Stolipinovo is one of several European Roma communities that I have visited over the years (several times now), and it's the largest that I'm aware of. The photos in the post are representative and true of how the area actually is, and I'm happy to answer any questions (forewarning, I'm not an expert).
If I were to emphasize any one take-away - it's the friendliness I experienced from the locals. Sounds cliched, but look at reality - I was taking photos in a place where I don't particularly belong (it's kind of my hobby since "retiring" from tech), and you may assume that a poverty-stricken, much maligned group of people would be wary of "outsiders".
Indeed, the exact opposite was the case.
edit: with regards to racism, a story I was told in the same city is perhaps the best example of just how far Bulgaria (in this example) has to climb. I asked a local Bulgarian friend why I didn't see Roma working at the local restaurants. He said that would be really bad for the business - to have a Gypsy waiter, or cashier, or in any "public facing" role. I voiced my assumption that perhaps they were working back-of-house, in the kitchen. He said they weren't - if the public found out a Gypsy was working in the kitchen, most people would never dine at that restaurant.
Incredible photos and a great story. Thanks for putting this together. People forget all too easily how everyone in this world is trying to live their best life with the resources they have. That becomes exponentially more difficult when someone treats you as less of a person for whatever delusional reasons they rationalize in their minds.
Thank you for your article. I now know more than about my country than before. We have similar ghetto in my home city Burgas, but due to my grand-father working in the area, and my mom too - never felt that much threatened.
Although at the NGO level activists claim that "Roma" should be used instead of "gypsy", it is very common when talking to Balkan Roma to be corrected by them: “Don’t call us Roma, we’re <locally used exonym equivalent to ‘gypsies’>". Obviously their own endonym is Rom, plural Roma, but they sometimes bristle at outsiders using it.
I have the impression those being better off, with (somewhat) higher social status, education being better connected to the majority population find "Gypsy" to be derogatory.
But once I met a poor family referring to themselves this way, so a bit perplexed and curious I rather asked them directly if they consider themselves being Roma or Gypsy... only to get an ambiguous answer.
In Brazil (which has a sizeable Romani population, and had two Romani presidents), the direct translation of this, "Cigano", is still the one officially used.
It depends. Sometimes, older people will call themselves "Gypsy" and may even correct you if you call them "Roma". But younger people have been taught that "Gypsy" is an offense, so they will get offended if you use the word.
It’s complicated. Ultimately it’s rude to refer to anyone by their skin colour, ethnicity or racial “group”. There are almost no situations where it’s appropriate.
As a long-time "hobby" photographer of street and neighborhood life in certain parts of Mexico, I'm curious, how did you build rapport with the locals for the sake of your photography, and that friendly acceptance. I'd love to hear any advice or observations you have.
Of course, but were you frequently asked why you were taking photos? In your case, what explanation would you give? Wonderful shots by the way, and thank you for your reply.
Thanks for the compliment! Yes, I was asked several times that day what I was doing. My explanation was "I'm just taking photos". Lame, but it works if you show a little smile.
I want to echo what chimen said, with a bit of nuance. There is discrimination, real and pretty strong. But on the other hand it's rational to discriminate - if a group of traditionally dressed roma is entering a shop, you'd better bet the security guard will follow their every step without even bothering to be subtle, and that he's doing this from experience. And walking around in roma neighborhoods as a foreigner is a _very_ chancy activity. Nobody local will even cry for you if you get robbed.
The main reason for this state of affairs is roma's traditional reliance on internal law and complete disregard for outsiders and their laws. Coupled with this is a tendency to just not apply morality to whatever you do to outsiders. This makes it very very hard to change their ways from outside - even 40 years of communism barely made a dent. Best strategy I know of is to make sure each individual has full protection of the host nation's laws and support mechanisms, and that they know it. This makes it possible for them to disregard internal laws with less fear of being ostracized. It's a slow strategy, but I know of none quicker.
And to end on a brighter note, in the next elections I'll be voting for an independent, who is the newest rising star of local politics. He's a gypsy.
The first thing that stands out to me is the choice of the word "gypsy". While many Roma are perfectly fine with it and even use it themselves, there are also many who find the word offensive and it has historically been used as a racial slur. Why not drop the word alltogether and fall back to the (at least to my understanding) neutral "roma"?
Since you sounds honest and not sarcastic, may I take this opportunity to ask you what mechanism do you believe will help improving the actual situation once the word have been successfully changed (assuming for the sake of discussion that the word can be effectively changed) ?
I have always been intrigued by the power of words.
Racism is not that obviously immoral behavior depicted in Disney movies when ugly people misjudge good people for frivolous reasons. Racism is when a group of people consider another group as inferior / less worthy for some reason conflated with their biology or culture (of which most often than not very little is actually known). Racism is exactly the thoughts you have just expressed.
Upvoted for your honest contribution that sheds some light on what's racism in 2020's Europe, despite it makes me sad how easily one still associate the conduct of some members of a minority that's discriminated against with the genuine culture of that community.
Sorry, no; racism is just about biology, by definition. Culture is not race.
Discrimination based on culture has other terms like xenophobia.
Discriminating against some culture may be justified. For instance, to some extent it is justified to discriminate against a culture that tolerates theft and vandalism.
If you assume that someone with a certain physical appearance automatically belongs some specific culture, and then discriminate against them based on that assumption, that is then racism.
The discriminating against that culture per se isn't racism, and not even necessarily wrong; it depends on the culture.
> Sorry, no; racism is just about biology, by definition. Culture is not race.
Unfortunately, some people have redefined "racism" to mean dislike of anything related to another ethnic group. Biology, culture, religion, whatever.
I agree with you here. Blaming the culture is the opposite of blaming the biology. But the meaning of "racism" has expanded from "blaming biology" to, well, "noticing anything negative about anything". The only non-racist behavior is to say the differences don't exist at all, or blaming them 100% on oppression.
If Bulgaria and Romania are racist, we beg you, please, take home our gypsies and treat them with respect. They've been integrating into Europe since the 15th century with no measurable success. The Communists tried that hard, too; they gave them free housing, many privileges like they could get into any university without exams. Yet, it would help if you watched documentaries of what they turned those apartment buildings into - the whole complex had to be destroyed as it was inhabitable.
Again and again, a "gypsy" is not a matter of race or ethnicity as there are many well-integrated gypsies who distance themselves from the other gypsies, nobody calls them or considers them to be gypsies - being a gypsy is a matter of social irresponsibility, not following any laws, and having crime (mostly theft) as heritage.
If you look into recent genetic studies, gypsies are descendants from the untouchables caste in India. The same thing they do in Bulgaria and Romania, they've been doing in India, and that's why they were persecuted and moved from Asia to Europe. They were not a different race back in India!
The problem is this "heritage." Not all heritage should be cherished and preserved. As an extreme example, I will give you cannibalism.
Gypsies teach their kids to pickpocket at an early age. It's not considered immoral. In fact, in gypsy culture, theft is only when you take away gold or silver. It's not only a way to make a living for them, but they also consider it an intellectual challenge - how to outsmart people.
Another gypsy heritage is the bride marketplace. Women in the 21st century are sold like cattle. There are tons of documentaries on the subject. Should this heritage be preserved and celebrated, too?
So, let's stop calling Bulgarians and Romanians racists! We're not. It's been 500 years already, and gypsies have killed more Bulgarians and Romanians than Bulgarians and Romanians have killed gypsies. Yes, often older people in the villages are getting tortured and killed over 5 euros.
I can speak about Bulgaria, which has been a multicultural country way before many new Western democracies. We've welcomed thousands and thousands of Armenian refugees; we live in peace with Bulgarian Turks. We have many Jews - we saved all our Jews during WWII even if we were allies of Germany. We have Russians, Greek, Italians, Macedonians, and Serbians living in Bulgaria. During Communism, many Libyans, Lebanese, and Syrians came to study in Bulgaria, get married and stayed. I can't recall any racism and ethnicism against any of them - there's a different attitude only toward gypsies!
Regarding the pocket-picking - I had a currency exchange business on the main street, and I've witnessed in the past many gypsy troupes "working" tourists. Of course, they wouldn't try to pickpocket from Bulgarians as when they see a gypsy, everybody grabs their bags and protects their belongings. With Bulgaria and Romania joining the EU, these troupes are now all over Europe. Back to when I had that business - often gypsies were coming to me offering me 20% of what they steal if I let them "work" in the store!
And, please, let's not victimize them and point fingers at Bulgarians and Romanians - they are victims but of their own "cultural" heritage! The change can only change if kids are not allowed to be "trained" into being a "gypsy" (the social behavior) by their parents! I don't get why "racist heritage" could be bashed, but "theft heritage" cannot be!
First of all, I'm not calling Bulgarians and Romanians racists. I'm calling _you_ racist.
Secondly, I've tried my best not to bash you nor your countrymen. And I do not even disagree with many things you have said: indeed, some gypsies consider it fair game to steal from tourists, some have no respect for property, etc. Sure. The same could be said of many other discriminated minorities, and I'm pretty sure we've all heard and read the exact same complains that $Xs are just thieves, cannot be educated, will never give away their long heritage of misbehaviour, etc, etc, where $X is the minority of the day and place.
