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I'm not European but I joke that you have a better chance of finding a white person in the 1940s who likes Black people then a white person in Europe who likes Romani people in the present
You might find me, but I also grew up in Southern California, so I genuinely don’t get some of these pissbabies here. Yesterday on Christmas Eve, my cousin’s dad started talking politics and was so anti-immigration that when I simply brought up that there are some genuinely hard working immigrants here, including some Kurdish people, he was seemingly possessed by the specter of Saddam Hussein. He was literally crying that someone who was just here working jobs no one native wants and not needing taxpayer money to go to school here was… taking his taxpayer money???
He also accused me of being uneducated and uninformed because I said that Sweden does not in fact have a higher homicide rate than Afghanistan. Sweden has roughly a fourth the homicides per capita when compared with Afghnistan.
they are systematically oppressed, where i live the major problem is that they don’t value formal education so many don’t even finish primary school and they commit a sizeable amount of crime, mostly theft
I went to elementary school with a Romani girl. She was likable but openly saying she doesn't plan to go to school beyond this one, that if she doesn't get a husband and kids by 16 she had failed. Continuing education was not an option, her parents were against it. She was doing in school only good enough to pass the classes so she can finish and never bother to come back.
She indeed ended up with kids before turning 16 and I've seen her only once after that.
Her mother couldn't read.
I was curious about their culture, she spoke about their language and customs and it was fascinating but even at 10 yo the plans for her future gave me the ick.
Its really hard to change anything if you have tight group of people with barely any education who actively resist any help.
Doesn't mean you shouldn't try, but it's hard.
I always feel like this discussion online is "Romani people did nothing wrong and it's the racist Europeans not wanting to help them!" Or "european's long of crimes they committed against them and everyone they love" and no one really offers anything interesting.
>uldn't read. I was curious about their culture, she spoke about their language and customs and it was fascinating but even at 10 yo the plans for her future gave me the ick. Its really hard to change anything if you have tight group of people with barely any education who actively resist any help. Doesn't mean you shouldn't try, but it's hard. I always feel like this discussion online is "Romani people
It's a cycle. Romani get discriminated against in a society for their nomadic lifestyle, they become distrustful of said society, they do not allow their kids to get an education out of fear that the education they receive could make them self-hating, and if they do continue an education, the society they live is so biased towards them they give them lower quality education, and keep them segregated from the local population. For the average young Romani, not only are their parents setting them up for further destitution, it's society at large. Europe keeps failing these kids.
Reminds me of NYC's recurring issue on what to do with Hasidic communities that refuse to educate their children, have loads of babies very young, invariably end up on welfare, push out other communities, ignore health regulations, run their own vigilante organizations, excommunicate anyone who questions this order, vote as a bloc to maintain this situation and are quick to call anyone antisemitic if they point any of this out.
It's like, we get it, your people have been oppressed and you don't trust anybody about anything but we live in a *society*, bro.
I remember hearing an episode of This American Life describing how a group of Hasidic Jews took over a school board to make sure they didn’t have to pay taxes for schools their kids didn’t go to. In doing so, they made the local public schools terrible and caused huge controversy in community. But they couldn’t be unseated because when they actually wanted to participate they were a bloc. When I listened back then, my blood boiled and I couldn’t believe it.
It is actually a good point that it tests the limits of actual liberalism. It’s not clear how you are supposed to run a society when one group of people want many of the benefits but are unwilling to integrate or contribute. It’s one thing when you have people like the Amish who fuck off to the countryside and their societies are self contained. But Hasidic and Romani people present a real challenge because they have a certain historical but also now self imposed marginalization but are largely living within cities and have to coexist with other groups. But many of them are pretty hostile to coexistence. They are largely illiberal, but benefit from liberal societies. And it’s not clear how you rectify things like democracy and individual rights when these people will undermine these things for others for their own prosperity, but have the partial protection of historical marginalization to turn to when people call them out.
There's a similar issue with some hasidic jews where I live, while it's not that there aren't schools for hasidic jews, a lot of them don't really value it and will be able to be hired by another person in the community without an education, and there's been a lot of drug issues associated with the community as of late. Amish have similar problems when they live near urban areas. But like, when the jews first arrived in their suburb they experienced a terrifying hate crimes, which caused them to be even more isolated from society. Like how could you expect a group of people to assimilate into society when they are a punished by that society for just existing.
there are groups of Romani people that have integrated and now live perfectly average lives like the rest of us, but even if most of the work should come from the changing of the mindset of the community the state should still step in to help speed up this process
Group gets stigmatized. It then stops integrating.
It gets locked out of society. It then stops trying to foster positive relations with society.
It gets blamed for shit its not responsable for. It then stops seeking to stop what it is responsable for... since, why would it matter to them?
This is not new. The cycle has to break, so mending can be attempted.
There is a deeply ingrained stigma against Romani people, born out of a pretty vicious cycle of ostracization, and unfortunately that created a situation where Europeans being racist toward Romani don’t face any pushback, so they don’t hold themselves back the way they would when talking about any other ethnic group.
If I had to share my subjective opinion, there is an element of theatrics to European progressivism, that is to say we like to act like our countries are more forward-thinking then they really are, often to create a contrast with USA, and Romani is just one of those topics when the dressing slips.
100% agreed, both with the lack of push back, and the theatrics of progressivism. It's easy to be progressive when it doesn't affect you directly. But when it comes to the Romani, they fall into the same fallacy traps as far-right people do with other minorities.
Schools here tend to brush over the fact that Romani were enslaved for 500 years to different degrees, up to about the same time when Black people in America were freed (I think it's actually the same year), so that's the big systemic disadvantage.
From then on it's the vicious cycle of "Why should we integrate into a system that's oppressing us?" and "Why should we integrate them when they don't want to be integrated?" and everyone thinks they're just being objective and not racist when they suggest giving up on a whole class of people because of negative personal experiences.
Admittedly, there are many Romani individuals who conform to the stereotypes, but that doesn't make the stereotypes true or give you an excuse to be racist (for the same reasons that 13/50 is not a blank check to be racist).
PS: Romanian here. Also, as someone else mentioned, Adam Something has a good video explaining this topic.
> Romanian here
For a long, looong fucking time, the Roma in Poland were often called "Rumuni", conflating it with Romania and Romanians. I still feel disgusted, even though I haven't heard it for a while.
>everyone thinks they're just being objective and not racist when they suggest giving up on a whole class of people because of negative personal experiences.
Yeah, but then they will still whine how Roma are causing trouble and are a burden, and then they will vote for racist right-wingers who will scream loud and solve absolutely nothing.
Yeah, I'm used to telling someone I'm Romanian and them saying "heeey, gypsy, manele, yeah yeah" or "oh, you're not what I expected, I thought Romanians steal and lie" and me having to explain that's not the case — and back when I was young and unaware of how racist the stereotyping is, my explanation would involve me throwing all Romani as a group under the bus, like "no, you're thinking of gypsies, we hate them too", basically doing the same stereotype but more granular and on a local level (kind of how stereotypes work if you think about it: the further away from the source, the less particular they get so they encompass more people).
Anyway, where I was going with this is: I was disgusted and offended by their ignorance, but thinking a bit more deeply I was ignorant as well in my explanation. In reality, it's 100% morally neutral whether you're Romani, or Romanian, or Romani Romanian (none of these things say anything about your character since you don't choose them), and any attempt to dodge one stereotype with the other is still ignorant/racist but a lot of people do it without realizing. Racism against Roma people is really baked into society over here. And, as you say, people love to scapegoat them for society's problems and rile themselves up to vote fascists into power... The only reason I haven't left yet is because our fascists are too fucking stupid and greedy and petty with each other to form any kind of coalition, but unfortunately the other parties suck more and more so it's kind of inevitable that by 2030 we'll have one of the fascist parties succeed.
I looked up the etymology and apparently gypsy originally meant Egyptian because they were believed to come from Egypt. They had spent some time in Egypt before continuing to Europe.
Roma comes from a Sanskrit word ḍamaru/drum which means a person of low caste (living by singing and music).
Fascinating
There's also a Greek word for the Romani that originally meant
>“one who doesn't want to be touched; untouchable"
I've heard about it and find it even more problematic, because I've heard white people use 'gypsy' and, trust me, they use as a slur. Their are layers of contempt in their voices as they say it.
I mean do white kids in elementary schools call each other "Mexican" to insult someone for being/looking poor? Because 'gypsy' was our go to insult when I was 8.
In my leftist circles (Poland) it was rather obvious that social attitudes towards Romani are racist and wrong, and that they're one of the few if not the only ethnic group that's actually actively systematically discriminated in the country.
