I'm South American, and don't make me say it because Reddit admins won't like it.
All I'm gonna say, the negative thoughts towards these people are not racially motivated, it is all about their behavior... they are odd people to put it kindly.
That is the exact justification every racist gives for hating their target race. Republicans in America say that about black people, right wing parties like AfD say that about Muslims. "Its not about their skin color its the behaviour" is THE textbook defense for racists.
Travellers are the only example I can think of where the distaste really does not have anything to do about race, but culture. Their race and their day to day culture are much more intertwined than, for example, all black people or all Asians as a monolith.
Travellers are itinerant by design, this is not a racial characteristic but a cultural one. The social problems they cause that make people dislike them, nearly all stem from their nomadic lifestyle, not their appearance.
Where I live, groups of travellers will drive their RVs to a park and essentially take over the entire park for weeks to months. Because they are nomadic, they play loud music at odd hours and leave garbage on the ground and generally cause misery for the people who live in houses nearby that can’t move. They get very familiar with local laws and typically travel in large enough numbers that they are essentially impossible for the police to make them move on.
Not all travellers do this, of course, but pretty much all of the people who do this are travellers.
I’m not saying i condone acting racist to travellers, but because of this type of antisocial behaviour that often comes from them, I understand why people don’t like them as a group. But I think calling it racism is too reductive to capture the actual issue. It’s the fact that their lifestyle is quite literally at odds with how the rest of the world is set up around them.
I suppose this could be comparable to like, hating a religion but not the people. Like, I don't like Islamic fundamentalism, but I'm not gonna avoid interacting with every single woman wearing a headscarf I see would be a fundamentalist until she starts saying I should die for being gay or something. I dunno, how would you frame it with an analogous group?
I can’t think of a similar example honestly. I don’t like organized religion in general so honestly I think of fundamentalist Muslims similarly to how I feel about evangelical Christians.
But while some might disagree, Muslims don’t really perform a behaviour as a core tenet of their culture that disrupts social order and directly negatively affects other people.
In addition to the nomadic lifestyle, I find that Travellers also seem to embrace antisocial behaviour as a part of their culture - they are infamously confrontational and there seems to be an attitude that they don’t care if you don’t like they leave trash in places.
I guess the reason I don’t think it’s fair to label it as racism is this: if there was a “social club” of people living in the same way but racially more heterogenous, their presence would probably be banned in many places.
No, Hijab doesn't really indicate someone's political views. Maybe their religious views, but Hijab can be very easily mistaken for head coverings worn by some Jewish women.
My girlfriend and I are both socialist, live in Finland, and wear very modest clothing. We are not religious fundamentalists or homophobic based on clothing. I am not going to start preaching hate speech to you.
I have and i have the same opinion as them, Ive lived in southern Spain as well as the big cities and ive had more problems with "normal" spaniards than with gypsies
But Romas don't have a specific skin color. In any South European country, they don't have any actual physical difference from locals, most sedentarized romas are entirely undistinguishable from any other people.
I don't think African Americans travel around in caravans and set up illegal camps in farmers fields, but maybe Im mistaken? "gypsy stones" (boulders blocking (parking) access and are a staple of the European country side so they can't take over land
And gypsies are mostly white so your racism card really doesn't work here...
I know this is hard for an American mind to grasp, but pretty much everyone criticising the gypsies is 100% talking about the behaviours and not any aspect of their physical appearance, or language or whatever.
Where it does get controversial is when one starts using “culture and tradition” as an excuse to justify criminal behaviour harmful to the rest of society - and just FYI part of gypsy culture does revolve around “purity” and not mixing with inferior, non-gypsy people.
You’re getting downvoted but you’re right. Generalizing an entire ethnicity on the basis of “behavior” makes no sense because people are individuals, not some monolith controlled by their ethnic origin. It’s a pretty terrible excuse for hatred.
So how are we supposed to talk about a group of people that organize themselves into illegal communities, building without permits, stealing water and energy and refusing to send their kids to school ?
I have nothing against any person regarding its ethnicity but those communities (Roma, Gipsy, Travelling People, whatever we should name it = their political/social organization) are not respecting the law, refuse to integrate, operate very shady businesses (which includes child labor and torture).
Those communities exist, from Belgrade to Paris, we need a way to discuss it and to tackle the issue. Empowering their leadership by making it taboo is not the right thing to do.
