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Europeans hate gypsies-why?
I know that not all Europeans hate the Romani gypsies, but I've met plenty and have yet to meet 1 who has a somewhat decent opinion of them. I'm not European, I am an Arab American. I haven't met many in my life, just caught glimpses of them selling things on the side of the road and when I go to Syria (before the civil war) there are a few here and there selling things and performing. Remember once a gypsy family moved next to my house, they were awful. Fought everyone and everything, wrecked havoc, their children acted like assholes, stole literally anything, drank, partied every night. But I figured I just had a bad run in, and their behaviour had nothing to do with their ethnicity. I notice coming from Europeans that while the continent is racist overall, they say insults about Romani that they would never be allowed to say about Arabs, black people, or Asians without outrage. Why is this? Have they done something to gain this status?
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There are 'Bad Apples' to be found in all cultures, all races and all countries. The "bad" people are usually the only ones a person really see's because they don't care who's watching. They may be acting on grudges passed along down the family line toward a certain race/people from a bad experience. The bad people are more opinionated and believe themselves to be above everyone else. This has been going on in history for eons, even with early man. I too have only once in a serviced based company heard about the difficulty experienced by tech who went to the home of a family who eventually never paid for the services, etc.... But I never heard about other customers never paying. Lots of people form their beliefs based on what they experience. The thing is that most will not have a personal experience with a person of another culture who treated them badly and yet form their beliefs about a culture or people based on just one experience that others had. This is not a smart way to form ones beliefs. I have never lived in Europe so I can't speak on how Europeans view them for the most part but what few times I have heard peoples opinions, it is negative. My parents raised me to be accepting of all people in the world and only to decide on a person to person basis if any one person of any background is making the same bad choices in how they interact with me whether as friend, in business, etc. ONly judging each person for their own deeds. Thats as it should be. But most people tend to follow their peers rather than research or form ideas for themselves. Its rather stupid really. Its as dumb as if the first time a person ate a slice of bread but it was moldy and so they now tell everyone they can that all bread is unhealthy and moldy and tastes bad or assumes the baker is so badly skilled in baking that they should be avoided as a place to get bread. When we look at it that way, we are letting one bad experience outweigh all the good.
Yes, I know that that the good honest Romani's are not visible much at all in any country as they have learned how to hide out in the open and never share their heritage. Calling them Gypsy is considered like a racial slur, same like calling a black person nigger or every person of German descent a Nazi. They seem to be a forgotten overlooked people probably because they don't necessarily have a country to themselves where all the people are Romani. I will paste in a link I read about them.
[Link](Mouse over link to see full location)
This article shares some history I didn't even know. That about 220,000 Romani's were killed along with Jews by Hitler. Yet today, there are museums and often enough stories come up to teach the public so we will never forget what happened to the Jews. Likewise, I grew up in school days being taught about the enslavery of black people by the white man. We hear stories about Native American history and how the white man took their land away from them by deception over and over. If anyone wants to point the finger and call someone untruthful or as gypping people, then plenty of white men did that to the Natives. However, I have read enough history also about one native tribe fighting against the other, a peaceful one. This fighting was going on long before white man showed up. So what does this all boil down to? No one race is evil. But mankind is a mixed bag of varying degrees between all good like God and evil or unGod-like. There are way less examples of what we consider good people but when there are ones, they are idolized and spoken of and shared about by media, like Mother Theresa. I don't think there is anyone who doesn't know who she was. Media has more examples of bad people to share and do so generously. They seem to have a power by training people to change their beliefs. A good example that has made more people open minded and accepting of gays or transgenders is how often you see that portrayed in TV shows or movies. The more it increased in media, the more people who realized they had a lot of misconceptions, have changed to become more acceptive and supportive. I also see lately more shows with bi racial couples. I think that is the next move to change peoples opinions. But humans change slowly if at all in their life times so not sure when the Romani's will get their chance at being accepted. What people see portrayed is what they will learn to believe, same as what I was taught in text books is what someone chose to portray historical events or certain peoples as.
According to the article I gave link to, theres still confusion as to where most Romani's originated from if they don't have a country of their own. Some beleived they came from Egypt, thus coming up with the word 'Gypsy' to designate a people that came from there originally but traveled to many places in Europe to settle. However the article explains how their language more resembles the language spoken in North India, Punjab, so it is now believed that Romani originally came from India. Many are shown as migrating straight to an area known as Romania, which may be where they finally came up with name for themselves as Roma or Romani. From that area, they spread to live in many other places like the Netherlands for example. Today any Romani you come across is going to fit in and look much like others of the same land if a certain group of Romani's did not strictly marry their own race but mixed, selecting wives from other cultures.
So as you ask if they have done somethig to gain their status, no I don't believe they did, just like any other race did not as a whole do something to gain their status either as needing to be exterminated, as being violent or trouble makers. The media still portrays too many black people as being trouble makers. Media of any form is the culprit I believe. Taking the blacks as example, I have met enough who are wonderful people, I do not see them as some one to be afraid will do some violence towards me. I do know that video will search high and low for all the bad stories about black people incidents when there are tons of good deed stories that never make it onto the news. So people will assume that because 5 blacks killed whites in the last week that it is a growing problem. What we don't realize is that those 5 people are probably less than one percent when you think of the amount of black people living in America. The history for Romani's as a people interacting with other cultures goes back way further than persecutions of other people. Although in history, many peoples did travel to relocate for whatever reason. It seems logical that one would go where the environment is better for survival, after all, in America, people will relocate from the town they grew up simply for jobs. I think that also because they don't have a country of their own, the Romani's aren't considered a people important enough to portray to the world in positive light or any way at all. Ignorance plain and simple, and not thinking for oneself but blindly accepting any others view point as honest truth, and finally, the want to control or own more land to settle is what ALL mankind finds comes easily to him. We have to choose to educate ourselves and not think ourselves better than others, after all, we are all Gods children and as such, we are all brothers and sisters, not by blood ties, but by soul/spirit ties. And God patiently waits for his kids to stop squabbling, grow up and learn to become more like him and therefore more accepting of all people. But its gonna take a long long time.
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