I always was under the impression that unless you were referring to a child in costume on Halloween, complete with crystal ball and dangly earrings, that calling someone a “gypsy” was not quite as offensive as some terminology, but definitely not PC. At the very least I wasn’t aware it identified a specific racial or ethnic group. Now, I’m generally not someone who worries much about being politically correct, but I have a coworker who constantly refers to certain people as gypsies. (She has somewhat narrow views on certain social and cultural aspects of life to begin with.) Anyway, she claims that the term “gypsy” refers to a specific group of dark-skinned people of Arabic or Indian descent who reside in Europe. I’ve never heard that before, but I wouldn’t have necessarily. Anybody else? I guess I was also skeptical because she usually refers to the gypsies- whoever they are- as criminals.
There have been a number of Threads on the SDMB that refer to the term as a racial slur.
And yes, there are a distinct roup of people abused under that name.
And for the life of me, I cannot recall the polite term. :smack:
Yes, “Gypsy” refers to an ethnic identity in Europe: the Roma. I’ve heard the gamut about the use of Gypsy: everything from “it’s fine” to “it’s not offensive but not preferred” to “it’s a horrible racial slur,” so your best bet is to use “Roma.” There is a negative stereotype about the Roma and theft.
The Roma (or Romani) are believed to have originated in the Punjab region - northwest India and northern Pakistan - between the Indus & Jumna rivers. They began migrating towards Europe in about 1050. There is a modestly-sizable Romani population (they total about 10 million people worldwide) on every continent now - with the possible exception of Australia.
:smack: Oh! I do remember reading some good information, probably back in high school, about the Roma. I guess I didn’t put two and two together and realize that that is what “gypsy” refers to. It does sound awfully offensive…
As it happens, I have co-written a staff report about Gypsies. It’ll be a while before it hits the website though. Here is the reference section:
Belton, Brian, Questioning Gypsy Identity: Ethnic Narratives in Britain and America (2005)
Blurred history of Gypsy terms, BBC News, March 21, 2005: BBC NEWS | UK | Politics | Blurred history of Gypsy terms
Borrow, George, Word-Book of the Romany, or English Gypsy Language, globusz.com, 2003: Globusz - Libros y más libros
Clark, Frank, The Never-ending Road American Roma (Gypsy ), Travellers, & “Others,” 2005: American Roma (Gypsies) and Travellers (North and South America)
Crystal, Ellie, Roma People - Gypsies, crystalinks.com: Romani People - Gypsies - Crystalinks
Dellal, Jasmine, “American Gypsy: A Stranger in Everybody’s Land” (2000): http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2000/americangypsy/index.html
Dragonmir, Marius, Europe’s Beggars, Romania’s Roma, Central Europe Review, November 27, 2000: http://www.ce-review.org/00/41/dragomir41.html
Duna, William, Gypsies: A Persecuted Race, 1985: http://www.chgs.umn.edu/Histories__Narratives__Documen/Roma___Sinti__Gypsies_/Gypsies__A_Persecuted_Race/gypsies__a_persecuted_race.html
Fonseca, Isabel , Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey (1996)
Gardi, Balazs, The Roma People, The Digital Journalist, November 2006: The Roma People by Balazs Gardi - The Digital Journalist (November 2006)
Garofoli, Joe, "Crystal-ball crackdown – New S.F. Fortune-teller Law: City Takes Gypsies’ Sensitivities into Account, San Francisco Chronicle, July 17, 2003: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/07/17/MN240405.DTL
Gatlif, Tony, Latcho Drom (1993)
Godwin, Peter, “Gypsies: The Outsiders,” National Geographic, April 2001
Gray, Russell & Atkinson, Quentin, “Language-tree divergence times support the Anatolian theory of Indo-European origin,” Nature, November 2003: http://www.psych.auckland.ac.nz/Psych/research/Evolution/Gray&Atkinson2003.pdf
“Gypsies” in the United States, Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies: http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/migrations/gyp/gypstart.html
Hancock, Ian, The Pariah Syndrome: An Account of Gypsy Slavery and Persecution (1999)
Hancock, Ian, Roma, The Handbook of Texas Online, 2001: http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/RR/pxrfh.html
Hancock, Ian, We Are the Romani People (2002)
Mattras, Yaron, ed., History of the Romani Language, University of Manchester Romani Project: http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/Research/Projects/romani/files/11_origins.shtml
Lockwood, William & Salo, Sheila, Gypsy and Traveler Groups in North America, The Gypsy Lore Society, July 1, 2005: http://www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html
McClure, Erica, “Ethnoanatomy in a Multilingual Community: An Analysis of Semantic Change,” American Ethnologist, (August 1976) 525-542.
