5 ms·

You did an amazing job turning the blame on the Roma themselves.

by mavdi 10y ago

darawk 10y ago
What makes you think they aren't to blame?
- mavdi 10y ago
  So you're saying Roma people are born evil? Like if you grabbed a Roma kid, well fed and educated, taught the right from wrong, and you would still get a petty thief? Like the society and policies have no effect on them? Is this hackernews or did I just accidentally open up the comment section of daily mail?
  - rospaya 10y ago
    Where did OP imply that? He said it's a cultural thing and that's something you're not born with. From my own experience and dealing with NGO's that are trying to turn the tide, I can witness the same.
  - viraptor 10y ago
    If you grabbed a Roma kid who is well fed and educated, it's very unlikely that they come from traditional Roma culture. Behaviour described in the original post belongs to that culture. It's a description of the system, not of separate people. I wouldn't call it blaming the people directly.
  - Yetanfou 10y ago
    No, that is not what he said. What he said is that Roma (or 'Gypsy' as that term also covers other groups like the Sinti, Kale, Romanichal, Manush and others, even though that word is often used in a pejorative sense) culture (or 'nurture' in the classical nature/nurture dichotomy) leads to many of the problems experienced by these people. This is hacker news, a place where I hope more value is placed in facts than in feelings. If the facts - which can easily be found out, there are many published studies and books on the subject - don't fit your vision of society that is a problem for you to solve - or ignore. Facts and the implications thereof can be discussed but it does not make sense to deny them, nor to try to shift the attention away from them.
  - Pica_soO 10y ago
    Some cultures have built in defenses - like conspiracy theories, unfollowable rules for outsiders and micro-agressions to uphold. But yes, you could reeducate that kid- but are you actually saying that a destructive culture should be dissolved by reeducating? Mao would be so proud off you. Speared on his own mental censor-scissor! In all seriousness, the most interesting thing that was dissolving these anti-modern Regressor-cultures are smartphones and the old, non censored internet. If everyone can look over the fence, even the children, suddenly the conspiracy stories are difficult to entrench.
    - viraptor 10y ago
      > are you actually saying that a destructive culture should be dissolved by reeducating? Mao would be so proud off you. Isn't this the main idea behind modern jails? (Idea, not implementation)
  - darawk 10y ago
    I didn't actually say anything, i'm simply pointing out that your reaction is knee-jerk and likely baseless. Neither of us know exactly why they are the way they are. It may be their fault, it may be society's fault, it may be some combination of the two. To simply conclude that it isn't their fault because your worldview is such that minority groups are never at fault is illogical and harmful.
- ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
  wow, HN.
  - fennecfoxen 10y ago
    Hey Chris. So you know, I'm generally anti-left. But I've also had good training from hanging out on Wikipedia and I try to be fair about things and I definitely don't try to be ostentatiously anti-left. I personally agree with you that there's serious problems with the way that the left perceives, reasons about, and talks about both cultures and consequences, at a distance and otherwise. I furthermore believe that you could be downvoted or called a racist xenophobe on these pages, simply for expressing true facts and reasonable opinions. And I downvoted your comment. I also downvoted the grandparent comment and the great-grandparent comment, and for the same reason: because they didn't seem very conducive to a productive conversation. The original poster doesn't deserve snarkily being called out for "victim blaming" for a reasonable post which relatively-neutrally explores the cycles that perpetuate the status quo. The reply "What makes you think they aren't to blame?" doesn't add anything productive to the conversation and just increases the temperature. Your approach as exemplified by this comment - pigeonholing all critics into a conspiracy - is worthless, unproductive, raises the flame-war temperature, and is generally harmful to the cause of Reason as well as any particular cause you're hoping to promote. If Hacker News is leftist-zone full of oikophobes, well then, you should be all the more prepared to apply Principle and Rigor to your arguments, a property which is mostly welcome here. (Outside of a few disturbing incidents like the Brendan Eich witch hunt, anyway.) In summary, you got downvoted 'cuz you're doing HN wrong.
  - darawk 10y ago
