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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 "w

• s9w 6y ago
  Do you know Roma?
  • carlsborg 6y ago
    My friend. Let me help you with a definition from the top hit on Google for this word.. racism /ˈreɪsɪz(ə)m/ noun prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.
    • s9w 6y ago
      Don't you think that makes it a bit easy? Every european knows Roma. If I were to cite crime statistics, that would make me a racist? It would also be illegal for me, depending on the judge. This whole comment section is just insane. A bunch of Americans complaining about racist Europeans. I would really like to encourage to visit a big European city and watch them.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • vetinari 6y ago
      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.
      • eznzt 6y ago
        >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.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • dang 6y ago
    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 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.
    • s9w 6y ago
      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.
      • dang 6y ago
        Even assuming all that is true, the comment broke the site guidelines and is not ok to post here.
        • s9w 6y ago
          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.
          • dang 6y ago
            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.
• SubiculumCode 6y ago
  As a rule everyone is quick to point out the failings of others, but be blind to their own. Such is the nature of the world.
• apecat 6y ago
  I came here to write pretty much this. Here's a picture to clarify even further. https://imgur.com/m88rKwx https://imgur.com/m88rKwx
  • DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
    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?
    • mmm_grayons 6y ago
      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).
    • hervature 6y ago
      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)
  • malkia 6y ago
    Spot on. Lots of my friends back from the country (Bulgaria), relatives, etc. We also did this atrocity - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_Process#1989_Ethnic_Cleansing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_Process#1989_Ethnic_Cl...
  • dang 6y ago
    Please don't post flamebait to HN. We don't need this here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• knuthsat 6y ago
  I believe also that Roma people in the US are successfully integrated and do not live in ghettos or outskirts. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0494831/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0494831/ Documentary above also really nicely shows the microculture of these people
  • mpol 6y ago
    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 :) ).
    • true_religion 6y ago
      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.
    • dx87 6y ago
      It's probably not a good idea to draw conclusions about an entire culture based on what you saw on a single episode of a reality TV show.
• INTPenis 6y ago
  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.
  • cblconfederate 6y ago
    > I feel like I can easier spot where a european is from That's because you have seen italians speaking and acting italian, romanians speaking romanian etc. Americans see americans speaking american
    • StavrosK 6y ago
      That's what my American friends say, but it's easy to tell, for example, Albanians and Greeks apart, or Englishpeople and Spaniards.
      • evgen 6y ago
        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.
        • StavrosK 6y ago
• pmoriarty 6y ago
  "I always respond by pointing out that the citizens of almost every country are naturally xenophobic and/or racist" That "everybody's racist" and "racism is natural" is a common refrain from white supremacists and Neo Nazis. It's sickening to see that propaganda upvoted on HN. No. Not everybody's racist, and it's certainly not "natural".
  • tdeck 6y ago
    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.
    • layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
      >Roma people were similarly held as slaves in the medieval area - discrimination against them benefitted slaveholders economically and justified their exploitation. [citation needed]
      • fwip 6y ago
        Google's a great tool. I typed in "Roma slavery" and got dozens of hits. Take your pick.
  • Causality1 6y ago
    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.
    • eeZah7Ux 6y ago
• marton78 6y ago
  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.
  • ithkuil 6y ago
    > Roma and the other gypsy peoples I thought gypsy was the exonym for the Roma(ni) people. Are there other "gypsy" peoples?
    • bigbubba 6y ago
      Irish Travellers are sometimes called gypsies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Travellers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Travellers
    • de_Selby 6y ago
      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.
      • ithkuil 6y ago
        > Travellers could also be considered gypsies Yes I heard people use that label for all nomadic minorities. I wonder if it's improper use of the word.
• DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  When I was growing up in New England in the 1970's, children commonly used the term "gyp" / "gyped" as a slang version of "cheat" / "cheated". It's only as an adult that I realized this was probably a racial or cultural slur.
  • foobar1962 6y ago
    Same here in Australia regarding the "gypped" expression. I don't think there are any Roma communities here but the expression travelled down.
• pchjys12 6y ago
  Most Roma at a very young age are taught by their parents a moral code that says, "Never steal from your own Roma people, but outsiders are fair game, for they are not your people." During countless European wars this was also the code, for example, "English ships may rob Spanish treasure galleons, for the Spanish are not the English." "The Spanish may rob the indigenous New Worlders of their gold, for they are not Spanish." There have been many largely unsuccessful humanitarian efforts in Europe to get Roma to assimilate better, to abandon their nomadic lifestyle so that their children can remain enrolled in the same public school and eventually qualify for decent jobs that can pull them up in society. But they are culturally resistant to change.
• petre 6y ago
  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. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/eyes-wide-shut-collective-punishment-roma-twenty-first-century-europe/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/eyes-wid...
  • adventured 6y ago
    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. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/world/europe/denmark-immigrant-ghettos.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/world/europe/denmark-immi... (https://archive.is/Um7tE https://archive.is/Um7tE) https://www.vox.com/world/2018/7/3/17525960/denmark-children-immigrant-muslim-danish-ghetto https://www.vox.com/world/2018/7/3/17525960/denmark-children... https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/01/15/denmarks-ghetto-plan-and-the-communities-it-targets/ https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/01/15/denmarks-ghett...
• jrochkind1 6y ago
  It is definitely common in today's world, that alone is not enough to conclude the people are "naturally" xenophobic or racist, that it is "natural".
  • wussboy 6y ago
    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
    • earthboundkid 6y ago
      “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).
      • jrochkind1 6y ago
        This is a really important point. 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.
• abraxas 6y ago
  Ask all those smug Europeans how they treat their Roma or even the Eastern European expats. Brexit was one big middle finger to the Polish diaspora.
• yeetman21 6y ago
  Unless you live next to them, you should not judge what others (who have lived next to them) say
• 01100011 6y ago
  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?
  • Bost 6y ago
    > I was pretty surprised, having believed Europe was more enlightened than the US. As rule of thumb the bigger the distance from the Blue Banana the less enlightenment you encounter. Especially in the eastern and southern direction.
• dvoiss 6y ago
  > 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.
  • earthboundkid 6y ago
    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.
• rsync 6y ago
  "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 ?
  • CydeWeys 6y ago
    It's always been easy to justify racism against people that don't speak your language. That's a hell of an outgroup.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• Spooky23 6y ago
  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.
• hechang1997 6y ago
  I would go so far as saying people are born racist and can only grow out of it.