I have disagreed with Monstro in the past over a variety of issues but I think she’s got a valid complaint here. How far back does one need to go in their family history before a racial tie (however tenuous) is valid? Grand parent? Great grand parent?
To have this woman be classified as a gypsy when:
She has none of the characteristics which may identify her as a gypsy.
Has little or no exposure to gypsy culture.
There is practically no chance anyone would classify her as a gypsy.
She has a generations old ancestor that is gypsy.
Is ridiculous. Without question, IMHO, she shouldn’t be eligible for monetary aid which requires a minority status.
However, I can’t really say that I’m surprised. There will always be people who try to abuse systems (be they government, corporate, whatever). Whether it be a woman who cries abuse during a divorce proceeding in order to get their partner kicked out of the house, a man who takes advantage of a “good ol’boy” relationship to secure favors, or a poser who claims victim status in order to claim undeserved benefits they all involve unscrupulous individuals who either do not care about the consequences of their actions or are ignorant of them.
One last thing. Monstro, you said that if she is awarded financial aid based on her minority status that you would withdraw from your program. IMO this is a bad idea. Fight against the injustice if you so desire, register a complaint, or make the school newspaper aware of the situation… whatever. But don’t short change your own opportunities when you see this type of injustice. Otherwise you’ll be short changing yourself your entire life as unfair / unjust things happen ALL the time. Yes, yes, I’m Cynical with a capital C why do you ask?
I can hear my mother saying this exact thing. She would also say, “Why are you worried about what another person is doing?” And part of me would agree with her.
But I don’t know. Although I appreciate the NIH efforts, I don’t need their funding in order to keep up with my education. It’s not like without this fellowship, I would end up working at McDonald’s for the rest of my life. It’s not like the problems of the world will be solved just from me graduating with a Ph.D sponsered by the NIH.
So because it’s not necessary, I would feel guilty participating in the program if I knew all that they were interested in was filling up some kind of quota. I don’t want them to take an interest in me just because I’m not white. I want them to take an interest in me because they think maybe they can use me as a tool to get poor people or black people or whatever people interested in learning science, going to the doctor regularly, or being aware of environmental injustice. I want to help make science more aware of its impacts on society. I don’t just want to be another person “getting while the grabbing is good”. Because then I would really be no different than Miss Wannabe Minority.
You know, this kind of thing pisses me off, too. Not because I’m a minority, but because I’m one of those people who A.) At times felt like she could use a government grant/scholarship, B.) Has a few minority ancestors but C.) isn’t willing to use the fact that she’s related to them to mooch off the system.
I have a significant percentage (well, not all THAT significant, like 10% or whatever approximately 1/8th is) Native American ancestry (Cree, if anyone’s interested). I have an undetermined amount of Rom ancestry (no more than 25%, and probably a bit less than that…it’s hard on that side of the family, because just about anyone who knows anything is dead, and all those who aren’t are somewhere in the Balkans or Greece; we do know, however, that there were conflicting ethnicities reported between first cousins in the US when being a “gypsy” wasn’t a good thing). With a twist of the imagination, I can even claim Hispanic ancestry–my great-grandma was Spanish (as in both parents came from Spain). And let’s not even go into the whole French-Canadian, my-mom-couldn’t-even-walk-home-with-her-best-friend-in-grade-school-because-her-friend’s-mom-was-a-predjudiced-bitch thing.
Long story short, there are a few minorities I could conceivably claim. And I don’t. Why? 'Cause I am essentially a white girl raised in the Chicago 'burbs. And it pisses me off to see someone who is obviously not very in touch with her ancestry (it’s really not like she’s living in a caravan or going down to Rio to visit relatives) using it for her own monetary advantage. Sadly, though, I can understand why she did it. I’ve been tempted myself…
Concerning your first point: What are the characteristics that would identify her as Roma? Roma can have any hair/skin/eye colour, can be of any religion, can wear any type of clothing and can live anywhere - in any type of dwelling (the majority of the world’s Roma population live in houses, the fact that they don’t live in trailers or horse-drawn wagons doesn’t make them any less Roma)
Your second point is very valid though, She’s gonna have to display a strong knowledge of Roma culture if her claim is to hold water (or show damn good reason as to why she doesn’t).
I suppose every ethnic categorization comes down to this.
What the person considers himself/herself to be…not just on some whim but on a long term basis.
Whether most other persons in this designated group accept the person as ‘one of their own’. Of course some people might expect you to be a 100% full blooded whatever, while others will accept you as a landsman if you just know some obscure ethnic recipes and a folk song or two.
