Post by chocolate on Apr 1, 2017 22:37:08 GMT -4
www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/62t2tl/serious_people_who_arewere_raised_roma_what_was/
There are a lot of censored answers from there, (you'll see in a minute why) but I'll try to post what i saved.
1. +121 (not a Roma, but most upvoted one)
2. +116 (Best explained IMO)
3. [score hidden]
4. +73
These were the only actual answers, the rest were removed. EDIT: There are more now
5. +18
6. +16
7. [score hidden]
There are a lot of censored answers from there, (you'll see in a minute why) but I'll try to post what i saved.
1. +121 (not a Roma, but most upvoted one)
My late wife was half-Roma. Her mom (a gaijo, or foreigner) ran off with someone of the Ristick/Ely clan on the east coast, got pregnant, and stayed with him for a few years. My wife grew up as a toddler in the family and was even named after a great aunt, but was always considered a "half breed" and never accepted. They finally left the family and she saw her dad once more at age 8, and never after that.
The family was well known as running an entire operation of palm readers, carnival operators, and people who are wanted by the FBI. Because she grew up in some of the environment, she was able to spot all kinds of things that most people skip over. Things like common gypsy scams, rigged carnival equipment, and other begging operations that were new to her but she recognized the techniques. Like those people that come up to you and say they can fix that dent in your bumper for only $100, hang around craft shows as spiritual advisors, and just a group of them hanging out doing who knows what.
Generally her family is one of many gypsies that believed that they were forgiven by God because they stole one of the nails off the cross that crucified Jesus Christ. They think the rest of the world, the gaijo, the same way we might think about monkeys. For instance, if monkeys had a camera, you would think that the camera doesn't really belong to them, and they probably took it from someone else. So if you take something for my monkey, it's not really theft. They did consider themselves the superior race.
One thing my wife remembered, was that children are considered untouchable. Children can get away with anything, no matter what they do, no matter how bratty they act, they are not to have a hand laid upon them. There was one point, when my wife was about two or three years old, that she tried to take a drink from a bottle of beer and her mom smacked her hand away. My wife's father grabbed her hand, and used it to smack her mother back. "You tell mommy she's WRONG! BAD MOMMY!" There are tales of her cousins kicking in the dashboards of cars because they were having a temper tantrum in the passenger seat. Shit like that. Kids could get away with anything.
After they left that family, my wife partially idolized her gypsy past. She said one of the things that she considered amazing about them, was how they dealt with the death of a relative. It didn't matter when it happened, where it happened, or how far away the other relatives were. If a relative died? Everyone showed up. There were no phone calls, this was way before the Internet, and there was no way for anyone to be told that a relative had died. They would just get dressed, and drive however long it took to get to the funeral like they just knew.
The family was well known as running an entire operation of palm readers, carnival operators, and people who are wanted by the FBI. Because she grew up in some of the environment, she was able to spot all kinds of things that most people skip over. Things like common gypsy scams, rigged carnival equipment, and other begging operations that were new to her but she recognized the techniques. Like those people that come up to you and say they can fix that dent in your bumper for only $100, hang around craft shows as spiritual advisors, and just a group of them hanging out doing who knows what.
Generally her family is one of many gypsies that believed that they were forgiven by God because they stole one of the nails off the cross that crucified Jesus Christ. They think the rest of the world, the gaijo, the same way we might think about monkeys. For instance, if monkeys had a camera, you would think that the camera doesn't really belong to them, and they probably took it from someone else. So if you take something for my monkey, it's not really theft. They did consider themselves the superior race.
One thing my wife remembered, was that children are considered untouchable. Children can get away with anything, no matter what they do, no matter how bratty they act, they are not to have a hand laid upon them. There was one point, when my wife was about two or three years old, that she tried to take a drink from a bottle of beer and her mom smacked her hand away. My wife's father grabbed her hand, and used it to smack her mother back. "You tell mommy she's WRONG! BAD MOMMY!" There are tales of her cousins kicking in the dashboards of cars because they were having a temper tantrum in the passenger seat. Shit like that. Kids could get away with anything.