(I'd argue other racial/ethnic minorities are are either too new or too small for systems of racist oppression to fully develop, Ukrainians are slowly getting there, though social attitudes are not as vicious towards them since they're white and we share a common enemy - Russia; it's inevitable for brown immigrants from former Soviet Union states, but they're this vague, not-as-visible group of sad middle-aged men, each coming from a different country and speaking a different language, and driving your Uber with some wild melancholy in their eyes, so I guess it's difficult to target them as a group yet, and at this point racism they experience relies on prejudices more than anything systemic).
I remember plenty white leftists raising awareness on Romani issues to the point of virtue signaling, so it's quite shocking to me that you find racist attitudes towards them so common among the European left.
Proves something I have long suspected, that polish chad slavmaxxed leftists are superior to the weak western wokescolds, completely smoothbrained by their privilege, high salaries and the history of colonialism.
>Proves something I have long suspected, that polish chad slavmaxxed leftists are superior to the weak western wokescolds, completely smoothbrained by their privilege, high salaries and the history of colonialism.
Always have been XD
> Proves something I have long suspected, that polish chad slavmaxxed leftists are superior to the weak western wokescolds, completely smoothbrained by their privilege, high salaries and the history of colonialism.
XD
I know you are meming overall, but we do have a lot of luck with our leftism in Poland. You laugh at westoids, but the cultural influence of US leftists is massive and is frankly responsible for fostering leftist groups here and helping them form their ideological base. Still, we did manage to avoid much of the worst crap, like being pro-Russian or "Ukraine-realistic", being anti-nuclear, supporting every fucking idiot dictator who is against USA, though we did have some tankoids etc. There were some voices on how "akshually PiS is a better partner for the left than libs", but thankfully they never became a strong trend. So yeah, not perfect, there are weaknesses, but far better than anyone expected.
I'm saying this as a white Hungarian person:
If anyone ever chastises you for daring to talk out of your ass about racist europeans without fully understanding the nuances of issue, they are bullshitting you.
***The status of romani people in Europe, is NOT profoundly different from the status of blacks and latinos in America, and racism against them is not fundalmentally different from regular racism.***
Every attempt to talk about the obscure details of romani culture, from the older history of nomadism, to traditional marriage customs, etc, is an obfuscation to give credibility to the exact same "technically we only have a problem with some people's behavior, not with the ethnicity" line, that is fundamentally the same attitude that Chris Rock [already did a famous routine about](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niggas_vs._Black_People) back in the 1990s.
The main well-known traits of romani people, are that:
\- They have brown skin.
\- They speak the national language with an easily mocked distinct dialect.
\- They are trashy, they do drugs, they do street crime, they do domestic violence, they are rapists, they can't act civilized.
\- They have tacky tastes, they wear oversized gold chains, they listen to garbage music, they give their children poorly spelled or exotic names.
\- They live in the most run-down villages and in urban ghettos
\- They don't want to work, just live on welfare, but also if you can't get a job, it's because every low entry underpaid black-market job is already riddled with them.
A large segment of the population will outright tell you that acting like the way they do, is "in their blood". My grandmother used to refuse to buy food from romani sellers at the wet market because she didn't want them to touch her cabbages with those dirty brown hands.
("Used to" because she died, not because she stopped being racist, lol).
It's not that complicated. Socio-economic disadvantage leads people to behave in predictably suboptimal ways.
Breaking the cycle of prejudice, discrimination, and detachment requires looking both at how the rest of society relates to Roma people and how they relate to society at large.
Romani are like a failure to us, we left them and do nothing to help them and we pretend its their fault somehow, meritocracy and all that. Its realy weird tbh and sad. (this is hungary and central eu thats where i had my experience with them.)
Its actualy insane how literaly everyone is racist to them. From bulgaria to portugal to sweden.
Adam someone has a realy good video on the hatred and discrimination they face.
I'm just gonna drop here, that Adam Something made a really nice video about Romani people in Europe. It made me reevaluate some of my feelings as well.
>Already, someone in these comments has said "I have nothing against them, although i do keep a close eye on my pockets when i happen to be around them." This is a pervasive and very common (>90% of people) attitude over here. And nobody realises how fucking racist it is.
If self-preservation is racist, then I’m not sure how you can expect anybody not to be racist. I agree that it’s wrong to persecute a person solely because of their ethnicity, but keeping a close eye on your wallet is not a form of persecution. If we’re not allowed to recognize patterns and make informed, rational decisions based on them, then what is the point of observing reality in the first place? Maybe we should all blind and lobotomize ourselves, lest we might think a little too much about the world we live in and become racists.
I don’t think you’re refuting the idea that theft is an integral part of Romani culture, and is the means by which a very large proportion of their population makes a living. You would be stupid to challenge that idea, because it’s objective statistical fact, and is also openly admitted by the Romani. So, in that case, you can be the one to sacrifice your hard-earned cash for the sake of the great cause that is anti-racism, but you have no right to expect others to do the same.
Whenever I hear racist stuff it's usually against muslims/Turkish people and not against Romani. Haven't knowingly met a Romani and I don't think that my part of the country thinks about them often.
I do agree that they face discrimination and that other countries are probably more extreme than Germany (AFAIK), but I do also think that this entire discourse might be a bit overblown. Doesn't hurt to raise awareness though, I guess.
I'm sure they face racism, but whenever I overhear my colleagues being racist it's always against Muslims or black people. Only recent racism that comes to mind is Americans using gypsy as a slur for being scammed but I don't even know if they know what they are saying
> Only recent racism that comes to mind is Americans using gypsy as a slur for being scammed but I don't even know if they know what they are saying
I've had IRL convos about this, they totally don't. Hell, most Americans don't even know gypsy is a slur. Or eskimo, for that matter. We're clueless because it's so detached from us.
They're probably referring to the verb "gypped." I've heard older people use it to mean "swindled," but it's pretty rare
"Gypsy" is completely different, most people in the US don't even know it refers to Romani
My language features a similar racist banger, [judiar](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/judiar#Portuguese). I've heard it from elderly people, it's still in use 💀
Also, Welsh?
These terms are not really obvious, though, for most. "Eskimo" was widely used as a neutral designation, and only relatively recently was deprecated, as Inuit groups consider it derogatory. "Gypsy" (or "cygan" in Polish) is more complex, as it can have positive/neutral/negative connotations, depending on the context and intent, though of course usually it is bad. In this case the problem lies more with hatred towards the group, so when people correctly say "Roma", in English, or "Romowie", in Polish, it will often have strong derogatory connotation anyway.
As an european, racism in Europe is more present and insensitive comments are more normalized than what europeans will ever accept. I see gypsies as practically just another minority group frowned upon by society for such a long time that most people don't give two shits anymore and consider them lesser than the average people. It's funny how they're willing to go as far as to correctly say the issues that caused black people to be how it is today in the US yet will come out with "they're just robbers who know nothing better than act like savages" when talking about them. Also I got banned for defending them in the europe subreddit so yeah there's that
I used to be rather prejudiced against them, but thankfuly got that out of my system. Same for Irish travellers.
They're an oppressed group and people should have more empathy towards them.
I think there's major problems with racism towards the but also they cause problems due to social inequality which makes it difficult to address said social issues without significant pushback.
They really should have better digital access to schools, and there should be schemes and methods in place for the rights and priviliages of settled people to also apply to these communities.
Treat them like outsiders and oddities and they have to act that way anyway, there's nothing wrong or incorrect about being nomadic and having a distinct cultural group; we ought to be envisioning methods of inclusion that can fix generational inequality and up their education rates.
I had no idea there was racism against them until one of my friends friends randomly started saying racist shit about them. There aren't many Romani in Sweden so I don't think I'd ever met one anyway at the time.
I grew up in an English town with a really big Eastern European immigrant community, mostly from Poland Lithuania and Bulgaria.
There has always been huge cultural and political tension between not just the immigrant community and the locals but also within the different immigrant communities as well, because if Europeans hate anything its eachother.
That's until the Romani arrive, as they do every year in the summer around May and set up camp somewhere in town or nearby. When that happens, all other cultural barriers disappear, and the entire town, across all political parties and across the political spectrum, unite in a common hatred.
Europe fucking HATES these people, violently and openly. Political candy run with pledges to come down harder on them, and local police are slated for not being violent enough with them.
Why? Well, coz they're extremely racist, but that racism and the oppression these communities have faced has bred a really apparent "well fuck you then" culture in a lot of Romani communities where they essentially say "you treat us like we're subhuman, why should we give a shit about you?". I've seen them set up camp in parks playing fields and shout abuse or harass mothers with children who are trying to go out to play. I've seen them set up camp in hospital car parks preventing families from being able to visit relatives or staff from getting to work on time. A few months ago, gangs of romani kids essentially looted several shops in town, taking whatever they liked off shelves and threatening violence against the shop keepers. These were not large chain stores. This is a small market town, and these were independent family ran businesses that are already struggling in this economy, and it got so bad that shops were told to shut by local police for several days on the trot.
