Europe’s Problem With The Roma

The Romani people have been a part of European culture for centuries — Charlie Chaplin and flamenco both have Romani origins. But this ethnic group (also known by more derogatory names like “gypsies”) has been discriminated against for hundreds of years, culminating in the death of hundreds of thousands of them in the Holocaust. And the Romani still face open bigotry today. We’re going to look at who the Roma people are and their ongoing fight for respect and survival.

#Romani #Holocaust #Europe

[christine_ren]

My mum is a teacher and had a Romani student that did really well at school, wanted to pursue higher education, but was shunned by his family and friends for that. It must be really difficult because if you stand out it's easy to feel like you don't belong anywhere. People must have shunned him in the dominant culture because he was Romani, and the Romani shunned him for following the "mainstream" ways. I can see why in such cases the easiest path is for the status quo to remain.

[TxxT]

From what I gather, this hate is because people do not have good personal experiences with the romas. You can keep an open mind, but if you get robbed, scammed, thrown rocks at, trash your neighborhood every time you actually interact with them, then you'll develop your own perceptions due to that experience.

[cmopkzy]

Romani people are probably the only group of people where everyone I've met is either a scam artist or a criminal. It's insane

[tylerlittle]

All I can say is I was a restaurant manager and every single time gypsies came in we had a problem. Not 1 or 2 times, but 16 for 16 100%. And it was the same thing every time, customize everything then complain that thats not what was on the menu, then eat 80% of the food then try to send it back and get a refund, then when I wouldn’t give it to them they would throw stuff on the floor and threaten my staff.

[owenlj]

Never ask a man his salary
A woman her age
Or a European their opinion on romani

[svenskaela]

I was always friends with Roma since I was a child I had two best friends in my class we would spend everyday together then one of them disappeared. We later found out she was sold by her family to be married she was 9. My other best friend disappeared at 11 also sold to a man. As I grew up I witnessed so many disgusting things that the Roma did they would have so many children that the children themselves didn’t know their names bcs they never got named.

After my friends were sold I stayed away from Roma people in my city.

I know there are those who live normal lives and I respect them but those who still follow their traditions so closely they sell their own daughters as children disgust me and no matter what I can’t see past that.

[richiejohnson]

My only contact with Romani was in Italy at a tourist spot. A mother---( or captain?) had a group of five children rush me. Their hands were in my pockets and my jacket ( I use a money belt when I travel). I had no idea what was happening, and I pushed them away hard enough to make one fall over. I screamed bloody hell at the woman, which I am able to do at an extremely high volume. And still they persisted.
I was in shock. I had never experienced anything remotely like it.
What on earth am I supposed to think?

[Mladjasmilic]

Situation from Serbia:
My sister had in her class a Roma girl, with great grades, who wanted to become a doctor. But her grandfather arranged her a marriage to a guy that 10 years older and lived in Austria. Her father could not stand to his father. She was 14.
Many Roma children are born at home. And these births are never reported, so they have no ID. And when these children have children of their own, they could not be reported as their mother did not have an ID. They could not travel, go to school, doctor. They do not exist. Some even do not know when or where they are born.

Problem is that if they want to join surrounding society, they are banished from Roma. But there is a fear that other would not accept them, so they become alone.

PS.
When I got to university I was so happy to see Roma-looking guy. But it turned out, it was a student from Bangladesh.

[HyprBee]

I’m not Romani, I’m Hmong, but their history is really similar to our history. Our people migrated around a lot because of persecution and annexation. Started in China and settled all over South East Asia. Most of our people died building The Great Wall and kept in slavery for a long time. Still no reparations to this day because they’re trying to erase our history. The only way one would know is story passed on down by their families.

[susanlett]

As a 54 year old American my only experience with the Romany gypsies as they are called sometimes has been bad. They had caravans in my hometown when I was a little girl in the seventies and they refused to leave a man's private property and this happened many times. After a while the sheriff's department evicted them and ejected them from the property and escorted them to the county line. Once they reach the county line the so-called Romani people began throwing human feces at the officers. My other experience was cleaning hotel rooms about 25 years ago maybe 20 and probably the dirtiest person I've ever seen had me in a room for 3 hours cleaning until finally I got disgusted and walked out

[lovelessissimo]

The disgust isn't based on race; its behavior.

[WakaWaka]

There are 2 types of people
1.Those who hate Roma
2. Those who have never met Roma

[ivanproynov]

My take on the whole situation with the Roma people as doctor working in a public hospital in Bulgaria, where a good amount of the patients are Romani is that a big problem for them is their clan structure. Almost all of the ones that are living in poverty belong to something like a clan run by a criminal boss( we call it a gypsy baron) who is responsible for the "well being" of his subjects - forbids them to be educated in order to keep the status quo, forces them to work criminal jobs like prostitution or begging and most importantly collects money from political parties during election and orders his people who to vote for - that's why this system is tolerated. I didn't see anything meaningful in this video how to integrate the Roma, just raising some awareness.
A good example for Roma people that broke off from this system in Bulgaria are the ones that joined religious sects, like seventh day Adventists. They are usually educated and don't live in poverty, so maybe that's one way.

[rainerwinkler]

I had met them in Bosnia once. They tried to steal my camera. I hate them.

[kevinwong]

When I was a kid (in England), travellers moved into the local field behind our housing area. I can't recall if they were Irish travellers or Romani, but they pitched themselves on the land with their caravans. I always hung out with the kids in the local area and most of us have never encountered 'travellers' before. The first time we met with the kids from the travellers, one of the boys pulled out a knife on us for no apparent reason. From that point on, the negative view of travellers has stuck with me. They just move on to public land, leave tons of trash and shit everywhere and move on. The local council decided to dig trenches around the fields to prevent them from pitching on the land.

[EuroUser]

This report falls into the cliché of presenting the discrimination of Gipsies as something completely inexplicable. It doesn't make the slightest attempt to explain why Gipsies are hated or disliked in so many places. Quite a few Roma have integrated and are now indistinguishable for 'payos' – as Gipsies call everyone else, in Spain. But Roma living in Gipsie-majority communities make terrible neighbours. They refuse to follow laws and common-sense rules; and are often ready to resort to violence if they are called-out. Plus many of them engage in drug traffic, robbery, extortion and similar low-profile crimes.

[angeltzepesh]

Im so tired of this "racism" word being thrown around when we talk about gypsies. Most of us are not racist, but living a lifetime around them made us learn to keep our pockets safe, because if you will be stolen from in Europe, it will be a gypsy 99.99% of times.

Im from Romania, where we have the biggest population of gypsies and life is not pleasant around them, to be fair. Im lucky to have a gypsy community in my village that is more civilized and got integrated well with the rest, but you still have your weekly fight and police visit. The thing only gets worse when you go to bigger towns and cities, pickpockets and scammers are everywhere, all gypsy.

You can also read comments from different countries like France or Germany, where many migrated from Romania after joining EU, the stories said there are not hood either. Most countries tried to integrate them, but is so hard when their culture is so full of anti-social behavior.

[EvanS_-]

Every gypsy I’ve ever met in my life has asked me for money

[SickPrid]

"Nazis targeted Romani people for being supposedly racially inferior" - Nazis targeted everyone because of that same reason

[priyankapalit]

As a foreigner in Spain... I had a horrible experience and interactions with Romani people. They thought they could bully and say anything to me just because I was a foreigner from a third world country.