After they left that family, my wife partially idolized her gypsy past. She said one of the things that she considered amazing about them, was how they dealt with the death of a relative. It didn't matter when it happened, where it happened, or how far away the other relatives were. If a relative died? Everyone showed up. There were no phone calls, this was way before the Internet, and there was no way for anyone to be told that a relative had died. They would just get dressed, and drive however long it took to get to the funeral like they just knew.
2. +116 (Best explained IMO)
Half breed here, and yeah it pretty much comes down to most Romani fitting the stereotype. Those of us that don't tend to distance ourselves from the community. And yeah, the view most Romani have towards outsiders comes from an understandable place, spend enough time getting kicked around by everyone else and you'll usually start sticking together against them.
For me a big part of my choice to start distancing myself was the realization that at some point no matter how understandable it is in its origin, that view point was little different from any other kind of racism. Spend some time out in the world getting to know people and you realize that we've all got more in common than different pretty quickly.
For me a big part of my choice to start distancing myself was the realization that at some point no matter how understandable it is in its origin, that view point was little different from any other kind of racism. Spend some time out in the world getting to know people and you realize that we've all got more in common than different pretty quickly.
It's a nasty cycle of "we need jobs but no one is willing to give them to us so we resort to criminality which further condemns us to the rest of the world, so people won't be willing to give us the jobs we need ad nauseam". Throw in a bit of "gadzhe don't like us so why should we care" attitude that many Romani adopt, and you get just that.
We're self-isolated because we deal with shit like this, for one. If we try to reach out and distance ourselves from the criminals, we're still gonna deal with bigots who will treat us like we're all one and the same. Like I said, there's a lot of "gadzhe don't care about us, why should we care about them" type of attitude among the Romani, but that didn't just manifest for the hell of it - centuries of prejudice, enslavement and genocide more or less instilled that in us. If you still think we deserve that stuff, nothing I say is gonna change that, but let's not act like us Roma suddenly decided to keep to ourselves for the hell of it. It's a cycle.
3. [score hidden]
I am roma from northeast us. My family I think has strayed from the lifestyle and disconnected quite a bit. My family owns a paving company and used to travel the east coast paving but now they've put roots down in more recent generations. My grandfather and his siblings were all pretty uneducated and all spoke the language. My grandfather was actually the first person in his family to marry outside the family instead of marrying a cousin. A lot of them were also drug addicts and criminals. Now it's to the point where my cousins and I only speak a few words and mostly just call each other names in the language. We don't really participate in the "culture" I guess. We all went to school and have jobs and such. We don't call ourselves roma though. We say we're gypsy or rumnies (romani). I mostly use it as a fun fact about myself at this point. Sorry this post was a bit rambling I'm mostly a lurker but felt I could participate.
4. +73
I'm half Roma, and I spent most of my childhood explaining to people that we're an actual ethnic group and not some weird urban legend people think we are. We're a self-isolated group that want nothing to do with the rest of the world, and that there are a lot of us that fit the criminal stereotype does nothing for the rest of us in the long run, and as a result I became a bit more distant from my heritage. I still practice Romanipe and I speak some Romanes but that's about it. All that said, I'm from Mexico so things for the Roma there are probably different than they are for the ones in Europe.
These were the only actual answers, the rest were removed. EDIT: There are more now
5. +18
I'm third generation settled, northeast us. I have plenty of cousins that aren't, we have plenty of criminals and drug addicts in that part of the family but also doctors and lawyers. No one ever noticed or cared that I was Roma, when I was picked on in third grade I thought it was racist, but then I realized they didn't know what I was. I'm sinti and there are Romanichal in the area and I know a little sinto but there seem to be differences in the language and some big ones in culture (I.e. We haven't done arranged marriage since the 1800s and I've met a lot of 18yos with two kids married to 30-somethings). I was raised with uncles and cousins passing through and imparting family history and blowing town, generally American majority culture with dashes of sinti culture here and there. I get really angry when I see gypsy bashing threads, I get that there are some bad ones I have one of the shittiest as a first cousin but blanket generalizations based on race piss me off.