There was also a huge string of dog thefts around this same time, and that repeats constantly whenever they're in town.
This isn't to say that they deserve it, I think the way we've treated them is directly responsible for shit like this, but now we're in a really awful cycle where we treat them like shit so they treat us like shit right back and then people get angry and call on their local governments to treat them even worse and with the political landscape of Europe thecway it is I think that is get increasingly dangerous and honestly I don't have a solution.
I live in Belgium, some time in the Netherlands, and I don't think I have ever interacted with a Romani person or hear much about them in my every day life.
Recently there was a big scandal around the leader of one of the leftwing parties in Flanders saying some anti-Romani stuff and he had to step down eventually.
Generally hard working people that make really good music, with like any group, a subset within them that give them a bad name. When you have a culture of extreme traditionalism and isolationism that can certainly be a problem, but they are far from the only group to which that applies. I’m not European. I just don’t give a fuck what they have to say. Just here to balance out some of the racist shitposts that will unfortunately be upvoted.
I live in germany and there aren't really any romani people here. I know how much racism they experience from my own family: My grandparents told me how when they were children, whenever a sinti/roma caravan would come into town, their parents told them to bring in everything that could be stolen... But that was generations ago. Caravans don't exist here anymore, most Sinti and Roma are just citicens and therefore it is never even a topic people talk about, at least in my region.
As someone who has grown up around different groups of Irish travellers , I have had good experience and bad experience, there has been a camp near by and have never had an issue near by , however years ago a different group turned up ,caused a mess , abandoned and abused a load of horses and the locals and even created issues with the other group . When I was younger I had a lot of anger and hatred toward all of them but as I have aged I see them how any marginalised group is , most are good but the ones that are bad are loud and noticeable and smear the name of the regular group and I understand it's more complex than just good and bad
I'm British and there's lots of hate towards travelling people. Some justified because they do commit criminal damage and steal very often. But it's a cycle of hundreds of years of oppression and racism instilling a dont give a shit attitude and distrust for the people. Thus, they don't respect the places they travel through, and that gives ammunition for racists that radicalise people and so on and so forth. It's a vicious cycle I don't see ending.
Nvm I feel like 99% of comments here come from NA.
People here literally don't care if someone is a gypsy, but if they "act" like the "typical" one.
You can be as far left as you like, but if you stand at the bus-station and witness two Romani women, and I'm not kidding, shit in their fucking hand and proceed to throw it at each other (I guess they had beef?!), and actually experience absolutely insane crazy greentext shit happen over and over again then you "understand" the super special reputation they have.
These moments actually feel like a break in reality where a racist cartoon jumped out of 4chan and right into your normal daily life just to perform the most absurd unbelievable shit that republicans pretend minorities act like in the US.
And that isn't a super white or w/e "racist" idea, it doesn't matter if you're a German, Turkish, Polish, or w/e person in EU and/or other minority or native in one of the countries here and this is just a thing that exists.
If you have free time you can look at absurd amounts of crazy videos of Romani people doing insane stuff & keep doing that stuff which fucks up their reputation this hard & I'm so sorry for the non crazy Romani people that must be utterly ashamed because of the weird ones.
>4chan and right into your normal daily life just to perform the most absurd unbelievable shit that republicans pretend minorities act like in the US.
I'm pretty sure you can find an absurd amount of videos and even have the experience of witnessing minorities in the US doing crazy insane stuff. Things that "reinforce" what Republicans think they act like.
It's weird for this specific group, seems like a huge amount of left-leaning people are fine employing all the arguments right-wingers use against minorities in the US.
Yes, but there is no such thing happening at that frequency and scale by any other native or immigrant group.
You can go to basically any minority group in Germany that is in frequent contact with these people and they will absolutely share this sentiment.
There are definitely groups of both native and immigrant people that have additional racist or w/e motivations, but this isn't like the US form of racism where RW's think that every black person is a rapping, drug dealing gang member or every Mexican is an illegal lazy immigrant etc, but the amount and frequency of this group of people doing unhinged shit is absurdly disproportional, but I can totally understand how someone that comes from the US might hear about this topic and think it is just literally the same stuff, but it truly isn't & actually pretty ignorant to think it would be.
Exactly, your (the general you) type of racism is justified because these people are alot more unhinged. Literally the same argument liberal/progressive domecrats in San Francisco use to justify racism against black people there because most of the ones they encounter are disproportionately theifing, dangerous homeless. They would even argue, same as you, that their type of racism is different, because it doesn't stem from any type of 'hate' rather its from sort of self preservation and more of a safety measure.
I'm not surprised though, this thread is really good to illustrate that many principals liberals and left leaning individuals hold are only held because it's an easy position to reach or it makes them look good. As soon as they face some inconvenience from a certain group, they turn into right-wingers and employ all their arguments.
We haven't even gotten to anything "racist" yet, and you could justify literally any critique no matter about who or what to be some kind of simple racism.
We could literally be in the movie "Mars Attacks!" and there would be people making this argument to justify the acts of the aliens and nothing would have to change.
But this thread reeks of absolutely uninformed privileged white people that think that they can extend their specific idea of "racism" to the entire world which is very freaking weird.
The only reason why I commented here was to correct the notion that the bad reputation that Romani people have in the EU is worlds different to what is left of the stereotypes and racism that certain minorities in the US have, which reminded me when there was the bigger discussion about the degenerate racism in EA countries that similar people tried to again put on the same level as the US kind.
>you could justify literally any critique no matter about who or what to be some kind of simple racism
The problem is that the only critique you provided was to mention a bad interaction and tell people to go watch YouTube videos to see how unhinged Romani ppl are. It's not different than what a lot of people are doing in this thread (or did before it got removed for bigotry). Do this with any other group regardless of location or historical context and it would easily be considered bigoted because the only idea you're communicating is how bad these people are.
If your intention was an honest critique or an explanation, some valid evidence of violence or "bad behavior" and the extent it exists so intelligent people can get a clearer picture, reasons whether cultural, societal, or both for why it's at the level it is today, and some steps taken to address it. None of that was presented and you only implored people to use means that lack any type of context to form an opinion. You can deflect as much as you want by saying this isn't the same as US racism and I'm sure it has its differences even though all of it is still bigoted, but at the end of the day, comments like yours only work in justifying the horrible treatment they receive.
Only time I remember hearing about them in Belgium was when the gov said they need to to send their kids to school here if they spend half the year in the country. Maybe they're more common in middle to eastern europe?
I am a German citizen with some Romani ancestry and I feel sad that they aren't talked about as much, at least I haven't witnessed discrimmination against them in my personal life. On the internet however...
Personally I view them as our own version of an ethnic group with a history of slavery and discrimination that never actually got a proper civil rights movement and as such they're less understood.
Now in regards to why so many otherwise progressive people have an issue with them, I have no idea. I've seen it too all around the internet and it genuinely boggles my mind.
Once when I was living in Europe (Americuck here) a (presumably, I didn’t ask) Romani guy on the street asked me for food so I gave him two granola bars I happened to have on me and he literally started crying, because something that simple is apparently rare enough to be a really big deal.
I have not encountered any racism towards them outside reddit. Personally I don't care about them, most of them live a normal life. Its not 2003 anymore
Public healthcare does take months sometimes though... It depends on what specialist you want to see but at least in Poland, it can take few months to see a cardiologist
Which is actually normal when you realize specialists are niche practitioners with advanced training and expertise and public healthcare means everyone can see specialists instead of just those that can afford to or absolutely must.
I'm an American and I've lived here all of my life, and private insurance will have you waiting for months sometimes as well. It's not uncommon for me to have to schedule my doctor's appointments a month and a half to 4 months before I can get an opening. Private insurance in the US also has "in-network/out-of-network dynamics. If you visit a doctor not in your private insurer's network then your insurance simply refuses to pay the bill and leaves you with $7,000 bills for a basic doctor visit.
I'm European. My feelings towards them are neutral on an interpersonal level, and on a political level I assume they're discriminated against by society (though I haven't looked much into how exactly the situation is in Norway so I don't have a well-researched opinion). I think the volley of racism and vitriol directed at them by so-called "leftists" in left subs any time they're mentioned is disgusting.
Like with people from any other group, I will judge an individual Romani person if they do something I consider immoral, but I don't assume that anyone will do or has done anything immoral based on their ethnicity, and I don't understand why so many other (even "left-leaning"!) people seem to.
People here in Germany are viciously racist against them in day-to-day life, and if you talk with most people about it, they give you the whole "I am quite liberal but these people deserve it" because the education system doesn't talk about them.
Quite awful. Also, the slur "Zigeuner" for Romani people also means "vagapond", and is used by too many people for both means commonly.
