I forgot the name of that oppressed group in Spain and France. Famously, they speak the local language, practice the local religion and are loyal to the local governments. Despite this, they have been discriminated against for centuries, just for being part of this group.
They were liberated (or whatever) by the French Revolution and decrees by various Popes. The group still exists.
There is a Wikipedia page on them and everything. I read it and then I forgot the name of the group.
Weird, they were discriminated against because they simply belonged to a certain family line?
If you spoke the same language, acted according to the same customs and practiced the same religion as your neighbours, but your great-great-great grandfather was a Cagot, that was you scundered?
Some similarities, but the OP says “they speak the local language.” Also that they were “loyal to the local governments,” while especially the Spanish Basques had a significant independence movement.
Absolutely 100%. People in poor conditions feel much better when there is a class of people considered worse than them. It doesn’t matter if the reason they are considered worse makes any sense or not - so long as the entire community agrees that they should be discriminated against. The fact that there is no obvious way to group them other than the fact that they are the ones discriminated against isn’t all that hard to explain - it’s the same as the caste system in India I’d say. People knew who belonged to which “caste”, and you couldn’t marry outside of it, and were restricted by profession, so it was easy to keep track of down the generations.
Would love to see what DNA testing would show for them. Perhaps the living people are little better mixed, but presumably centuries ago the dead were buried separately from the bigots so maybe some telling DNA there.
Maybe they are genetically the same as their neighbors as well.
