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Well, isn't antisemitism back in style? I am honestly not antagonistic. I find the Rom interesting. They are uniquely a Cryptic Culture. But I know enough about them to find your political correctness naive. Jews do not have at the heart of their culture a tradition of swindling, whatever the stereotypes.

Romnia are experiencing 70%, 80%, and even 90% unemployment in areas that otherwise have rates of 7-8%. Who wouldn't resort to theft under those conditions? They are denied housing - they are denied medical care. Who wouldn't be bitter and distrustful of outsiders under those conditions? It's not that I'm trying to be PC - its that they are in very real danger of pogroms and massacres again.

Yes, I was testing you about the cats. They are filthy to to Rom. As a matter of fact, they would use the image of a cat as a Patteran (graphic image carved or drawn to alert oncoming "hoboes" as to what to expect on the road ahead. I saw this once in a catalog, and the writers of the catalog interpreted the image of a cat to mean "nice lady who'll offer you food." Had to laugh. It could well be that that is what some Gyspy told whoever wrote the copy for the catalog.

It could also be that the person was confusing it with North American hobo code. I think they use many similar marks but they also have different meanings for some of the same marks. American hobos weren't organized around ethnicity so cultural marks like cats being unclean could drift away over time.

re: They are denied housing - they are denied medical care. Who wouldn't be bitter and distrustful of outsiders under those conditions? It's not that I'm trying to be PC - its that they are in very real danger of pogroms and massacres again.)))

As are we all. But I fear you put the cart before the horse. As I have said, it is a cryptic culture. There is a cultural imperative in the Rom to deceive and rob outsiders. You think such behavior is automatically wrong according to your western values, and you also assume this behavior emerges from how they are treated rather than the other way around. Overtures to the Rom are problematic because you will always bump into their cultural imperatives, which go back hundreds of years in Europe. They are isolated in large part because they choose to be. You don't really know them because they have intricate social mechanisms to avoid being known. There's no Junior League Gypsy Recipe Cookbook.

And the ethnicity is also problematic. You saw that I jumped to the conclusion that a blonde, green-eyed Gypsy was part of the Irish bands that you come across in the rural US south. The culture of the Gypsies, the underground thieves and deceivers, wore off on some Irish and they brought it with them to the US. They don't have some of the religious (there again is a mystery of the Gypsy) culture, are often Catholic, but the clannishness and some other peculiar habits are the same. And I have to give them credit that they are not a "grievance group" like minorities are in the US, executing elaborate shakedowns of business under pain of being called "racist" like Jesse Jackson, et al. They do not engage in Rainbow Coalition extortion rackets, they prefer their own traditional cons.

Sound familiar?

Victim Mentality: I loathe it from the left. It’s sad and pathetic. I’m biased enough to be modestly more tolerant of it from the right although it’s getting over the top right now. Count the number of threads in a conservative forums (admitted - FR is better than most) where somebody isn’t complaining about being an oppressed minority. If I don’t like hearing it from sad aging hippies why should I like hearing it from my own?

The "hobo code", as you put it, comes from the Gypsies during the Depression when more contact was made between the traditional travelers and the newly homeless. There are a lot of Gypsy-isms in the theatre, in homosexual slang, and of course Carnies, where wider culture came in contact with Gypsies. What is curious is how very little evidence there is of contact, when you look at how new ethnicities affect our popular culture, language, cuisines. I'm thinking mostly of the Gypsies in the UK, Ireland and US.