Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: TomOnTheRun
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.

86 posted on 08/27/2009 2:15:26 PM PDT by Mamzelle (Who is Kenneth Gladney?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 77 | View Replies ]


To: Mamzelle
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.

No. I don't. Flatly wrong. But I do believe that such conditions make it almost impossible for those who wish to settle down and associate in a reaosnable fashion with others to do so. Attackers have also sought out whole families in their homes, or whole communities in some cases, and disrupted them violently. Communities which are just beginning to establish themselves after both Nazi and Soviet persecution. This violence is being directed at them without distinction - adults, the elderly, and small children. It's goal is to physically remove the presence of Roma in towns and cities in several European countries. Why would they play by the rules under those conditions.
90 posted on 08/27/2009 2:23:06 PM PDT by TomOnTheRun
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 86 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson