The Roma would have a hard time over here. With all the other cultures, they'd have trouble fitting in. In the inner cities, the ethnic gangs would take advantage of them. In the rural areas, they'd have to deal with rednecks. If the Roma came to America, their culture would disappear. They'd be forced to melt into the American way of life. Only being Roma by name.
Not at all (about 2/3 were deemed fit for Germanization), but Germans tended to mistrust Czechs as bacstabbing beasts who would turn against them if they got weapons.
Anyone who decides to run a welfare system and doesn't expect abuse is naive. There will always be people who abuse systems like that.
Both Roma and Czech.
The heart of the problem is your welfare system. You said that instead of getting an X amount of cash for every kid, the money gets multiplied for every extra kid you get.
You've actually got it exactly backwards. It's your lack of colonial history, or rather, your history at the other end of the colonialist enterprise, which makes you blind to the ways in which systematised social forces serve to hurt and discriminate against populations. It leads to a lack of self-reflectiveness and the naive assumption that nothing the dominant societies have done in their history or contemporary policies could possibly have helped create the situation.
It's rather telling that a lot of posts keep going BUT LOOK HOW BAD THEIR BEHAVIOUR AND LIVING CONDITIONS ARE as though that means anything, or as though we doubt it. Those conditions are hardly the point. Aborigines in this country have way above-average crime and social problem statistics, but the difference is, we actually recognise that our own history played a big part in how things got that way and don't just blame them for being the victims of our own discrimination and ignorance. We can't afford to play innocent because we know what's happened. a lot of you, by contrast, really sound like the worst sorts of ignorant, racist Australians when you spout off unreflectively about what "scum" these people (who you neeeeever discriminate against) are.
So step one to fixing the problem is really looking hard at your own societies and their history and asking how things got the way they are. Accept that a historically dominated population can still dominate and marginalise others, in turn. The Roma are basically an internally colonised population, victims of the modern state and its homogenising tendencies. So how do you address that, because heavy handed assimilationist policies clearly aren't working. Get creative, learn from what works in other countries (Finland?). I'd start with the school systems, it sounds like they're generally pretty hell-bent on imposing a common socialisation on everyone instead of, you know, actually catering to diverse needs. I blame communism for that.
Jesus, you people even have an easy out... blame communism for alienating them with its crushing pressures to conform and homogenise... then change the policies until something works!
You just made a fool of yourself with that statemet. Romania was formed in 1859.
To you and Cheezy: The poster you showed us is AN ARGUMENT AGAINST what you're saying. Learn Romanian before you post Romanian-language things on the Internet.
Here's a short lesson on the Romanian language: "Tigan" - Gypsy. "Tiganesc" - belonging to the gypsies. "Sclavi tiganesti" - slaves BELONGING TO GYPSIES .
Had they wanted to say "Gypsy Slaves", the words would have been "Sclavi Tigani".
That being said, some gypsies were indeed slaves in the 19th century, just like some Romanians were slaves in the 19th centuries, and some Bulgarians too. In fact, Bulgarian slaves were the most sought after, as they were thought to be very good with gardening and outside work. Furthermore, some of those slaves belonging to gypsies that were being sold in that poster might have been very well gypsies themselves. Doesn't mean anything, apart from proving that slaves existed in the 19th century, which is a fact nobody ever contested in this thread. I cannot believe just how much self-pwnage that post contains.
You just made a fool of yourself with that statemet. Romania was formed in 1859.
To you and Cheezy: The poster you showed us is AN ARGUMENT AGAINST what you're saying. Learn Romanian before you post Romanian-language things on the Internet.
Here's a short lesson on the Romanian language: "Tigan" - Gypsy. "Tiganesc" - belonging to the gypsies. "Sclavi tiganesti" - slaves BELONGING TO GYPSIES .
Had they wanted to say "Gypsy Slaves", the words would have been "Sclavi Tigani".
That being said, some gypsies were indeed slaves in the 19th century, just like some Romanians were slaves in the 19th centuries, and some Bulgarians too. In fact, Bulgarian slaves were the most sought after, as they were thought to be very good with gardening and outside work. Furthermore, some of those slaves belonging to gypsies that were being sold in that poster might have been very well gypsies themselves. Doesn't mean anything, apart from proving that slaves existed in the 19th century, which is a fact nobody ever contested in this thread. I cannot believe just how much self-pwnage that post contains.
