So what, Communists and Jews were also victims of the holocaust, that does not give a free pass to those who colonize West-Bank or to Kim Jong-Il.
It gave Jews the right to Israel. Communists are in no danger.
Bub, from the little bit of research I have now done, the situation in different countries may be different. For example in the UK as well as Roma we have our own historical travelling people from Ireland and Scotland. How we deal with this may vary from country to country but what seems to be endemic is an unrealistic or possibly uneducated dislike of them.
You remember I said my mother told me there were no gypsies any more. Well apparently that was one of the beliefs here. It appears that in the UK the situation of travellers has been extremely ignored, partly caused by their history being only oral. Because of this we had the concept of the 'romantic gypsy' the one I heard of as a child and wanted to become and then all the stereotypes which came from people not fitting into this romantic stereotype.
Here is a few notes I have taken
Yet, the stereotypes governing how 'true' Gypsies were meant to behave remained fossilised in tightly-bound and largely artificially-constructed norms stemming from the late-nineteenth century. Given the growing lack of personal contact between majority society and Travellers, and the fact that they no longer conformed to 'romanticised' stereotypes of Gypsies (who might have a right to travel), Travellers were seen as having no right to a nomadic lifestyle. Rather, they were (and are) depicted as social failures, who had a duty to settle down and become integrated.
-ship
So, in contrast to Germany in the first four decades of the twentieth century, the British state specifically did not collect information on Travellers as a group - during the wars, for example, they were issued with the same type of ration cards as travelling salesmen, and no records were kept of their enlistment into the armed forces.
-snip
It is also crucial to disentangle the rhetoric and practice of different levels of the state. Crudely we can argue that the further from 'the ground' the level of the state (European Union, central government), the less negative the attitude towards Travellers and the less likely the body is to promote negative policies. Conversely, the closer to the ground - most typically parish and district councils - the more prejudiced and anti-Traveller the body is likely to be. This suggests that, structurally at least, central government was (and remains) well-placed to resist repressive measures towards Travellers. Yet, this position has been consistently undermined by two factors.
-snip
Layered on to this was the near universal personal prejudice of the civil servants themselves, for as one confessed: 'I have the normal Englishman's dislike of the Gypsy'
-snip
that is meaning that no Travellers were able to stop outside of the official sites. Where official sites were given permission, then almost without exception they were located in the most marginalised and stigmatised spaces available - next to motorways, sewage works, land fill sites - far from residential areas. All of these factors were signals of the unwillingness of councils to expend resources on people who they perceived (and often continue to perceive) to be 'non-citizens'.
Stereotypes and the state: Britain's travellers past and present, by Becky Taylor</p>
We have made some progress since then see 'causes of hope' at the end of the article. but we still have a long way to go and the biggest problem appears to be ingrained prejudice.
First, I have absolutely no hatred towards them. Maybe some prejudice, but nothing more.
I believe you but prejudice is not looking at the situation in a balnced way. It is prejudiced. If someone like yourself is prejudiced, then it concerns me what other people will be like in their prejudice. When a society gets together in it's prejudice against a particular group, it tends to end in unpleasant things and while I would not expect you to be involved in that, nonetheless it is reality.
Did you watch the video? If you don't believe me, watch again and count the cars, then explain me how nomad people who do not have stable jobs could possibly pay for such cars.
I watched the video but, sorry Paris, being a brit I do not speak french so could not understand it. I know nothing about cars and they just looked like cars and vans to me.
I cannot speak about one isolated occurrence which I know nothing about. What I would say is that the high life is not the general life of travelling people. I believe that whatever is on that video is an isolated occurrence, or wrongly depicted, to try and promote prejudice.
It took them one month to figure out that they should ask the owner of the fields first. Imagine that you own a field, and one morning when you wake up you see 250 caravans on it! Is that going to make you love them?
Of course not. That is why I believe all countries need to provide adequate decent camping facilities. Look at the end of my quote at how we in the UK, when we were providing camp sites, provided them in the most disgusting environments.
I'm not saying there should be a special treatment towards them, I'm just saying we should apply our laws to them, just like we apply them to everyone. If you don't work and drive a porsche, it's suspect. If you squat a private property, it's illegal.
Well I have no reason to believe that gypsies are not subject to the same laws as everyone else in the UK. Interestingly in England it certainly used to be legal to squat - I don't know if this has changed - though having said that camping on people's fields would probably get into trouble with the no tresspass laws.
What I am saying though Bub is that you are taking one situation and making it into a stereotype. Possibly unlike ourselves you have no gypsies who are citizens. If you do have gypsies who are citizens then it makes sense to start addressing their needs rather than building up more stereotypes and prejudice in the general population.
In this country the ethnic status of Roma and Irish gypsies, but not Scottish ones, has been legally accepted, that is a step in the right direction. Central funding has also been given to local authorities to provide decent sites for them, that also is a step in the right direction. We still have further to go.
Read the article I provided. It illustrates that by not having a history, by any understanding of gypsies just being written by amateurs and usually romantic amateurs we have little understanding of their history. When they have not lived up to the romantic descriptions, equally unrealistic negative stereotypes and prejudice have taken their place.
