the destination was typically Canada rather than the United States.
Not sure why the downvotes. Feel free to visit Roma housings provided for those in need in northrine-westfalia, and witness behaviour that can only be described as anti social.
Like literally throwing trash out the window, social security fraud, theft, begging and overt hostility to "intruders.
But feel free to click that downvote button, the warm fuzz of perceived moral superiority feels great doesn't it?
You forgot "threatening to kill their children when police try to make arrests at camp". I leave it as an exercise to any incredulous reader to look this shit up.
People who shout 'racist' in discussions about Roma have never interacted with Roma. What's worrying (to me) is that these do-gooders don't seem to realize that their behavior is pushing otherwise moderate people to the far right. The far right is literally the only political arena that recognizes that such a problem exists.
> People who shout 'racist' in discussions about Roma have never interacted with Roma
The issue with that sort of reasoning is that it is word-for-word exactly what was said about Black people... and is still said by some. So people have a pretty understandable reaction to it, regardless of the merit of it within a particular context.
Yes, and I can totally understand that. That's the hard thing when discussing Roma: they really are a special case, and said case doesn't map onto anything the American public has experienced.
The other thing that makes it difficult is that they objectively have suffered at the hands of the Nazi regime, so it's easy to start accusing critics of supporting such policies. In my experience, this is rarely the case, and doing so only lends legitimacy to far-right political groups.
That said, it's possible to be critical of a clear and consistent pattern of behavior without calling for violence.
> they really are a special case, and said case doesn't map onto anything the American public has experienced.
The American public has experienced a variety of urban certain inner-city communities comprised largely of African Americans. They are culturally distinctive, and members are easily recognisable as such by their appearance and their typical clothing.
Due at least in part to a multigenerational history of prejudice and mistreatment, these communities are wreaked by poverty, both petty and violent crimes, alcoholism, and use/abuse of illegal drugs. Some group members ostentatiously reject the idea of "integration" into the more prosperous bands of American society, and have published many popular rap songs glorifying a "gangsta" lifestyle characterized by violence and objectification of women. It is possible that this is self-perpetuating to some extent, as the culture's family structures (a very high incidence of single-mother families) and the culture's values (especially regarding education) may not be conducive to modern prosperity.
And yet we're generally able to say as a nation that African-Americans have as much potential as human beings as any other, morally and intellectually. We call on each other to treat each other, and all people, as individual humans and not to judge them by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. It's hardly a conflict-free relationship, but it's something.
So I'm curious what's different specifically with the Roma that maps onto this experience so poorly, or whether it's just the larger surrounding cultures not having a well-developed culture of tolerance. Do tell.
I have never heard of African Americans emptying a house while the elderly occupants are still in, tearing apart the pipes to re-sell for tin, throwing the occupants down the stairs to die in agony, with a broken hip, for hours, all that for 50c worth of copper.
If it happened, I have never heard Jessy Jackson explain on national TV that this is perfectly normal and that property is a cultural thing and that that kind of “cultural misunderstanding” is entirely the fault of Police brutality and forced education.
I have never heard of African American claims that at 6’2” tall guy with visible muscle lines, a full beard and a deep voice is 12 y.-o., has not document to prove it, and therefore cannot be charged with grand larceny and barbaric violence, even if he was caught in the act and the whole thing is on tape.
I have never heard Rev. Jesse Jackson explain that forcing the public rape of an 11 y.o. by her 13 y.-o. cousin is also a cultural thing.
When a African American drug lord is arrested, his gang might challenge the authorities and defend him, but the vast majority of his victims, generally also African American, rejoice -- they do not spit racist slurs.
Some, very few, African American can, on occasion us racially charge epithet. They do not casually say that the live of a Gadjo is not worth the clothes he’s wearing and you’d be happy to help yourself if he were your size. To his face. African American don’t see White Americans as cattle to prey upon.
The contempt some, most Roma have for Gadjo, is reminiscent of WWII rhetoric. Europe has changed since; not sure Roma culture has. If it has, the groups that are far more visible to Gadjos in Europe didn’t get the memo.
