Since the enslavement of Romani people is so unknown yet so vast, I wanted to compile a little timeline to put it in to perspective on the anniversary of Romanian emancipation. This doesn't include everything because there is just far too much and also a word limit here.
1100s: King Muhmud of Ghazni used slave warriors to destroy all the Sindh and Punjab peoples in India. These warriors would be some of the earliest beginnings of the Romani people.
Romanian Slavery (1385-1864): This is some of the most severe slavery Roma have gone through. It was generational slavery (as it did last 500 years), so children of slaves were slaves. It became a familial line which is important later on. Extreme physical punishment was commonly given out. Women were often involved in sex slavery by being raped by their owners and any visitors — as many masters considered it polite to offer these sexual favours to guests. Many Romanian Roma nowadays are more lighterskinned, and this can be traced back to this. The Catholic Orthodox Church was also a large slaveholder.
1498: Columbus brings Romani slaves to American colonies.
1500-1700: Spain sent Roma to be enslaved in Louisiana colonies
1500-1700: France sent Roma to be enslaved in the modern day Caribbean.
1500-1700: Dutch sent Roma to be enslaved in modern day Delaware, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and more.
1500s: Beginning in the 1500s, Portugal mass deports Roma slaves to Brazil, Africa, and India
1514: All Roma in England were branded with a “V” and forced into two years of slave labor. Attempted escapes were punished by being branded again and now being enslaved for life.
1560: All Roma in Spain eventually sent to galley slavery
1561: France previously banned Roma from the country, so if you were found in the country, you were sentenced to slavery.
1650-1775: Scotland sent Roma to be enslaved in Panama, Novascotia, New Jersey, and Georgia.
1658-1700s: England sends Roma slaves to many Southern state plantations and Caribbean. Mass arrest and deportations occur.
1672-1678: France and Dutch Republic both force Roma to fight for them. Afterwards, the Dutch slaughtered all Roma, even those who fought for them. This was known as the “heathen hunt.”
1700s: Scotland has Roma slaves work in coal mines.
1700s: In Jamaica, Roma woman were almost all sex slaves. Freed Black slaves were given Roma slaves.
1733: Russia’s Empress declares Roma to be slaves to the crown
1749: Great Gypsy Round-up occurs in Spain. All Roma arrested and forced into slave labor, including very young children. The operation was funded by confiscated goods and homes of the Roma.
1839: There were up to a quarter of a million Roma slaves in Romania.
1864: Romania abolishes slavery. Many remained fully dependent on local landowners and authorities after. A lot of Romanian Roma ‘tribes’ can be traced back specifically to what labor they did during slavery.
Holocaust (1933-1945): Roma were some of the forced workers who built the labor camps, many of whom would die in the camps the built. Forced labor occurred in many concentration camps. Around 2 million Roma died in the Holocaust.
Nowadays, Roma are still the most heavily trafficked group in the world for reasons such as forced labour, sex trafficking, illegal adoption. This is in many places, but here are just a few stats to show the severity: "Roma constitute only approximately 7% of the total Hungarian population. A police source estimated that 80% of trafficked persons are Romani. According to information provided by two NGOs supplying services to prostitutes/sex workers in destination countries (Switzerland and the Netherlands), approximately 25-30% of their beneficiaries are Hungarian women, of which 80% are Romani, a large number of whom have been trafficked and/or are exploited."
You can read more about trafficking in Europe here.
And to leave it off, here is this: "A grim illustration of the silent normalization of extremist attitudes and opinions can be found under the most mundane forms: internet comments. In the section for opinions and comments, at the end of media articles on the long history of the Roma slavery in the Romanian Principalities, some readers are openly stating that the only sad part about the Romani enslavement, from their perspective, was its abolition. A number of other comments were patronizing the daring act of Romani activism, associating Roma people with second-class citizens who should not have a saying in the matters of society. Most of all, since when do they have an informed opinion? Aren’t they supposed to be stealing something or destroy our calm as decent citizens?"
Yeah, before that conversation I barely realized how big racism against Roma is in Romania. It was weird how she tried to frame this supposed problem as a unique phenomenon, even though her arguments were indistinguishable from the attitudes you'd find in the US against Black people, in the UK against Muslims, in Russia against Tajik immigrant workers etc. Same rhetoric, same justifications. I guess you can afford to be woke about other races when you're a Romanian student in the UK, but at home you're just “this is different, you don't get it”.