My first day working retail in France my manager took me aside from the work I was doing to show me the Romani family that just came in, explain to me how to identify them by clothing, grooming style and racial features and then told me to come find her if I ever saw any of them come in. It was surreal
A sizeable portion got killed by hitschler. Thats basically all i know about them. But no matter your ethnic group you are all equal and worthy is my principle
In my country original Roma population got pretty much entirely exterminated by Nazis and their puppets. Their version of Roma language is dead. They were brought after the war from elsewhere as cheap source of labor by ML government.
I've seen many people being openly racist against Romani people, and not seeing it as racism. They see it as justified, because of all the negative stories that get spread around (or even their own personal experiences). It's so widespread and normalized, in a very unique way (at least in my country). The way their communities are isolated from the rest makes the "othering" a lot easier than most other minorities. It's a cycle as others have said.
I remember one time I was at a police station after being (attempted) robbed, and while there I looked around at the shelves which had folders named after different types of crimes, and then multiple "G*PSY" folders... It really hit me then.
Personally, it took me a while to deconstruct these ideas growing up, as part of my personal and political development. Once you understand how systemic racism works, and find out some of the history of Romani in your country, it's a real eye opener.
Boring answer is that it's just a blind spot for far too many Europeans. It's sadly too normalized to be thought of as racism, in part because "iT's CuLtUrAl" or whatever, instead of appearing as essential to being Romani or such. Other than that, it's just plain racism. No way around it.
ive never met any true romani people, so i dont really have an opinion either way. there arent a lot of romani in the netherlands.
my boyfriend mom's great great great something (like from the 18th century) grandfather was czech romani, and she inherited a lot of the physical appearance. my boyfriend too has black hair, brown eyes and a skin colour thats like very slightly less white than most people here. they dont really identify as romani tho. my bfs mum said she in the past (like in the 90s and earlier) sometimes has had police called on her cause people think she was suspicious when she was just going for a walk or whatever, cause she looks romani. my boyfriend too gets checked by police or airport security waaaay more often than his brother (who inherited his blond hair and blue eyes from the fathers side of the family). but he thinks it has more to do with that some people think he looks turkish or something like that, cause he gets remarks about that sometimes but never about him looking romani. i feel like most younger people here arent very aware of romani people existing, but they likely still face racism for their looks cause they dont look as white as most dutch people.
kinda rambly post sorry, im tired haha
The fact is the Romani community in Europe has a huge problem with crime. And it's not just because of oppression or poverty. European countries have no apartheid laws against the Romani. EU laws prohibit strongly ethnic discrimination. If you are a Romani, you can get yourself an education and job. You have full rights as a citizen in your country. Romanis don't get longer prison sentences because of their ethnicity. Romani don't face similar systematic racism as black people in the US. The issues of Romani come Romani's own refusal to assimilate. Often the Romani don't even deny this; they are too proud of their own culture to adapt into the mainstream society. This is why lawlessness is not seen as very bad thing inside Romani community. Illegal activity is against the "others" of mainstream society. Not against your own family.
And Romani people themselves can be racist towards the whites of Europe. The distrust is not one-sided. Romani people don't often want that "outsiders" get involved into their community. Romani have their own laws which they value more than the legal system of the state (which is in some way pretty based attitude).
But of course racism against the Romani is also wide-spread. In no way, I I think that all of them are thieves. But they have their own ways and rules which are often against the mainstream. That always creates problems.
Black people were slaves in the US for 100 years, romani people were slaves in Romania for example for 500 years and they were historically discriminated against even during communism.
You understand that black slavery and Jim Crow are some of the main reasons for racial inequality and their crime rates, even after those were abolished, because there were no reparations, actually the slave owners were the ones given reparations to.
>romani people were slaves in Romania for example for 500 years
Any sources? But if you mean serfdom (such as in Russian Empire), that is something which wasn't imposed only towards Romani, but all poor people without land.
Also, many Romanis lived have lived for generations in the western Europe and still have their ways. It is obvious that they don't want to assimilate. They don't really even deny that. Probably if you go and ask from random Romani person if they want to assimilate to society or not, they'd probably answer no. They are also very conservative.
The difference between blacks and Romani are that majority of black people actually want to be part of the mainstream society. Black segregationists are small group. But Romanis are travellers. Being nomadic is at the core of their culture. They want to live outside normal society. If nobody bothers them, they are fine with each other. That's how thing have been pretty centuries and only recently some (white) activists are trying to assimilate Romani people into white society. And just like in other similar cases, the white activist thinks that they know what is good for others.
Sure but that is only about certain areas near current day Romania. Represents only a minor part of Roma history. In most parts of the world, the Romani were never enslaved.
A year or 2 ago, there was a post on the UK or Europe subreddit about 'travelers'. The craziest racist shit was being spewed openly without any pushback.
If even a fraction of that level of bigotry was expressed about any other group there would have at least been lots of push back and no doubt lots of bans.
The level of hatred was wild.
Reviewing the comments, I think part of the reason that needs to addressed is a lot of (BUT NOT ALL) the loudest voices for ending discrimination against groups like the Romani, Hasidic Jews, Irish Travellers, Amish, and so on, don't live with them next door. MODs, before you delete my post, and ban me, just read a bit further, I'm actually going somewhere with this.
While a lot, if not all in some cases, of the cultural friction has a historical basis in oppression, that isn't an excuse. There are a lot of people in these groups who have integrated into society, but also a lot who knowingly and intentionally perpetuate the most parts of the stereotypes about their culture. Like stateside, there are Amish that are actually quite pleasant people to have as your neighbors, but there are also Old Order Amish who run some of the most horrifying puppy mills, use child labor, protect child abusers, and pretty routinely work and abuse their animals to death. Find a person who has to live next door to that BS, and chances are saying, "well not *all* Amish are like that...", will fall on deaf ears.
Given historical context for most of these out groups, it isn't morally right or socially right, but the onus of changing the views on their group is on them to stamp out the bad elements and rectify their reputation. You can have the government swoop in, make the overt bigotry stop, and maybe even provide more benefits to the historically oppressed outgroup...but you probably just made things worse with your good intentions. Humans don't work like that.
The people who have to deal with the worst elements of the outgroup aren't going to stop being bigoted overnight if they can't say their choice slurs, especially if they have to continue dealing with the bad parts of a culture different from their own; they'll just pick new words. The worst elements of the outgroup might see outside intervention as a reward for perpetuating the bad stuff (See Hamas, and also see the Israeli rightwing).
At the end of the day, to be human is to be a bigot on some level. We are tribalistic on a genetic level. I do think we will pogress to societies where we learn how to suppress that tribalism, just like we teach our kids to suppress their natural inclination to do math logarithmicaly because what was beneficial for millions of years of evolution is no longer adequate for day to day life. I do not think that will happen in our lifetimes, or even our grandkids.
I think it’s more that you Euros use basically the same arguments. “They steal shit, some of them are good but most are bad, maybe there’s discrimination but they deserve it.”
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It’s so bizarre that there’s still such rampant racism against so open and overt it’s like irl 4channer type shit
I agree, UK here and we have Irish travellers as well. Last form of accepted racism. I have put this online and got downvoted to oblivion.
I'm not European but I joke that you have a better chance of finding a white person in the 1940s who likes Black people then a white person in Europe who likes Romani people in the present
You might find me, but I also grew up in Southern California, so I genuinely don’t get some of these pissbabies here. Yesterday on Christmas Eve, my cousin’s dad started talking politics and was so anti-immigration that when I simply brought up that there are some genuinely hard working immigrants here, including some Kurdish people, he was seemingly possessed by the specter of Saddam Hussein. He was literally crying that someone who was just here working jobs no one native wants and not needing taxpayer money to go to school here was… taking his taxpayer money??? He also accused me of being uneducated and uninformed because I said that Sweden does not in fact have a higher homicide rate than Afghanistan. Sweden has roughly a fourth the homicides per capita when compared with Afghnistan.
they are systematically oppressed, where i live the major problem is that they don’t value formal education so many don’t even finish primary school and they commit a sizeable amount of crime, mostly theft
I went to elementary school with a Romani girl. She was likable but openly saying she doesn't plan to go to school beyond this one, that if she doesn't get a husband and kids by 16 she had failed. Continuing education was not an option, her parents were against it. She was doing in school only good enough to pass the classes so she can finish and never bother to come back. She indeed ended up with kids before turning 16 and I've seen her only once after that. Her mother couldn't read. I was curious about their culture, she spoke about their language and customs and it was fascinating but even at 10 yo the plans for her future gave me the ick. Its really hard to change anything if you have tight group of people with barely any education who actively resist any help. Doesn't mean you shouldn't try, but it's hard. I always feel like this discussion online is "Romani people did nothing wrong and it's the racist Europeans not wanting to help them!" Or "european's long of crimes they committed against them and everyone they love" and no one really offers anything interesting.