> The contempt some, most Roma have for Gadjo, is reminiscent of WWII rhetoric
... did you not see the irony in this statement when you wrote it? Are you aware that the Roma people were targeted during the Holocaust? And that more than 25% of the Roma population was killed?
> I have never heard of African Americans emptying a house while the elderly occupants are still in, tearing apart the pipes to re-sell for tin, throwing the occupants down the stairs to die in agony, with a broken hip, for hours, all that for 50c worth of copper.
Copper theft is a big thing in the US: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100917758 - I'm sure there's someone in the US who did something close enough and we could find a sensationalised headline if we did enough research. You probably just have that one case embedded in your brain because it matches a preexisting narrative, a trivially common form of cognitive bias.
> I have never heard Rev. Jesse Jackson explain that forcing the public rape of an 11 y.o. by her 13 y.-o. cousin is also a cultural thing.
It's true, Jackson is more about defending people shooting the police with cries of "black lives matter!" while gang shootings continue to take about 13 black lives a day (and there's a lot more tragedies like Tyshawn Lee's than Laquan McDonald's out there.) If that's not practically an endorsement of having different values for what goes on inside the borders of a different culture, I'm not quite sure what is. And even if not, that's one man's specific political views versus an unsourced assertion and it fails to satisfy.
> When a African American drug lord is arrested, his gang might challenge the authorities and defend him, but the vast majority of his victims, generally also African American, rejoice -- they do not spit racist slurs.
Well, the police force is multiracial in a lot of cities, so racist slurs aren't always appropriate. There are plenty of places they'd just cry "Fuck the police!" etc. Inclusion on the police force may be a key difference, actually, though it's hard to be itinerant and hold that kind of a position at once.
> African American don’t see White Americans as cattle to prey upon.
Guarantee you there are some thugs out there who do. I wouldn't generalise, but I'm not yet confident that you should generalise either.
I have to be honest: I am not as familiar with the US as most people on Hacker News.
> that's one man's specific political views versus an unsourced assertion and it fails to satisfy.
I’m not trying to tell anymore.
I have asked to journalist friends why they do not write on the topic, and none gave a reasonable answer. I can assure you that my experiences are mirrored by people who were confronted to bad situations; people who weren’t just find it incredible and dismiss them.
> I wouldn't generalise, but I'm not yet confident that you should generalise either.
I don’t want to. I would like to see the ties between the violent thieves that I was confronted to and the glorious culture that I heard so much about. Internal tensions in the community are probably fascinating… but it’s completely undocumented. Once again: I answered questions about why Europeans have such a violent reaction to Gypsies. There are countless incredibly shocking anecdotes of open racism against gadjos. I know my stories are true. If you want to finance journalists to look into it in more details, be my guest. I have tried, and I really hated the response I got from Roma officials.
It's getting late, but I'll happily pick this up tomorrow.
In a nutshell, the we're not using the word "integration" in the same sense. Roma reject the "host culture" (for lack of a better term) to an extent that is difficult to fathom, and much, much more extreme than anything in the American Black community. The Black community in the US has legitimate grievences and understandable trust issues with White America. Roma do not (except, perhaps, with Germany, but you'll note that they behave the same way everywhere... even in Romania!)
- They don't send their children to school
- They force their children to beg on the streets
- They force their children to steal (pickpocketing, stealing from yards/farms/public-utilitlies/etc
- They force their women into prostitution
- They force their children to spend their days running scams (the most well-known of which involves harrassing people for signatures on petitions for government subsidies. Typically, at least in France, they start fraudulent "associations" for deaf/mute people, collect a certain number of signatures, and cash in)
- When the police come to their shanty-towns to make arrests for anything from petty theft to battery to murder, they hold knives to the throats of their children and hold them hostage (I know you don't believe me so I leave it as an exercise to the reader to look this up. Examples abound.)
- They get into knife-fights between themselves and with locals, go to the hospital, and don't pay anything.
- They set up camp in agricultural fields, preventing them form being exploited, and leave behind mounds of garbage, requiring substantial cleanup efforts before the area can be exploited for its intended use once more [0]
The list goes on.
