OP speaking. Look, everyone: Please, calm down. I know we’re in the pit, but I didn’t want to start another pile-on. I most certainly don’t want to pick on Roma culture. I have zero problems with Roma culture (although I don’t know much about it). I don’t even want to criticize **ZPG **in this thread, particularly. As I said, I think a lot of this may be down to a misunderstanding.
If someone belongs to a minority culture and/or holds unusual opinions, what do I care? I come from a small country (and still live in one), so in some ways, whenever I’m visiting the US (or, for that matter, participating on a message board where most posters are American) I’m from a minority culture. I also hold certain opinions that the majority might find a bit odd. My posting history is my cite.
However, I am *aware *of those things about myself, because they would be downright impossible not to notice.
The thing is, what I am observing about **ZPG **is this: In ZPG’s world, her opinions and cultural quirks are not restricted to the minority, and they are not considered unusual. They are commonplace in mainstream American society. To her, we’re the strange outliers, and she simply finds it baffling how we are trying to push our marginal beliefs onto everyone in the country.
Let me quote **ZPG **from the “polite things” thread:
Note “the accepted etiquette in a culture” and “many people don’t bother to do things the right way according to their own culture” (we here must seem like that to her).
Note: hundreds if not thousands of times in my life and rather normal.
Note: every social circle, and you guys here on the Dope and it really surprises me.
Doesn’t this, and other posts/threads by **ZPG **make a lot more sense, and come across much more benign, if we assume that she lives in a version of the USA where the majority culture is notably different from the one we’re living in, in our version?
I have seen **ZPG **been accused of trying to push her views onto others. I don’t think that’s fair. I think her posts only make sense if she lives in a world where her views, at least to a large extent, are already shared by the majority of others.
And now I’m super curious and eager to learn more about that world.