Accusing me of lazy racism
I said your basic arguments are in fact similar to those advanced regularly by nationalists playing the xenophobia card, but I said your comment was well-meaning, ie I did not accuse you of anything, let alone of lazy racism.
I dug out the Bulgarian essay for the comments thread because it debated a lot of these points.
To your points: all you say about East European arrivals and "generationally suspect" orthodox Jews reinforces what I say. It's their fault that they're different and there are supposedly too many of them, or it's a simple fact that most people refuse to accept cultural outsiders? What I mean is, which way round are we looking at this?
BTW, I knew sedentary gypsies who were perfectly settled in council houses (or other private accomodation) in England in the '60s and '70s, just as there are in France, so I have a job with the idea that there is a monolithic refusal on their part to change their traditional habits. Perhaps increased motricity has changed that somewhat - after all, isn't planetary nomadism a prestigious recent phenomenon, don't middle-class people move around by car and plane as an essential element of their lifestyle, don't all kinds of people find freedom in movement? I suggest that's what's wrong with the Roma is not that they don't "settle down", but that they're scary brown people with a huge cultural baggage they're far from solely responsible for.
Yes, human beings are tribal. We tend to react with suspicion to those who hold themselves apart or behave in ways the majority culture consider odd. Peer group pressure is a powerful tool of conformity and those who resist will face sanctions. However much we might pretend otherwise, it's the nature of the beast within us.
Some cultures have developed more authoritarian and conformist tendencies than others but most express sanctions against the outsider, even if it manifests just as a low level distrust. So yes, in some respect it is their fault. It would be nice if we, as a species, were more accepting but. We. Just. Aren't. We, as thinking liberals, can recognise the impulse and move beyond it, but I think history shows that, across populations, the veneer of civilisation isn't quite as robust as we might wish.
Now, in saying that I am not saying it is their fault, even 50%, merely that over time minor differences will be exaggerated, both by the minority as a signifier of proud difference and by the majority as an excuse for discrimination. A perfectly human tendency kinda makes things worse.
So, does it matter which way round we look at it ? What's done is done and we need to move forward more urgently than we need to explain past grievances. Both sides need to recongise that there is a problem and each played a part in creating it and each has apart to play in fixing it. Right now I don't see such recongnition by either group.
Yes, there are a lot of individuals who have assimilated. Group tendencies don't preclude individual variant behaviours. I dson't necessarily see a great difference between our positions except mine is perhaps a more brutal acceptance of how people are. keep to the Fen Causeway