    I didn't mean to necessarily imply that they are. I'm posing the question honestly: What makes you think that they aren't to blame for their own plight? Is it a sense that a minority group is, by definition, incapable of being at fault? Is it not possible that, without making per se value judgments, a culture is fundamentally incompatible with Western society and norms?
    - ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
      Don't worry Darawk, I was agreeing with you. I even posted video evidence of how those people live and how they destroy communities due to their particular cultural habbits. But the growing left leaning part of the HN hive-mind started the downvoting and I realized it's just not worth it, I deleted it and just left "wow HN". I've been on here for over 7 years (registered 5 years), I remember when the front page was literally linux code snippet links, nerd chat, and startup dreams and non of this political diarrhea / white savoir nonsense. I remember Reddit when it was just 1 Reddit (no subreddits), and I remember browsing Digg starting from the very 1st page. And I've seen the same pattern over and over all across tech/news websites: Like Digg, Mashable, and so many subReddits, HN too over time has become...well... "wonderful and totally tolerant of non non-left-wing views" and "is totally not a hive-mind, not at all, I swear". I'm an independent, neither left nor right. So it's annoying to see this happen over and over and over. It got so annoying I started taking screenshots of the front page when it first started years ago. Before the new mods, before Altman took over Ycombinator, before the new algorithms, as proof of increasing left-leaning articles that have nothing to do with tech or startups. I should dig up the evidence and release it someday. I ran from the propaganda of conservatism and Fox News from the exposure to it in my teens with the other "Generation-4-Chaners/Anonymous" and now find I'm having to escape liberalism. What happens when there's no place left to go? I think i'm done with this community. I left Digg for Reddit, Reddit for Mashable and TechCrunch, left those for HN, and now I see no point. There was a time when there were "Show HN" submissions all over the front page. Now they are far and few in between. Tech hangouts all turn into Huffingpost eventually. HN was a sort of last bastion due to the algorithm changes every now and then but it's starting to creep back. The Fall of HN is often laughed at, denied, and explained away using cherry picked evidence. It isn't until you flash a screenshot of HN 7 years ago and compare the headlines that the shock hits you. And each time someone brings this up someone who's also a long term member explains it away. It's useless. Did you see what happened to Paul Graham when he published his articles on Inequality, Women, and the Problem with foreign accents in startups. All of his articles were honest and accurate and based on the reality of things, and immediately he was attacked by left leaning media. When he stepped down and replaced himself with Sam Altman he was asked about the attacks and he specifically said and I quote "that part I won't miss". Saving a community on the decline means saving the people who made it decline. What's the point? Let them suffer in their own stench.
oblio 10y ago
There's amazingly little (overt at least) discrimination for Roma which are not following traditional values. For example some of Romania's greatest artists and athletes/coaches are at least partly of Roma origin. Google Gheorghe Zamfir or Mircea Lucescu, for example. So a lot of this discrimination is based on culture. Which is something which can and often does change. Especially since several of the things I mentioned in the comment above are things which are widely considered to be incompatible with Western society (disrespecting property rights and children's rights). What I can tell you is that if the discrimination is just to be blamed on the majorities (Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, etc.), then it is a feeling which is widely spread and becomes even wider spread as Roma migrate to other countries (there's rising backlash from France, Sweden, Norway, Germany, etc.). And some of the countries listed are considered among the most tolerant in the world (Sweden, Norway). We have a saying which goes something like this: "If 1 person tells you that you're drunk, you can ignore her. If 2 persons say it, maybe it's time to go to bed". Anyway, it is a super complex topic and I have no idea how it can be fixed. There has to be a looooot of tolerance and willingness to interact and advance together for both groups and it's hard to do that from such a long history of bad blood.
sctb 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12535355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12535355 and marked it off-topic.

