Cultural Roma - like my understanding of cultural Jews - have traditionally been very insular. Intermarriage outside the community was rare. You are more likely to get people who have “Roma” genetics who were exiled from their tribe and stopped being culturally Roma (which was apparently not unusual). Or, like African Americans, there are a lot of Roma who were held in slavery - and when you hold a woman in slavery, there tends to be rape and genetic mixing from that.
Well, honestly, that is because the lifestyle of both involved low level criminal activities.
If a person of either heritage went and got a job as, for example, a nurse or a bus driver and lived in a apartment, I do not think there’d be a issue. No one would even know unless that person made a point of it.
However I know a couple of people in the SCA who do have regular jobs, etc but brag about being a “gypsy”.
I think “gypsy” is one of those words that can swing both ways. It is all about context.
This has no bearing on the discussion at hand.
We’re not talking about treatment, we’re talking about terms.
Worth listening to that video just for the hair.
One episode of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding featured a woman whose boss hated Gypsies and didn’t know she was Roma. She quit her job when she got married and on her last day they filmed her telling him. Her boss turned out to be a Sikh in a turban, and his takeaway was that he was wrong… about Gypsies who’ve settled down and live in houses. 
The animus in the UK is mostly directed at the lifestyle, and applies equally to the Irish Travellers who are 100% white. But I’m sorry about your friend.
I doubt this. From what I have observed, people who are native to sub-Saharan African countries are treated as exotic novelties in the US, not second-class citizens. They have none of the culture or accent of American blacks, and usually even look different since they might come from very different genetics than most American blacks, and also because most Americans who identify as black have European genes in their background as well. Aboriginal Aussies would be treated much the same, I would assume.
My reply, and @Dangerosa’s, were in direct response to your question: Yes, it can be discrimination even if it’s broadly applied to multiple groups.
That was sort of how I lost my friend. We were in a book club together - she’s an Irish national, and somehow the topic of Roma and Travellers (Gypsys) came up and she started slagging. I quietly said “I’m a quarter Roma” - and from that moment, I was held at arms length or farther.
I’d also been advised earlier in my career when working with a guy who was Dutch who I had told my heritage to (my mother’s family is part Dutch and I’m tangentially related to a former Dutch PM - and my husband was born in Leiden - so I have some interest in the Netherlands which is how “where my family came from” came up), not to mention it in meetings as my integrity would then be questioned. (The two of us continued to have a good relationship for another decade).
Yes, and the point is, most racial slurs are not particularly precise, either in coinage or in usage. If “Gypsy” can’t be a racial slur because it’s used to describe several different disparate ethnic groups, then neither is “Paki,” which is used to describe anyone who is from (or even just looks) Middle Eastern, and not just specifically people from Pakistan.
I would probably disagree with this. I think once someone is well known to a person, if you’re from like Ghana or Nigeria, you are probably seen differently than an African American from Atlanta or Youngstown OH. But “on first glance” native born Africans will still register as “black” to most Americans, and all that that entails.
That goes very much against my experience, living near one of the nations largest Somali immigrant communities. I mean, if you want to claim Ilhan Omar has just faced being treated as an exotic novelty and not some sort of threat to America, you can, but its going to be a hard sell to me.
Yeah, I just moved from an area that had a large Somali population. While I would agree with the premise they are seen as “different” from native born American black people, I would disagree with Ulfreida they are just seen as a benign novelty. If anything I would say at least in the case of that population, they face more discrimination even than native born American black people.
Most racists don’t inquire as to the precise details of the ancestry of the people they’re discriminating against, and even in the rare case that they do, they don’t usually care. I don’t know what you observed, but what I have observed is that the son of a native of sub-Saharan Africa was subjected to extensive racial discrimination, despite his ancestry being better-known to the entire country than almost anyone else in history. You might have heard of the fellow I’m thinking of-- He was in the news a lot starting about 13 or 14 years ago.
Simply ask any Asian-American if the post-Covid backlash really cared whether the target had Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, or any other particular Asian ancestry.
So are you saying that this kind of bigotry wouldn’t happen if people started calling you Roma exclusively? That some random American using the term gypsy in reference to some cartoon character that has almost nothing in common with the Roma caused it? Or will we learn from history for once and realize that as soon as the term gypsy is banished from the vernacular, the word Roma will take it’s place and all the same bigotry will remain.
No, did black people stop being discriminated against when we stopped using the N word? Wow, racism was easy to solve. Glad that’s over.
I’m asking that now that you are aware of some of the history and culture, that you use preferred terms and are aware of cultural appropriation. That won’t stop discrimination, but it might make life a tiny bit easier for some of the people who face it.
Lazy analogy. Gypsy has been used to describe a lifestyle, and frankly never carried much ethnic baggage with it in these parts. I’d argue it only barely was derogatory.
Paki is obviously entirely about race and nationality.
But whatever, we’ve done the bad words threads on the Dope about a million times now and I guess you all are solving racism. Keep on keeping on.
I’m an adult and was never ignorant of any of it, I don’t find reason to use the term. My original comment was a reflection to what my experiences were as a less well informed teen. But then I got attacked for being a bigot, so I figure fuck it. The language police are eternal and there’s no wiggle room on anything any more. To hell with subjectivity.
Now its my turn to be unable to parse your statements. You have never been ignorant of its use as a slur, but you find its recategorization as a slur to be head scratching?