You've actually got it exactly backwards. It's your lack of colonial history, or rather, your history at the other end of the colonialist enterprise, which makes you blind to the ways in which systematised social forces serve to hurt and discriminate against populations. It leads to a lack of self-reflectiveness and the naive assumption that nothing the dominant societies have done in their history or contemporary policies could possibly have helped create the situation.
It's rather telling that a lot of posts keep going BUT LOOK HOW BAD THEIR BEHAVIOUR AND LIVING CONDITIONS ARE as though that means anything, or as though we doubt it. Those conditions are hardly the point. Aborigines in this country have way above-average crime and social problem statistics, but the difference is, we actually recognise that our own history played a big part in how things got that way and don't just blame them for being the victims of our own discrimination and ignorance. We can't afford to play innocent because we know what's happened. a lot of you, by contrast, really sound like the worst sorts of ignorant, racist Australians when you spout off unreflectively about what "scum" these people (who you neeeeever discriminate against) are.
So step one to fixing the problem is really looking hard at your own societies and their history and asking how things got the way they are. Accept that a historically dominated population can still dominate and marginalise others, in turn. The Roma are basically an internally colonised population, victims of the modern state and its homogenising tendencies. So how do you address that, because heavy handed assimilationist policies clearly aren't working. Get creative, learn from what works in other countries (Finland?). I'd start with the school systems, it sounds like they're generally pretty hell-bent on imposing a common socialisation on everyone instead of, you know, actually catering to diverse needs. I blame communism for that.
Jesus, you people even have an easy out... blame communism for alienating them with its crushing pressures to conform and homogenise... then change the policies until something works!
First, comparison between Roma and Aborigines is not exactly working. Aborigines were a stone-age culture just a hundred years ago, whom you drove from their lands, who were devastated with booze and could not possibly hope to cope with modern society without major problems straight away. Roma, on the other hand, arrived into Europe more than six hundred years ago and there never was such a technological barrier between "their" and "our" culture. They were not naive savages exploited by ruthless colonialists, they were every bit as "advanced" as contemporary Europeans. I am just saying this, because I understand that a comparison must not be perfect to make sense.
Second, I am not saying that Roma are not discriminated against. In fact I explicitly said they are. I'll come back to that later. However, Europe is literally stock full of minorities that have faced similar or even greater discrimination in the past. The Jews for instance, who don't make that an excuse for not sending their kids to school and living off of petty thievery in squalor. Most Estonians, for God's sake, were freed from 500-year period of serfdom under a foreign empire just a generation before slavery was abolished in Romanian principalities. Or take the Irish. Or Sorbs. Or Slovaks. Europe has no shortage of minorities that have been oppressed and discriminated - though very rarely on racist grounds.
Coming back to discrimination...yes, Roma face lots of discrimination, but that has nothing to do with racism. I'll take liberty to quote innonimatu on this:
An example:
Getting the children of gypsies to attend to school and follow classes with success similar to that of other, non-gypsy, children, can be impossible. Not always, but there are cases of that, it'll depend on the place it happens, on the lifestyles of the particular group of gypsies considered and on the "mainstream" community within which they live.
The problem starts with the fact that what is taught at school may go counter some of the beliefs held by their families. Often even the obligation of attending school - for women, in particular. So, should states force children to attend normal schools? Should they take away custody of those children from their parents in order to guarantee regular success? It would happen to other, non-gypsy, parents... but if you do it to gypsies, the very same associations complaining about unequal schooling will complain about racism over that forced separation. And indeed I personally find it a bigger evil also. So, what is the solution? Special schools? But then we have the "Equal Access to Quality Education for Roma" or whatever complaining about that too...
You can't expect kids who don't even receive basic education to grow up as productive members to society. That is where the problem really starts and perpetuates itself. But what to do when their parents refuse to let them attend school? Whatever solution you take, whether you leave the matter be or force them or establish special schools, will come to discrimination against them and will be lamented as such. In US, educating blacks was actively discouraged, the situation is not same here. The problem in US was easier to solve: many blacks wanted to go to schools and universities, whites simply did not want to see them there. Stopping segregation on legislative level and threats of hanging to keep them out pretty much did the trick. Roma, on the other hand, you pretty damn near have to threaten with hanging to get them into schools.