Suffice to say that there is very little about Black Americans that resembles Roma. Black Americans resist integration in a certain sense (as you have shown illustrated), but not nearly to the same extent.
Black Americans aren't, for example, forbiding their children from going to school in order to have them turn tricks for the benefit of elders.
I spent about half of my life in the US and half of my life in France. I've seen Black America (spent 6 years in an inner-city school in Wilmington, DE) and I've seen Roma. It's very hard to explain to a non-European what the deal is with Roma, but I implore you to believe me when I tell you the two have nothing in common. Roma are not bad by nature. I am not a racist. That said, Roma (by and large) do not share ours (i.e. yours and mine) values of tolerance, integration, and mutual respect. As a community, they are nothing short of abusive, and the strong reactions you see from Europeans reflects this.
I completely understand your skepticism, but I don't know how else to put it. This is different.
> The Black community in the US has legitimate grievences and understandable trust issues with White America. Roma do not
Are you serious? For starters, you completely glossed over the Holocaust because "they behave the same way everywhere" not just in Germany. But Romani throughout Europe were persecuted, including in Romania (which, you'll remember, was an Axis power).
>For starters, you completely glossed over the Holocaust
Actually, I'm pretty sure I didn't...
But I do concede your point. I oversimplified to the point of misrepresentation. Please accept my apology and my assurances that this was accidental. Roma do indeed have a bone to pick with several peoples in Europe.
Still, I have to wonder what your underlying point is. Are you claiming that they're sociologically comparable to Black Americans? Black Americans are by-and-large law-abiding, hard-working, and desire nothing more to become an integral part of American society. They're angry precisely because they feel marginalized. Roma aren't particularly angry. They want to be marginal, as evidenced by the fact that they behave the same way even with peoples that have not been so horrific to them, so it can't be that...
Surely you aren't claiming that this justifies their all-but-systematic prostituting of their women, exploitation of their children, larceny, fraud and violence...
The only line from your post that even begins to reference the Holocaust is "Roma do not (except, perhaps, with Germany, but you'll note that they behave the same way everywhere... even in Romania!)". In my book, that's glossing over.
> Are you claiming that they're sociologically comparable to Black Americans?
No, African Americans are a pretty different case.
> I have to wonder what your point is.
> Surely you aren't claiming that this justifies their all-but-systematic prostituting of their women, exploitation of their children, larceny, fraud and violence...
I just wanted to correct what I thought was a gross oversight of your writing, which doesn't mention the long history of persecution of Roma that continues into this century. That's important context if you want to talk about Roma culture.
> Black Americans are by-and-large law-abiding, hard-working
I agree, but I'm curious what you mean when you say "by-and-large". You used the same phrase to say that the Roma have an issue with criminality. What do you mean, formally, by "by-and-large"? When you say "People X are by-and-large Y" do you mean that more than 50% of X are Y? Do you mean being X is positively correlated with being Y? Do you control for other factors, such as Z?
I'd just like to see a little more pedantry in this thread, a few more firm statistics.
This entire article's threads are a gigantic dumpster fire. If you replaced the word "Roma" with "Black people" the mods would have (rightly) nuked the entire discussion from orbit by now. It's as if all of a sudden HN turned into Storefront for just one article. Now back to reading about Angular and React.js. Jeez
The article is about Roma who say they have had "camps demolished, businesses firebombed, neighborhoods walled off and children beaten" in Europe seeking asylum in the US.
You're just making counter accusations about the Roma. It sounds like you are justifying the firebombings and beatings. Are you?
The full sentence is: "A resurgence of neo-Nazism from Romania to Italy has seen their camps demolished, businesses firebombed, neighborhoods walled off and children beaten." Where did you get that the Roma were firebombing other Roma? There's certainly nothing in the article that suggests that.
After I was beaten down by a group of Romas, I made a declaration of theft at the Police station.
