I can recall my grandparents telling me to behave or the gypsies would come and take me. Or they’d threaten to give me to the gypsies if I’d done something really naughty. :eek: Scared me pretty good at age 6 or 7.
They were the classic bogeyman for a lot of kids in my generation and earlier. They still traveled around in their wagons well into the 1940’s. My grandparents sometimes hired them for odd jobs in return for a good meal. That was common in the Great Depression.
I’ve never met any real gypsies AFAIK. I know many of them are still around traveling in cars and SUV’s instead of wagons. Panhandling, odd jobs or in some cases, other illegal means to support themselves. It’s a nomadic lifestyle hundreds of years old. Never gave them much thought until the recent news stories dredged up my old childhood memories. This one family has 14 kids and they are checking them all to confirm if they are the parent’s kids. The little blue eyed blonde girl’s DNA shows she isn’t from that family.
I wonder if the Roma have a genetic marker? If the paternity tests find more kids that aren’t the parents. Can the cops at least confirm if these kids are from that group of people? There’s always a possibility they took in a 3rd cousin’s kid, or even a child only related by marriage.
A Facebook friend of mine is trying to spin this as a racist news story–rescuing the blonde girl from Those People. On the one hand I see how unfair it is that being blonde got this girl recognized and possibly sent home while darker children might blend in. On another hand, I think he’s being kind of hysterical about it. Thoughts?
She resembled the missing English girl Madeleine Mccann. She’s the right age, she’s called Maddy and that helped call attention to her. Sadly DNA proves shes not Madeleine Mccann. Hopefully they’ll find her real family.
I’ve always heard the Roma are very tightly knitted. Very clannish. It’s quite possible this couple took in kids from other Roma families. Thats why I asked if a genetic marker would at least prove they are Roma.
My grandmother always talked fondly of the gypsies that camped near her home. Never caused trouble, were skilled at odd jobs. She liked them and fed them well. A good meal meant a lot in the great depression. Like any group theres a bad element out there that commits petty crimes. But thats true of any group of people.
This story reminds of a local story in Houston back around 2008?
An aid worker working in an African country noticed some black children in an orphanage with USA accents and it turned out their mother from Houston had met a guy in Africa and dragged all the kids there with her to meet him, then dumped them in an orphanage and had returned to the USA.
So I guess the take away is be blonde or have a USA accent when dumped in foreign countries.
update first court appearance and they got a lawyer.
I’m inclined to think another impoverished mother did give the couple the child. She wasn’t formally adopted and now its got the authorities involved. It’s a mess for the courts to decide. I just can’t see any reason a family with a dozen kids would snatch one from a home. It’s just too far fetched. Kids are expensive to feed. Why steal someone elses kid when you got plenty of your own?
Yeah–I’ve known parents, especially parents living in poverty, who transfer guardianship of a child with a friend and without notifying anyone in authority. One time that happened with a kid at my school, and it took forever to resolve (since the school had a list of people we could legally communicate with about the kid, and the new guardian wasn’t on the list, and none of the folks who were on the list could be contacted for a long time). It wouldn’t surprise me at all if this story were the combination of this sort of informal arrangement and crazy racist cops who saw a white kid with some nonwhite grownups.
Edit: oh, add some crazy racist news coverage. Gotta love how they mention the girl’s blond hair (“the mystery blond girl”) as the least possible coded way of saying “white girl”. Jerks.
I read one news story about this that said a possible reason for all the kids was public aid/welfare. The more kids, the more money for aid. Sorry, no cite, I’ll look for it again.
OTOH, given identical dispositions, differences in motive and opportunity will produce different results. Roma tend to be lower on the socioeconomic ladder (motive) and also are an insular group with a nomadic lifestyle (opportunity).
There aren’t a dozen kids. There are four, well, five counting Maria, and documents that are probably a result of one or more child being registered in multiple jurisdictions.
There may be a perfectly decent reason for Maria to be there, but it’s not like anyone can just take her caregivers’ word for it. Between the drugs and the fraudulent IDs and the changing stories, her identity and how she came to be there has to be proved from other sources.
Actual Roma (that’s the proper name for the people they are calling Gypsies in this news story) and longtime board member checking in. (So, aceplace57, you can now claim to at least have encountered a Gypsy in cyberspace). I am suspicious over the use of the word adoption in this case because that’s not a word or a concept Roma use to describe situations where children are raised by people other than biological family. Though perhaps their lawyer is interpreting the terminology they are using incorrectly or there is a problem in translation. My best guess about the situation based on my experience in my community in North America and Europe is the child was probably born to a poor mother, who may or may not have wanted to give birth. If she didn’t want to parent, but was friends with these people or related to them in some way she may have given the girl to them to raise if she thought they could do it better. The little girl could even be Roma, some of us are light skinned. The family may have taken the child for any number of reasons. Maybe they just like children and if the mother was very poor they may have felt the little girl would be safer and better fed with them. Finally while it is rare (but possible), and I am sure this suggestion is going to set some people screaming, the Roma mother may have known the girl’s mother well and the little girl and thought the girl might make a suitable future wife for one of her sons, so they took her to live with them early and grow up as Romany knowing the language and customs. Some poor Roma families have been known to match children up early usually because a girl’s family is very poor and her in-laws can provide better for her than her parents. It’s not common, but it does happen. I know everyone against arranged marriages is now screaming. Take a chill pill.
No, no I didn’t. I insinuated that the cops might be crazy racists, period. Their crazy racism might lead them to look at this situation and draw racist conclusions from it. That is, if they saw a black child with white parents, do you think they’d be nearly as likely to go the OMG Kidnapping route as they are to go that route if they see a Roma couple with a blonde kid? (Of course you probably think that because you probably don’t even see race and therefore believe there’s no racism in the world.)
As for the media, if you don’t think they’re sensationalizing this case in a way they wouldn’t do with different races–say, a black child taken away from white parents–then you live in a fantasy world. Can you imagine if the roles were reversed–would they refer to the “mystery black-haired girl”?
I’m forced to lower your grade to a gentleman’s C. Let’s not have to lower it any further, mkay?
Which is what I originally said and you denied having said.
To repeat, you’re saying that "someone who thinks a blond haired white kid is unlikely to be the child of Roma parents is a “crazy racist”.
And media who note the disparity are “jerks”."
Keep one story and stick to it.
Point is that in this particular case, the blond hair happens to be relevant. There’s nothing about noting the blond hair which makes it racist to point it out.
Of course, if you start off with the assumption that the media would always treat blacks and whites differently and you inevitably see it in every instance. More broadly, if you’re looking to find racism you can always find it, in every situation that involves different races. So your posts are completely unsurprising in that regard.
