Roma community feels discriminated in Poland

A short interview here with a spokesman who says the Roma community still feel discriminated in Poland.

dw.com/en/polands-roma-community-battles-discrimination/a-43273328

There weren't many examples of the discrimination mind you, with one being that they are sometimes told 'you are Roma you can't come in here' by shop owners. Although that might be more to do with a reputation some from the Roma/gypsy communities have of stealing than any 'inherent' racism. I don't believe Poland have any particular dislike of Roma people just for who they are - they just don't trust them, as many have had bad experiences and been tricked in the past.

I have also seen other interviews where Roma representatives have said they are happy in Poland and feel very integrated, so I think this interview is a bit of an overreach and just another attempt to complain.

Maybe if they would stop begging for money on every tram and on every corner in the center, people would take more kindly to them.

the correct term is 'discriminated against' (or 'suffer discrimination'), sorry to be pedantic but it's one of my pet peeves...

Anyhoo, there is zero incentive for anyone to write that Roma/Gypsies don't feel discriminated against and maintaining a seperate existence is one of the main goals of Roma/Gypsy peoples so it's kind of a non-story, especially since the Roma/Gypsy population in Poland is so small compared to other countries in the area.

And as long as Roma/Gypsies eschew education nothing good will change for them.

More like attempt of gaining victim status which is very useful commodity these days.

Gypsy's are caravan type people and have their own code amongst themselves, and that's where it should stay. Do they actually have a homeland someplace or are they perpetual wanderers? Maybe perhaps their origin is Birobidjan. I like Django Rheinhardts' guitar works but can't recall if he was a Roma. If they were more conniving and deceptive, they would have taken over banking, media etc like their fellow gypsy cousins have.

They come from the Indian subcontinent (the language is related to languages of northern India). One theory is that they were camp followers who followed an army outside the continent were sold into slavery en masse and once they escaped kept going west rather than back east.


A completely roma/gypsy society is more or less impossible because there are too many jobs they won't/can't do (for reasons of ritual purity and the like) so they need a host culture to survive and flounder on their own, the worst roma/gyspy poverty is where they are most on their own.

"Gypsy" in fact comes from the once mistaken notion that they were actually of Egyptian origin:-)

Interesting reading: The Jewish-Romani connection: Are Gypsies descendants of the tribe of Simeon?
ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5248902,00.html

No.


There are certainly Gypsies in Egypt, however the English-language term does come from a time when the general populace (and even the intelectual elite) had a far weaker understanding of geography.

The jewish authors of the article disagree. They ask the question of themselves. Plenty of room to argue on that page Jon.

Their ethnicity is relevant how?


So do you; this does not mean you or they are right.

There have been plenty of DNA tests and they have been remarkably consistent. Roma are descended from a group of around a thousand people who left north-western India over a millennium ago.

They're jewish scholars re-evaluating their own origins. That's how. They are more expert on it than you or I. If jews are gypsies then what does it matter. The issue is what if their findings don't fit the proper narrative. I don't care where people who call themselves jews come from actually, only their behavior and intent which has been remarkably consistent. As a jew yourself, I would think their study may be of interest to you. There are many websites dedicated to geneology and heraldry. The interest of ancestry is innate.

They are still wrong; reliable DNA tests have been carried out and repeated.

The ethnicity of the writers is irrelevant to Roma issues.

And if you think they're wrong, argue with them about it. It's your opinion versus their work.

When you are done there, you can argue with this jewish fellow from Johns Hopkins:

sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130116195333.htm

" Elhaik's findings strongly support the Khazarian Hypothesis "

DNA is remarkable. It yields so much information, thus the popularity of businesses like 23andMe. I was going to try it myself but have yet to.

Tribesmen all over the world can now predict their probability of developing diseases expressed by their genes.

jewishgeneticdiseases.org

haaretz.com/.premium-ashkenazi-gene-increases-schizophrenia-1.5294333

It's science versus their opinion. The route by which the ancestors of our Roma brother's and sisters came to Europe has been analysed and confirmed by solid scientific analysis.


That's also been comprehensively debunked.


We're all the same anyway, the variance between DNA in humans is tiny.

Wrong on all counts Jon. The variance in DNA is important enough to Israel, without the right type you can't emmigrate there. This is pointless discussion now though.

Or even completely right.

Odd you think that the DNA is so important for establishing a conn3ction to that great country, when in fact it's the family and culture and community/religious documentation that matter (and are consulted first). Most immigrants there don't need to do a DNA test. DNA is merely one way to verify that in the absence of the more usual methods.

When the Roma eventually get their own state, it's anybody's guess if they'll use that. The results of DNA tests among European traveller communities are interesting. It charts their forebears' fascinating journey from India.