Nahabedian, Matilda, All Ethnic Problems Solved?, Central Europe Review, November 27, 2000: http://www.ce-review.org/00/41/nahabedian41.html
Nemeth, David, “DX: Gypsies (Romanies) and Travelers” (online version of exhibit at Carlson Library, The University of Toledo) Summer, 2005: Welcome to the University of Toledo Libraries
Nemeth, David, The Gypsy-American: An Ethnogeographic Study (2002)
Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, Religion and Culture of the Roma, 1998-2005: http://www.religioustolerance.org/roma.htm
Pancevski, Bojan, “Villagers to sue ‘Borat’
Romanians angry over their portrayal vow legal action today. Fox disputes accusations,” latimes.com, November 20, 2006: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-borat20nov20,0, 1256926.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Partos, Gabriel, Nations unite to help Roma people, BBC News, February 2, 2005: BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Nations unite to help Roma people
The Patrin Web Journal:
Romani Culture and History, 1996-2002: Yahoo | Mail, Weather, Search, Politics, News, Finance, Sports & Videos
Reinhardt, Claudia & Ganzel, Bill, Gypsies in North America During the Great Depression, Wessels Living History Farm: http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/life_33.html
Roma (Gypsy) Origins & History, Romani.org, 1998: http://www.romani.org/local/romhist.html
Roma (people), Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2006: http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761568856/Roma_(people).html
RomaniWorld.com: http://www.romaniworld.com/
RomNews Network Community: http://romnews.com/community/modules.php?op=modload&name=Web_Links&file=index&req=MostPopular
Schneider, Howard & Spolar, Christine, “Czech Prejudice — and TV — Fuel Gypsy Migration to Canada,” Washington Post, September 1, 1997: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/americas/sep/03/gypsies.htm
Smith, Fergus, Romany Language, 1998:
http://www2.arnes.si/~eusmith/Romany/index.html
Sutherland, Anne, Gypsies: The Hidden Americans (1975)
Tong, Diane, ed., Gypsies: An Interdisciplinary Reader (1998)
Van Horn, Carol, “Census 2000 Informational Memorandum No. 3,” Census.gov, January 20, 1999: http://www.census.gov/dmd/www/pdf/InfoMem.pdf
Weyerauch, Walter, ed., Gypsy Law: Romani Legal Traditions and Culture (2001)
Yoors, Jan, The Gypsies (1967)
Yoors, Jan, The Heroic Present: Life Among the Gypsies (2004)
Very cool. Looking forward to reading it.
Anecdotally, and at least over here, there’s more of a negative stereotype about the Pavee (more recent travellers of Irish origin), who’re the group characteristically associated with the tarmac-yer-drive scam and leaving mounds of filth everywhere they’ve been. Romanies, or “real Gypsies” as we gorgio tend to think of them, are few in number, generally unobtrusive, don’t leave much mess behind, and are reasonably honest. Admittedly you wouldn’t tempt them by leaving your hen-house wide open, but neither would you need to nail your windows shut. They are unlikely to do worse than peddle white heather or clothes pegs, which you would be wise to consider buying, or maybe pilfer a chicken or a rabbit for the pot, which is little enough to worry about. <– Thus the traditional view, I should say. Among my peer group there is negligible animosity to actual Romanies.
And yes, as with some other posters on some other topics, it’s well worth hoping that Kal will happen by and have his say. 
My experience with Roma in both the US and Spain is that they don’t have any problem with gypsy or gitano - they do have a problem when someone uses it to mean thief but not when it means “them”.
There’s been a curious situation in Spain. For something like 20 years, there had been pressure to use the terms “romaní”, “calé” or “caló”. This had been linked to things like gypsies getting more into schools, running the paperwork needed to create legal associations, etc.; a whole movement to figure out how to use the payo system without losing their own identity. Then, 5-10 years ago, we started getting these Romanian Roma who are viewed by a lot of Spanish gypsies as… well, “everything we’re trying to clean away from”. So, because the Romanian Roma will refer to themselves as “Roma”, the ones who’ve been living in Spain since the XIII century or thereabouts are now perfectly happy to hear gitano. So long, as I said, as it’s not used to mean thief.