Of course Romania must seek solution (I am glad there is virtually no Roma in Estonia), but this solution will take time - few generations minimum and it will be costly, because they'll have to "civilize" these people pretty much against their will.
And then you get people like one certain pop artist or Form, who, in their wisdom, are sure that the problems would just magically go away if we all just stopped being so damn rasist and bigoted and opened up our minds to the fact that the Roma really are fellow human beings - just as we did not know that.
Anyone who decides to run a welfare system and doesn't expect abuse is naive. There will always be people who abuse systems like that.
Both Roma and Czech.
The heart of the problem is your welfare system. You said that instead of getting an X amount of cash for every kid, the money gets multiplied for every extra kid you get.
Because civilized people don't have a problem with constraining themselves. You're right, BTW, many non-gypsies abuse the system too, but while such forms of abuse are rare among the majority population (and most of the minorities as well - I've never heard about a Vietnamese who would take money from the the gov. for nothing), it's a sort of a standard among the Roma. On Roma web pages, they admit that 90% of those 80% of Roma who are unemployed are taking welfare, even though they have other sources of (non-taxed) income.
What you propose is wrong and undoable - if you take all welfare from them, they'll descend into an existentially threatening poverty, which is both unthinkable in this country (an average Czech cannot grasp how it's possible that there are so many really poor people in the US when the country is so rich, for example) and it would only be counter-productive.
The key is, IMO, to design such a system of welfare which will motivate the Roma to take real interest in their childrens' education and which will force them to actively seek jobs and stick to them once they get it. The gov. should also create some subsidised jobs for people like the Roma so that they can't evade this by saying "we can't find a job".
So, the problem isn't the welfare system itself, the problem is that it is too generous and forgiving (especially to minorities who cry "racism!" every time someone decides to treat them like any other citizen ).
So, the problem isn't the welfare system itself, the problem is that it is too generous and forgiving (especially to minorities who cry "racism!" every time someone decides to treat them like any other citizen ).
Based on what I've read on the subject (and I haven't read a lot, I'll admit, so don't go all MobBoss on me if I say something that isn't true), it seems to me like the authorities are a bit afraid of treating the Roma "just like any other citizen". They appear to have a unique approach for them - in an effort to appear non-racist and PC.
Why aren't Roma parents being punished when their children aren't being educated in schools? Isn't there a law against that sort of thing? What would happen to a Bohemian (or Moravian) family that did the same thing to their kids - wouldn't the state step in?
The thing you all need to remember is Madonna is a baby stealing whore. Even if she's right, even a broken clock is right sometimes, she's still a baby stealing whore.
The thing you all need to remember is Madonna is a baby stealing whore. Even if she's right, even a broken clock is right sometimes, she's still a baby stealing whore.
Christ, that is exactly what I was talking about. Because of your civil rights movement you have developed a knee-jerk reaction "OMG rasism!" to every instance of real or imagined discrimination against minorities and won't even consider any other possibility.
No, we just have a lot of experience dealing with bigots and racists who have claimed the same things many are trying to claim about the Roma. None of this is 'new' to us as it apparently is to you because we have already been subjected to decades of the same absurd rhetoric. In fact, Hitler used the same excuses to exterminate over a million of them. I'm rather surprised you haven't noticed the obvious similarities yourself.
Obviously me, Winner, Mirc, Defiant, innonimatu and every other one who has been trying to explain why many Roma (as individuals, not as ethnicity) face discrimination are just a bunch of bigoted White Supremacists - because you found one analogy and think it suits all cases everywhere and in perpetuity.
If you actually think they have been discriminated against and continue to be so, then you are in all likelihood not bigoted towards them. It's as simple as that. I am addressing those who claim the Roma are NOT being discriminated against, or who have made obvious racist statements regarding the Roma. Is that so difficult for you to comprehend the obvious difference from the statements I have made in this thread and in the past?
