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Phlegmish posted:Chicken, egg. A lot of the hostility that exists towards the Roma community stems from the fact that many of them do have a rather insular, ethnocentric mentality. As a general rule, they have little interest in becoming 'functioning, happy members' of whatever host society they happen to live in - which is of course the entire reason that they've managed to survive as a distinct group over the centuries. The idea that the problem is purely due to discrimination is fairly nonsensical, since many Western Europeans had the exact same attitude that you do when Roma people first started immigrating to Western Europe in the nineties and early 2000's. As a western european I see your point and agree that just claiming "pswah, bigotry" oversimplifies the issue and ignores the problem altogether. I'd like to point out that most hatred expressed towards this collective actually goes towards those extremely ethnocentric groups he mentioned that explicitly say that don't acknowledge any law other than their own. Usually nobody has a problem with a romany per se (they comprise a big porcentage of the population in Andalusia, where I come from, and in fact, unless you're good recognizing facial patterns you'll have a hard time distinguishing a romany from most mediterranean "whites"), so it's not about hating a group of people for what they are but for what they do. The authorities' stance on the matter doesn't help improving the relations either. I usually hear stories about how abusive America's police is towards minorities, in this case is the complete opposite, unless a serious crime is involved, authorities are usually passive to their felonies since they know there's no point (their income is normally undeclared so from the state's perspective they can't pay fines), so seeing them getting away with no consequences just adds more fuel to the conflict. What I really mean is that, although I and most people know discrimination is awful and they have suffered a lot during history I'd be lying if I said I didn't understand how an otherwise decent person might not have a liking for certain groups.
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Aug 7, 2013 10:44
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