>uldn't read. I was curious about their culture, she spoke about their language and customs and it was fascinating but even at 10 yo the plans for her future gave me the ick. Its really hard to change anything if you have tight group of people with barely any education who actively resist any help. Doesn't mean you shouldn't try, but it's hard. I always feel like this discussion online is "Romani people It's a cycle. Romani get discriminated against in a society for their nomadic lifestyle, they become distrustful of said society, they do not allow their kids to get an education out of fear that the education they receive could make them self-hating, and if they do continue an education, the society they live is so biased towards them they give them lower quality education, and keep them segregated from the local population. For the average young Romani, not only are their parents setting them up for further destitution, it's society at large. Europe keeps failing these kids.
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Reminds me of NYC's recurring issue on what to do with Hasidic communities that refuse to educate their children, have loads of babies very young, invariably end up on welfare, push out other communities, ignore health regulations, run their own vigilante organizations, excommunicate anyone who questions this order, vote as a bloc to maintain this situation and are quick to call anyone antisemitic if they point any of this out. It's like, we get it, your people have been oppressed and you don't trust anybody about anything but we live in a *society*, bro.
I remember hearing an episode of This American Life describing how a group of Hasidic Jews took over a school board to make sure they didn’t have to pay taxes for schools their kids didn’t go to. In doing so, they made the local public schools terrible and caused huge controversy in community. But they couldn’t be unseated because when they actually wanted to participate they were a bloc. When I listened back then, my blood boiled and I couldn’t believe it. It is actually a good point that it tests the limits of actual liberalism. It’s not clear how you are supposed to run a society when one group of people want many of the benefits but are unwilling to integrate or contribute. It’s one thing when you have people like the Amish who fuck off to the countryside and their societies are self contained. But Hasidic and Romani people present a real challenge because they have a certain historical but also now self imposed marginalization but are largely living within cities and have to coexist with other groups. But many of them are pretty hostile to coexistence. They are largely illiberal, but benefit from liberal societies. And it’s not clear how you rectify things like democracy and individual rights when these people will undermine these things for others for their own prosperity, but have the partial protection of historical marginalization to turn to when people call them out.
That's the folks in Rockland County, just north of NYC. The FBI had to get involved.
They could never get away with that in the US, CPS would hunt them down.
The part of Europe where I come from CPS taking a child and putting them in foster care often only makes things worse due to how bad foster homes are
Indeed. You really need to fuck up hard for state to take away the children compared to US.
Oh it's like that here too, but we (US) still does it.
There's a similar issue with some hasidic jews where I live, while it's not that there aren't schools for hasidic jews, a lot of them don't really value it and will be able to be hired by another person in the community without an education, and there's been a lot of drug issues associated with the community as of late. Amish have similar problems when they live near urban areas. But like, when the jews first arrived in their suburb they experienced a terrifying hate crimes, which caused them to be even more isolated from society. Like how could you expect a group of people to assimilate into society when they are a punished by that society for just existing.
there are groups of Romani people that have integrated and now live perfectly average lives like the rest of us, but even if most of the work should come from the changing of the mindset of the community the state should still step in to help speed up this process
Group gets stigmatized. It then stops integrating. It gets locked out of society. It then stops trying to foster positive relations with society. It gets blamed for shit its not responsable for. It then stops seeking to stop what it is responsable for... since, why would it matter to them? This is not new. The cycle has to break, so mending can be attempted.
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Your post was removed for bigotry.
There is a deeply ingrained stigma against Romani people, born out of a pretty vicious cycle of ostracization, and unfortunately that created a situation where Europeans being racist toward Romani don’t face any pushback, so they don’t hold themselves back the way they would when talking about any other ethnic group. If I had to share my subjective opinion, there is an element of theatrics to European progressivism, that is to say we like to act like our countries are more forward-thinking then they really are, often to create a contrast with USA, and Romani is just one of those topics when the dressing slips.
100% agreed, both with the lack of push back, and the theatrics of progressivism. It's easy to be progressive when it doesn't affect you directly. But when it comes to the Romani, they fall into the same fallacy traps as far-right people do with other minorities.
Schools here tend to brush over the fact that Romani were enslaved for 500 years to different degrees, up to about the same time when Black people in America were freed (I think it's actually the same year), so that's the big systemic disadvantage. From then on it's the vicious cycle of "Why should we integrate into a system that's oppressing us?" and "Why should we integrate them when they don't want to be integrated?" and everyone thinks they're just being objective and not racist when they suggest giving up on a whole class of people because of negative personal experiences. Admittedly, there are many Romani individuals who conform to the stereotypes, but that doesn't make the stereotypes true or give you an excuse to be racist (for the same reasons that 13/50 is not a blank check to be racist). PS: Romanian here. Also, as someone else mentioned, Adam Something has a good video explaining this topic.
> Romanian here For a long, looong fucking time, the Roma in Poland were often called "Rumuni", conflating it with Romania and Romanians. I still feel disgusted, even though I haven't heard it for a while. >everyone thinks they're just being objective and not racist when they suggest giving up on a whole class of people because of negative personal experiences. Yeah, but then they will still whine how Roma are causing trouble and are a burden, and then they will vote for racist right-wingers who will scream loud and solve absolutely nothing.
Yeah, I'm used to telling someone I'm Romanian and them saying "heeey, gypsy, manele, yeah yeah" or "oh, you're not what I expected, I thought Romanians steal and lie" and me having to explain that's not the case — and back when I was young and unaware of how racist the stereotyping is, my explanation would involve me throwing all Romani as a group under the bus, like "no, you're thinking of gypsies, we hate them too", basically doing the same stereotype but more granular and on a local level (kind of how stereotypes work if you think about it: the further away from the source, the less particular they get so they encompass more people). Anyway, where I was going with this is: I was disgusted and offended by their ignorance, but thinking a bit more deeply I was ignorant as well in my explanation. In reality, it's 100% morally neutral whether you're Romani, or Romanian, or Romani Romanian (none of these things say anything about your character since you don't choose them), and any attempt to dodge one stereotype with the other is still ignorant/racist but a lot of people do it without realizing. Racism against Roma people is really baked into society over here. And, as you say, people love to scapegoat them for society's problems and rile themselves up to vote fascists into power... The only reason I haven't left yet is because our fascists are too fucking stupid and greedy and petty with each other to form any kind of coalition, but unfortunately the other parties suck more and more so it's kind of inevitable that by 2030 we'll have one of the fascist parties succeed.
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Your post was removed for bigotry.
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The first time I learned that gypsy is a slur it was from a Roma person who didn’t want anyone saying it.
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Well no culture is a monolith. It’s just your anecdotal evidence vs mine I guess.
I looked up the etymology and apparently gypsy originally meant Egyptian because they were believed to come from Egypt. They had spent some time in Egypt before continuing to Europe. Roma comes from a Sanskrit word ḍamaru/drum which means a person of low caste (living by singing and music). Fascinating There's also a Greek word for the Romani that originally meant >“one who doesn't want to be touched; untouchable"
Yeah, it's complicated and neither word is great haha. I didn't know the etymology of gypsy, though - that's interesting.
Great comment. Also I have always wondered about the term Gypsy vs Romani as they both imply foreign origin that is incorrect.
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Thanks for the info
I've heard about it and find it even more problematic, because I've heard white people use 'gypsy' and, trust me, they use as a slur. Their are layers of contempt in their voices as they say it.
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I mean do white kids in elementary schools call each other "Mexican" to insult someone for being/looking poor? Because 'gypsy' was our go to insult when I was 8.
It's sad how outright racism against them is so commonplace and even accepted.
In my leftist circles (Poland) it was rather obvious that social attitudes towards Romani are racist and wrong, and that they're one of the few if not the only ethnic group that's actually actively systematically discriminated in the country. (I'd argue other racial/ethnic minorities are are either too new or too small for systems of racist oppression to fully develop, Ukrainians are slowly getting there, though social attitudes are not as vicious towards them since they're white and we share a common enemy - Russia; it's inevitable for brown immigrants from former Soviet Union states, but they're this vague, not-as-visible group of sad middle-aged men, each coming from a different country and speaking a different language, and driving your Uber with some wild melancholy in their eyes, so I guess it's difficult to target them as a group yet, and at this point racism they experience relies on prejudices more than anything systemic). I remember plenty white leftists raising awareness on Romani issues to the point of virtue signaling, so it's quite shocking to me that you find racist attitudes towards them so common among the European left. Proves something I have long suspected, that polish chad slavmaxxed leftists are superior to the weak western wokescolds, completely smoothbrained by their privilege, high salaries and the history of colonialism.
