Irish Traveller is not a "race", it's a lifestyle..so yes, it would be perfectly ok to ask this band of thieving transients if they routinely beat their kids.
"Blackstone's Commentaries" Vol IV Pg. 165, "Public Wrongs": 4-Outlandish persons calling themselves Egyptians or Gypsies, are another object of the severity of some of our unrepealed statutes. These are a strange kind of commonwealth among themselves of wandering imposters and jugglers, wo made their first appearance in Germany about the beginning of the sixteenth century, and have since spread themselves all over Europe. Munster, it is true, who is followed and relied upon by Spelman, fixes the time of their first appearance to the year 1417; but, as he owns, that the first whom he ever saw were in 1524, it is probably an error of the press for 1517: especially as other historians inform us, that when the sultan Selim conquered Egypt, in the year 1517, several of the natives refused to submit to the Turkish yoke; but, being at length subdued and banished, they agreed to disperse in small parties al over the world, where their supposed skill in the black art gave them an universal reception, in that age of superstition and credulity.
In the compass of a very few years they gained such a number of idle proselytes (who imitated their language and complexion, and betook themselves to the same arts of chiromancy, begging, and pilfering) that they became troublesome and even formidable to most of the states of Europe. Hence they were expelled from France in the year 1560, and from Spain in 1591. And the government in England took the alarm much earlier: for in 1530, they are described by the statute 22 Hen. VIII c. 10 as "outlandish people, calling themselves Egyptians, using no craft or feat of merchandize, who have come into this realm and gone from shire to shire and place to place in great company, and used great, subtil, and crafty means to deceive the people; bearing them in hand, that they by palmistry could tell men's and women's fortunes; and so many times by craft and subtilty have deceived the people from their money, and also have committed many heinous felonies and robberies." Wherefor they are directed to avoid the realm, and not return under pain of imprisonment, and forfeiture of their goods and chattels; and upon their trials for any felony which they may have committed, they shall not be entitled to a trial by jury de medietate linguae. ........
As you can read, race has nothing to do with it.