6. +16
I wasn't raised Romani since society shunned my dad and family of certain practices (like his school washed his mouth out with pHisoHex when he spoke Romani at school and thus his family apparently denounced it in his early years), and it was only at 2010 or so that he got back into his heritage big time (I was about 25)... He built a vardo (wish I had pictures, but my portable hard drive was stolen), got vanity plates, went to Sara e Kali, very active in online boards, and legally renamed himself to have a Slavic name (although his last name of Williamsii is more of a soundalike rather based on our Anglicized name, rather than using my great-grandfather's Prussian last name of Wittkowski for some reason).
However, maybe it's also a combination the culture of the Pacific Northwest (who are also very liberal), but the Romanis I've met tend to be heavily liberal and all about social justice and equality, very community-driven, and none that I personally know are into crime and whatnot, and believe that there's good in the Romani people and though there's bad apples, I believe that some of the things said about Romanis may be a hasty generalization/stereotype... Just like how other races have their stereotypes that doesn't necessarily apply 100%.
For me? My dad's friends added me on Facebook shortly after he passed on in mid-2013 and occasionally chime in on a post or two, but I haven't really gotten heavily involved since my political views are more of a conservative-leaning libertarian, I don't really hold anything of my heritage in a particular regard (Romani, Prussian, UK, Taiwanese on my mom's side, etc.), so I feel too much like an outcast to associate myself with them, although I'm not not ashamed of them either.
However, maybe it's also a combination the culture of the Pacific Northwest (who are also very liberal), but the Romanis I've met tend to be heavily liberal and all about social justice and equality, very community-driven, and none that I personally know are into crime and whatnot, and believe that there's good in the Romani people and though there's bad apples, I believe that some of the things said about Romanis may be a hasty generalization/stereotype... Just like how other races have their stereotypes that doesn't necessarily apply 100%.
For me? My dad's friends added me on Facebook shortly after he passed on in mid-2013 and occasionally chime in on a post or two, but I haven't really gotten heavily involved since my political views are more of a conservative-leaning libertarian, I don't really hold anything of my heritage in a particular regard (Romani, Prussian, UK, Taiwanese on my mom's side, etc.), so I feel too much like an outcast to associate myself with them, although I'm not not ashamed of them either.
7. [score hidden]
I'm only part Roma, but from what I've been told my mom's childhood was pretty much the American ideal. My family was already pretty assimilated (Czech) when they came over in the 1800's.
I guess the biggest misconception is that there's a whole range of experiences! We don't ALL live in poverty (though an unfortunate number of us do). I have some friends/acquaintances who are Lovari and Kalderash who are connected very closely to the culture and language. They're both college graduates with cool careers. There's others I've met like me who either are totally disconnected, mixed, or both.
The other thing is there's also definitely some anti-Roma sentiments in the U.S. Lots of bullying in school for above mentioned pals, and when I even bring up my heritage I get something about stealing children (bitch I don't even want my own) and one guy implied I'm inbred...
I guess the biggest misconception is that there's a whole range of experiences! We don't ALL live in poverty (though an unfortunate number of us do). I have some friends/acquaintances who are Lovari and Kalderash who are connected very closely to the culture and language. They're both college graduates with cool careers. There's others I've met like me who either are totally disconnected, mixed, or both.
The other thing is there's also definitely some anti-Roma sentiments in the U.S. Lots of bullying in school for above mentioned pals, and when I even bring up my heritage I get something about stealing children (bitch I don't even want my own) and one guy implied I'm inbred...