If they’ve not abducted her, and their crimes were welfare fraud and poverty, I find the idea of not returning the child to them to be horrifying. The state must not take children from homes unless the children are in danger. If the only danger is poverty, the state needs to get its shit together vis a vis poverty.
The idea that they’ll keep this child from the only parents she knows out of some sort of anti-Roma sentiment is revolting.
It’s sarcasm. I’m agreeing with you. These incidents wouldn’t occur if the people involved looked different or came from a different culture, or if authorities applied the same standard they used here to everybody children would be taken from their parents based on their appearance every day.
A good week all around. A ‘Blonde Angel’ has been rescued from her dark and evil kidnappers; an ‘Irish Maddie’ was rescued from Gypsies in Ireland. Another child, too. Gypsies have been dragged across the front pages, their child stealing ways exposed for the world to see.
Oh. Hang on. The ‘Irish Maddie’ was Roma? And belonged to the parents who said she was their daughter? And the other one, the boy, he was also Roma? Oh. Well, what about the Greek one? Obviously, that’s a clear case of dirty Gyppo scum stealing innocent Blonde Angels. There’s no fucking way that she’s… What?! They think they’ve found her natural mother, her story matches what the Blonde Angel’s kidnappers say, she lives in a Roma camp and she’s fucking brown?
Did they at least buy her? Bet they bought her, 'cos that’s something filthy Gypsies would do. No? Well, fucking hell. So the only children that have been stolen from their parents are Gypsy ones? Ach, well. That’s still a good week, then. What? They gave the two Irish ones back? Are they mental?
Shit. Look, can I at least rest easy knowing that there’s plenty of historical evidence that Gypsies used to steal children? I see. Not a single well-documented case. Why, that’s not a good week at all.
Ah, sod this noise. I’m fucking off back to Reddit where I can happily opine that the only thing wrong with Hitler was that he didn’t get the job done. Fucking hippies with your PC ‘fact’ bullshit.
Clap clap, Kal. I especially like how you allude to the fact that there* is *some child-stealing going on in these cases, but it ain’t the Roma or Gypsies that are doin’ the stealin’…
The way people went off on the “blonde angel” thing does leave a foul taste… Had they been ethnic “Hellenes” would the uproar have been such?
“…Sure, we’ve created a welfare/public services system completely vulnerable to, and filled with, fraud and corruption and we can’t even keep up a proper registry of birth certificates. But the problem is that it draws Gypsies who use other people’s kids to take advantage!” Riiiight.
Legal adopters. Don’t forget that many people in Western mainstream cultures will have a negative view of the notion of adoption or foster care being valid without official paperwork from the authorities. (Foster families, meanwhile, are *expected *to hand over the children to blood family if the latter are fit to take care and will not endanger the child.)
AFAIK, in most American states, the rule would be that if there are no fit and available * recognized* family members (adoptive if an adoption has been consummated, natural if not) to whom to return a displaced child, you do not just hand her back over to the people who had her under irregular circumstances without going through a prolonged process.
OTOH:
Indeed, a nonviolent petty criminal record that does not directly endanger the child’s welfare should not result in removal of custodial rights.
But again, I expect that in most of the West this would apply for those to whom custodial rights are legally recognized, not just those who had de facto physical custody. The big IF in this specific case would lie in whether recognition or nonrecognition of an “off the records” family composition would be “colorblind” i.e., would a couple of ethnic-Greek welfare fraudsters claiming a child without proper papers get her back on the basis it’s the only family she has known?
I doubt the little girl refers to the Dimopoulous as her parents (though she may refer to Mrs. Dimopoulou as her mother-in-law) or sees them as such in reality. It’s just not the way we do things when children go to live with relatives, future relatives or family friends (who quite often are distant family). The family’s lawyers may use these terms for reasons of gathering public sympathy or simple inability to properly interpret the language the family uses however.
You couldn’t find a cite from Stormfront?