The discriminated minority varies, but what does not vary is the false generalisation ("all $X are thieves"), the scapegoating ("$Xs are why the economy is bad"), and the reassuring feeling of superiority ("we have been nice to $Xs to no avail yet they were never nice to us"). This is exactly what racism is all about in my views.
Listen, I'm not calling you a bad person for that. I totally understand that when pockets of poverty and antisocial behaviour do exist in one's country then one is upset about it. Just be aware that no minority is inherently bad; minorities have their own dynamic that depends upon many things (on top of which: having to live in a ghetto), but not upon the inner biology/heritage/wtv of any individuals. Do not delude yourself into thinking you would behave any different were you born in the same circumstances, into the same ghetto, etc.
I do not know what have the previous regimes tried to end the discrimination and integrate gypsies, and I'm sad if that has failed. I'm certain though that ghettos are not improving anyone's situation, be it in Bulgaria or in France.
Let's always try to think about the problem practically, to look for solutions/improvements not to look for revenge.
I don't care what _you_ call me because that's your personal disoriented _opinion_ and nothing more. Unlike you, I did propose solutions that will work. By calling people racists, you solve no problems - the solution is to root out the reasons for profiling, and this is very much what MLM said about the ghettos in America, too! Most of the issues need to be solved from inside first - you cannot expect people to tolerate systematic and widespread unlawful behavior because some Westerners are victimizing them without bothering to look into the centuries of goodwill efforts! Compare the level of hate crime in Bulgaria to some Democracies in Europe! Yes, we may be pretty blunt about what we don't like about the majority of that minority is doing (yes, this are not empty words, there's a lot of statistics although much of it's not reported because in Bulgaria a theft is considered if something is worth at least a minimum wage and also many Bulgarians don't report these, because they know nothing will be done anyway and that later the criminals will terrorize them much more). I have two relatives who died directly from gypsy terror! They kept terrorizing my grandmother daily and my father later, too, stealing everything, breaking daily in their homes when they were out, and so on. At night, they were attacking my grandmother's house, and she died from a heart attack from this terror, as they kept vandalizing her home, trying to steal everything they can find use in them or sell them for change. It's easy to judge others when you don't have to experience this daily - from the comfort of your home here. I am not saying gypsies are bad people or that all are thieves - not sure where you draw that conclusion from, but that they are allowed to commit crimes, they always claim they are being discriminated against, they regularly attack the couple policemen in small villages and towns, and, yes, they are victims, but victims of their own heritage. Before we talk about human rights, we need to talk about laws and responsibilities as rights build upon a social contract foundation. The liberal view that everybody is a victim, so they are not responsible for what they do simply does not work. And that's why in Italy and France, there are double standards, and gypsies are treated differently, too! So, again, given gypsies are not a racial issue, as Indians live in Bulgaria and nobody profiles them although morphologically their look similarly and belong to the same race - it's the "culture" that people cannot accept and be silent about! If we can live well with Turks, who for 500 years were killing us and terrorizing us under the Ottoman Yoke, why do you think we are so loud about the gypsies? It's because Turks, Armenians, Jews, Russian obey the social contract, and gypsies don't! Although you called me _racist_, I'm working to help greatly a project [0], which is the only solution, and multiple Western organizations back it. It's very much aligned with my vision on how to solve this problem. If you want to learn about it and not just talk empty words, go check it out!
P.S. I forgot to mention that some Protestant churches got into the ghettos, and they educated the gypsies about theft being a bad thing. They are hugely successful, too. So, again, this is another proof that the negative heritage should be rooted out. There's a lot of negative heritage in Bulgaria, also! For example, some pagan rituals, which predate Christianity, such as dog spinning [1]. Should we keep it, because it's heritage! Of course, not!
Slaves of Bulgarians or slaves of the Ottomans? Because Bulgarians were Ottoman slaves, too! In fact, gypsies came to Bulgaria through the Ottoman Empire. And I cannot talk about Western Europe and how it treated gypsies as I've never studies it; I can only talk about Bulgaria and we never had slavery, so, can we quite extending Western guilts to Bulgaria?
> The reason they don't get hired is because it is always a gamble doing that.
So if you don't let them make an honest living, how the hell will they survive?? You claim they're all thieves and they don't want to be integrated, so you deny them any job prospects. And then you turn around and wonder why they steal!! How else will they feed their families or afford the basic necessities, man?
I'm not saying they're all honest people; but if the honest ones are not given a chance, they will have to resort to dishonest means.
It takes 2 to tango. You need both sides to make compromises.
This whole episode reminds me of how blacks were treated in America. Were it not for WW2, I wonder what the situation of blacks would be like in the USA.
There's no comparison to how blacks were treated in America, we are not barbarians. There's no colored bathrooms and stuff like that.
They have all the legal right as any citizen to own propert, start companies, hire others, etc. Further more there a lot of positive discrimination by guaranteeing them seats in Universities, etc.
> There's no comparison to how blacks were treated in America, we are not barbarians.
According to Wikipedia[1] (as I have no other sources at hand) gypsies have been slaves in Romania for most of the period since the Romanian Principalities' inception in the 13th, 14th century until 1864. I think 400+ years of indentured servitude and slavery paints Romania as quite barbaric. You should probably reconsider your biases.
> There's no comparison to how blacks were treated in America, we are not barbarians. There's no colored bathrooms and stuff like that.
At least in America now there are laws specifically disallowing discrimination against blacks and minorities. But it appears in Romania and the rest of Eastern Europe there is still widespread discrimination against the Roma. Looks pretty barbaric to me!
> > There's no comparison to how blacks were treated in America, we are not barbarians. There's no colored bathrooms and stuff like that.
> At least in America now there are laws specifically disallowing discrimination against blacks and minorities. But it appears in Romania and the rest of Eastern Europe there is still widespread discrimination against the Roma. Looks pretty barbaric to me!
You are comparing laws on the books on one place with practice in another.
There is widespread discrimination against blacks in the US, despite the existence of laws prohibiting it. To the point that white supremacists have expressed confidence that local police throughout the country will stand aside for them to commit murder against blacks and/or people seeking accountability for crimes against blacks without any need for direct coordination or specific inside coconspirators, and those sentiments have been validated.
Plus, GP didn't offer a comparison to current treatment of blacks in America, but basically to treatment before the mid-20th century civil rights movement, when there were not such laws. When someone does that to reject that their treatment of someone else is barbaric, you don't need to shift the ground and try to do an apples to oranges comparison to something else, you can just say that the bar they have set is too low to reject the characterization of barbarism even if taken as true.
> There's no comparison to how blacks were treated in America, we are not barbarians.
They've literally been genocided with few Europeans actually caring at the end of the day (the holocaust killed almost a third of them). They're arguably treated worse than blacks in America.
The way Roma are and have been treated is pretty much definition barbaric.
I hired three of them to build me a fence last year - following an online ad that they had, we talked on the phone and settled for the next day. Good for me that I have cameras in my yard because they jumped me to pay double at the end of the job quoting some bs numbers that we didn't discuss. 4 of them getting in my face at night. I already knew how it is going to go down from the moment I saw that the car of workers is made entirely of gypsies so I had someone recording and ready to call the cops. Nice tango there. I hope you don't get to dance it. As I said, it's easy to speak from the side when you don't know the situation - everyone seems to have an opinion but completely disregards what an entire nation thinks.
As a fellow Bulgarian here, I think that you're wasting your time trying to explain the situation to people from distant countries who haven't experienced the same first hand.
It's always cute to see and read how from their high horse, westeners point fingers at us for being racist and what not when they have no idea what it is like to live near or have to deal with gipsies for all kinds of matters.
In the village where I live, we have neighbors from the UK, Germany, France and even the US. When they moved here at first, they were being exactly the same as the poster that you're replying to. Criticizing the locals for being racist and not giving poor gipsies a chance to prove their virtues to society. Well, guess what, a couple of years later, those foreigners that had moved here from the West now behave in more racist ways that us mere locals. I guess the minority in question has succeeded beautifully to prove their "virtues" to the naive people from the West. ;)
Saying they "they steal or avoid work whenever possible" is that demonstrably a (racist) lie?
When so many people have the "belief" that Gypsy/Roma steal because that's just what they do, it's nice to see in reality this is simply not true. Counterpoint provided by EVN, the Austrian electrical company who provides services to Stolipinovo:
"As a result of the project, the average monthly payment rate for (Stolipinovo) electricity customers rose from 3% to 85%. At the same time, network losses from the low voltage power grid were reduced from 40% to 5%."
also I feel that its worth noting that "avoiding work whenever possible" isn't something you can ascribe to just one group of people. Most people don't love working, which makes it easy to pin it on a specific type of people but you can see it in really anyone. And it can be caused by a lot of external factors, being tired because you don't go home to a place you can feel safe and rest, being consistently shit on because of your culture, not having a great upbringing, being sick, and sometimes some people just cant set their minds to a task the same as others. Things like this can be helped by having a stable job and being treated the same as other people around you.
> We are talking about a community of people that appears in Europe in the 9th century and they keep their cultural identity ever since
Well, let's not forget that gypsies have been slaves for most of their existence in Romania and it's been less than 200 years since slavery has been abolished and they've been freed. Most Romanians conveniently forget this part when justifying their racism.