The officers there explained what they had been living after only three months of Roma invasion: 100% of street crimes, larceny, house and flat theft were directly attributed (with testimony, video) to Romas. There was a fire at one of the camps and Romas went to the press to clamour about racism and hatred, but when the Police asked to investigate, the Roma leaders refused access. The Police did anyway, and in addition to children hidden from the administration, criminally insalubrious conditions, and a ton of stolen equipment, they realised there were a feud with another nearby camp. They went there, and the leader there promised to “Burn them to the ground, for good this time”. After that, they took testimonies from Romas with a grain of salt.
I’ve started searching for it, but there are too many references to ATM and Romas for me to find that particular instance.
The Police investigation are not made public here. They tried to make an arrest anyway, but apparently the fire never happened after all. Somehow, the press didn’t cover that part.
So you're saying Roma people are born evil? Like if you grabbed a Roma kid, well fed and educated, taught the right from wrong, and you would still get a petty thief? Like the society and policies have no effect on them?
Is this hackernews or did I just accidentally open up the comment section of daily mail?
If you grabbed a Roma kid who is well fed and educated, it's very unlikely that they come from traditional Roma culture. Behaviour described in the original post belongs to that culture. It's a description of the system, not of separate people. I wouldn't call it blaming the people directly.
No, that is not what he said. What he said is that Roma (or 'Gypsy' as that term also covers other groups like the Sinti, Kale, Romanichal, Manush and others, even though that word is often used in a pejorative sense) culture (or 'nurture' in the classical nature/nurture dichotomy) leads to many of the problems experienced by these people.
This is hacker news, a place where I hope more value is placed in facts than in feelings. If the facts - which can easily be found out, there are many published studies and books on the subject - don't fit your vision of society that is a problem for you to solve - or ignore. Facts and the implications thereof can be discussed but it does not make sense to deny them, nor to try to shift the attention away from them.
Some cultures have built in defenses - like conspiracy theories, unfollowable rules for outsiders and micro-agressions to uphold.
But yes, you could reeducate that kid- but are you actually saying that a destructive culture should be dissolved by reeducating? Mao would be so proud off you. Speared on his own mental censor-scissor!
In all seriousness, the most interesting thing that was dissolving these anti-modern Regressor-cultures are smartphones and the old, non censored internet. If everyone can look over the fence, even the children, suddenly the conspiracy stories are difficult to entrench.
I didn't actually say anything, i'm simply pointing out that your reaction is knee-jerk and likely baseless. Neither of us know exactly why they are the way they are. It may be their fault, it may be society's fault, it may be some combination of the two. To simply conclude that it isn't their fault because your worldview is such that minority groups are never at fault is illogical and harmful.
So you know, I'm generally anti-left. But I've also had good training from hanging out on Wikipedia and I try to be fair about things and I definitely don't try to be ostentatiously anti-left.
I personally agree with you that there's serious problems with the way that the left perceives, reasons about, and talks about both cultures and consequences, at a distance and otherwise. I furthermore believe that you could be downvoted or called a racist xenophobe on these pages, simply for expressing true facts and reasonable opinions.
And I downvoted your comment.
I also downvoted the grandparent comment and the great-grandparent comment, and for the same reason: because they didn't seem very conducive to a productive conversation. The original poster doesn't deserve snarkily being called out for "victim blaming" for a reasonable post which relatively-neutrally explores the cycles that perpetuate the status quo. The reply "What makes you think they aren't to blame?" doesn't add anything productive to the conversation and just increases the temperature.
Your approach as exemplified by this comment - pigeonholing all critics into a conspiracy - is worthless, unproductive, raises the flame-war temperature, and is generally harmful to the cause of Reason as well as any particular cause you're hoping to promote. If Hacker News is leftist-zone full of oikophobes, well then, you should be all the more prepared to apply Principle and Rigor to your arguments, a property which is mostly welcome here. (Outside of a few disturbing incidents like the Brendan Eich witch hunt, anyway.)
In summary, you got downvoted 'cuz you're doing HN wrong.
I didn't mean to necessarily imply that they are. I'm posing the question honestly: What makes you think that they aren't to blame for their own plight? Is it a sense that a minority group is, by definition, incapable of being at fault? Is it not possible that, without making per se value judgments, a culture is fundamentally incompatible with Western society and norms?