It's actually unique in a sense, because their stature in society is not like black people or whatever. It's like they live in a different country, or a different plane of existence. It's really bad and I don't think Americans fully grasp what it's like. You try to compare it to black people in the US, but, like, you have black people in your workplaces, in your schools, in media, etc. This is not the case with Romani people (well, it largely depends on the country, I'm just talking about Greece, but it's not much better in other places afaik). They often don't go to the same schools as everyone else. They usually don't have "normal" jobs. In some places they are farmers in which case they tend to have a better life, but in the cities they're basically forced to beg, be fortune tellers, or gather scrap metal etc (or more recently deal drugs which is another issue). You won't find any Romani representation anywhere, in media, or politics, or anything. The ones who live in cities tend to live in shanty towns which look a bit like this. So you have almost no real interaction between them and other people, they often have no way to find a job because of prejudice, they have no representation, and they live in extreme poverty. Many people just view them as background noise. It's bad, and a very hard issue to address.
Eh, I don't about that. Take the social status of Tajik and Uzbek worker immigrants in Russia, or better yet, somebody like Chechens, who are Russian citizens. You hear exactly the same justifications for their racism: they live in insular communities, they don't want to integrate, they speak shitty Russian, they're violent and prone to crime, they stick to themselves, bla bla.
My point is that the girl in question can afford to be woke about non-Roma minorities, because the only Black/Muslim/Asian people she interacts with are students or whatever, but the Roma people are too close to home for her. If she was born in Russia, she'd hate Caucasians and Central Asians, if she was an American, she'd hate Black people, if she was from an extremely white UK city such as Worrington, she'd hate Muslims and Desi people, with the exact same rhetoric and justifications. So in this sense I don't think it's unique.
The specific circumstances of Roma people may be nuanced, but the racism against them certainly isn't.
I don't really know what the situation with Tajiks and Uzbeks is in Russia. It definitely isn't a justification to be racist of course, but it is a lot easier to be racist against romani people in these countries than to be racist against black people in the US or Muslims in the UK. There are black people and muslims here too, and although there is discrimination against them too, it's not as bad as it is with romani people. "Gyftos" which is a Greek word for gypsy is very commonly used in casual conversation to describe someone being rude or uncivil etc. It's that bad. And the worst thing is that romani people are somewhat invisible in society. That's not the case with, say, muslims in the UK. Like, isn't the mayor of London Muslim? You would never, ever see a Romani mayor here (for now at least). Again, I'm not saying that to excuse people being racist, but on the contrary, to explain how it is actually WORSE for them than what people in other countries probably have in mind, and even people who wouldn't "normally" be bigoted against some group can be like that with Roma in particular, because of the unfamiliarity between groups and how culturally pervasive it is.
I dunno, maybe you're right. Don't underestimate the ability of an ethnic majority of any given country to be racist though :).
I live in Kazakhstan, and back when I was doing my undergrad, I was arguing with the vice dean about my grades or whatever, and she jokingly called me a Jew, implying I was cheeky. So it goes.
Oh I definitely don't. It is the main issue.
Is it bad that I laughed? I'm trying to picture that in my mind and it's so weird and blatant...
Yeah, Americans would be surprised by some of the weird types of racism in other countries. They mostly know white vs black, and in particular the self conscious, self censoring covert racism that is pervasive in the US, but there's just so much weird confusing conflict in other countries that gets a lot more blatant and complicated. Like, in Greece there was a huge issue with Albanians. Lots of people just fucking hate Albanians. Then there's the historical hatred vs Turks. There used to be an issue with Greek people hating other Greek people from other regions, and especially Pontic Greeks who are still used as the butt of jokes to this day (although by now Pontics don't care). Like, it's one of the most homogeneous countries in Europe and somehow we still managed to find ways to be angry at each other on a racial basis. You gotta hear my uncle rant about the racial characteristics of Cretans because he had to pay a fine for illegal parking. There's a word for it in Greek, it roughly translates to regionalism, it's like nationalism but for tiny regions in a tiny country. However none of it is comparable to the racism against Albanians (which is getting better at least), refugees and especially Roma which is just on another level.
I remember one of my Greek acquaintances going off about how he just doesn't care for those Cypriot Greeks, fun days. Anyway, you're all wrong, because only Serbia has wisdom of a falcon, so much so that Tupac is alive in Serbia and making album of Serbia, fast rap wizard.
I was gonna say, they're the exception lmao they actually kinda deserve it (ok, I'm joking, but only partially). Although mainland Greeks are very responsible for their brain worms.