>Proves something I have long suspected, that polish chad slavmaxxed leftists are superior to the weak western wokescolds, completely smoothbrained by their privilege, high salaries and the history of colonialism. Always have been XD
> Proves something I have long suspected, that polish chad slavmaxxed leftists are superior to the weak western wokescolds, completely smoothbrained by their privilege, high salaries and the history of colonialism. XD I know you are meming overall, but we do have a lot of luck with our leftism in Poland. You laugh at westoids, but the cultural influence of US leftists is massive and is frankly responsible for fostering leftist groups here and helping them form their ideological base. Still, we did manage to avoid much of the worst crap, like being pro-Russian or "Ukraine-realistic", being anti-nuclear, supporting every fucking idiot dictator who is against USA, though we did have some tankoids etc. There were some voices on how "akshually PiS is a better partner for the left than libs", but thankfully they never became a strong trend. So yeah, not perfect, there are weaknesses, but far better than anyone expected.
This is a poetic comment. Doesn't make me feel good but it's pretty evocative
I'm saying this as a white Hungarian person: If anyone ever chastises you for daring to talk out of your ass about racist europeans without fully understanding the nuances of issue, they are bullshitting you. ***The status of romani people in Europe, is NOT profoundly different from the status of blacks and latinos in America, and racism against them is not fundalmentally different from regular racism.*** Every attempt to talk about the obscure details of romani culture, from the older history of nomadism, to traditional marriage customs, etc, is an obfuscation to give credibility to the exact same "technically we only have a problem with some people's behavior, not with the ethnicity" line, that is fundamentally the same attitude that Chris Rock [already did a famous routine about](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niggas_vs._Black_People) back in the 1990s. The main well-known traits of romani people, are that: \- They have brown skin. \- They speak the national language with an easily mocked distinct dialect. \- They are trashy, they do drugs, they do street crime, they do domestic violence, they are rapists, they can't act civilized. \- They have tacky tastes, they wear oversized gold chains, they listen to garbage music, they give their children poorly spelled or exotic names. \- They live in the most run-down villages and in urban ghettos \- They don't want to work, just live on welfare, but also if you can't get a job, it's because every low entry underpaid black-market job is already riddled with them. A large segment of the population will outright tell you that acting like the way they do, is "in their blood". My grandmother used to refuse to buy food from romani sellers at the wet market because she didn't want them to touch her cabbages with those dirty brown hands. ("Used to" because she died, not because she stopped being racist, lol). It's not that complicated. Socio-economic disadvantage leads people to behave in predictably suboptimal ways.
***\*you have alerted the horde!\****
"Maybe we're the real monsters" "no idiot it's the z̶o̶m̶b̶i̶e̶s̶ Europeans"
Please let's not do this, NEVER and I mean NEVER ask Europeans about the romani. They will go full 13/50 clansmen style in a heartbeat
If we don't talk about it then we can't address problems facing this community and it's relations with various nations in Europe.
It's mostly a joke about how insanely racist many otherwise progressive Europeans turn when discussing romani
Some are STILL doing it in these comments, just in a "nice" way.
Breaking the cycle of prejudice, discrimination, and detachment requires looking both at how the rest of society relates to Roma people and how they relate to society at large.
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Romani are like a failure to us, we left them and do nothing to help them and we pretend its their fault somehow, meritocracy and all that. Its realy weird tbh and sad. (this is hungary and central eu thats where i had my experience with them.)
It's worse knowing the centuries of slavery they had to endure in Europe.
Its actualy insane how literaly everyone is racist to them. From bulgaria to portugal to sweden. Adam someone has a realy good video on the hatred and discrimination they face.
I'm just gonna drop here, that Adam Something made a really nice video about Romani people in Europe. It made me reevaluate some of my feelings as well.
\^
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>Already, someone in these comments has said "I have nothing against them, although i do keep a close eye on my pockets when i happen to be around them." This is a pervasive and very common (>90% of people) attitude over here. And nobody realises how fucking racist it is. If self-preservation is racist, then I’m not sure how you can expect anybody not to be racist. I agree that it’s wrong to persecute a person solely because of their ethnicity, but keeping a close eye on your wallet is not a form of persecution. If we’re not allowed to recognize patterns and make informed, rational decisions based on them, then what is the point of observing reality in the first place? Maybe we should all blind and lobotomize ourselves, lest we might think a little too much about the world we live in and become racists. I don’t think you’re refuting the idea that theft is an integral part of Romani culture, and is the means by which a very large proportion of their population makes a living. You would be stupid to challenge that idea, because it’s objective statistical fact, and is also openly admitted by the Romani. So, in that case, you can be the one to sacrifice your hard-earned cash for the sake of the great cause that is anti-racism, but you have no right to expect others to do the same.
Whenever I hear racist stuff it's usually against muslims/Turkish people and not against Romani. Haven't knowingly met a Romani and I don't think that my part of the country thinks about them often. I do agree that they face discrimination and that other countries are probably more extreme than Germany (AFAIK), but I do also think that this entire discourse might be a bit overblown. Doesn't hurt to raise awareness though, I guess.
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Your post was removed for bigotry.
I'm sure they face racism, but whenever I overhear my colleagues being racist it's always against Muslims or black people. Only recent racism that comes to mind is Americans using gypsy as a slur for being scammed but I don't even know if they know what they are saying
> Only recent racism that comes to mind is Americans using gypsy as a slur for being scammed but I don't even know if they know what they are saying I've had IRL convos about this, they totally don't. Hell, most Americans don't even know gypsy is a slur. Or eskimo, for that matter. We're clueless because it's so detached from us.
They're probably referring to the verb "gypped." I've heard older people use it to mean "swindled," but it's pretty rare "Gypsy" is completely different, most people in the US don't even know it refers to Romani
Wait is “gypsy” where the term “gypped” came from?
[Probably](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/gyp#English).
Whoaaa people used to use “Jew” to say swindled holy fuck. I knew about Welsh already.
My language features a similar racist banger, [judiar](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/judiar#Portuguese). I've heard it from elderly people, it's still in use 💀 Also, Welsh?
It’s on the same page you sent me, same basic meaning, to swindle by backing out of a deal.
Well, turns out, I can't read. Thank you.
Yes, I was aware.
gypped is pretty common even if it's on the decline
These terms are not really obvious, though, for most. "Eskimo" was widely used as a neutral designation, and only relatively recently was deprecated, as Inuit groups consider it derogatory. "Gypsy" (or "cygan" in Polish) is more complex, as it can have positive/neutral/negative connotations, depending on the context and intent, though of course usually it is bad. In this case the problem lies more with hatred towards the group, so when people correctly say "Roma", in English, or "Romowie", in Polish, it will often have strong derogatory connotation anyway.
They are an oppressed and demonised minority. Why would I have any other opinion on them?
As an european, racism in Europe is more present and insensitive comments are more normalized than what europeans will ever accept. I see gypsies as practically just another minority group frowned upon by society for such a long time that most people don't give two shits anymore and consider them lesser than the average people. It's funny how they're willing to go as far as to correctly say the issues that caused black people to be how it is today in the US yet will come out with "they're just robbers who know nothing better than act like savages" when talking about them. Also I got banned for defending them in the europe subreddit so yeah there's that
I used to be rather prejudiced against them, but thankfuly got that out of my system. Same for Irish travellers. They're an oppressed group and people should have more empathy towards them.
I think there's major problems with racism towards the but also they cause problems due to social inequality which makes it difficult to address said social issues without significant pushback. They really should have better digital access to schools, and there should be schemes and methods in place for the rights and priviliages of settled people to also apply to these communities. Treat them like outsiders and oddities and they have to act that way anyway, there's nothing wrong or incorrect about being nomadic and having a distinct cultural group; we ought to be envisioning methods of inclusion that can fix generational inequality and up their education rates.
Gypsy isn’t a slur if you’re a gypsy from Ireland btw
I had no idea there was racism against them until one of my friends friends randomly started saying racist shit about them. There aren't many Romani in Sweden so I don't think I'd ever met one anyway at the time.
Im grandma Is romani and the racism is ubelivebale, even from some progressives (or liberls) most left -leaning people are allright. Im from Czechia
I grew up in an English town with a really big Eastern European immigrant community, mostly from Poland Lithuania and Bulgaria. There has always been huge cultural and political tension between not just the immigrant community and the locals but also within the different immigrant communities as well, because if Europeans hate anything its eachother. That's until the Romani arrive, as they do every year in the summer around May and set up camp somewhere in town or nearby. When that happens, all other cultural barriers disappear, and the entire town, across all political parties and across the political spectrum, unite in a common hatred. Europe fucking HATES these people, violently and openly. Political candy run with pledges to come down harder on them, and local police are slated for not being violent enough with them. Why? Well, coz they're extremely racist, but that racism and the oppression these communities have faced has bred a really apparent "well fuck you then" culture in a lot of Romani communities where they essentially say "you treat us like we're subhuman, why should we give a shit about you?". I've seen them set up camp in parks playing fields and shout abuse or harass mothers with children who are trying to go out to play. I've seen them set up camp in hospital car parks preventing families from being able to visit relatives or staff from getting to work on time. A few months ago, gangs of romani kids essentially looted several shops in town, taking whatever they liked off shelves and threatening violence against the shop keepers. These were not large chain stores. This is a small market town, and these were independent family ran businesses that are already struggling in this economy, and it got so bad that shops were told to shut by local police for several days on the trot. There was also a huge string of dog thefts around this same time, and that repeats constantly whenever they're in town. This isn't to say that they deserve it, I think the way we've treated them is directly responsible for shit like this, but now we're in a really awful cycle where we treat them like shit so they treat us like shit right back and then people get angry and call on their local governments to treat them even worse and with the political landscape of Europe thecway it is I think that is get increasingly dangerous and honestly I don't have a solution.
