View on Romani and About Them

[Car]

It'd be also interesting to know if it's the result of prejudice or bad experience.

I don't know that the two can be separated. If you're prejudiced against someone, you're likely to have a bad experience when you interact with them and blame them for it.

True, but you have people who are prejudiced and never actually had any kind of experience with said group or people who weren't prejudiced, but then had a bad experience. That may be difficult to separate, though.

[linguoboy]

True, but you have people who are prejudiced and never actually had any kind of experience with said group or people who weren't prejudiced, but then had a bad experience.

But this is all self-reported, isn't it? How do you know if you're actually prejudiced against a group or not if you haven't had any interactions with them? I would say that having a bad experience with a member of a group and concluding from that that there's something wrong about that group of people in general rather than the person(s) you interacted with or with your own expectations is pretty telling.

[linguoboy]

I don't get it. First you say:

Even in the present day, outsiders arriving in your community is often bad news--especially if you're already poor and marginalised.

Then you say:

it still isn't clear that there's a strong correlation between poverty/marginalisation and xenophobia.

If outsiders arriving in your community is bad news, how would that not lead to you being afraid of them?

In the first case, I'm speaking anecdotally. In the second, empirically. "Strong correlation" has a formal definition in statistics.

[flag=]en[/flag] The criteria for what a "race" is and its relevance as a social category varies so much by society that it's very hard to draw any meaningful conclusions from it. What languages was the survey printed in and what translations of "race" were used? Is it possible, for example, that "race" was conflated with "caste" in the Indian survey (with the word nasl for example)? Did the Eastern Europeans think about Roma when they responded on the survey, given that at least in Serbia they are a nacionalnost not a rasa? Are linguistic and religious differences not more relevant in some areas than "racial" ones? Is the way race is conceived in India at all comparable with the way it's conceived in the US, when the US is also different from other American countries like Cuba and Brazil (due to the one drop rule, for example)?

Like most surveys, this one is imperfect.

Answers to specific questions about the methodology are likely available at their website (http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp), though they may be behind a paywall.

[vijayjohn]

Getting back to my original question for a moment:

Can we at least all agree that in medieval Europe, people were generally poorer and more marginalized than Koko or me today, and that they were therefore much more likely to see foreigners as a potential threat?

Do we still have trouble agreeing that poverty and marginalization make people more likely to be xenophobic?

But this is all self-reported, isn't it? How do you know if you're actually prejudiced against a group or not if you haven't had any interactions with them? I would say that having a bad experience with a member of a group and concluding from that that there's something wrong about that group of people in general rather than the person(s) you interacted with or with your own expectations is pretty telling.

Does it really matter? I think not having any actual interactions with a group is likely to be more harmful than having an unpleasant one. In fact, I would say that at the root of the problems that Romani people in the Americas face is precisely the fact that no one knows about them. Romani people here don't face pogroms so much as the denial that they exist at all as an ethnic group. As a result, people here are far more likely than in Europe to associate the word "Gypsy" exclusively with a lifestyle rather than with an ethnic group. When you neither acknowledge nor know about an ethnic group, it's that much easier to form baseless stereotypes about them.

[linguoboy]

Getting back to my original question for a moment:

Can we at least all agree that in medieval Europe, people were generally poorer and more marginalized than Koko or me today, and that they were therefore much more likely to see foreigners as a potential threat?

Do we still have trouble agreeing that poverty and marginalization make people more likely to be xenophobic?

There may be some sort of causal relationship, but I'm not convinced this is the most important factor. Poor and marginalised people can be extremely welcoming while some of the most xenophobic people I've known are quite well off indeed. That's why I'd like to see some evidence for this hypothesis which goes beyond conjecture and anecdote.

Does it really matter?

I would argue it doesn't.

[Ludwig Whitby]

Getting back to my original question for a moment:

Can we at least all agree that in medieval Europe, people were generally poorer and more marginalized than Koko or me today, and that they were therefore much more likely to see foreigners as a potential threat?