Without knowing every detail, this reads like there was a lot more classism than racism involved. People are getting outraged about the media hype over her blondeness, but if the little girl had been black, I bet she’d still have been taken away from the couple - it was the contrast that got cops’ attention, not the blondeness per se.
But if they’d been affluent professionals living in a fancy house, even if they and the little girl all looked exactly the way they do, I bet no one would ever have looked twice. They’d just have assumed she was adopted, through the legal channels, because only poor people do dodgy stuff.
I know poor people who see getting another kid the way we see getting a raise at work.
DNA test shows Bulgarian Roma woman is mother of “Maria”
Unfortunately for the adoptive parents:
And what happens to the biological parents who give their child away?
No clue. I was just quoting the linked article. I imagine this bio-mother is not subject to Greek law anyway, considering that she is Bulgarian.
Worth noting, BTW, that Greek police arrest childless couple suspected of buying baby from Roma. It doesn’t seem like the people arrested were Roma themselves.
In theory, they could be charged with some sort of neglect, on the same basis as the receiving couple possibly being charged with abduction – the State does not permit a parent to transfer custody of (i.e., give away) a child without its approval.
My guess would be that it’s unlikely that the Bulgarian authorities would prosecute them just over an illegal adoption, since then all of their other kids would enter state custody. If they took money in exchange for the child, that would probably be a bigger deal, but I haven’t seen any evidence of that beyond what sounds like racist speculation, and I’m not sure what evidence there would be at this point anyway.
No you don’t.
Seriously, do you think that the news articles would have been mentioning the “brown-haired angel” in that case? Do you think there even would have BEEN news articles in that case? Do you think that if the couple had been a poor ethnically-Greek couple there would have been news stories?
No. The story here is that gypsies stole a baby. That’s what’s revolting. The police’s immediate belief that this happened because of gypsy-child-snatching, not because of informal adoption, is also probably a symptom (not a clear indication, a symptom, although I despair of Fothering whatever of getting the difference) of racism on the part of the police.
Possibly you’re right, but I speak from what I know about how young mammals deal with adult caregivers. I get called “daddy” often enough by my third-graders that I suspect either I should be using contraception or else kids just imprint “parent” on the adults who care for them. But I admittedly speak from ignorance of Roma culture.
Honestly, I don’t see any racism in it at all. Yes, I would expect that people who were allegedly guilty of multiple crimes would have an unusually different child checked out. And if the child is found not to belong to them biologically, and there is no legal record of guardianship, I do expect the child would be removed and placed into social services. I would not in any way expect the child to be given to any non-blood relatives or friends of the family.
I think the problem is not caused by race, but this particular family’s choice to ostracize themselves from the legal system of Greece. By choosing to not get the state involved in the permanent guardianship, they made it impossible for said government to know that the child had not been kidnapped. The government is doing its due diligence in checking things out. Now that it has been proven, hopefully the guardians will choose to make it official.
Although, there is one bogeyman that rares its ugly head here, and that is the child-bride issue. Th is not a racial thing, either, as most of the world is against it. Or, to be more specific, they consider a consummated marriage with a pre- or mid-pubescent to be a form of child rape. Combined with the poor living arrangements for the child, an argument that the guardians are abusive may be made in order to get the child taken away from her guardians.
But, despite how most Roma will see this, I repeat that this is not about race. It’s about morality and multiculturalism, and how these interact. Is the child-bride thing immoral enough that it should be prohibited for everyone, or is it just a cultural preference? If the former, then it doesn’t matter what race/religion/culture/etc that you have–it will not be allowed, anymore than we would allow murder because it’s what happens in a certain culture.
As for the news articles themselves, so what if they were racist? That doesn’t make the actions of the police racist. The only criteria here is whether or not others in a similar situation, minus the Roma race/culture, would have been treated the same way. And I have yet to see a compelling case that it would have not have been. Nothing anyone has objected to seems to me to be something that would only happen to Roma.
And personally, I think continuing to claim that said actions must be racist actually hurt the cause against the very real racism against the Roma people. Unless you can come up with something other than what I’ve addressed here, of course. Even just racist quotes from the police in question would be good.