You did an amazing job turning the blame on the Roma themselves.

by mavdi 10y ago

You did an amazing job turning the blame on the Roma themselves.

darawk 10y ago

What makes you think they aren't to blame?

mavdi 10y ago
So you're saying Roma people are born evil? Like if you grabbed a Roma kid, well fed and educated, taught the right from wrong, and you would still get a petty thief? Like the society and policies have no effect on them? Is this hackernews or did I just accidentally open up the comment section of daily mail?
- rospaya 10y ago
  Where did OP imply that? He said it's a cultural thing and that's something you're not born with. From my own experience and dealing with NGO's that are trying to turn the tide, I can witness the same.
- viraptor 10y ago
  If you grabbed a Roma kid who is well fed and educated, it's very unlikely that they come from traditional Roma culture. Behaviour described in the original post belongs to that culture. It's a description of the system, not of separate people. I wouldn't call it blaming the people directly.
- Yetanfou 10y ago
  No, that is not what he said. What he said is that Roma (or 'Gypsy' as that term also covers other groups like the Sinti, Kale, Romanichal, Manush and others, even though that word is often used in a pejorative sense) culture (or 'nurture' in the classical nature/nurture dichotomy) leads to many of the problems experienced by these people. This is hacker news, a place where I hope more value is placed in facts than in feelings. If the facts - which can easily be found out, there are many published studies and books on the subject - don't fit your vision of society that is a problem for you to solve - or ignore. Facts and the implications thereof can be discussed but it does not make sense to deny them, nor to try to shift the attention away from them.
- Pica_soO 10y ago
  Some cultures have built in defenses - like conspiracy theories, unfollowable rules for outsiders and micro-agressions to uphold. But yes, you could reeducate that kid- but are you actually saying that a destructive culture should be dissolved by reeducating? Mao would be so proud off you. Speared on his own mental censor-scissor! In all seriousness, the most interesting thing that was dissolving these anti-modern Regressor-cultures are smartphones and the old, non censored internet. If everyone can look over the fence, even the children, suddenly the conspiracy stories are difficult to entrench.
  - viraptor 10y ago
    > are you actually saying that a destructive culture should be dissolved by reeducating? Mao would be so proud off you. Isn't this the main idea behind modern jails? (Idea, not implementation)
- darawk 10y ago
  I didn't actually say anything, i'm simply pointing out that your reaction is knee-jerk and likely baseless. Neither of us know exactly why they are the way they are. It may be their fault, it may be society's fault, it may be some combination of the two. To simply conclude that it isn't their fault because your worldview is such that minority groups are never at fault is illogical and harmful.
ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
wow, HN.
- fennecfoxen 10y ago
  Hey Chris. So you know, I'm generally anti-left. But I've also had good training from hanging out on Wikipedia and I try to be fair about things and I definitely don't try to be ostentatiously anti-left. I personally agree with you that there's serious problems with the way that the left perceives, reasons about, and talks about both cultures and consequences, at a distance and otherwise. I furthermore believe that you could be downvoted or called a racist xenophobe on these pages, simply for expressing true facts and reasonable opinions. And I downvoted your comment. I also downvoted the grandparent comment and the great-grandparent comment, and for the same reason: because they didn't seem very conducive to a productive conversation. The original poster doesn't deserve snarkily being called out for "victim blaming" for a reasonable post which relatively-neutrally explores the cycles that perpetuate the status quo. The reply "What makes you think they aren't to blame?" doesn't add anything productive to the conversation and just increases the temperature. Your approach as exemplified by this comment - pigeonholing all critics into a conspiracy - is worthless, unproductive, raises the flame-war temperature, and is generally harmful to the cause of Reason as well as any particular cause you're hoping to promote. If Hacker News is leftist-zone full of oikophobes, well then, you should be all the more prepared to apply Principle and Rigor to your arguments, a property which is mostly welcome here. (Outside of a few disturbing incidents like the Brendan Eich witch hunt, anyway.) In summary, you got downvoted 'cuz you're doing HN wrong.
- darawk 10y ago