You make 0 sense stop babling with your slavery "Wikipedia" quotes. Life is not Wikipedia - we don't have slaves here. We're in 2020 nobody here cares about what happened 100 years ago more than for historic reference. We also slaved for the Ottomans during the same periods that you're quoting but you don't see me going into their country to do what they do here, in Austria, Spain, Italy or somewhere else.
Leave Wikipedia alone, come visit Bucharest, sit at the central train station for an hour and I'll show you 9th century "cultural identity" my friend.
> We're in 2020 nobody here cares about what happened 100 years ago
correction: you don't care about what happened 100 years ago. You don't care because it doesn't affect you. 100 years ago isn't very long ago at all, and the economic consequences can still effect people. The difference for people who's grandparents or great grandparents were able to work normally and provide for their children and the people who's grandparents or great grandparents who were slaves.
Germany rebuilt itself 2 times from the ground up in the last 100 years. These ones can barely finish 4 years in school here and they receive special treatment for doing so anyways. Most of them are in there for the monthly help from the state. My parents were unable to provide me with anything and I still managed to finish my school. They provided education and that is enough sometimes. The right kind of education. These are not oppressed people that live in poor conditions:
Last phrase says this: "France, Germany and Italy won't give up and continue to supply Romania with money in order to try harder to integrate gypsies and keep them HOME" - they had enough of them also.
We know better - I'm not one to discriminate but these are facts. I tried, we tried, you lot do whatever you can to keep them here, at home, in order to avoid having them in Paris, London or Frankfurt but...pointing please refrain from pointing fingers at us.
We haven't tried hard enough my dude. If you trust the Eastern European governments to do (or to have done) an honest attempt at integrating gypsies, I think you're very naive.
As a piece of anecdata that I have, a very close friend that was doing a master's degree at the Sociology University in Bucharest mentioned that the literacy in gypsy communities was raised in the early years of the 2000nds due to the "Cornul si Laptele" program. The program that most of the country derided. Poor families started to send their children to school instead of keeping them home because they received a modicum of food and lessened the burden on their parents.
I'm not a local, but wouldn't eat at a restaurant if it was staffed by people from that specific neighborhood documented in the submitted web page. That's regardless of their ethnic background: they could be milk-white Bulgarians.
I would expect them to show up in dirty clothes, and not having bathed in months, and neglect to follow basic hygiene like washing their hands. They would likely perpetrate actions like tasting food and putting the same utensil back into the pot, completely lacking the inhibition of refraining from doing whatever comes naturally.
I have quite a few European friends on social media and they always seem perplexed whenever racial tensions flare up in the USA. Some even have openly asked "why do Americans find it so hard not to be racist? It's not that hard."
I always respond by pointing out that the citizens of almost every country are naturally xenophobic and/or racist, just not necessarily against people of African descent. In the case of Europe, I usually point to the Roma as an area where Europeans tend to be a bit racist. I had no idea there were huge Roma ghettos in Bulgaria, but I knew of some Roma communities when I lived in Rome, Italy. And without fail, countless Italians warned me to steer clear of the Roma because "they are all liars and thieves"...
"I always respond by pointing out that the citizens of almost every country are naturally xenophobic and/or racist, just not necessarily against people of African descent. In the case of Europe, I usually point to the Roma ..."
I think Roma are the least interesting example of this.
In 2020 I had the pleasure of reading the Nobel Laureate Sigrid Undset's Magnum Opus _Kristin Lavransdatter_.
For those that don't know, _Kristin Lavransdatter_ is the Norwegian _Anna Karenina_ ... but longer. Recommended.
In the book, among other things, it describes that Norwegians in the fourteenth century thought that Finnish people were basically sub-humans. They were treated like animals and could be killed (!) without legal ramification.
Let that sink in for a bit ...
Blonde-haired, blue-eyed Handt Hanson considered Blonde-haired, blue-eyed Eli Halla to not even be a human being.
I think there may be some deep conclusions to make about the nature of division and difference in human societies. Could it be that there will never not be an out-group ?
I know exactly what you mean, I'm european and it bothers me too.
From my perspective the United States is amazing because a lot of "white" people who stick together are actually from different parts of Europe who might not have always been fond of each other.
This is all conjecture but as a european I feel like I can easier spot where a european is from based on their appearance, while white americans don't see that in each other.
Similarly black americans are from wildly different parts of Africa who might have been at war during some time. But in the US they're all black americans.
I find this very fascinating, which shows how much more divided we are here and definitely prejudiced.
It is similar for a lot of Asian populations as well. I think it is mostly just due to how much exposure you have had to the various populations where you can notice the small differences that tend to make a group distinct. Most Americans do not interact with enough European sub-groups to distinguish between them, while most Europeans I have run into tend to lump east Asians into a single group while I can easily distinguish between London tourists who are Chinese, Korean, and Japanese just from having spent a couple of decades on the west coast of the US. When you are surrounded by different groups you tend to pick up on the subtle clues.
Yes, exactly. I can usually distinguish between Japanese/Chinese/Korean just by realizing there are differences and noticing, but most other people just think "Asian" (or, even worse in my country, "Chinese").
> I can usually distinguish between Japanese/Chinese/Korean just by realizing there are differences and noticing, but most other people just think "Asian" (or, even worse in my country, "Chinese").
Compare the advice a Chinese teacher in Shanghai gave my class when someone asked about telling whether someone was Japanese or Chinese: "It's easy. Japanese people wear much nicer clothes."
I agree that many Europeans are racist towards Roma and the other gypsy peoples. Much of what they say will be pure nonsense (e.g., they are stupid, not fit for work, etc), but other common statements you might hear also have some truth to them. For example, "they all steal" is of course a gross simplification, as many Roma are well integrated and live a regular life. However, if you are surrounded by a group of people clearly discernible as gypsies (women in long robes, etc) there is a high likelihood you're in trouble.
It's more than a bit. It's institutionalised and pervasive racism.
One big difference from the US is that Eastern-Europeans don't even acknowledge there is any racism against gypsies so it's not even part of the public discourse. Much like how fish don't realise they're surrounded by water, so do Eastern Europeans not acknowledge that they live in a racist society. The tensions flaring up in the US are partly caused by the fact that the opressed category is trying to get equal footing in society. If gypsies were to start talking about how they should be treated equally, you can bet there would be a backlash from a big part of society.
For comparison, look at how the US treated race relations 100 years ago. (To be clear, I'm not saying Eastern-European countries are backwards or more primitive just because they can be compared to the US in the past; it's just a helpful way to understand the context.)
Source: I'm originally from an Eastern European country and only realised the racism in Eastern Europe once I lived abroad for multiple years and drew parallels with the highly mediatised US racial tensions.
I think people always acknowledged it, but it's just that the majority was okay with it. Here's what the opposition said about the Czechoslovak law number 117 from 1927 that created a "gypsy ID card" for everyone older than 14 (ID with all the fingerprints, photo, list of kin, etc):
"We are not satisfied with the fact that one nation keeps the remnants of another from birth to death under police surveillance, we know that the vast majority of the oppressed nation is innocent and irresponsible for the actions of their anti-social minority, whose actions are justified by the current social order ... that mud would be slung on the rest of the nomadic nation and that it be made lawless in such a way that all human rights, which, even according to this constitution, belong to every human being, are taken away from this nation only because its members are dark-skinned. "
> I'm originally from an Eastern European country and only realised the racism in Eastern Europe once I lived abroad for multiple years and drew parallels with the highly mediatised US racial tensions.
I've been having exactly(!) the same "only after I lived abroad" experience.
Let's be honest, 90% of E. European were oppressed/repressed themselves. Unless you were in the 5% communist party elite, your life under communism was full of oppression everywhere.
'Race Relation' are a luxury of wealthier western countries. When you are struggling for food/heat/shelter yourself, it is hard to worry about other's problems.
I think it will take at least one more generation for things to slowly change.
Came here expecting to find this, because THIS is in fact what happens in every online discussion of Roma I see, not some other "pure nonsense", but just this.
In America, if people say "The things people say about Black people are a gross simplification HOWEVER", it's usually something really racist that's about to follow. Say, "Sure many Black people are fine, but if you find yourself surrounded by Black people in the Inner City, you are in danger." I mean, I dunno.
The reality is that people are not wrong when they act as if Black people in the U.S. are more likely to commit violent crimes. Black people are ~20% of the population, but commit ~55% of the murders, making for a per capita murder offense rate among Black Americans that is ~5x (yes, 500%) of the rate for the remainder.
That said, people pay way too much attention to murder and violent crime in public discourse and in their private lives for the most part. Sure, Black people may murder at 5x the rate of non-Black people, but murder is really, really rare. What about we worry about, I dunno, diabetes? Education? Population growth? Climate change?
Being surrounded by any one group in a foreign place could be a bit alarming, whether these are Roma in Bulgaria, Blacks in inner cities, or Whites in some rural town, or Arabs in Marseille.
Travellers could also be considered gypsies. They are mainly in Ireland and England and are regarded similarly.
Part of the problem is that a nomadic lifestyle just doesn't gel with modern society so they don't integrate at all. For the same reason it's hard for these people to find work and a subset do often turn to crime.
Culturally they also have very conservative and often misogynistic views which acts as another barrier to integration.
In ways it is similar to the issues with Islamic migrants integrating into European society. It's too simplistic to just label it as racism and be done with it (not to say there isn't racism). There are real issues.