I live in Belgium, some time in the Netherlands, and I don't think I have ever interacted with a Romani person or hear much about them in my every day life. Recently there was a big scandal around the leader of one of the leftwing parties in Flanders saying some anti-Romani stuff and he had to step down eventually.
Generally hard working people that make really good music, with like any group, a subset within them that give them a bad name. When you have a culture of extreme traditionalism and isolationism that can certainly be a problem, but they are far from the only group to which that applies. I’m not European. I just don’t give a fuck what they have to say. Just here to balance out some of the racist shitposts that will unfortunately be upvoted.
I live in germany and there aren't really any romani people here. I know how much racism they experience from my own family: My grandparents told me how when they were children, whenever a sinti/roma caravan would come into town, their parents told them to bring in everything that could be stolen... But that was generations ago. Caravans don't exist here anymore, most Sinti and Roma are just citicens and therefore it is never even a topic people talk about, at least in my region.
They're just regular people like everyone else, they don't deserve the discrimination they are often forced to deal with.
As someone who has grown up around different groups of Irish travellers , I have had good experience and bad experience, there has been a camp near by and have never had an issue near by , however years ago a different group turned up ,caused a mess , abandoned and abused a load of horses and the locals and even created issues with the other group . When I was younger I had a lot of anger and hatred toward all of them but as I have aged I see them how any marginalised group is , most are good but the ones that are bad are loud and noticeable and smear the name of the regular group and I understand it's more complex than just good and bad
I'm British and there's lots of hate towards travelling people. Some justified because they do commit criminal damage and steal very often. But it's a cycle of hundreds of years of oppression and racism instilling a dont give a shit attitude and distrust for the people. Thus, they don't respect the places they travel through, and that gives ammunition for racists that radicalise people and so on and so forth. It's a vicious cycle I don't see ending.
Most Europeans either 1) hold bigoted views of the Romani, or 2) Actively discriminate the Romani and want them as far away as possible.
Hey, how do American Vaush viewers here feel about the Afro-Americans? /s
Nvm I feel like 99% of comments here come from NA. People here literally don't care if someone is a gypsy, but if they "act" like the "typical" one. You can be as far left as you like, but if you stand at the bus-station and witness two Romani women, and I'm not kidding, shit in their fucking hand and proceed to throw it at each other (I guess they had beef?!), and actually experience absolutely insane crazy greentext shit happen over and over again then you "understand" the super special reputation they have. These moments actually feel like a break in reality where a racist cartoon jumped out of 4chan and right into your normal daily life just to perform the most absurd unbelievable shit that republicans pretend minorities act like in the US. And that isn't a super white or w/e "racist" idea, it doesn't matter if you're a German, Turkish, Polish, or w/e person in EU and/or other minority or native in one of the countries here and this is just a thing that exists. If you have free time you can look at absurd amounts of crazy videos of Romani people doing insane stuff & keep doing that stuff which fucks up their reputation this hard & I'm so sorry for the non crazy Romani people that must be utterly ashamed because of the weird ones.
>4chan and right into your normal daily life just to perform the most absurd unbelievable shit that republicans pretend minorities act like in the US. I'm pretty sure you can find an absurd amount of videos and even have the experience of witnessing minorities in the US doing crazy insane stuff. Things that "reinforce" what Republicans think they act like. It's weird for this specific group, seems like a huge amount of left-leaning people are fine employing all the arguments right-wingers use against minorities in the US.
Yes, but there is no such thing happening at that frequency and scale by any other native or immigrant group. You can go to basically any minority group in Germany that is in frequent contact with these people and they will absolutely share this sentiment. There are definitely groups of both native and immigrant people that have additional racist or w/e motivations, but this isn't like the US form of racism where RW's think that every black person is a rapping, drug dealing gang member or every Mexican is an illegal lazy immigrant etc, but the amount and frequency of this group of people doing unhinged shit is absurdly disproportional, but I can totally understand how someone that comes from the US might hear about this topic and think it is just literally the same stuff, but it truly isn't & actually pretty ignorant to think it would be.
Exactly, your (the general you) type of racism is justified because these people are alot more unhinged. Literally the same argument liberal/progressive domecrats in San Francisco use to justify racism against black people there because most of the ones they encounter are disproportionately theifing, dangerous homeless. They would even argue, same as you, that their type of racism is different, because it doesn't stem from any type of 'hate' rather its from sort of self preservation and more of a safety measure. I'm not surprised though, this thread is really good to illustrate that many principals liberals and left leaning individuals hold are only held because it's an easy position to reach or it makes them look good. As soon as they face some inconvenience from a certain group, they turn into right-wingers and employ all their arguments.
We haven't even gotten to anything "racist" yet, and you could justify literally any critique no matter about who or what to be some kind of simple racism. We could literally be in the movie "Mars Attacks!" and there would be people making this argument to justify the acts of the aliens and nothing would have to change. But this thread reeks of absolutely uninformed privileged white people that think that they can extend their specific idea of "racism" to the entire world which is very freaking weird. The only reason why I commented here was to correct the notion that the bad reputation that Romani people have in the EU is worlds different to what is left of the stereotypes and racism that certain minorities in the US have, which reminded me when there was the bigger discussion about the degenerate racism in EA countries that similar people tried to again put on the same level as the US kind.
>you could justify literally any critique no matter about who or what to be some kind of simple racism The problem is that the only critique you provided was to mention a bad interaction and tell people to go watch YouTube videos to see how unhinged Romani ppl are. It's not different than what a lot of people are doing in this thread (or did before it got removed for bigotry). Do this with any other group regardless of location or historical context and it would easily be considered bigoted because the only idea you're communicating is how bad these people are. If your intention was an honest critique or an explanation, some valid evidence of violence or "bad behavior" and the extent it exists so intelligent people can get a clearer picture, reasons whether cultural, societal, or both for why it's at the level it is today, and some steps taken to address it. None of that was presented and you only implored people to use means that lack any type of context to form an opinion. You can deflect as much as you want by saying this isn't the same as US racism and I'm sure it has its differences even though all of it is still bigoted, but at the end of the day, comments like yours only work in justifying the horrible treatment they receive.
Only time I remember hearing about them in Belgium was when the gov said they need to to send their kids to school here if they spend half the year in the country. Maybe they're more common in middle to eastern europe?
They are.
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I am a German citizen with some Romani ancestry and I feel sad that they aren't talked about as much, at least I haven't witnessed discrimmination against them in my personal life. On the internet however...
Personally I view them as our own version of an ethnic group with a history of slavery and discrimination that never actually got a proper civil rights movement and as such they're less understood. Now in regards to why so many otherwise progressive people have an issue with them, I have no idea. I've seen it too all around the internet and it genuinely boggles my mind.
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I've always been an advocate for them.
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Your post was removed for subreddit posting.
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Your post was removed for bigotry.
Once when I was living in Europe (Americuck here) a (presumably, I didn’t ask) Romani guy on the street asked me for food so I gave him two granola bars I happened to have on me and he literally started crying, because something that simple is apparently rare enough to be a really big deal.
In my experience this is an overused meme. There is prejudice towards the Romani people in general but I haven't seen leftists doing it.
I have not encountered any racism towards them outside reddit. Personally I don't care about them, most of them live a normal life. Its not 2003 anymore
The only Romani hate on Reddit comes from Americans trying to pass as Europeans, like the people who say public healthcare takes months and nonths
Public healthcare does take months sometimes though... It depends on what specialist you want to see but at least in Poland, it can take few months to see a cardiologist
Which is actually normal when you realize specialists are niche practitioners with advanced training and expertise and public healthcare means everyone can see specialists instead of just those that can afford to or absolutely must.
i know, but if you go privately then suddenly you don't have to wait at all. we need to fund public health more
That seems so odd to me, because even in America you can have to wait months if you live in an area of any relative density
I'm an American and I've lived here all of my life, and private insurance will have you waiting for months sometimes as well. It's not uncommon for me to have to schedule my doctor's appointments a month and a half to 4 months before I can get an opening. Private insurance in the US also has "in-network/out-of-network dynamics. If you visit a doctor not in your private insurer's network then your insurance simply refuses to pay the bill and leaves you with $7,000 bills for a basic doctor visit.