Cyprus is like a Greece-Britain hybrid (Cyprus was a British colony until rather recently, but not, like, one of the badly oppressed ones. One result is that they also drive at the wrong side of the road), and as a result most Cypriots are super reactionary. I said mainland Greeks are responsible because a number of horrible failures and idiotic interventions by Greece during the junta days resulted in a part of Cyprus being annexed by Turkey in 1974. As a result, Cyprus has become rather militarized and super reactionary. Cypriots are forced to serve the military for a year right after school. Now, the same is true for Greece, but if you are studying, which is the case for the vast majority of Greeks, your service is postponed until you're finished. But in Cyprus, everyone has their brains broken at age 18. Additionally, their economy is very dependent on managing foreign capital, banking, etc. So generally it's a very weird country with a culture that is generally more individualistic, entrepreneurial and reactionary than Greece on average. Most Greeks meet Cypriots at uni since a number of seats is reserved for them in Greek unis and they all come here because in Cyprus most universities are either horrible, or private (and also horrible), whereas all unis are free in Greece, and that's usually when they decide they're annoyed by Cypriots because Cypriots don't hang around with Greeks a lot and prefer to form more insular groups, calling Greek people "kalamarades" which... Isn't really bad I guess but most people don't know wtf it means and it sounds weird because it kinda translates to "squid people" (I asked a Cypriot girl why that is and she didn't really know either, she was also confused), and they generally show very little solidarity to other students. I've also never, ever met a Cypriot leftist. I'M SURE THEY EXIST SOMEWHERE BUT SERIOUSLY WTF. It's even weirder that the party that was in government a few years ago is supposed to be the communist party or at least the continuation of the communist party, except for Cyprus that's about as conservative as the fucking liberal conservatives here.
So yeah, people end up being somewhat annoyed by them. I think most people are a little unfair with them, when I first got to uni I primarily hanged out with Cypriots for a while and while they're a little weird about stuff and generally completely indifferent towards social issues they're alright, but I see why some people don't like them very much, and it's not really a very big issue for anyone since neither group holds any kind of power over the other, and really there's no real animosity, it's more along the lines of Americans cracking jokes or being mildly annoyed about Texans or Floridians or whatever. After all Cypriots don't seem to enjoy hanging out with squid people very much either. The important thing is that both countries vote for each other in Eurovision, and that's what really matters. With Pontics for example it was different because Pontics, while Greek, used to live in Turkey and they came to Greece as refugees, and there was very real animosity and marginalization, although that's over now. Generally regionalism isn't a real issue any more but it's very funny when it comes up.
God, I love learning about racisms in other places when I have no skin in the game lol, thanks for educating me.
Y'know what it reminds me of, my grandfather was a Volga German, before collapse of the USSR, Kazakhstan was home to almost a million of Soviet Germans, many of whom emigrated to Germany in the 90s, so my grandpa, two of my uncles and their families ended up there.
Back in Soviet times there was this racial stereotype that compared to other Soviet ethnicities Germans are really punctual, educated, their fences are always upright, their houses are clean and shit, true Teutonic Europeans and shit. Guess what, they come to Germany, and the local Germans fucking hate their immigrant guts. Turns out Russified Soviet Germans are just Ruskies to them. They speak German with a Russian accent, they watch Russian TV channels, they walk around in tracksuits, squatting like real Slavs and shit.
The complete lack of desire of local Germans to accept Soviet German immigrants is real bad. Most of them failed to integrate so hard, that I know of several suicides because of that. I visited my uncle for his birthday in Berlin, and the only friends he invited were fellow Soviet Germans, they all spoke Russian, and I lost count how many times they were like “God I miss Kazakhstan so much”. Most of them barely made any local German friends, my unc watches exclusively Putin channels, I don't speak a word of German and I still hear him speaking German with a thick accent. When I visit him, he cooks exclusively Kazakh food, mate, I came here to try those famed sausages and shit and you give me what I already eat on a daily basis.
I does lead to funny situations though. My mum loves to tell the story about this one Soviet German in Germany. She got on the bus, and some random German youth calls her Russisch Schwein. She explodes and starts calling all of these Germans Nazis and how in 1945 we beat them and didn't beat enough. The Volga German immigrants feel so little affinity with the locals, that their identity as former Soviet citizens is only strengthened.
Btw, I looked up the etymology of the squid people characterization, and... Yeah, it's not exactly bad, and it is what I suspected, but it does SOUND bad to people. Basically Cypriots started calling mainland Greeks kalamarades many years ago, when Greece was a newly liberated country, and intellectuals came to Cyprus from Greece to teach them to write Greek etc. They called said intellectuals squid people because they used to write with squid ink, and the name just kinda stuck and then became a general characterization for all Greeks. Now most Cypriots don't really know what it means and neither do Greeks.
I agree with Pezevenk here, if it’s any indication of how things are, as a european gypsy. Our situation is unique in ways some other types of racism/prejudism isn’t nowadays.