Interestingly, English and Irish travelers are unrelated to mainland gypsies: they are mostly of the same ancestry as regular English and Irish, they just live different lifestyle on the edge of society. On the other hand, most mainland gypsies are actually their own ethnicity with their own separate genetic ancestry.
My "shallow" understanding is that "gypsy" seemed to be related to "egyptian", because of their looks. Others point to 13th-14th century ottoman invasion bringing troops from South Asia that were forced to move out from there, and used them as supporting troops later settling in Europe.
Hell if I know. I'm bulgarian, and you can imagine how this was portrayed to me, by parents, school, friends, etc. This article actually opened my eyes. Not that I didn't know how it looked, but how would it feel...
> I have quite a few European friends on social media and they always seem perplexed whenever racial tensions flare up in the USA. Some even have openly asked "why do Americans find it so hard not to be racist? It's not that hard." ... And without fail, countless Italians warned me to steer clear of the Roma because "they are all liars and thieves"...
Many of the replies to your comment are from Europeans defending their prejudice likewise as "oh but you don't understand, in Europe it's different because you may be surrounded by a gang of people that are clearly gypsy and they rob you, so it's easy to see why!".
But that's the exact same thing with X race in Y country. Such as blacks in America. It's a broad brush stroke based on an experience or group of experiences that eventually paints the whole race that way.
My friend did some malaria research in Myanmar/Burma. He found that the Burmese would be quite explicit in their anti-Rohingya prejudice. He’d hear people say things like “Oh, they’re basically dogs and not people” and not realize that it’s rude to be so openly prejudiced in US culture. He wasn’t surprised when the genocide started after he left.
You can find these things in basically every country, sadly.
The Roma are well integrated in the US? I saw a TV show where that was clearly not the case, there was a community where everybody was supposed to get married inside their own community. I don't think that is integration.
Ofcourse I don't know how big this group was, relative to all Roma people in the US. This was some reality marriage show, I think on TLC or something. (yes, my then-girlfriend watched this :) ).
Well they are just as well integrated as the Jewish population or the Amish. Small communities where everyone married back into the faith is the only way to keep a small ethnic group consistent.
In Naples they set their ghetto alight in 2008. In Eastern Europe their ghettos are bulldozed over whenever real estate interests take priority. In France they were deported to their home countries and their ghettos dismantled, although I've also heard of succesful integration stories on RFI.
Once Eastern Europeans of other ethnicities are no longer willing to do migrant work, Western farms and slaughterhouses shall run out of options and employ Roma migrant workers. This is already happening.
Western Europeans also like to pretend those things only happen elsewhere in Europe.
In Denmark they're committing a mass crime against humanity in a cultural cleansing against their Muslim minority, a vicious fascist action, and nobody cares to stop it.
A fellow American friend of mine visited Europe with his child's soccer team about 4 years ago. During a match in Spain, people were yelling racist obscenities at one of the 12 year old American soccer players who is black. I was pretty surprised, having believed Europe was more enlightened than the US. Was that just a fluke occurrence? Is that something common at children's soccer games?
They are ignorant of their history and don’t understand that a lot of work had to be done in terms of education, acceptance and making peace to make that possible.
Europeans spent centuries coming up with creative ways to kill each other in the name of god, country or race, and was able to move on to better things only after having been on the precipice of annihilation.
The American condition shouldn’t be whitewashed and is a story that is still evolving. But people are people, and the stories of America or Europe or some subdivision are more about people than country.
On the contrary I think both scientific evidence and theory point strongly to the fact that all humans are racist. In group/out group is baked in to our genes. None of that makes it right, of course. But pretending we are not all prone to racism is not useful
“Racism” is the wrong word for it because “race” is a modern concept. Certainly prejudice and xenophobia are natural and pervasive human qualities, but “race” per se doesn’t exist before 1492, so there was no “racism” just lots of particular prejudices (anti-Semitism and anti-Samaritanism, for example).
On the larger point, it's possible xenophobia is "natural", but I think it pays to be very cautious about what is "natural" or not among humans, what even that means. So so much is our social context. We can look at what social contexts (re)produce xenophobia and which don't without even having to decide what is "natural" though.
Honest question: I can't figure out what the point is that that image is making. (I can't reconcile the image with the caption.) Could someone explain?
When Europeans talk about racism in America they are left/libertarian in their views (red dot in the low left quadrant in the left image). When they talk about the Romani, they are basically Nazis (so extreme in the top right quadrant that you need to draw a swastika to extend the graph to get the dot to appear)
There is a whole subset of memes focused on the "political compass", which maps one's position from liberal to conservative and from authoritarian to libertarian. Right-wing authoritarian is where people like nazis are typically placed; left-wing libertarian is where progressives or green party type people are typically placed. The joke is that some Europeans will say, "We should treat everyone equally; hon hon, look at silly American being racist!" then go treat gypsies poorly (moving from bottom-left to top-right).
Flamebait will get you banned here, especially on racial/ethnic topics. We don't want the predictable and toxic material that leads to. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, we'd be grateful. Note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Most comments in this thread, even the ones with a negative tinge, show some evidence of earnestly wrestling with the topic. Your post does not. Please don't post like this here.
Your assessment doesn't hold any water. It's a bunch of Americans virtue signalling about how good they are, talking about a problem they don't know. Hence my inquiry about that. Because as a European, I know that the things said in this thread are objectively not true.
No it didn't. But the lovely guy in this thread who called me a racist did. And the 2-5 trump posts per day do. And the guys who openly call for violence do. The guidelines have been ignored or months now, leaving nothing of value on this site.
I will continue to do what I do. I recommend that you ban me though.
Ok, since you don't want to use HN as intended, I've banned the account. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
I would like to know your opinion, after living for a few weeks nearby one of such group. Maybe you would turn racist then? /s
Most people here do not have that experience. In their ignorance they think, that it is a case of racism. It is not. It is not tolerating asocial behavior.
Romas, who integrate into the society are accepted by the majority. Unfortunately, that requires for the individuals to break ties with their community, because their community encourages their members to behave asocially. It is really hard problem, you cannot even start with pupils in school, as they routinely skip it, because... see previous sentence.
Untold millions of euro were spent to solve this problem. It was wasted money.
>Romas, who integrate into the society are accepted by the majority.
In fact, here in the south, they are completely indistinguishable--we have the exact same skin colour, facial features, etc. You can only tell romas apart when they choose to. In other words, this is not a case similar to blacks in America.
As you said it is probably an unsolvable problem. Better in ghettos than causing trouble. If any roma wants to leave the ghetto and live a normal life, nobody would bat an eye--in fact, nobody would even notice.
What is definitely natural for humans (and other animals, apparently) is xenophobia in a broader sense, meaning preference for in-group - however defined - over the out-group. The exact definitions are cultural and situational - racism is one example of that - but the point remains that human societies will tend to discriminate naturally, and you need to make a constant conscious effort to restrain them.
I had a negative knee-jerk reaction to your comment and I will attempt to explain myself here. I am not claiming this is how you meant your comment: What you wrote really reminds me of the "we should be colorblind and that will fix American racism" argument. However implicit biases are a thing and past damage does not get fixed by simply being colorblind (rather it festers). Similarly, your comment sounds like "just do not be racist" is a trivial thing to do, while usually subscribing to that view just makes you more susceptible to your own biases that you are unaware of. Very active thought is required to avoid in-tribe knee-jerk behavior. Maybe it is easy for you, but then I claim you are underestimating how difficult it is for others, even when they are well-meaning.
In-group out-group thinking is completely natural. That doesn't make it good. If you expose a dog to only one race or one sex from when it's a puppy, it will be uncomfortable as an adult around others. Same goes for a child. It's up to us to adjust ourselves to a diverse global community that our genes never could've prepared us for.
You're probably being downvoted for mentioning neo Nazis but you're absolutely right. Racism and these various similar tensions aren't "natural", they're constructed over time by people with their own agendas. In the U.S. what we've come to know as racism is a set of ideas constructed to justify slavery. Roma people were similarly held as slaves in the medieval area - discrimination against them benefitted slaveholders economically and justified their exploitation.
>Roma people were similarly held as slaves in the medieval area - discrimination against them benefitted slaveholders economically and justified their exploitation.
Most people on the planet are not white, most societies are not white, yet there is plenty of racism in those too. Look at Asia: Han Chinese vs minorities like Uighurs. Ever heard of that? Do you follow the news about Myanmar at all? It is complete utter nonsense that racism is a white invention or has anything to do with being white. Take you white guild nonsense elsewhere.
"It is complete utter nonsense that racism is a white invention or has anything to do with being white."
Whoever you think you're arguing against in your reply to my post, it's not me.
Let me make my position clear.
Racism is not a white invention.
I never said it, I don't believe it.
What I said is "Not everybody's racist".
That doesn't mean there aren't racists in all societies or cultures. Maybe there are maybe there aren't. That's tangential to my point. But it's clear that there are many racists in many societies.
But, again, that doesn't mean that "everybody's racist". They're just not.
Neither does my point imply that "racism is a white invention or has anything to do with being white". You picked that out of thin air, not out of anything I said, because I never so much as implied it.