  I didn't mean to necessarily imply that they are. I'm posing the question honestly: What makes you think that they aren't to blame for their own plight? Is it a sense that a minority group is, by definition, incapable of being at fault? Is it not possible that, without making per se value judgments, a culture is fundamentally incompatible with Western society and norms?
  - ChrisNorstrom 10y ago
    Don't worry Darawk, I was agreeing with you. I even posted video evidence of how those people live and how they destroy communities due to their particular cultural habbits. But the growing left leaning part of the HN hive-mind started the downvoting and I realized it's just not worth it, I deleted it and just left "wow HN". I've been on here for over 7 years (registered 5 years), I remember when the front page was literally linux code snippet links, nerd chat, and startup dreams and non of this political diarrhea / white savoir nonsense. I remember Reddit when it was just 1 Reddit (no subreddits), and I remember browsing Digg starting from the very 1st page. And I've seen the same pattern over and over all across tech/news websites: Like Digg, Mashable, and so many subReddits, HN too over time has become...well... "wonderful and totally tolerant of non non-left-wing views" and "is totally not a hive-mind, not at all, I swear". I'm an independent, neither left nor right. So it's annoying to see this happen over and over and over. It got so annoying I started taking screenshots of the front page when it first started years ago. Before the new mods, before Altman took over Ycombinator, before the new algorithms, as proof of increasing left-leaning articles that have nothing to do with tech or startups. I should dig up the evidence and release it someday. I ran from the propaganda of conservatism and Fox News from the exposure to it in my teens with the other "Generation-4-Chaners/Anonymous" and now find I'm having to escape liberalism. What happens when there's no place left to go? I think i'm done with this community. I left Digg for Reddit, Reddit for Mashable and TechCrunch, left those for HN, and now I see no point. There was a time when there were "Show HN" submissions all over the front page. Now they are far and few in between. Tech hangouts all turn into Huffingpost eventually. HN was a sort of last bastion due to the algorithm changes every now and then but it's starting to creep back. The Fall of HN is often laughed at, denied, and explained away using cherry picked evidence. It isn't until you flash a screenshot of HN 7 years ago and compare the headlines that the shock hits you. And each time someone brings this up someone who's also a long term member explains it away. It's useless. Did you see what happened to Paul Graham when he published his articles on Inequality, Women, and the Problem with foreign accents in startups. All of his articles were honest and accurate and based on the reality of things, and immediately he was attacked by left leaning media. When he stepped down and replaced himself with Sam Altman he was asked about the attacks and he specifically said and I quote "that part I won't miss". Saving a community on the decline means saving the people who made it decline. What's the point? Let them suffer in their own stench.

oblio 10y ago

There's amazingly little (overt at least) discrimination for Roma which are not following traditional values. For example some of Romania's greatest artists and athletes/coaches are at least partly of Roma origin. Google Gheorghe Zamfir or Mircea Lucescu, for example. So a lot of this discrimination is based on culture. Which is something which can and often does change. Especially since several of the things I mentioned in the comment above are things which are widely considered to be incompatible with Western society (disrespecting property rights and children's rights). What I can tell you is that if the discrimination is just to be blamed on the majorities (Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, etc.), then it is a feeling which is widely spread and becomes even wider spread as Roma migrate to other countries (there's rising backlash from France, Sweden, Norway, Germany, etc.). And some of the countries listed are considered among the most tolerant in the world (Sweden, Norway). We have a saying which goes something like this: "If 1 person tells you that you're drunk, you can ignore her. If 2 persons say it, maybe it's time to go to bed". Anyway, it is a super complex topic and I have no idea how it can be fixed. There has to be a looooot of tolerance and willingness to interact and advance together for both groups and it's hard to do that from such a long history of bad blood.

sctb 10y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12535355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12535355 and marked it off-topic.