Don't worry Darawk, I was agreeing with you. I even posted video evidence of how those people live and how they destroy communities due to their particular cultural habbits. But the growing left leaning part of the HN hive-mind started the downvoting and I realized it's just not worth it, I deleted it and just left "wow HN". I've been on here for over 7 years (registered 5 years), I remember when the front page was literally linux code snippet links, nerd chat, and startup dreams and non of this political diarrhea / white savoir nonsense. I remember Reddit when it was just 1 Reddit (no subreddits), and I remember browsing Digg starting from the very 1st page. And I've seen the same pattern over and over all across tech/news websites: Like Digg, Mashable, and so many subReddits, HN too over time has become...well... "wonderful and totally tolerant of non non-left-wing views" and "is totally not a hive-mind, not at all, I swear". I'm an independent, neither left nor right. So it's annoying to see this happen over and over and over.
It got so annoying I started taking screenshots of the front page when it first started years ago. Before the new mods, before Altman took over Ycombinator, before the new algorithms, as proof of increasing left-leaning articles that have nothing to do with tech or startups. I should dig up the evidence and release it someday. I ran from the propaganda of conservatism and Fox News from the exposure to it in my teens with the other "Generation-4-Chaners/Anonymous" and now find I'm having to escape liberalism. What happens when there's no place left to go?
I think i'm done with this community. I left Digg for Reddit, Reddit for Mashable and TechCrunch, left those for HN, and now I see no point. There was a time when there were "Show HN" submissions all over the front page. Now they are far and few in between. Tech hangouts all turn into Huffingpost eventually. HN was a sort of last bastion due to the algorithm changes every now and then but it's starting to creep back. The Fall of HN is often laughed at, denied, and explained away using cherry picked evidence. It isn't until you flash a screenshot of HN 7 years ago and compare the headlines that the shock hits you. And each time someone brings this up someone who's also a long term member explains it away. It's useless.
Did you see what happened to Paul Graham when he published his articles on Inequality, Women, and the Problem with foreign accents in startups. All of his articles were honest and accurate and based on the reality of things, and immediately he was attacked by left leaning media. When he stepped down and replaced himself with Sam Altman he was asked about the attacks and he specifically said and I quote "that part I won't miss".
Saving a community on the decline means saving the people who made it decline. What's the point? Let them suffer in their own stench.
There's amazingly little (overt at least) discrimination for Roma which are not following traditional values. For example some of Romania's greatest artists and athletes/coaches are at least partly of Roma origin. Google Gheorghe Zamfir or Mircea Lucescu, for example.
So a lot of this discrimination is based on culture. Which is something which can and often does change. Especially since several of the things I mentioned in the comment above are things which are widely considered to be incompatible with Western society (disrespecting property rights and children's rights).
What I can tell you is that if the discrimination is just to be blamed on the majorities (Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, etc.), then it is a feeling which is widely spread and becomes even wider spread as Roma migrate to other countries (there's rising backlash from France, Sweden, Norway, Germany, etc.). And some of the countries listed are considered among the most tolerant in the world (Sweden, Norway).
We have a saying which goes something like this: "If 1 person tells you that you're drunk, you can ignore her. If 2 persons say it, maybe it's time to go to bed".
Anyway, it is a super complex topic and I have no idea how it can be fixed. There has to be a looooot of tolerance and willingness to interact and advance together for both groups and it's hard to do that from such a long history of bad blood.
I lived in Europe for 14 years. I had several Roma friends, and I also had several family members (grandmother, father) robbed by Roma in the street. I don't see much benefit to letting those who want to leave Europe live in America. Many Roma populations are mired in multigenerational poverty, with all the vices that tend to accompany that condition.
I've had brushes with Roma in Italy. They're very hard-pressing when begging, but other than that, they seemed OK. People were really not nice to them, though. It scared me a little.
If by “hard-pressing”, you mean beat people down, empty their pocket, break doors to empty houses, tear away the pipes, steal your car… then yeah: you have the reason why people don’t like them a lot.