In Bulgaria, Gypsies are viewed as a huge problem and people are often openly racist against them, even on national TV. The stereotype is that the gypsies will steal whatever they can, trash and start fights and many other things. My grandma would hide her stuff if sees a gypsy, on the other hand there's a subset that she would adore. The subset, according to her, are the "tradesmen" gypsies and she would often buy services from them and would trust them. Also, the gypsies are quite often the musicians at the Turkish minority weddings. Bulgarians would also often complain that gypsies are making Bulgarians look bad in the EU.
I have relatives that live in a region with a lot of gypsies and I am endlessly fascinated by the success of their phone scams. As I visit them annually, I witnessed gypsies getting rich and building huge houses, collecting scam money from the local western-union branch almost on regular basis. Since they speak Turkish too, women call random Turkish numbers and ask men for money(claiming that they are coming to Turkey for them but an issue come up at the border) and their husbands collect the money from the western union. Sometimes it's very theatrical, the husband pretends to be the "evil Bulgarian police officer". I've seen it with my own eyes.
Just next to Bulgaria is Turkey and in this country the Gypsy image is drastically different. In Turkey gypsies are musicians, dancers and overall free soul people. Much less negative connotations overall. The exception is "Conolar" or "the Jonos", a clan in a major Turkish city. They are known for their temper and originalit. Here is a local fight, quite amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaNj4RQC4Ec
If I lived only in Bulgaria I might as well be a racist but I have seen enough to believe that the Bulgarians need to look in the mirror if they are looking someone to blame about the situation with gypsies. It doesn't have to be the way it is in Bulgaria.
There is a lot of "racism" talk on this thread, but criminal Roma gangs are an undeniable fact in Europe as they are regularly dismantled by the police. One cannot defend the exploitation of the poor, young kids, the disabled, the old, sent to western Europe and forced into begging, stealing or mugging locals and excuse that with "cultural relativism".
These ones live in shanty towns, do not send their young children to school even in places where school is mandatory under 15 thus perpetuate the cycle of illiteracy. Is this what educated people here are defending? really? This kids aren't even given a chance to succeed.
They have a tight sense of community and most of them never assimilate wherever they go and barely make effort to speak the local language. This isn't a cliché or a stereotype, that's the reality of these gangs. There is next to 500 Roma slums around Paris, and we're talking about people that have for EU citizenship. One cannot blame that situation on "racism", this is 100% due to criminal behaviour and gangs trafficking vulnerable people.
Yes, all Roma aren't like this, a lot of them work tough jobs in agriculture or construction. But criminal Roma networks are a reality nobody can deny.
> but criminal Roma gangs are an undeniable fact in Europe
There are a plethora of criminal gangs that belong to other ethnicities and nationalities in Europe. Painting the whole ethnicity/nationality with the same brush is the textbook definition of racism even though we like to hide it behind "not all Roma are like this".
> These ones live in shanty towns, do not send their young children to school even in places where school is mandatory under 15 thus perpetuate the cycle of illiteracy. Is this what educated people here are defending? really? This kids aren't even given a chance to succeed.
Yes. Gypsies are very insular and keep their culture, but I feel like that is too convenient of an explanation that people are using. In my opinion governments should make a better attempt at integrating them into the education system. Literacy is key into helping them overcome the gadjo vs roma mentality and I don't think that people and communities do enough to overcome this problem.
> But criminal Roma networks are a reality nobody can deny.
True, but that doesn't mean there is no racism. If anything, this would support the fact that racism exists, since conflict tends to make people think in terms of in-group/out-group.
A follow-up question is whether the racism is justified. An even more important question is whether the conlfict stems from a failure to integrate different cultures and whether taking deliberate steps to encourage integration would resolve these conflicts.
Btw, the same argument also comes up wrt racial tensions in the US: "Blacks are x% of the population, yet are involved in y% of crime" with y >> x.
> They have a tight sense of community and most of them never assimilate wherever they go and barely make effort to speak the local language.
This has been my impression as well. The Roma seem to first identify themselves as part of their community and only then, part of the common folk in the country they reside in. Many also follow some internal social group laws that are often totally illegal, e.g., bride market.
To answer your question, I believe there’s a strong mismatch in culture and I do not see a way to solve this problem with any possible social or state actions.
The problem, as it seems, will solve itself in the long term as the Roma population has a greater positive net increase compared to the non-Roma population in Eastern Europe. It seems in some decades from now, Eastern Europe will mostly be Roma populated. Is that good or bad, I honestly don’t know.
> The more likely explanation is that the Bulgarians screwed up with the policy and the Turks got something right.
You're insinuating that Bulgaria enacted policies that forced Roma into a life of crime. You're also insinuating that all Europe enacted policies that forced Roma in Europe into crime since they behave likewise everywhere in Europe this specific group of gypsies goes which is a preposterous assertion.
There are other groups of gypsies, in France for instance which live there and do not have that criminal culture. So no, the problem isn't Bulgaria, or Romania, or France. The problem is criminal gangs that exploit their illiterate brothers and sisters, you can't put the onus on European states, not today.
> Well, if it’s not about gypsies and policies but about criminal gangs then that’s the police not doing their job.
If parents don't send their children to school so they can have chance to a better life then the parents, thus their culture, is the issue, not the police, a culture that is essentially criminogenic because it encourages bad behaviour and segregation due to illiteracy.
It did actually (Bulgarian here). During communist regime, roma (gypsies) were segregated - taught in different schools, lived in different areas. When the communist regime fell, it was accepted that's how it is, and the situation did not improve. Just my view on the matter.
I don't think you have to "defend the exploitation of the poor..." to argue that the problem is these people are not being integrated into the social/government networks the rest of Europe benefits from. The criminal gangs fill a vacuum. Insularity results from centuries of maltreatment.
I think the root of all that goes way back. I've lived in Bulgaria for most of my life(with the exception of around 4-5 years during university). Back in the day when I was a kid and teenager(think 90's and early 2000's) gypsies were a big problem. I remember one summer when everyone went away for a holiday and there was just me and my mum in a 300 meter radius for around two weeks. A house was getting robbed every night during those two weeks. And we are talking pretty much the center of the capital.
That said, at some point(not sure when or how) that all changed. Now in the day-to-day life, gypsies cause no harm whatsoever. They are a minority and as such I have very little interaction with them but in the few instances I've had, they've always been very warm and kind and the once I've worked with have been incredibly hard working and devoted.
But even though I see a huge improvement, we need to look back a bit to see the root cause: I had the chance to meet some of my grand-grand parents and they all had roma friends when they were young in the early 20-th century. However there have been huge political campaigns against them(both socially and economically) between 1944 and 1989(even though those were flowered up as "integration" programs). I think what we see now is one of the many scars the regime left behind.
I’m Irish. We had a similar gypsy group in this country commonly referred to as Travellers and to say that there is utter hatred of them by the general populace is an understatement. The division between communities is extreme.
It’s difficult to look past ones prejudices and I’m very aware of my own in this situation. It’s easy to hate on the entire community because of the appalling behaviour of a few and their insular nature as a community.
Of course it’s far more complex than the surface reveals and there are huge issues around education, inclusion, and integration.
This reminds me of the so-called City of the Dead[1] in Cairo.
It's an ancient cemetery which has basically turned in to a giant slum, with poverty-stricken people living among the ancient tombs.
There are a number of interesting videos on youtube about it, such as [2], [3], and [4], but it's the first of these that I found most fascinating, because not only did it show and talk about the City of the Dead, it also shows Zabbaleen.[5]
Zabbaleen is much like Stolipinovo, with people living among mountains of garbage.
The people who live there grow up there and are traditionally tasked with dealing with the garbage, which is shipped in to the neighborhood for them to live amongst.
It's clearly a miserable, nightmarish life.
As the narrator in the video says at about 9 minutes in, "I don't care how essential what they do is for Cairo. Cairo needs to get its shit together.. it's not ok."
I highly recommend watching this video[2]. The part on Zabaleen starts around 4'48".
>"The thing is, for the most part, travel writing is based upon deception. Corporate writers are dependent upon their publisher satiating the requirements and bias of their masters, and not upsetting the bill-paying advertisers. Only the most positive and flowery destination reviews will make it through to print. Many travel bloggers, despite having built a truly independent outlet to express their own honesty and creativity, forsake that opportunity and instead accept the comparative crumbs of “sponsorship”, exchanging their little slice of the internet for free travel and accommodation, publishing questionable articles more curious for their omissions than their inclusions."
>"And, personally, honestly, I’m actually deceiving you right here on this page. It can’t be helped. No set of photos, nor a thousand or so words, gathered over the course of a single day in Stolipinovo, could possibly begin to tell the whole story."
What a great summary. What great photos. This whole post was a wonderful bit of travel journalism. Thanks for sharing.
I ask myself quite genuinely if under the same circumstances I would live like that. It's really very hard to imagine that I or anyone I know would just accept living in trash like that. We would surely all agree to get some shovels and at least clean up the sidewalk in front of our house...right? What stops them from doing that? It seems like a choice.
Not sure if it were the case here, but here in my country the slum would look like that because there is no organized garbage disposal in the neighborhood, so everyone is simply dumping their trash whenever convenient and burn them later. I mean, you could pick up a shovel and clean up the front of your house, but where would you throw those trash you just shoveled if there is no garbageman picking up trash every week? Chance that you'll just dump them across the street and burn it and the wind will pick up some bits of trash and spreading them again throughout the neighborhood, completing the cycle.