Agitanado and gitano are also used to mean the kind of coloring which I think English refers to as “olive-skinned”. And gitano can also mean “someone who’s very good at figuring out the best way out of a difficult situation”, “a survivor” and “someone good with his hands” (they often were peddlers and tinmen).
They claim to be of egyptian descent; gypsy and gitano are both derived from “egyptian”.
There’s a very popular musical group from southern France called The Gipsy Kings http://www.gipsykings.com/ The members are from Roma families. If the word Gipsy is okay with them, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be used.
That’s pretty much it.
http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/migrations/gyp/gypstart.html
http://www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html
http://www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/RR/pxrfh.html
But see,
http://www.utexas.edu/features/archive/2003/romani.html
quoting the author of the last link.
Gypsy is a bothersome word.
Now many wouldn’t really bat an eyelid at it, while others would be deeply offended because they liken it to Nigger. I’m kinda in the middle. To me, it’s roughly the same as Negro or Eskimo.
If it were solely used in reference to Romani people, then I suppose that would be fair enough. The real problem is with gypsy - with the lowercase g. That annoys the crap out of me and many others, expecially when both terms (Gypsy and gypsy) are used as though they were the same word.
gypsy defines us as a lifestyle and often throws up many negative stereotypes of Romani people. The image of nomadism, for example, which gypsy would inspire is totally out of touch with reality. Most Gypsies live in houses. Even in countries where it was tradional, the number of Romanies that live in trailers is a slim proportion of the population. Here in the UK, where the number of people with at least one Romani parent is in the region of 300,000 - 500,000, only about 7% of them are on the road.
Okay, me painkillers have mad me lose sight of my point (Tramadol is brill), but I think I can sum it up like this:
Gypsy, used to refer to Romani people, is normally sorta fine - but if you’re using it in front of a Romani person then you may get corrected as to the term they’d prefer. Using it to refer to other peoples or a lifestyle is annoying.
Bear in mind that this is the point of view of a settled bloke who lives in the UK, where there are far worse words for us than just Gypsy.
If you want to use the correct terms, then the best word to use is probably Romani or Romany - depending on how you want to spell it.
That’s interesting. From what I understand, the relatively enlightened view those in the U.K. take towards the Roma causes a great number of them to seek asylum there from other countries (here’s a link to an interesting article I ran across on Roma seeking asylum in the U.K.). I used to live in the Czech Republic, and for everything I loved about the place, I was rather shocked at the open hostility many (although certainly not all) held towards the Roma population. The Republican Party (not to be confused with our GOP) of the Czech Republic runs on a platform that is essentially racist and anti-Roma, and puts up billboards to that effect. In many ways it reminded me of the condition of Black Americans in the American South in the decades prior to the civil rights movement.
Let’s not paint too rosy a picture of the utopian UK, though. The recent influx of a lot of Eastern European Gypsies causes problems of its own. We’re not that bad compared to some other countries, but there’s a sizeable element that worries over the new arrivals, viewing them as beggars if nothing worse (mainly the kind that beg with obviously hungry children in tow to make the begging more aggressive). That said, where I live we don’t see many Romanians. Ours is a Portuguese stamping ground for some reason, and also, of all the odd ethnic groups, I’ve seen a Lithuanian food shop in one of the local towns. (If it weren’t for Medieval: Total War, I might struggle to locate Lithuania on a map.)
See generally:
http://www.ce-review.org/00/4/culik4_document.html (2000)
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JQP/is_299/ai_30196129 (1998)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/americas/sep/03/gypsies.htm
This is an excellent thread, so I’d hate to lose it from MPSIMS, but it’s really meant for GQ. (I don’t see much of a debate–at least, not at this point–but if the GQ mods see fit to move it later on to GD, have at it.)
Interesting:
Kal’s newspaper picture (not sure which paper that was from, I was still reading the Mail regularly in those days and don’t remember it) lists Lithuania as a source of immigrants, and I guess they must have let in more than a few families if there’s a customer base for a Lithuanian shop in a backwater Norfolk town.
Wonder why we’d be so down on the Czechs?
Think that was the Express. A newspaper whose stories on Gypsies got it taken to the PCC twice after complaints of racism from its own journalists.