Twisty: You can’t code for shit but you’re a good man.
What Twisty says about assimilation and the experiences of the Pavee in integrated schools is also true for other Travelling people. Been there, done that, didn’t have a good time, got the scars to prove it.
Duckster says in point 5 “She admitted to being a traveller”
I think the choice of the word “admitted” says a lot about the general attitude to travellers.
I think it’s fairly important in these discussions (which are rapidly approaching GD) to keep track of the terminoligy and keep an eye on what is being discussed. We have Roma “Gypsies” who are a completely separate entity to Irish Travellers. We then have Travellers in Ireland, who are again as different from the american “Irish Travellers” being discussed as an Irish-American is from an Irish person.
My read on this is that this woman is a criminal first and a Traveller second. No more than it would be correct to assume that all Italians are invloved in organised crime, or that all Irish support the IRA, or that all black people are drug dealers it is not acceptable to equate Travellers with criminal activity. There is absolutley a discussion to be had on the criminal activities engaged in by sectors of the travelling communities, be it Roma, Irish or Irish-American communites, in the same way as there is a discussion to be had on any topic, but it would be a mistake of traditionally epic proportians to overgeneralise.
On an aside, the way in which I hear people both here and in Ireland refer to Travellers sounds more or less exactly like the way one has heard other minoritys referred to before. The concept of “good nigger” absolutly exists. As in “I have nothing against Travellers, Travellers are fine, it’s the Nackers (derogatory Irish term for Travellers) I can’t stand”. In other words that the problem is with the minority of a group that perpetuates the commonly held negative stereotypes, thus damaging the whole group, possibly until the point where only a completely assimilated individual is considered “acceptable”.
In some ways however Travellers have the issue (imho) of being a partially invisible minority. Similar for example to gay people or non-ethnic jewish people. In other words, the Traveller who works in your office and lives in a nice house isn’t recognised as a Traveller and therefore cannot balance out the negative associations of the visible sector of the minority. Similar to the fact that “all gay men are screaming hairdressers”, because you take for granted that the drywaller who built your house is straight.
Am I making any sense?
One thing I thought we all agreed on was that the Travellers are not (unlike the Roma/gypsies) a race or ethnic group unto themselves. They are rather (and self-identify as) defined by their itinerant way of life. For that reason alone, I think the analogies to racism are a bit flawed, and didn’t mean to evoke those. Ethnic origin is immutable, but living in a caravan or painting driveways for a living are mutable and chosen states of behavior – which I should hasten to add are not, in themselves, good or bad, but should be subject to criticism if they appear to be carried out in a socially non-beneficial way. I don’t deny that Travellers would probably not mind being viewed as a “protected class” whose interests can’t be criticized or compromised without encountering strict scrutiny (hey, who wouldn’t like that deal), but I don’t completely buy the direct equating of anti-Traveller feelings to anti-black, or anti-Jewish, discrimination.
Twist:
I take your point to the extent that the media I tend to resort to in Ireland are probably of the more “progressive” school – e.g., Irish Times and RTE. I do think these outlets’ coverage of Travellers, at least in recent years, has been of a consciously tolerant stripe, and has tried to downplay (I won’t say excuse) the perceived pathologies of the Travellers. I will keep in mind your point that the more populist media have probably been a little less inhibited in conveying the populist dissatisfaction with certain Traveller behavior.
We also don’t really disagree on whether the Travellers’ non-assimilation is “legitimate;” you point out that Government efforts at assimilation have been a failure (probably due in equal part to bumbling and mutual misunderstanding/cross purposes by the Govt. and Travellers alike), and no wonder the Travellers reject settlement; and I am enough of a libertarian not to condemn someone because he chooses to live itinerant lives in a community of caravans (heck, there are thousands of retired RV’ers in the U.S. who do just that). I’m not enough of a libertarian to assume, though, that if I buy an RV the state should pay for my caravan site or that I should be able to leave my litter on public or private property.