Don't mistake the map for the landscape.

Please, they are totally incapable of achieving (or maintaining) a state. They can't organize at any level higher than the extended family (or caste, if you will).

The Soviets tried to settle them and essentially failed.

Gypsies are nomads. Or at least they were.
Have they ever wanted their own state?
Their customs and traditions make their own identity regardless of where they live.
Not sure where and when I read it but British travellers and Polish Gypsies are different peoples. And there are a lot of Polish Gypsies that look Indian enough to me.

They might have got one post-WW2 if it wasn't for the genocide carried out on them. It would've made a lot of sense to move them into a state carved out of Eastern Slovakia, Eastern Hungary and that bit of Ukraine that borders both of them - although I suspect that it would be comparable to Kosovo today and probably would be a Russian protectorate.

The Holocaust of the Roma people is yet another forgotten piece of history.
I watched a documentary about it once - Nazis had to find an excuse why they would exterminate Gypsies though they were related to Indians and the Aryan race - they claimed Gypsies had mixed too much with non-Aryans

It would be an immediate failed state without non-Romany to actually run things. Traditional Romany culture (like orthodox Jewish culture) needs a host because there's too many things necessary to keep a society going that they won't do because they're too concerned with nonsense like ritual purity and maintaining tradition rather than improving their lives materially.

A better long term plan would have been to carve out a not too bad part of the Soviet union with compulsory bilingual education for a few generations.

Yes, weren't they also the biggest victims in terms of percentage killed?


That could also have worked, especially if they had Russian administrators to ensure that the state functioned. They could implement Roma in administrative positions over time, similar to what happened in Kosovo. The question is how they would function post-dissolution of the USSR, but again, with the Russian military there to help, maybe they could have had a functioning state. I think though, realistically, expecting them to have anything better than modern day Kosovo is a step too far.

I know of one place where the Czechs have mostly succeeded with them, but that was through encouraging their traditional view of the world to do things for the better - for instance, they encouraged male Roma leaders to not allow prostitution in their communities through some very specific targeted education. The Roma men responded positively, and they managed to drive out German sex tourists.

Gypsy prostitutes? Wouldn't they be totally ostracised?

They were essentially being used as sources of income by the community, it seems. That's why it was so effective to get through to the male leaders, because they had both the ability to stop the exploitation of women, but also the ability to physically put a stop to the German sex tourists turning up in their area.

Apparently it worked because the male leaders in the area saw the benefit from stopping sex tourism and encouraging the Czech state to subsidise them instead, but it wouldn't work everywhere.

Not necessarily. The thing to remember about gypsies is they have something like a caste system and some of them support themselves partly from prostitution with non-gypsies.

Once in Bucharest in the middle of the street in summer I saw an adult gypsy woman very obviously prostituting a young girl (barely a teen) to someone in a car. Very unsettling. People with weak nerves don't necessarily want to know how gypsy cultures work...

I know even premarital sex is an issue - for women.
That often results in teenage pregnancies.

What you saw was unthinkable ...

Gypsies like lots of kids, a teenage pregnancy isn't a problem...

I used to know a Polish Gypsy couple in London ... what I know about Gypsies is what I know from them. She was half Polish and didn't look Gypsy even though she wore long dresses and her long her up.At first I thought she was a Polish woman with an Indian/Pakistani husband. Until he spoke fluent Polish to me.

They had only two children. She laughed the nurses at hospital were surprised when she gave birth to her first child - she was already eighteen which was rather late for a Gypsy woman

They were pretty serious about their traditions, though. No premarital sex, long dresses, separate tables for men and women at weddings etc.
I see a mixed Polish-Gypsy couple where I live but they're kind of progressive. She wears jeans. He doesn't mind being seen with his wife as they walk their children to school.

I think the Polish Roma are culturally a bit different to the Czecho-Slovak ones though? It would explain why they had no problems with pimping out their own (or at least, pimping out Roma from poorer places than the Czech Republic - I don't think their origin was established, only that they were visibly Roma) - whereas in Poland, it would be a huge no-no.


I've read in a few places that the Polish Roma mostly well integrated with the exception of the school system (there's a lot of discrimination towards them if they can't speak Polish when they start school), but the problems are more with the very poor Romanian Roma that have no means of supporting themselves in Poland. There was a situation in Wrocław a few years ago with Romanian Roma who were living in a shanty town, but from what I know, the Polish Roma essentially ignored them and wanted nothing to do with them.

Are there any Polish Roma ghettos like the horror of Lunik IX in Kosice or Predlice in Usti nad Labem?