• Pezevenk [he/him]
    1·
    4 years ago

    Well hating Muslims is all the rage now, hating Roma has taken a back seat to that.

    Though the whole Roma issue is very complex because there is indeed tons of crime (mostly petty crime and drugs) coming out of these communities and they are extremely marginalised. Their way of life means that they are almost impossible to integrate. That shouldn't be a serious issue, since we can just agree to live different. But it makes helping them very hard sometimes. My friend worked at a hospital here, there were lots of Roma children ending up there with various infections, and almost none of them had done any vaccines at all, so doctors gave them all the important vaccines they could for as long as they would stay in the hospital because chances were they were never going to see them again. So yeah, it is a really bad situation and it got worse after the cops dumped all sorts of drugs in their communities during the 90s. I know in other countries things are better but it's just a really tough problem even without all the insane racism against them.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Roma don't integrate because every time they stop moving the Europeans all try to kill them. They all remember how Europe fed them to the Nazis during the holocaust. Why would they integrate with people who have been trying to exterminate them for hundreds of years and still kidnap their children, rape their women, and are right now trying put roma in camps, again.

      Also, somewhere over 50% of European Roma are settled and integrated but Europeans don't seem to know that, probably because Roma don't say it too loudly because they know if it became generally known they'd be hunted down and pogromed.

      O.o

      • Pezevenk [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        What you are saying depends on the country. The situation of Roma varies widely according to the specific country. It is a lot more complex than that. There is countries where most have integrated (not now, but it was a process of hundreds of years). Then there is others where almost none have. That they are integrating and people just don't know is also a misleading picture, because, well, people in most European countries are extremely good at telling the descent of someone just by looking at or speaking to them. I guess homogeneity does that to you. It is extremely unlikely that someone would not figure out someone is romani. It's just that 1) settled doesn't mean integrated, there are many communities which are settled but not at all integrated, and 2) it's just not the case for the vast majority in many countries.

        The thing is, their traditional way of life is just... Not compatible with the modern way of life in European countries, so settling and integrating is a very, very long and gradual process. And as I said, settling doesn't mean integrating. Integrating is a longer process.

        You are 100% right though that part of why they refuse to settle is persecution and social exclusion. And it is absolutely fucked that their genocide wasn't really recognised because "eh, we were racist to them anyways lol". But it is not as simple as "if people just stopped persecuting them they would integrate", because even where tat does happen to some extent, they aren't integrating, and they won't do so for many more years. But maybe they don't have to integrate and it is the wrong way to tackle the issue. So the question becomes, how can there be communication between them and the rest of the population, how can their living standards be up to par, without them necessarily integrating? And that's a hard question. And the way mafias as well as police basically filled their communities with drugs and used them as pawns for drug trade certainly didn't help. There was a sharp before and after felt by many communities with a significant romani population. Though that didn't happen in every country, and where it did, it didn't happen simultaneously. The whole situation is really fucked and there really isn't something I can say "ok, if only we did that, things would get better". The only thing I know for sure is that we need to fight the people trying to take away their rights.