Discrimination is a sociological term that refers to treatment taken toward or against a person of a certain group that is taken in consideration based on class or category. The United Nations explains: "Discriminatory behaviours take many forms, but they all involve some form of exclusion or rejection." [1] Discriminatory laws such as redlining have existed in many countries. In some countries, controversial attempts such as racial quotas have been used to redress negative effects of discrimination.
And then you get people like one certain pop artist or Form, who, in their wisdom, are sure that the problems would just magically go away if we all just stopped being so damn rasist and bigoted and opened up our minds to the fact that the Roma really are fellow human beings - just as we did not know that.
For someone who claims that the Roma are indeed being discriminated against, there sure seems to be a lot of hatred and apparent deliberate distortion of facts and my own opinions in your continuing rhetoric. I stated long ago that there is indeed a problem. I also stated that continuing to discriminate them is not going to solve matters. Do you actually disagree with those statements? If not, I would suggest you tone down your constant invectives a bit because you are coming across as someone who hates and vilifies almost as much as the bigots do.
Furthermore, what do you suggest be done to try to resolve this problem? Sterilize the women? Segregate the children into "special ed" classes where they fall even further behind? Force parents to give up their children? Do you agree with these programs instituted by the Czechs and others, or not?
The quality and tone of the arguments seem to have improved over the last couple of pages, with Yeekim and Arwon in particular making some solid points. In that spirit, I'll try to add something more constructive to the discussion myself.
I'll admit that my knowledge of this particular issue is fairly limited, so I don't feel qualified to offer any opinion on the original causes of the problems, or to make any specific suggestions about how they might be resolved in the future. However, I have spent several years studying socio-political issues of this type (including the Roma question, though not in any great detail), so I'm not talking from a position of total ignorance.
From what I've read here and elsewhere, the way in which many eastern Europeans talk about the Roma does imply a certain ingrained prejudice against that group. And, while it does seem likely that many - or even most - Roma conform to the stereotype, experience suggests that such stereotypes tend to be self-perpetuating.
That is to say, if the population at large routinely associates certain traits with the members of a certain group, then the latter will tend to manifest behaviours that justify the popular conception of them. Moreover, if the traits/behaviours in question are predominantly anti-social (at least in the eyes of the majority), then the minority group will tend to see themselves as outsiders. Ultimately, the result is a culture of blame/victimhood, wherein the majority and minority find it increasingly difficult to live with one another.
When it comes to seeking solutions, however, the fact that there may be plenty of justification for either side's view of the other is almost irrelevant. And, moreover, where the focus is on those justifications, it tends to be much harder to address the actual problems. After all, what really matters is not who is responsible for things being as they are, but what can be done to reverse the trend.
Yeekim said:
Of course Romania must seek solution (I am glad there is virtually no Roma in Estonia), but this solution will take time - few generations minimum and it will be costly, because they'll have to "civilize" these people pretty much against their will.
That it takes an interminably long time to resolve such issues is unquestionable. But it's also the case that imposed solutions have (to my knowledge) no record of lasting success, unless accompanied by a program of sustained violence.
The idea of 'civilising' an outsider group against their will is a flawed one - so long as that will is opposed to being civilised, attempts to force the issue will likely produce increased resistance. You might seek to crush their collective identity to the point where they abandon it, and offer no further resistance. Or, alternatively, you can try to work through the painstaking process of finding mutually-acceptable solutions. Neither path offers a guarantee of ultimate success, but I think it's pretty clear that the former approach can end up making things a lot worse, a result which is much less likely with the latter.
What you propose is wrong and undoable - if you take all welfare from them, they'll descend into an existentially threatening poverty, which is both unthinkable in this country (an average Czech cannot grasp how it's possible that there are so many really poor people in the US when the country is so rich, for example) and it would only be counter-productive.
Especially when the whole concept of them being "uncivilized" is itself flawed. Their civilization is just much different than others in that particular region. It doesn't mean they are 'uncivlized', any more than the aborigines in Australia, or the American Indians are ,or the Jews in Nazi Germany were. It just means their own culture is radically different compared to what is considered by the majority of the population to be the norm.