You perceive the sidewalk in front of your house as something that is related to you, and you know people in your culture would judge you if the sidewalk is dirty. But this is a cultural concept. You could also have a cultural concept that only things inside your house reflect on you, and the sidewalk is... just a random part of universe. Then there is no reason why you should go and clean up a random part of universe.
You probably don't feel that it is your duty to go and clean up garbage everywhere in your city. At some distance, it's simply not your problem anymore. This is the same, but the distance ends at the threshold of your house.
Any norm makes sense, internally, if you know that this is the norm others will use to judge you. Most people don't go beyond what is required of them.
> However, it was mostly smiles, laughter, and happy people. Indeed, the locals were actually dancing in the streets, to the sounds of multiple sound systems blasting music around the ‘hood. Invitations into homes and yards were being extended, food and drinks were constantly being offered.
Nice to see them being portrayed as friendly and in a somewhat positive light. Unfortunately, this is one of the most unfairly treated ethnic groups in Europe - the prejudice runs high even amongst people with generally progressive views - and I have to object to this headline's labelling of the area. I hope that in the coming years that would be treated as a racial slur.
I do not think they would be friendly to any local Bulgarian that wandered into the neighbourhood.
Also "many children don’t attend school." is rather a problem, isn't it. And though I do not know much about Bulgaria, I doubt it's because of the money. I'd assume Bulgaria has free schools and probably social support for financially struggling kids.
There are so many different nations in Europe, some with their nation states, many without. However, Roma or Travellers seem to have the same poor opinion almost everywhere - which is not really shared with any other people. Maybe it is not that fair to picture Bulgarians as the only source of the bad situation in this neighbourhood. Isn't there a way for the community to organise anything, even some basic cleanup?
I didn't particularly care for the quote (from comments):
> I generally try to avoid Western Europe these days – along with most of the Western world, people their are (in general) just trying to convince themselves that the little bubble they exist in is all that matters.
A bit rich coming from an American, but anyway I do not understand what it that supposed to mean. I'd believe it's rather Western Europeans that try to care for the world as the whole, rather than do the least immediately necessary.
You are right. Their situation is mostly of their own doing. And of course it's exacerbated by the discrimination, but they don't have to live in mountains of trash. Also they don't let the police in their communities, neither the taxmen. It's a de-facto state within the state. The state has "left" them the way they prefer. And I am a firm believer that this is the right stance. The only other possible approach would be something like a police state, forced labor and education etc. Free healthcare and social benefits they get even now. They literally do no work and get no jobs because they have enough money to continue their happy existence. I am not being sarcastic here by saying "happy" as it's very much visible in the article. This is the ultimate failure of the well-fare state and it's only going to get worse if the well-fare continues. It's very funny how progressives chant slogans from far away, but no one dares go propose the same ideas in-person (to the Roma).
I am also a member of a minority in Bulgaria (Turkish), but our people are nothing like the Roma - we don't live in ghettos. And although there is a lot of "historically based" hatred towards us here, I can say from experience that the (ethnic) Bulgarians are not that racist (or at least not unreasonably so). Westerners are too soft and entitled to their progressive beliefs which are going to screw them big time.
Roma in the Netherlands don’t keep their children in school either, even though it’s free and compulsory. Unsurprisingly they experience the issues associated with being uneducated people.
Note that the people that live in Stolipinovo are Bulgarian. I guess you meant to say "I do not think they would be friendly to any non-Roma Bulgarian". That's an assumption that (from experience) is incorrect.
> Note that the people that live in Stolipinovo are Bulgarian.
Bulgarian (Greek, Macedonian, Hungarian. or other nationalities with nation-states) has two semantic meanings: citizenship and ethnicity. So it is possible for individuals to be Bulgarian citizens, but not of Bulgarian ethnicity. Or vice versa. Someone of Bulgarian descent born in USA won't be necessarily Bulgarian-in-the-citizenship sense.
So in the grandparent case, he obviously meant "non-Roma", without regards to citizenship.
> I hope that in the coming years that would be treated as a racial slur.
It won't. Perhaps you should do some research and not try to object to or ban more language, as the term is not always used negatively. While some Romani are opposed to it, others use the term in a positive light to promote their culture
>Ticked me off a bit, since that was exactly the prejudice eastern europeans faced and face in western europe.
At least here in Spain that is because most of the Eastern Europeans we get are Roma. So people automatically assume Bulgarians or Romanians are all Roma and act like them.
> At least here in Spain that is because most of the Eastern Europeans we get are Roma.
While Roma might be highly visible to you because some beg in the streets or appear in crime reportage, Roma are still only a minority of the Eastern European immigrants in Spain. They are a minority even of the Balkan countries’ immigrants in Spain. You just don’t notice all those ethnic Romanians from Romania who don’t look particularly exotic, and who are quietly working hard in some industry outside the public eye (i.e. agriculture, or taking care of the elderly, or even the IT sector).
There used to be a time when ‘entrepreneurs’ were much more likely to travel abroad than law-abiding citizens for a combination of reasons and I imagine a similar combination makes only the worst of them travel and be seen outside of their usual places, giving a very bad rep to the wide group as a whole.
Wonderful photos. It's become a stereotype that Roma are all about emotions, sadness and hapiness at the same time, but the photos show it remarkably well. I agree with him -- it's simple, nobody should live like that. But in reality it's complicated because a lot of people in that part of the world have it hard. It's difficult to accept that somebody may have it even harder, and simply cannot change much on their own. Even if they try, they are struck down by systemic racism. And if they don't try, they confirm the stereotypes. And on the other hand the empathy is mostly academic and limited to watching photos like these. Once you're directly exposed to something like this, it's easy to look the other way because individuals are also products of their environment, and the environment is tough.
The situation of Roma is always a good counter example to the statement "no racism in Europe". Perhaps there was never official segregation, but there is almost always implicit segregation. They can ride the bus, but more intimate relationships between the Roma and non-Roma population are rare. True friendships, marriages etc. So it's not Mississippi of the 50's, but there's also been little progress in the last decades. Which is a pity because IMHO there is no quick fix, only slowly changing what is considered to be normal.
I was bored and raised In Thessaloniki, Greece where there’s a big community of Roma but also it’s a common understanding that lots of them from Bulgaria are constantly driving to Greece.
In the community that I grew (Evosmos, West Thessaloniki) there were many of them. I’ve met a few that were integrated in the community, managed to finish school etc.
But their culture is just nothing about that. Women in dirty clothes carrying a trolley all day and going through garbage cans collecting dumps. Kids 5,6,7 years old with no shoes and no clothes on are walking around main streets At noon sneaking into stores and stealing whatever they can. Their teenagers are bullying everyone they can when they go out for no reason. They are deep into the drugs and the guns game. Police are always on them but there isn’t much they can do but to isolate them in further areas outside the city.
I’ve seen all those things and they aren’t pretty.
To be fair, that behaviour is probably more associated with poverty than their "culture". North America also has people "wearing dirty clothes, carrying a trolley, and going through garbage cans" but it has nothing to do with their ethnic or cultural background, it's due to a lack of better options.
In some places, like Andalusia, the Romani people flourished and developed a distinctive and globally appreciated culture. Even Greece has 100k Romani, and most of them are not living on the streets.
It's both poverty and culture. The two can't be separated. You end up with a chicken-and-egg scenario: people surrounding the Roma know that the Roma they encounter are disproportionately likely to be the people who e.g. commit street crimes. This makes them act accordingly, by doing things like avoiding groups of Roma. This makes it harder for Roma who aren't committing crimes, whose behavior is not reflected in that estimate, to improve their culture or escape it. The non-Roma estimating that the average Roma is too likely to be violent to be worth interacting with think that for a reason, and we may call it "racism" or "bigotry" but it isn't unfounded.
My sense is that it's very popular to point to external causes, causes that aren't blame-producing. "It's because they're poor"...well, maybe it's true that "If not for being poor..." but that's not the world we live in. By many accounts their culture (that is, the set of learned things they inherit) is set up to produce more poverty, crime, and social isolation. There are many groups of very poor people who do not have this problem, and who thrive in different circumstances. Accepting that there are things about their culture that would be better if changed or removed both reflects empirical reality and sets you down the road to finding a workable solution.
It is absolutely a poverty problem first. Racism is much harder to maintain when the evidence in front of your face is of <member of group P> doing just fine, and where continuing to be racist costs you something. Capitalism got this right.
On one hand, European culture is indeed hypocritical to throw stones at the US over racism. Quite staggeringly so, actually. If I may, it's also an excellent demonstration that skin colour really isn't that important, and the US obsession over it is a bit weird.
Exactly. I've heard this same type of criticism about Native Americans. "their towns are filthy, you will get robbed, (they aren't proper people, and being friends with them lowers your social status)".
Having experienced them, US reservations are definitely shitty places, but everything the OP said applies. Yes, they look like 3rd world counties, and passers-by attribute that to the people living there. Rather, the real reason these places look terrible is poverty and lack of investment.
I had the misfortune last year of having to attend a funeral on a reservation (misfortune in the sense that my friend died), and there was a stark line between the ranchland surrounding the res and the res itself.
I can't speak to Europe, but even in NA it really isn't about color of skin. I'm of French Mediterranean background, so during the summer I'm browner than most of my Hispanic friends. Doesn't matter, I 'pass' as a white person, while my Hispanic friend who is whiter than me gets treated like a second class citizen. It's fucked, but in America I don't actually think it's about race, americans just hide classism behind race since racism is more acceptable than classism.