1400 years of persecution has culminated in a denial of access to basic education, healthcare and representation in government. The stereotypes applied to a people who live on the edge society are to some extent true for a dwindling minority who eschew societal norms, but who can blame them. Without access to the jobs market and a path to integration they're largely kept in their place. The response of Romania upon joining the EU was to thrust their failure to integrate the Roma on to other EU member states, who in turn have refused to offer anything resembling comprehensive help. It's sad that there's no realistic prospect for integration and no EU state truly believes in constitutional multiculturalism anymore so no protections will ever be afforded to the roma as are to jewish, christian & muslim minorities.
With one key distinction that you're overlooking: we repeatedly extend a helping hand in the form of subsidies, public education, public health, and de-facto tax exemption.
What we get in return is (by and large, with a few highly-publicized exceptions) groups of violent, fraudulent thieves.
I'm sorry but your appeal cultural relativism is little more than denying the problem exists. This is precisely the attitude that contributes to the rise of far-right political parties in Europe.
>there's no innate superiority of western european culture.
Please expand? I'm not talking about sauerkraut, television and opera here, but about human rights, humanist values and things like that. You know, Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. Thoughts that are at the heart of the European culture. Things that millions of people have died for.
Of course they're human, and shame on your for trying to use shame tactics to derail the discussion.
We can talk about group-level generalities while allowing for individuals that don't correspond to said generalities. Racism is not synonymous with "speaking in generalities", as you know damn well.
Here's another thing you know damn well: groups of people sometimes do bad things. Sometimes they even do these things systematically, save for a few outliers.
>As for "denying the problem exists" far from it, i instead want to see it change rather continuing with another decade of this hate.
Bullshit, as evidenced by your vitriolic accusations of "hate" and "racism" that follow from my description of the very problem you claim to recognize.
On the whole, as a group, Roma are violent, larcenous and fraudulent. This is not racism in the same way that "White people are responsible for slavery and segregation" is not racist. You know this and I know you know this. We see what you're doing, and it's shameful and disgusting.
Returning to the point at hand, it is evident that you've never had a Roma camp in your back yard (and if so, the implications for you are even worse). This attitude is exactly why the far-right is rising in the EU. You refuse to engage in a thoughtful discussion about a problem. Because of people like you, otherwise reasonable people end up saying "fine, call me racist if you want, but this phenomenon exists, I'm worried, and I want to talk about it". So what do they do? They run to the nearest group of people who will hear them out, which in the EU happens to be the far-right. The reason the far-right has this monopoly is because people like you have made the subject radioactive in mainstream politics. You have censored debate. You have stifled democracy. You have blamed victims time and time again. You discredit the grievances of upstanding people based on the color of their skin. You are regression and anti-intellectualism masquerading as progress and tolerance.
If you're European, I blame people like you for Berlusconi, Le Penn and Johnson.
If you're American, you embody the stereotype of the ignorant, arrogant American.
Either way, your impulsive accusations of racism trivialize the real thing, and do more to perpetuate far-right ideology than anything I've ever done, intentionally or otherwise.
For the love of what you claim to cherish: please stop.
Why the armchair preaching about how sad it is that no one wants to bother with this problem then? Maybe no country managed to do it because it's hard to change a culture? Uh no, let's blame racism.
Unless you will use force, money or magical brain washing, you can't make people do something. This wont change and all of those options are unfavourable.
> The response of Romania upon joining the EU was to thrust their failure to integrate the Roma on to other EU member states, who in turn have refused to offer anything resembling comprehensive help.
Can't speak for the entire EU, but in Ireland Roma have the same opportunity as any EU immigrant. There's no concerted effort to integrate them nor is there institutional prejudice to keep them down. Just good old apathy and a pretty solid social security system.
Any 'failure to integrate' is entirely on their part. Many are fully integrated, some are my friends. Others continue to live lifestyles similar to what has been described in the comments.
I was trying to point out the nuance between an integrated multiethnic society and a multicultural one involving multiple parallel societies where to a certain extent a minorities own laws take precedence. Going back to the article, I think minorities have an easier time coming to terms with fractured identities in America as at least one can be American-whatever, unlike in Europe in my own experience where you're simply "not from here".
> "nor is there institutional prejudice to keep them down"
>Americans who have never dealt with gypsies think their gypsies are anything like Europe's.