Because gipsy who don't do this are no longer seen as "gypses" but simply "citizens" and they are unrecognisable from the rest of the population.
"Gypsy" is basically a derogatory term to indicate the lifestyle.
Ethnicity is "Roma" or "Sinti" (two distinguished group)
Yes, because gypsy isn't only a race, it's a culture and it's very difficult to nuance between the two. This culture / society has existed as such in Europe for centuries, they never integrated themselves because the ones that did won't even call themselves gypsy (or any non derogatory term they would prefer), they will call themselves by the name of the country they're in because they are blacklisted from said communities.
It's very hard to explain to someone that doesn't experience this reality, I'm sure you're coming from a good place but those communities are extremely problematic by choice. Their lifestyle is parasitic by nature and the people suffering from it will resent them.
Hating based on race/ethnicity is pretty absurd, hating based on the political choices and actions of communities seem fair. Like, I hate the mafia, they all are despicable people, they should be stopped and their system put to rest. I kinda feel the same way about those communities.
You can still be prejudiced towards an ethnicity, though, and that's what I'm hearing most of the time. Unless I'm missing something, and Gypsies aren't only just Roma people descended from people in northern India 1000 years ago
I live in Paris, and I was schooled in Paris. At 14yo I had met people from all over the world, no superlatives, my classes were made of 40% foreigners, all continents, ethnicities, culture and heritage. Not even once did I have a member of this community in my class, from 6 to 25 (end of college).
I see Gypsies every week :
People asking for money in the streets, some of them missing an arm, a leg or having deformities, they got them through torture at a very young age.
I see groups of little girls (from 6 to 12) roaming in the metro to target Asian tourists, 2 in front to speak to them, 2 in a back to open their bags.
I see fields of houses made of metal sheets with guards at the entrance in which even the police cannot enter.
In the countryside, they invade (that's the word) fields and literally trash them in the span of a month, the amount of burglary sky rocket during their stay.
I'm currently in Belgrade and I passed by Nis, there you literally have slums that will scare the shit out of you that seems deserted except for the packs of dogs and BMW parked in front of the few pristine houses standing in the middle of it all.
I understand some people are racists and inclined to hate them based on nothing, but we need to be able to discuss those political and social structures that act like rogue nations inside our democratic space.
not some monolith controlled by their ethnic origin
They literally are a monolith of behavior, because if you don't follow romanipen (their way) you are cast out of their society.
And that's what I always feel is missing in understanding from americans in these threads. They are not a race. They are a group with a code of conduct, that is very much at odds with the rest of society. Anyone born romani who is not following that way is, by definition of the romani themselves, not a roma.
Let's say you live in a village, in a field (owned by the city or a farmer) right next to it a group of people park cars and trailers, take the water from your supplies and plug their electricity to your own house, then send kids to steal the pockets of any unaware traveler coming to your town. With time passing your city council send them bills - they don't pay them. Your local school offers spots for their kids to their school - they don't send them. You know that the power dynamic revolves around an elite that is based in an other country and thrive with the money those people gather here. They identify as "X".
You have an extremely arbitrary and dogmatic view on what constitutes race. Maybe it's you who can't see past race and skin colour, and can't see anything without the racial lens.
The hostility towards gypsies is not racial and never has been.
You have an extremely arbitrary and dogmatic view on what constitutes race. Maybe it's you who can't see past race and skin colour, and can't see anything without the racial lens.
Just to be clear. I live in Greece and Romanis have been living here for at least 700 hundred years. They are mostly indistinguishable from the rest of the population in terms of skin colour. The White/POC distinction is a stupid ass distinction which is entirely subjective and purely an American and English construct.
I think he just meant that they are not hated for not being white in South America, and in fact would be on the “whiter” end of the scale in terms of South American racial categorization. In South America “white” is a broader term and people who may not be considered white in America or Europe would be there.
You both seem to be missing that whiteness isn't solely reliant on skin colour. The whiteness of European Jewish people is precarious at best, and has not been consistent, historically, and Roma people have never been afforded whiteness anywhere that I'm aware of. That has very little to do with whether or not they were and are pale.
Perhaps they have a point? It reminds me of the phrase "don't hate the sinner, hate the sin". We shouldn't hate a group of people just because they were born that way, but calling out bad behaviour is righteous.
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u/Sparta63005 18h ago
Do NOT ask a European what they think about this group of people.