Edit: not to say that reservations are unequalled places of filth. In my experience, even if you aren't native people are willing to help out. I was cross-country traveling on a garbage old Harley that needed help every 75 miles, and I had the most generous offers when I was in Native country vs. anything else. This agrees with the OP, in these places people are more willing to help out. For example, in a reservation town in SW SD my magneto died. I struggled with kicking the bike for 10 minutes, somebody eventually saw I was struggling and offered to call their cousin with a truck. Towing the bike behind a truck got it to fire, and everyone involved refused money (common response was "you'll need it later"). I get I was driving an absolute crap piece of machinery, but the reservation towns were much more helpful than other towns that I broke down in over that trip (and I broke down in a lot, I was driving a 71 harley sportster, they weren't even reliable when new).
"But their culture is just nothing about that. Women in dirty clothes carrying a trolley all day and going through garbage cans collecting dumps. Kids 5,6,7 years old with no shoes and no clothes on are walking around main streets.."
Riiiight. It must be their culture?
You think that if you give them clean clothes they'll throw them away?
You think they prefer a meal picked out of a garbage can to one from a restaurant or grocery store?
Or that they'd rather have their kids go without shoes or clothes?
"I've seen all those things and they aren't pretty."
You might have seen them, but you did not understand them.
The same racist swill has been slung at nearly every minority and immigrant group.
People of Asian descent were accused of being dirty, so were black people, so were Irish and Italian immigrants, Mexicans, Indians, and of course Native Americans.
Their poverty was thrown in their face, as so was their lack of education (which was often mandated by law or other forms of discrimination).
Now in the US Irish and Italian communities have grown greatly in stature, and the slurs that were used against them are not so acceptable any more, are they?
Asians are now accused, if anything, of being far too educated and unfairly advantaged, though you still hear slurs thrown at them when talk turns to Chinatown or other Asian slums (as if any slum inhabitant, no matter what race or ethnicity, is going to afford to strut around in a freshly pressed three-piece suit).
Muslims and people from the Middle East are now getting their turn at being hated and accused of being dirty and lazy in many "civilized" countries to which they come for a better life.
Of course, one of the most well known and oppressed of groups who faced the very same accusations were Jews.
They also were called dirty, lazy, thieving, etc.. and at the same time rich, thieving, and miserly.
This kind of racist, bigoted, xenophobic libel leads straight to lynchings, pogroms, and gas chambers.
> This kind of racist, bigoted, xenophobic libel leads straight to lynchings, pogroms, and gas chambers.
Ehh...I think this is hyperbolic. It doesn't usually do that, it mostly just kind of simmers at the edges of society. And it's not "every minority and immigrant group", it's the poor ones.
"it's not "every minority and immigrant group", it's the poor ones."
Except Jews in Europe in the first half of the 20th Century (and in other places and times) were targeted for being poor and being rich.
When they were wealthy they were envied and accused of getting their money through immoral means, like usury and stealing it from their poorer neighbors.
When they were poor they were accused of being dirty, and poor because they were lazy.
And when they were neither rich nor poor, well then they were hated for just being Jews.
Even the ones who had fully assimilated weren't safe, because the racial laws meant that who your ancestors were mattered more than who you were.
> The same racist swill has been slung at nearly every minority and immigrant group.
Here comes the generalisation. As many have said, you can only speak with authority if you had first hand experience.
I think Bulgarians and other European nations have a much more nuanced and grounded view on the Roma, based on direct experience, not reading news online. They know that not all Roma are the same, they all know exceptions, they realise how hard it is for them to break out of this situation, but at the same time how much of it is self inflicted.
Do you know anything about Romas and their culture, do you know any Roma person? Because your comment talks about Asians, Irish, Italians, Mexicans, Indians and others but not about Gypsys at all.
"Lynchings, pogroms, and gas chambers" - are you serious?! What world do you live in?
And please check yourself with that racial hate on gypsy culture. Their culture is dark, mysterious, romantic, nomadic, wonderful and beautiful in its own way. It has different values from your culture (and mine) and leads to different outcomes but you shouldn't hate it.
Get yourself involved with a community or organization working with Gypsy people and maybe you'll start to understand them better instead of summarily judge them and those who know them.
"please check yourself with that racial hate on gypsy culture"
Point out one single thing. One thing I said that in any way, even the slightest, showed any kind of hate, racial or otherwise towards gypsy culture.
You can't. Because there isn't anything.
And if what I said in the post you replied to isn't enough, have a look at the rest of my comments in this thread. I'm against racism, not for it.
"Lynchings, pogroms, and gas chambers" - are you serious?! What world do you live in?"
Yes, I'm serious. Wake up to the 20th fucking century. That is the real world, and we're not so very far away from it. Might be going back to it some time soon, given the way right wing nationalism, xenophobia, and racism has been gaining ground all over the world.
Gypsies, by the way, were themselves victims in the Holocaust. If you are as much a fan of gypsies and gypsy culture as you appear to be, that should be of concern to you, as they, like every other minority and persecuted group are under threat from racism and xenophobia.
Read the above comment about how locals would refuse to patronize a restaurant staffed by a Romani worker. If you're living in an environment where people go out of their way to make sure you don't have any economic opportunity no matter what you do, what the hell is the point of preparing your children for a workforce that is guaranteed to reject them? To try and gain respectability among people who are steadfastly committed to never respecting them, because some day the dominant culture might decide the underlings are actually human beings? Why should they be disinclined to steal or beg from people who guarantee their entire community will continue to fail?
Yes, you put your finger on it. I think the central issue really is a chicken-and-egg issue: the people who live around them put causal force on the Roma's anti-social behavior, the Roma put it on their rejection / exclusion by the people around them (or maybe they don't?). Nobody wins until somebody backs down. Whoever backs down pays costs. If the surrounding people back down and start treating the Roma well, the Roma will take advantage of them for a while. If the Roma back down and start behaving the way the surrounding people want them to, they won't get full credit for their efforts for a while.
Maybe there's some way to broker a detente. Maybe that's already happening.
Your premise is based on the assumption of something approaching power equity. The Roma have zero clout in this situation— they can only, primarily, affect their own circumstances, and considering that people are intentionally blocking their access to the economy, they can't even do that very effectively. This isn't two equal weights pushing against each other, it's one sitting on top of the other and blaming them for the fact that they're being sat on.
Hmm, who better to bare the brunt of "backing down?" The wealthier group, or the group that if they did would starve and suffer in more squalor conditions than they already are? And for an unknown period of time, could be decades?
That comment is simply false. Nobody cares where the restaurant workers are coming from. They do care if they respect hygienic standards so cleanliness and integration do matter - race does not.
As someone who worked in bars, restaurants and nightclubs for much of my adult life, I can absolutely assure you that racism of various flavors exists in every restaurant scene on the planet. To believe otherwise is painfully naive. Perhaps willfully ignorant.
This is called "learned helplessness" and it stems from generations of extreme poverty.
Jeesh, do a bit of introspection dude.
I can't believe the high horse some of these SWE's (attained or proclaimed) ride sometimes. Why do some people so talented in some areas so gleefully bask in their ignorance of others.
There are plenty of very poor people and groups in Europe. Look at Ukraine, for example: majority of its population lives under what in the US would count as harsh poverty. Average wage outside of Kiev is around $2500 a year (a year, not a month), and even if you adjust it for purchasing power, it still buys you less than $10k does in US. And that’s average: most people survive on less than that, some even on half that.
However, crime in Ukraine is lower than in US, and it’s significantly lower than in US cities. While its infrastructure’s state reflects the income levels, it’s not atrocious, and it’s certainly better than what US would end up with if it was only spending figures comparable to Ukraine. Certainly, you don’t have rotting garbage piling up everywhere on the sides of the street, like in the OP photos.
It’s not poverty that results in what happens in Gypsy ghettos. It’s the culture.
A Ukrainian has no problems getting a job in a restaurant kitchen in Kiev, while it's virtually impossible for a Gipsy to get a job in the city, or a flat.
This is not something you can compare.
When no amount of grit, resilience, hard work or effort will give you any result, what would you do to survive?
Those who are integrated in a modern nation and only see the benefits (or, at best, neglect the side effects) cannot understand those who reject it because they hate various ordeals implied by the corresponding underlying system.
It seems like one issue is that the Roma can be easily identified even when mostly or fully absorbed by the surrounding culture. That isn't true of poor Ukranians I bet. But my gut says there's some dynamic with the Roma whereby remaining separate and different is highly valued by the community, and they punish their own for doing things that erode that separation. Which may be self-sustaining, but it's probably bad for them in aggregate.
Sorry, but you're just showing your own ignorance. Rather than accept, or be open to the fact that they are poor and discriminated against, you are just passing judgement on their entire culture.
To be fair, modern Greek culture is nothing but a shadow of its ancient past.
From all the posts in this thread, I wonder if there is a positive example of integration of Roma anywhere in Europe that other Europeans might look to.
Croatia, country where I'm from has it's own share of problems with Roma and the levels of integration vary.
One of the issues I is the social welfare state and the underlying social contracts it is based upon that are taken advantage of by Roma. There is an incentive for Roma communities to stay the same because of that as minimum social welfare check, child support and similar handouts help provide for a life based on large communities.