Whoop de doo. This puts you on the wrong side of history, is all–the side replete with people who defend obvious racism because they’d rather do that than pay attention to real problems with injustice. It’s nice for you to mansplain to the Roma why what they see as racism really isn’t, though (not sure that “mansplain” is the right term here, but I don’t know of another that works better for the combination of ignorance and condescension in your post).
Thanks for sharing!
Until I read your post and Googled ‘Stormfront’, I had never heard of it (them?).
If you’re trying to imply that I’m aligned with, or even condone, the views put forth by this (or any other) racially bigoted organization, I am highly offended. :mad:
Are you so sure about that?
It has now come to light that the “blond angel” is actually Roma, and her birth mother left her in the care of the Dimopoulous of her own free will. Parents are allowed to appoint guardians for their children that are entirely unrelated.
It probably would have been better if the arrangement had been legally formalized, and the latest report I heard on the TV is that the Dimopoulous family is now intending to do exactly that, presumably with the full consent and cooperation of the birth mother. I really see no reason for the child to be placed anywhere other than with the Dimopoulous under such circumstances.
Even if that is exactly what her biological relatives desire?
This strikes me as a sort of private adoption that was perhaps a little too private, that is, was not accompanied by legal papers. My white-bread, Irish/German Catholic side of the family engaged in such a couple generations ago (in their case, teens who couldn’t get along with their parents moved in with relatives who saw them through adolescence), I’ve known perhaps as many as three mainstream Western couples who had private adoptions (that I’m aware of - I don’t normally inqure how people obtained their children), and a former co-worker who, young and unmarried, gave the child she didn’t feel she could care for to an older sister to raise. In past generations these arrangements among the “mainstream” weren’t always formalized, either but they most certainly did and still do exist.
This strikes me as just more of the same, with perhaps a few particularly Roma nuances.
Where has it been stated that anyone is in any way intending to consummate a marriage with a pre-pubescent child? “Arranged marriage” /= “child rape”. In many cultures marriages might be arranged at birth but there is no consummating until both partners are considered legally adult in their societies.
I’m not convinced that the “poor living arrangements” are anything more than poverty, which is not inherently abusive. Granted, I haven’t followed this story in the greatest detail but what evidence is there that this child was in any way neglected or mistreated or treated significantly differently than any other child in the group?
Well, no, it wouldn’t happen to JUST the Roma - the immediate removal of the child strikes me as racist and classist - the dominant, settled culture immediately suspects kidnapping because 1) the child doesn’t fit the stereotype of Roma appearance and 2) the family is poor.
I see this where I live, but the people are black and poor - the assumption typically that they are involved in fraud (because aren’t all poor people?), using drugs, criminals, and abusive/neglectful of their children. And if you don’t believe that, why do politicians in the US push for drug-testing all “welfare” recipients (meaning government aid for poor people, as opposed to government aid to corporations and well-off old people) for drugs? What other rationale other than the assumption all poor people are drug abusers?
It’s easy to NOT see bias when it doesn’t affect you.
This case clearly shows that the first assumption is “kidnapping” rather than “adoption” when a child doesn’t look exactly like her parents.
Gorgiosplain? Though you might as well stick with the word you first thought of given than men are the authors of all the world’s misfortune. There was probably nothing wrong with " 'splain" if you wanted to avoid airing your own prejudices.
Gorgiosplain works; I wasn’t completely and entirely serious about “mansplain.”
Mansplain is kind of an interesting construction, though, representing when someone who doesn’t really know what they’re talking about condescendingly and incorrectly explains something to someone who isn’t ignorant, under the assumption that the audience, being a member of a less-respected group, cannot possibly understand things as well as the ignorant and condescending explainer, who is deemed an expert on all topics by virtue of membership in a more-respected group.
That’s a lot to include in two syllables, and I don’t know of any other word, neologism or paleo-, that gets to all of that.