In most of Europe it is highly accepted that you would feel unconfortable in the vicinity of "that dirty uneducated thiefs"... The problem of Roma integration/acceptance/cohabitation or whatever model you may prefer with a nomadic people, is a existing problem, and bad stereotyping an important part of it.
The results in Spain and Romania, I find them quite curious, from my personal experience. In Spain we are always Saint Mary and Jesus Christ in polls: we don't consider ourselves racist, we help the poor, we wouldn't kill a fly... Because that's the correct answer, the socially correct answer, the Catholic? correct answer. But that level of "confort", I don't think it's sincere. In Romania people do speak aloud without shame on hating gipsies, do say jokes, do say "let's send them all to Italy or Spain"... So I think that the "good neighbours" answer is the answer they give to EU, to foreigners thsat asked about it, because they know a good EU citizen would think otherwise (in public). Why the answer is more harsh in Hungary or Czech Republic, no idea at all... "If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none." (Fahrenheit 451)
The problem of Roma integration/acceptance/cohabitation or whatever model you may prefer with a nomadic people, is a existing problem, and bad stereotyping an important part of it.
I note that in the former East Bloc and Yugoslavia, most Rome/Gypsies are NOT nomadic (and the way they/their ancestors were settled by successive regimes is another part of the problem). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
In Spain an "Enlightened" King issued an edict forbidding discrimination but which basically assumed that Gypsies were Spanish people who had decided to adopt a strange way to dress and speak, which was also forbidden. You can imagine how successful that was... A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Probably smaller settlements followed in the 19th century, but what are significant again are the settlements done by the 'communist' regimes. The total assimilation of Gypsies into the supposedly classless workers' society was part of ideology, but in practice, the result was other forms of discrimination: houses would be built for them, but not necessarily of the same quality as for other people, and say all of them in one area on the edge of a village, thus in effect becoming ghettos. Also for ideological reasons, everyone was employed, but most Gypsies would get crap jobs or alibi jobs without real work (and when capitalism came, guess who were fired first and hired last). Then there was a de-facto educational segregation (though far from complete -- I too had Roma classmates), with the still continuing practice of pushing Roma children off into schools for the mentally retarded. Not to speak of heavier-handed policies like re-settlements (say in Chechoslovakia, re-settling Roma from Slovakia into villages from which Sudeten-Germans were chased away), taking children from their parents and such. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