In order to make any progress, a country should start by recognizing that in order to help Roma people and brake the cycle, special laws will be needed. In order to be smart about it, it should be done like Denmark did it with it's ghetto laws where they target an area (not ethnicity) and implement special restrictions, tougher laws, tougher punishment but at the same time focus more on providing primary and secondary education, working with families and so on.
I think racial tension came down a lot the last 10 years, and the reason is that quite a few Roma work in Western Europe. For the ones in Stolipinovo I believe the prime destination is Dortmund.
FWF I think the EU helped diffuse the tension by allowing increased mobility of both Roma and poor Bulgarians. I think the Roma neighbourhoods were much worse around the turn of the century and the politics were much more aggressive towards the Roma - I remember the Attack party being really popular back then.
I think it has been slow, but nowadays it is not as acceptable as once was to publish bluntly racist texts like this example from a prominent BG journalist in 2012:
"However, it was mostly smiles, laughter, and happy people. Indeed, the locals were actually dancing in the streets, to the sounds of multiple sound systems blasting music around the ‘hood. Invitations into homes and yards were being extended, food and drinks were constantly being offered.
That never happens when I stroll through a wealthy neighbourhood."
As a Spaniard, I am very aware of this issue. There are way too many people in this thread just labeling southern and east europeans as racist, as if this explained everything. I also find that comparing this to the racial problems in the US is off the mark.
There are millions of spaniards who really support government programs to integrate our large gypsee population (no one here, including the gitanos themselves, call them Roma; their dialect is known as romaní, though).
There are also millions of Spaniards who have written them off as a hopeless basket case.
Both groups have a point.
As many people here have pointed out, many gypsees have integrated in mainstream society, and in many cases one would struggle to identify them as such. These have no trouble working in restaurants, or getting any other job for that matter.
But gypsees have a very proud culture, and those who behave like payos (which is how they call non-gypsees) get mocked, and all but banished by their own kin. This is compounded by the sad fact that it is undeniable that those that do cross over would do better if they hide their origins from the mainstream. And this culture is radically different, not only from mainsteam spanish culture, but western culture in general.
The main issue with traditional gypsee culture, and the biggest hurdle for integration, is school education. The spanish state has spent millions over many decades on this, with mixed success.
What follows is just an anecdote, albeit not an isolated one, that I belive highlights the challenges. My mum has a very close friend who is a school teacher. Several years ago this friend, an idealist, volunteered to teach at an area with a very large gypsee population. The first and largest problem was to get the gypsee families to send their kids to school to begin with. The best they managed was to get them to cram a bunch of kids in a taxi, which the teachers, who in Spain are not well paid, would pay out of their own pockets. The kids, 5 year olds, swore like drunken sailors. Good luck teaching manners. Their dads would leave porn running on the tv, to which the kids would be exposed from an early age, and candidly told the teachers. They would also tell how daddy beat mummy regularly, because this gypsee culture is very macho. One boy said his dad was very good. He would pretend to beat his mum, who would scream, so that neighbours would know everything was alright in the family. My mums friend couldn't stand all this after a year and begged for a transfer. When they were relocated by the government from the shanty to new appartments, they yanked out all the fittings and furniture, and sold it all for scrap.
Me, I was instinctively terrified of them as a kid growing up in Spain. You saw gypsees, you ran. We have all been mugged and bullied by them. As you grow up, you become aware of the social problems, and also end up talking to some, and yes, many are very nice and friendly. But you also hear from them how their own environment makes it very hard to, say, take their education seriously.
My point is, it is too easy to slap the racist adjective without making an effort to understand. There is racism for sure, but there is also enormous cultural resistance from the gypsees, which makes many to abandon hope, on both sides.
My main gripe when it comes to comparing this to the racial problem in US is that no one brought the gypsees to Europe, they came of their own accord, and nowhere were they enslaved, AFAIK, at least not at scale, maybe only by the nazis.
They still keep coming to Spain, mostly from Romania. And, guess what? The spanish gypsees hate the romanian gypsees. In Spain, the gypsee women often beg. One day, sitting at a terrace, my mum gave one a coin, as she often does. The woman warned my mum, bitterly complaining about the romanian gypsee women. "We just beg, they will steal your handbag".
I'm from Bulgaria. I doubt that the Government really wants gypsies to become a functional part of society because they're so easy to buy. Gypsies win elections and that's it. There are some nice people which decide to educate themselves though. Definitely not enough to change the general opinion towards the ethnic group.
This looks a lot like the camps they set up when they come to Sweden to beg as well. Take the camp in Malmö called Sorgenfrilägret for instance. From empty industrial lot to illegally occupied shanty town full of trash: https://victorpressfeldt.com/2015/11/01/lagret-pa-sorgenfri-...
In a TV news segment they showed a portable toilet that somebody had given them, and it was unusable because of how filthy it was. When asked why the people living there said it was because nobody came there to clean it for them.
Here's another camp outside of Stockholm. Again, why so much trash?
As a Bulgarian I have a couple of interesting stories surrounding gypsies. Some more pleasant than others, but I'll try to be short.
My grandparents built a house near the Black Sea when I was a child and in spring and summer they've always hired a gypsy family from the nearby town to help us in the garden. They were hard workers and my grandparents treated them fairly and paid them fairly. Besides getting paid for their work we also gifted them some unused TV's, radios, bicycles and some other stuff throughout the years. The family head and his wife were on the older side and both had finished high school (under communism). Their 5 or 6 children however have not... They had finished only the mandatory 8 years at school and dropped out afterwards. They were really upset about the fact, but they couldn't control their children it seems. Other people from their gypsy community didn't really support them it looks like and it seemed easier to work in sanitation or other jobs where education was not important. Their daughter got married off to someone and soon grandchildren came into the picture as well. Their sons also moved away. I haven't seen them in many years now. Hope they're well. I've always respected them as people, but most of them are not like that family. They don't want to be integrated.
I've been in a couple of street fights throughout the years (never the instigator). One of them was with a gypsy who wanted to steal my watch. I was in high school at the time and by this point training in MA for 4-5 years. I was going home from school and it was dark because most high schools in Bulgaria divide the semesters in two timetables morning and afternoon (7:30-13:30, 13:00 - 19:15 the times also depend how many subjects you have that day). It was the first semester for me during autumn/winter and it was the afternoon timetable 13:00 to 19:15. So it was after 19 and it was already dark outside. I was walking on the sidewalk and there weren't a lot of cars passing by. I saw a person walking against me in the distance but didn't think any of it until he got closer and I saw he was a gypsy. The moment I saw his complexion I was on high alert. This is an instinct that most Bulgarians will understand in this situation. Alone, it's dark and there's a gypsy in front of you. We walk closer and closer to each other and I see that he looked at my watch. He stops me and asks me for some change and I say I don't have anything. The actual combat situation played out very fast. He very quickly grabbed my left hand. I instinctively punched with my right hand straight to his face and caught him on the chin, he wobbled back and let go of my left hand then I kicked somewhere around his waist groin area and he crumbled down. After that I started running and ran all the way home. He didn't try to follow me. By that point he probably thought it was more trouble than worth or was afraid of being caught. I don't know. Another friend years later was in a similar situation, they wanted his watch. My friend lost the watch and got a broken tooth in the ordeal :/
Integration does work but not when you segregate a minority into ghettos. The Germans learned this and they stopped segregating refugees. Everywhere else the refugees end up in a 'camp'.
On one hand, Germans try hard to avoid ghettoization. On the other hand they LOVE order. That means meticulously inspecting every bolt and nut, finding differences and putting them, with great pleasure, to different boxes. Like: These two bolts are of the same size. Yes but they have different color.
Imagine a policewoman, from 2nd or 3rd generation of a guest worker family, considering herself to be "rather turkish". And actually that's a sign her of flawless integration - completely in line with the way how the "German" Germans think of her. Because she has dark eyes and slightly, really just a tiny bit darker skin, even if she behaves like a typical German police(wo)man.
Might be worth pointing out that those apartment buildings are everywhere in the ex-communist block. In various states of (dis)repair. I think they were called "comfort III" (with I being the best).
HN is owned by an American company of course, but it is not a majority American community. The last time I ran the numbers, about 50% were in the US, and that of course includes many immigrants and expats.
Stolipinovo is one of several European Roma communities that I have visited over the years (several times now), and it's the largest that I'm aware of. The photos in the post are representative and true of how the area actually is, and I'm happy to answer any questions (forewarning, I'm not an expert).
If I were to emphasize any one take-away - it's the friendliness I experienced from the locals. Sounds cliched, but look at reality - I was taking photos in a place where I don't particularly belong (it's kind of my hobby since "retiring" from tech), and you may assume that a poverty-stricken, much maligned group of people would be wary of "outsiders".
Indeed, the exact opposite was the case.
edit: with regards to racism, a story I was told in the same city is perhaps the best example of just how far Bulgaria (in this example) has to climb. I asked a local Bulgarian friend why I didn't see Roma working at the local restaurants. He said that would be really bad for the business - to have a Gypsy waiter, or cashier, or in any "public facing" role. I voiced my assumption that perhaps they were working back-of-house, in the kitchen. He said they weren't - if the public found out a Gypsy was working in the kitchen, most people would never dine at that restaurant.