Whether the person is perceived by outsiders as a member of this group. This is iffy with lesser known groups given the general public’s ignorance on cultural geography or the relative obscurity of some groups. An Italian-American will probably be readily identified as such, but a Macedonian-American might get taken for just about everything else.
I’m sure someone will dispute this…anyway, as far as I know, its the only thing to go by. The lady in question just recently decided to fit the first criteria for a while, and the other two are doubtful.
(This girl must have watched the episode of “Norm”, where Norm McDonald rediscovers his ‘proud gypsy heritage’ just in time to keep his job by appealing to his boss as a ‘minority’ - I’m ashamed to admit I remember that show).
I live close to an army base in a border town. So many of the kids I grew up with - as well as myself (one of the few Dutch/German-Mexican guys with Lebanese cousins this side of Merida) - would be hard pressed to choose from one of the five or so EEOC categories.
I too am part Native American to a small degree; my great-grandmother was (I’m guessing) one quarter Algonquin, and was a medicine woman for a number of years. I too thought “Hmm, there’s scholarships I can get with that …”
Then I thought about the poverty-stricken conditions that many Native Americans face on reservations, and I decided that there are many many people with Native American ancestry that could use the money far more than some chick raised in a nice suburb of LA. It’s not that I am out of touch with my heritage, it’s just that I refuse to use it to get money that others need more than I do.
Monstro, while I respect your reasoning for possibly pulling out of the program, I would hope that someone of your obvious intellect would refuse to let a stupid system cause you to deny yourself anything that might be of benefit to you. You’ve most certainly survived more difficult situations. Because someone who is undeserving may succeed in manipulating the program shouldn’t mean that those who are deserving should jump ship. That said, it wouldn’t hurt for you to also make your opinion known, would it?
Hey, I used to be a smoker, they are a minority, can I get money too?
Seriously, monstro, I admire you. The woman is a jerk (and she’d probably be kicked off the SDMB, if she were a member). Being of the older persuasion, I am somewhat cynical, but I can see there are still people of integrity in this world.
Monstro’s response was so lame it’s not even worth a retort; but, perhaps, a grimace that anyone could actually come to those conclusions/assertions even with a functioning brain.
When writing my first point I wasn’t thinking specifically about Roma. I was thinking more along the lines of what it would take for a person to be classified as a minority (i.e. a black person in America would still be considered a minority by reason of their physical characteristics regardless of their familiarity (or lack thereof) with any culture). Therefore point 1 is applicable to certain minorities and not others (the Roma falling in the latter category). My apologies on a less than ideally expressed viewpoint.
Does this seem like Monstro is trying to paint this as a white person downplaying his “plight” as a minority? As long as minorities play into this whole “we’re poor helpless victims, and need to be coddled as such” (you may word it more positively if you like) then they will always be treated as such. I know a lot of black folk that are sick and tired of seeing other black folk playing into this whole thing. Like my friend who I shared an office with for a while, who gets made fun of by his peers in his hometown because he has a philosophy degree and a good job, he’s giving into the “white man”. While this may be reserved for the stupider element of a subgroup. The smarter finds out ways to get every institution to walk on their tippy toes when it regards their black heritage. I’m sorry to inform you bucko but Hispanics and Blacks were not the ONLY minorities to be stepped on. The Irish had a hell of a time at one point, and I am sure you would consider them “white” in fact what they went through at one point is definitely far worse than what you are going through now.
I grew up in New Mexico and I saw the Mexican MAJORITY all too often dictating policy as a minority voting block, so they got state funds as MINORITIES when in fact they were the majority. New Mexico is basically cut up in three groups Hispanic, Native American, Everyone Else. White people are poor just like black people, there are lot’s of white people who CANNOT afford to go to Rutgers, who went to school in poor areas of this country, like New Mexico and got a shoddy education. In fact, I think, accounting for the 45% drop out rate, of the remaining kids in my graduating class, I am one of the only people that actually left my hometown, let alone my home state. I hate to break it to you “minorities” but to the white people living in El Cerro Mission New Mexico (Little Juarez as it’s lovingly referred to.), they are no more socially advantaged than a person who comes from Harlem. In fact I see more of a chance for a black kid from Harlem. (I live next to harlem now)
So please, let’s end all this minority bullshit. while this girl is most likely full of shit, if she does have Roma heritage she qualifies as a minority far more than you do.
Speaking as one who has Roma heritage (in deference to Kal, I’ll try not to use the G-word here on SDMB anymore), I have to say “bullshit” to your “bullshit.”