Kal and jjimm: I’ll make the obvious point that statistical evidence is ultimately just anecdotal evidence that someone’s written down. No one’s actually doing controlled experiments of putting Travellers and non-Travellers in an isolation chamber and tracking their conduct like a science project – which fact alone makes it impossible to “prove” that Travellers do, or will, commit scams at an X% higher rate than non-Travellers. I’ll also note that the comparative absence of codified statistics on Traveller (or Roma) crime is probably not unrelated to strong political or social services-driven pressures that may be brought to bear against the collection or dissemination of such potentially “invidious” information (as even one pro-Roma advocacy group points out, Roma leaders have been quite resistant to even entertaining the issue of tabulating statistics on gypsy crime, thus making it hard to even begin judging whether there is support for a perception of a ‘gypsy crime problem.’ ). See:
http://www.per-usa.org/RomaandtheLaw00.pdf
So, we’re left with a patchwork of reports from the field and government statistics (see, for a random example re: Roma crime,
http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/psychology/IQ/elite.html
(reporting a “crime rate among [Czech] Gypsies sixfold to eightfold higher than among the Czech [non-Gypsies]”).
However, the absence of comprehensive PhD.-level, double-blind statistical proof should not be confused with the absence of meaningful evidence and patterns of behavior based on which meaningful tentative conclusions can be drawn by the public (and are routinely drawn by law enforcement personnel, who have more day-to-day exposure to roofing scams and the like and who seem, based on this experience, convinced that there is something to the notion that Travellers may be systematically committing more than their share of these crimes).
Hey, I just got an e-mail about a fantastic opportunity to claim a third share in $12.9 million in funds held by the widow of the ex-Nigerian president. Now, I can’t prove it’s not legit, and I certainly can’t give you statistical proof to support my sneaking suspicion that there is a pattern of Nigerian con men perpetrating advance fee fraud. This being the case, there’s probably nothing to such vicious and stereotypical rumors; I’ll be happy to forward you the e-mail for a small finder’s fee – heck, I’m generous, just give me half a million out of your share.
Re. racism: in the UK at least, Irish Travellers are a separate ethnicity. So anti-Travellerism is racism.
Re. the media: you seem unhappy with ‘tolerance’. That’s rather unfortunate. Travellers get a hard enough time from the general population without the media perpetuating stereotypes without foundation.
Re. figures: I think we’re agreed that there aren’t enough data to prove the ‘perceived pathologies’.
In short: I’m saying ‘there is no evidence, so there’s no proof’.
You’re saying ‘there is no evidence, so stereotypes will do’.
…but from a much higher sample size than ‘bloke down pub said’. I don’t think this attitude would work with the majority of scientific communities, who ask for data to back studies, not small samples.
Remember, similar ‘perceived pathologies’ that apply today to Irish Travellers, applied not too long ago to various ethnic groupings. We’ve moved away from that kind of behaviour towards other groups, thank goodness.
As I said before, you may be right - you may also be wrong. But since all you appear to be saying is “but thousands of people can’t be wrong”, I’m sorry old chap/ess, what you’re saying just doesn’t wash.
I cannot be the only person to find it disturbing that the second cite provided by Huerta88 appears to be a German-written eugenics paper.
Huerta88: You did a bad thing, a very, very bad thing. You purposly missed off the beginning of your quote for that cite:
Tsk, tsk. The actual line from your cite states:
Bolding mine, mine, all mine.
So this cite you provided, which has taken flawed data from the Czech Repuplic without finding out reasons behind it (For example it doesn’t explain the Roma unemployment rate and talks about the numbers of Roma children in schools for the mentally retarded - without stating that they are sent there under the racist policies of the Czech government*), still does not prove that Roma are proportionally more criminal than people in similar circumstances. Show me a cite, preferably with no connection to eugenics, that shows an unemployed Rom is more criminal than an unemployed person of another race, of the same socio-economic status.
*You want cites for my claims? I got cites aplenty, mush:
http://www.errc.org/publications/letters/2000/cz_april_18_2000.shtml
Or you may want to go and download “A Special Remedy: Roma and Schools for the Mentally
Handicapped in the Czech Republic” from here:
http://errc.org/publications/reports/index.shtml
Okay, two cites does not aplenty make - but it gets kinda depressing to have to read everything on this subject. If these two ain’t enough, let Google be your friend.
The General Question has been answered as well as it can be, and this thread seems to have turned into a sort of debate. I’ll close this thread and direct further debate to GD, where there is already at least one thread on the subject.
bibliophage
moderator GQ