I bet if a group of wandering Catholics had found their way to India and had taken up residence in the 11th Century, that they would have likely faced discrimination from being so different from everybody else as well. And it may even continue today.
So who is primarily to blame? The Roma for not assimilating as much as the majority population in these countries would wish? Or the various countries which have clearly discriminated against them for merely being different and having different values and culture, and who have actually made the situation much worse by deliberately denying them a proper education and access to decent jobs, while characterizing them all as being lazy thiefs with no sense of morals?
so long as that will is opposed to being civilised, attempts to force the issue will likely produce increased resistance. You might seek to crush their collective identity to the point where they abandon it, and offer no further resistance. Or, alternatively, you can try to work through the painstaking process of finding mutually-acceptable solutions. Neither path offers a guarantee of ultimate success, but I think it's pretty clear that the former approach can end up making things a lot worse, a result which is much less likely with the latter.
Indeed. That is the crux of the matter. Are you willing to be civlized yourself in your treatment of the Roma by trying to achieve slow steady progress by proven methods, as has happened in the US with the "black problem" since the end of slavery? Or do you simply want to force them to change, sterilize their women, or ship them someplace else? In other words, do you think these countries where they reside will ever have a "Roma" president or a "Roma" high court justice as the US now has?
The quality and tone of the arguments seem to have improved over the last couple of pages, with Yeekim and Arwon in particular making some solid points. In that spirit, I'll try to add something more constructive to the discussion myself.
I'll admit that my knowledge of this particular issue is fairly limited, so I don't feel qualified to offer any opinion on the original causes of the problems, or to make any specific suggestions about how they might be resolved in the future. However, I have spent several years studying socio-political issues of this type (including the Roma question, though not in any great detail), so I'm not talking from a position of total ignorance.
From what I've read here and elsewhere, the way in which many eastern Europeans talk about the Roma does imply a certain ingrained prejudice against that group. And, while it does seem likely that many - or even most - Roma conform to the stereotype, experience suggests that such stereotypes tend to be self-perpetuating.
That is to say, if the population at large routinely associates certain traits with the members of a certain group, then the latter will tend to manifest behaviours that justify the popular conception of them. Moreover, if the traits/behaviours in question are predominantly anti-social (at least in the eyes of the majority), then the minority group will tend to see themselves as outsiders. Ultimately, the result is a culture of blame/victimhood, wherein the majority and minority find it increasingly difficult to live with one another.
When it comes to seeking solutions, however, the fact that there may be plenty of justification for either side's view of the other is almost irrelevant. And, moreover, where the focus is on those justifications, it tends to be much harder to address the actual problems. After all, what really matters is not who is responsible for things being as they are, but what can be done to reverse the trend.
That it takes an interminably long time to resolve such issues is unquestionable. But it's also the case that imposed solutions have (to my knowledge) no record of lasting success, unless accompanied by a program of sustained violence.
The idea of 'civilising' an outsider group against their will is a flawed one - so long as that will is opposed to being civilised, attempts to force the issue will likely produce increased resistance. You might seek to crush their collective identity to the point where they abandon it, and offer no further resistance. Or, alternatively, you can try to work through the painstaking process of finding mutually-acceptable solutions. Neither path offers a guarantee of ultimate success, but I think it's pretty clear that the former approach can end up making things a lot worse, a result which is much less likely with the latter.
Furthermore, what do you suggest be done to try to resolve this problem? Sterilize the women? Segregate the children into "special ed" classes where they fall even further behind? Force parents to give up their children? Do you agree with these programs instituted by the Czechs and others, or not?
These are things that would work (maybe). But we are human beings. You can't actually suggest that we would want to do any of these things. Just like concentration camps were a solution to the unwanted masses of Jews in Nazi Germany, it doesn't mean that if no other solution existed, that they should have resorted to such inhumane solutions.
The actual solutions will take a lot more work and time, like Yeekim said, a few generations at least.
What we've been trying to explain to everyone is that it's not a simple case of "racism". Anyone who just shrugs off the situation as such obviously does not really understand it.
Her audience is probably one of the more liberal segments of their society. She was lecturing people, and assuming they were the discriminators. She was more than likely booed because she was insinuating her audience was a bunch of racists.
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Romania was formed in 1859.
).