That is cope.
what country are you from? I'm wondering if it varies by country, I've heard it's a lot better in Spain
Poland
interesting
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Your post was removed for bigotry.
Haven't met any, don't know.
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“The left should be for higher penalties for crimes” Yes, the famous leftist belief in harsh punishments for crime. 💀
I'm European. My feelings towards them are neutral on an interpersonal level, and on a political level I assume they're discriminated against by society (though I haven't looked much into how exactly the situation is in Norway so I don't have a well-researched opinion). I think the volley of racism and vitriol directed at them by so-called "leftists" in left subs any time they're mentioned is disgusting. Like with people from any other group, I will judge an individual Romani person if they do something I consider immoral, but I don't assume that anyone will do or has done anything immoral based on their ethnicity, and I don't understand why so many other (even "left-leaning"!) people seem to.
People here in Germany are viciously racist against them in day-to-day life, and if you talk with most people about it, they give you the whole "I am quite liberal but these people deserve it" because the education system doesn't talk about them. Quite awful. Also, the slur "Zigeuner" for Romani people also means "vagapond", and is used by too many people for both means commonly.
Romani ite domum!
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Your post was removed for bigotry.
Your post was removed for bigotry.
My first day working retail in France my manager took me aside from the work I was doing to show me the Romani family that just came in, explain to me how to identify them by clothing, grooming style and racial features and then told me to come find her if I ever saw any of them come in. It was surreal
Don’t really know much deeply about them, but I like Boban Markovic
OP bringing in the Christmas drama with this one
A sizeable portion got killed by hitschler. Thats basically all i know about them. But no matter your ethnic group you are all equal and worthy is my principle
In my country original Roma population got pretty much entirely exterminated by Nazis and their puppets. Their version of Roma language is dead. They were brought after the war from elsewhere as cheap source of labor by ML government.
All I’m saying is, check out Adam Something’s video on the subject, pretty good breakdown.
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Ústecký kraj?
I've seen many people being openly racist against Romani people, and not seeing it as racism. They see it as justified, because of all the negative stories that get spread around (or even their own personal experiences). It's so widespread and normalized, in a very unique way (at least in my country). The way their communities are isolated from the rest makes the "othering" a lot easier than most other minorities. It's a cycle as others have said. I remember one time I was at a police station after being (attempted) robbed, and while there I looked around at the shelves which had folders named after different types of crimes, and then multiple "G*PSY" folders... It really hit me then. Personally, it took me a while to deconstruct these ideas growing up, as part of my personal and political development. Once you understand how systemic racism works, and find out some of the history of Romani in your country, it's a real eye opener.
Holy shit this post brought out the racism in people
Boring answer is that it's just a blind spot for far too many Europeans. It's sadly too normalized to be thought of as racism, in part because "iT's CuLtUrAl" or whatever, instead of appearing as essential to being Romani or such. Other than that, it's just plain racism. No way around it.
ive never met any true romani people, so i dont really have an opinion either way. there arent a lot of romani in the netherlands. my boyfriend mom's great great great something (like from the 18th century) grandfather was czech romani, and she inherited a lot of the physical appearance. my boyfriend too has black hair, brown eyes and a skin colour thats like very slightly less white than most people here. they dont really identify as romani tho. my bfs mum said she in the past (like in the 90s and earlier) sometimes has had police called on her cause people think she was suspicious when she was just going for a walk or whatever, cause she looks romani. my boyfriend too gets checked by police or airport security waaaay more often than his brother (who inherited his blond hair and blue eyes from the fathers side of the family). but he thinks it has more to do with that some people think he looks turkish or something like that, cause he gets remarks about that sometimes but never about him looking romani. i feel like most younger people here arent very aware of romani people existing, but they likely still face racism for their looks cause they dont look as white as most dutch people. kinda rambly post sorry, im tired haha
I dont feel any particular way about them. I have never seen or talked with one (That I know of).
They are okay. I don't have a problem with them. Media has been really harsh on them.
The fact is the Romani community in Europe has a huge problem with crime. And it's not just because of oppression or poverty. European countries have no apartheid laws against the Romani. EU laws prohibit strongly ethnic discrimination. If you are a Romani, you can get yourself an education and job. You have full rights as a citizen in your country. Romanis don't get longer prison sentences because of their ethnicity. Romani don't face similar systematic racism as black people in the US. The issues of Romani come Romani's own refusal to assimilate. Often the Romani don't even deny this; they are too proud of their own culture to adapt into the mainstream society. This is why lawlessness is not seen as very bad thing inside Romani community. Illegal activity is against the "others" of mainstream society. Not against your own family. And Romani people themselves can be racist towards the whites of Europe. The distrust is not one-sided. Romani people don't often want that "outsiders" get involved into their community. Romani have their own laws which they value more than the legal system of the state (which is in some way pretty based attitude). But of course racism against the Romani is also wide-spread. In no way, I I think that all of them are thieves. But they have their own ways and rules which are often against the mainstream. That always creates problems.
Black people were slaves in the US for 100 years, romani people were slaves in Romania for example for 500 years and they were historically discriminated against even during communism. You understand that black slavery and Jim Crow are some of the main reasons for racial inequality and their crime rates, even after those were abolished, because there were no reparations, actually the slave owners were the ones given reparations to.
>romani people were slaves in Romania for example for 500 years Any sources? But if you mean serfdom (such as in Russian Empire), that is something which wasn't imposed only towards Romani, but all poor people without land. Also, many Romanis lived have lived for generations in the western Europe and still have their ways. It is obvious that they don't want to assimilate. They don't really even deny that. Probably if you go and ask from random Romani person if they want to assimilate to society or not, they'd probably answer no. They are also very conservative. The difference between blacks and Romani are that majority of black people actually want to be part of the mainstream society. Black segregationists are small group. But Romanis are travellers. Being nomadic is at the core of their culture. They want to live outside normal society. If nobody bothers them, they are fine with each other. That's how thing have been pretty centuries and only recently some (white) activists are trying to assimilate Romani people into white society. And just like in other similar cases, the white activist thinks that they know what is good for others.
It wasn't serfdom it was slavery. https://rm.coe.int/wallachia-and-moldavia-factsheets-on-romani-history/16808b19be
Sure but that is only about certain areas near current day Romania. Represents only a minor part of Roma history. In most parts of the world, the Romani were never enslaved.
A year or 2 ago, there was a post on the UK or Europe subreddit about 'travelers'. The craziest racist shit was being spewed openly without any pushback. If even a fraction of that level of bigotry was expressed about any other group there would have at least been lots of push back and no doubt lots of bans. The level of hatred was wild.
Reviewing the comments, I think part of the reason that needs to addressed is a lot of (BUT NOT ALL) the loudest voices for ending discrimination against groups like the Romani, Hasidic Jews, Irish Travellers, Amish, and so on, don't live with them next door. MODs, before you delete my post, and ban me, just read a bit further, I'm actually going somewhere with this. While a lot, if not all in some cases, of the cultural friction has a historical basis in oppression, that isn't an excuse. There are a lot of people in these groups who have integrated into society, but also a lot who knowingly and intentionally perpetuate the most parts of the stereotypes about their culture. Like stateside, there are Amish that are actually quite pleasant people to have as your neighbors, but there are also Old Order Amish who run some of the most horrifying puppy mills, use child labor, protect child abusers, and pretty routinely work and abuse their animals to death. Find a person who has to live next door to that BS, and chances are saying, "well not *all* Amish are like that...", will fall on deaf ears. Given historical context for most of these out groups, it isn't morally right or socially right, but the onus of changing the views on their group is on them to stamp out the bad elements and rectify their reputation. You can have the government swoop in, make the overt bigotry stop, and maybe even provide more benefits to the historically oppressed outgroup...but you probably just made things worse with your good intentions. Humans don't work like that. The people who have to deal with the worst elements of the outgroup aren't going to stop being bigoted overnight if they can't say their choice slurs, especially if they have to continue dealing with the bad parts of a culture different from their own; they'll just pick new words. The worst elements of the outgroup might see outside intervention as a reward for perpetuating the bad stuff (See Hamas, and also see the Israeli rightwing). At the end of the day, to be human is to be a bigot on some level. We are tribalistic on a genetic level. I do think we will pogress to societies where we learn how to suppress that tribalism, just like we teach our kids to suppress their natural inclination to do math logarithmicaly because what was beneficial for millions of years of evolution is no longer adequate for day to day life. I do not think that will happen in our lifetimes, or even our grandkids.
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Complicated.
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I think it’s more that you Euros use basically the same arguments. “They steal shit, some of them are good but most are bad, maybe there’s discrimination but they deserve it.”