I am white as rice. My father, who is a full-blooded Roma, is occasionally mistaken for Jewish, but only because of his hair. My grandfather called himself “The only gentile furrier in Chicago” (not on his business cards or anything, but still). No one bearing my last name has ever been discriminated against in America based on our ethnicity. There are, however, people who cannot say that, some of them Roma and many more of them not. For someone to claim their Roma descent so they can get a scholarship intended to redress discrimination is WRONG. For them to claim “I’m a minority, because one of my grandparents was Roma” is WRONG.
Yes, yes – everybody’s a minority somewhere, and everybody’s been oppressed by someone else. But let’s look beyond the word and see what the program that Monstro was talking about is intended to redress. Not the simple fact of “being a minority,” but the historical and not-so-historical discrimination in mainstream American society faced by those who fall into the classical American “minority” categories.
Nais tuke Stankow I know you tired of trying to get the whole Roma=Gypsy thing into people’s skulls - but this is the SDMB! We have a duty to fight ignorance.
I am a Great Canadian Mongrel. I have got Scottish, Irish, English, Korean, German, Jewish, and First Nations blood that I know of.
To look at, I am (as Kate Clinton would put it) a giant white person. (Actually, I’m mostly pink.) I know little about and do not typically associate myself with much of my blood heritage except when it’s relevant to my physical characteristics. I do not practice any particular ethnic culture except anglophone Canadian.
I have never been discriminated against on the basis of my race. To turn around and claim reparations and equilibrations that are made on the basis of oppression would be dishonest of me.
I have been discriminated against/harassed on the basis of my sexual orientation. I therefore take advantage of benefits that might be offered to me on that basis. But since I have the (unfair) advantage that race is not an issue for me (I am not “racialized,” as they say), I don’t go for any benefits that are trying to make up for it.
As I said, she doesn’t have Roma heritage. She has Roma “blood”. There is a difference, buddy.
Never once have I played the “more oppressed than thou” card (though I don’t know how you can say that Gypsies in the US are more of a minority than black Americans). Besides a few mean things that people have said me in the past, I have never been discrimated against or demeaned in the same way that my parents or my grandparents have. And I’m not into self-pity or victimization either. If I were, I doubt I would have gotten as far as I have.
But I do realize that I have been very lucky. Because I’ve been lucky, I feel a certain obligation to those who have been unlucky. The best victories are the ones you can share.
By taking this fellowship money, I unofficially agree to give back to my community somehow as an agent of science. Otherwise, the program is useless. I don’t think the girl in question views the program in the way it is intended to be viewed. She just sees this as a free lunch, not as something with much more noble, far-reaching goals. She thinks being a minority is like being in some special club that you can put on your CV, but at the end of the day you can sit back and smile because you’re still “white”. How wonderfully comfortable that must be.
New Mexico hasn’t had a Hispanic majority since around the turn of the last century…despite what many people there may think, the facts are otherwise. For that statement to be true, either you are very old -or your mindset is. And the last time I checked, NM had a decidedly white governor, an Italian-American senator and an Anglo-American senator…and all three congresspeople are non-Hispanic whites. Shit if New Mexico DID have a Hispanic majority, your claim that they somehow dominate the state would really be ridiculous in that light. In fact New Mexico and Arizona were not admitted as a states until 1912, decades after less populated states as Wyoming, North and South Dakota, Montana, and so on…you wanna know why?
I’m starting to think some people get double or triple vision when ‘race’ is involved, and cry “were outnumbered, they are wiping us outhi!” when the ratio gets down to 3/1 or 2/1.
Anyway, I’m not a defender of set-asides at all, but minority status is based on nationwide numbers not those for a particular state, county, or city anyway.
I was referring to the fact that Roma were very close to wiped out, whereas if African Americans are, then I don’t know where every second person I see on the street got their skin color from.
I think publically funded minority reparations are an evil. However, I am all for privately funded ones. But in that case you should be able to have a private fund for anything you want, even if that is “White Anglo Males with successful father’s and a penis size of at least 8 inches.”
I’d just like to point out that I never oppressed you, therefore my tax money shouldn’t be going to pay for your schooling based upon the fact that you were oppressed, or your parents were oppressed. (I don’t know what kind of fund she was trying to draw from however.) However I don’t have any problem with you receiving some of my tax money for being an exceptional scientist.
Something I don’t hear too often from the black community (just cuz I’m not hearing it doesn’t mean it’s not being said) is that there have been some REALLY major victories. I think that acknowledging that would be very productive.
I know you tired of trying to get the whole Roma=Gypsy thing into people’s skulls - but this is the SDMB! We have a duty to fight ignorance.