Do we still have trouble agreeing that poverty and marginalization make people more likely to be xenophobic?

Yes. Do you have any evidence to back that claim up, or are we talking simply anectodally?

Because, you're from America. White middle class Americans are neither poor nor marginalized and are often xenophobic. Without giving it much thought, I'm really not sure that there is a link between the two. I'm more inclined to believe that certain ideologies make people more likely to be xenophobic and that some other ideologies make people less likely to be xenophobic.

[vijayjohn]

Look, I'm not trying to make this into an argument where I come up with a position, defend it, and win. All I'm trying to do is explain xenophobia to Koko because it seems he doesn't understand it. I just want to come up with an explanation (or have somebody else come up with an explanation) of it that we all agree on. It's totally fine with me even if my original explanation is completely wrong, but if it's not right, please, let's come up with one that we can agree on.

So Ludwig, at least you've said something that might lead us to an alternative explanation. (Actually, so did Johanna, but I get the impression we don't all buy that one, either). You mentioned some ideologies making people more likely to be xenophobic than others. What kind of ideologies are these that make people more likely to be xenophobic? Is there a way to avoid circular reasoning in explaining this? And what causes people to have these ideologies?

[Car]

True, but you have people who are prejudiced and never actually had any kind of experience with said group or people who weren't prejudiced, but then had a bad experience.

But this is all self-reported, isn't it? How do you know if you're actually prejudiced against a group or not if you haven't had any interactions with them? I would say that having a bad experience with a member of a group and concluding from that that there's something wrong about that group of people in general rather than the person(s) you interacted with or with your own expectations is pretty telling.

Sure, that's the main problem with such polls anyway.

[Marah]

There does seem to be a rise of far-right wing parties in Europe since the economic crisis.

[linguoboy]

There does seem to be a rise of far-right wing parties in Europe since the economic crisis.

The far-right always gains support when people are frustrated with the mainstream parties. Although this often coincides with economic downturns, it needn't.

[Koko]

I understand xenophobia. I just find it stupid when it comes to people. If the race was completely new, then yes, I find it reasonable (like us to the Sentinelese: they don't know we are people, so we are alien to their people). But the Europeans had seen Roma before and more than likely talked to them, so why were they scared of them moving into Europe? It's even more stupid to me that the Romani didn't come in guns a-blazing, so they weren't threatening.

[vijayjohn]

But the Europeans had seen Roma before and more than likely talked to them

No, they hadn't. How would they have seen Roma before the Roma moved into Europe?

[Koko]

They'd been to India, surely they had met some Roma.

[mōdgethanc]

I understand xenophobia. I just find it stupid when it comes to people. If the race was completely new, then yes, I find it reasonable (like us to the Sentinelese: they don't know we are people, so we are alien to their people).

How do you know what the Sentinelese think about us? Is it implausible they realize we're people like them, yet still see us as a threat to their way of life?

They'd been to India, surely they had met some Roma.

I highly doubt the average European in the medieval period had ever been to India or seen anyone from there before. Hell, I don't know if I've ever seen a Roma person and I live in one of the most multicultural cities in the world.

[vijayjohn]

Koko, for one thing, there aren't any Roma in India. This is another reason why the term "Gypsy" is problematic; it's used as a cover term for lumping together all sorts of people who are (or are thought to be) nomadic. There are various groups of people in India who are all called "Gypsies," but they are not necessarily related to the Roma or to each other and do not even all speak languages from the same family.

For another, the arrival of Roma in Europe predated the Age of Exploration by hundreds of years. By the time the Roma arrived in Europe, very few Europeans had ever been as far as India. Travel was extremely difficult in those days, and only so many Europeans had even gone abroad at that time.

[vijayjohn]

[admin]Split from here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=35099&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=980#p972911[/admin]

Every term for it comes to be derogatory sooner or later: "idiot", "Mongoloid", "mentally retarded", "challenged", "special", and I have no doubt the current PC terms "developmentally delayed" and "intellectually disabled" will have to be replaced at some point too. This is called the euphemism treadmill.