Pretty much every country with a big gypsy population in Europe has programs to integrate them and have given them a chance (Romania, Spain, Portugal, France etc). Gypsies in Europe have repeatedly refused to integrate into our societies and while some do integrate and leave the gypsy life behind (I personally know one such person) they are the exception to the rule. Those who do face tremendous discrimination and have a hard time finding work. Why is that?
I would argue that racism (or xenophobia) stems from repeated, bad, past experiences with a group of people. The gypsies are one such group.
They deal in petty crime in every city, in organized crime and ATM theft (they make the ATMs explode at night and take the money), abduct children to raise as their own or as sex slaves, are untrustworthy in any exchange you might have with them (either they sell you crap and in that case you will never see them again or they sell you good stuff then come back later to steal it from you), if you wrong them in any way they will come back in huge groups and exact revenge, they roam the country and set up camps in private property or forests and leave a mess behind and last but not least if they have documentation the women will have dozens of kids and abuse the welfare systems.
How do you resolve this with "those poor gypsies are being persecuted, just give them a chance"? This is how they are, you can't change them no matter how many programs, education or money you throw at them.
To also add what those who have no clue about gypsies don't understand is that even if some of them want to become integrated, they'll get oppressed by OTHER GYPSIES, because their culture is at stake etc. Can a gypsy be racist to a fellow gypsy?
I'd be interested in hearing the answer, but presumably it will be nonfactual nonsense.
It will be an interesting experiment since the vast majority of Americans have none of these stereotypes. The word Gypsy conjures solely the image of a palm reader and the word Roma means nothing to the vast majority.
Their speech will sound like Russian to the American ear and their appearance will match that impression.
So, if the trend somehow continues or expands, we have a chance to see whether the exact same stereotypes re-emerge or whether they too end up following an unremarkable integration trajectory.
I feel like the millennia and holy and sacro-saint tradition of beating people at the ATM to steal their cash will match a very potent reaction in the land of the gun-totters.
California doesn't allow citizens that live in major metro areas to carry concealed weapons, unless they are employed as armed security, or are politically connected.
Roma Gypsies have been unsuccessfully trying to integrate into Europe since the 15th century. It's funny how the human rights Nazis support them but care less about their helpless and hopeless victims! In Bulgaria, many retired people live daily under the Gypsy terror, and nobody cares! These double standards make me sick! There are rights but rights come with responsibilities! If you reject to accept your civil responsibilities, you waive your rights - it's that simple!
As opposed to the actual Nazis that sent them to the gas chambers.
The entire point of universal human rights - which grew out of the aftermath of that same Holocaust, incidentally - is that you don't waive them, ever.
And it's particularly abhorrent to suggest that the rights of an entire group can be collectively abrogated by the actions of some - or even many or most - of that group.
That's a cute and proud theory until the ones who pay the bills are in place where they feel the government is neglecting them in favour of others and the economy isn't helping as well. You know, the citizens/taxpayers. Specially the lower and middle class, which is getting rare because of globalisation.
That's a cute retort until it becomes apparent that many of those citizens/taxpayers are quite happy for their government to expend great sums of money in the service of brutalising others.
Well, except that the Roma Gypsies are a special case as their "integration" has been for too long unsuccessful or more directly said - self-boycotted. In fact, their integration was unsuccessful back in India, their homeland, where they recently were found via genetic studies to descend from the Untouchables caste. In their culture, unless you steal gold, it's not considered theft. Some of their tribes still cut the right thumb of their children as it's easier to pickpocket without it. They buy their women on auctions, and there's polygamy with some. There many details about the "culture" of Roma Gypsies that Westerners are unaware of. I highly recommend you the movie "Hotel Paradise" [0], which will greatly change your perspective! The entire movie is free to watch in its entirety, it seems surreal, but it's only real!
It's not an oxymoron - it's the sad reality of today. It's pretty much like most PETA fans who'd gladly kill a hunter to save their prey - only with Gypsies it's the reverse situation as the prey, in this case, is the victims of the Gypsies - in Bulgaria, at least.
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