Oddly, I think I've seen some Eastern Europeans make a similar argument about the term "Roma" sometimes. "If 'Gypsy'/'gypsy' is derogatory, why replace it with 'Roma'? After all, sooner or later, 'Roma' will come to be used as a derogatory term instead." Which is odd, because Roma is an endonym and Gypsy is not. I'm not sure whether they really understand that fact.

[mōdgethanc]

Oddly, I think I've seen some Eastern Europeans make a similar argument about the term "Roma" sometimes. "If 'Gypsy'/'gypsy' is derogatory, why replace it with 'Roma'? After all, sooner or later, 'Roma' will come to be used as a derogatory term instead." Which is odd, because Roma is an endonym and Gypsy is not. I'm not sure whether they really understand that fact.

Well, we don't say "kike" anymore and "Jew" hasn't become pejorative instead, because there have been societal changes since then which have made antisemitism unacceptable nowadays. That's what Europe needs, and then "Roma" won't be an offensive term.

[הענט]

Romani or Roma is Romani for Gypsy. It doesn't make any sense. Will the Germans also become Deutsches, Dojčové? Crazy PC, if you ask me. The Gypsies call themselves Gypsies here, only media calls them Roma. It's not as bad situation as the one with the N word in the USA, but I have an old German-Arabic excerise book that says aswad means ni**er and the plural is sudan, which means that the country of Sudan can actually mean blacks or ni**ers... I don't use the N word, because I don't like it, but cikán (Czech for Gypsy) is okay with me. It's okay with the Gypsies when I say it around them...

[linguoboy]

Romani or Roma is Romani for Gypsy. It doesn't make any sense. Will the Germans also become Deutsches, Dojčové?

Is there widespread hostility towards and discrimination against Germans in Slovakia?

[vijayjohn]

Even if there was, there are countries where German is the official language, so Germans have at least one nation to appeal to. Romani people do not have this advantage.

I've seen almost all of these arguments before, BTW.

Romani or Roma is Romani for Gypsy. It doesn't make any sense. Will the Germans also become Deutsches, Dojčové? Crazy PC, if you ask me.

Just because we use the endonym for one group of people doesn't mean we have to do it for all groups. "German" is not considered a pejorative term, and Germans have not been persecuted for hundreds of years. As mōdgethanc pointed out, we use "Jew"; "Jew" comes from the Hebrew endonym Yehudi. If we can use "Jew," why not "Roma"? What's the big deal?

The Gypsies call themselves Gypsies here, only media calls them Roma.

Just because they call themselves that when speaking Czech or any other language doesn't mean it's okay for any of us outsiders to do that, too. The use of that word is usually an in-group thing, so it's quite likely that if you're not within the group, you're not supposed to use it. Black people here often use the n-word to refer to themselves and each other, too, but that doesn't make it the least bit okay for other people to use it.

It's not as bad situation as the one with the N word in the USA

Who is deciding? Isn't it up to the Roma themselves to decide whether it's as bad as that or not? And how is it even possible to know what they think when they are consistently discriminated against, the mutual mistrust between Roma and non-Roma is deep, and the discrimination is getting worse and worse?

, but I have an old German-Arabic excerise book that says aswad means ni**er and the plural is sudan, which means that the country of Sudan can actually mean blacks or ni**ers... I don't use the N word, because I don't like it, but cikán (Czech for Gypsy) is okay with me.

Tbh, this is the only part I've never heard before. I don't even see how any of this is relevant, including the last part. Frankly, how does it matter whether it's okay with you? You are not part of the ethnic group being discussed here.

It's okay with the Gypsies when I say it around them...

Is it? How do you know? If you say it around them, do they really have any choice but to let you do it? And besides, why would they want to risk a confrontation with you?

EDIT: Sorry, I meant to say this when I wrote this but forgot. I think probably this discussion should be moved to the one about views on Romani people, but I'm not sure which post would be considered the start of this discussion, really.