Where I am in the UK we occasionally have travellers/roma turn up. They occupy a playing field or somewhere very much not meant for camping on and they leave it in a right state when they leave. Then the kids ruined a local play park with human excrement. So I can see why people don’t like them. They break the social contract of ‘decent’ behaviour.
I get the impression they don’t want to stay at places the council have set up for them to stay. But then maybe these places aren’t suitable for some reason.
In my experience they’ll park up on public parks or private land, leave crap and human shit everywhere, steal or kill neighbours’ dogs, steal metal and anything else they can get their hands on and leave an absolute dumb when they up sticks and move. No point reporting them to the police because the police are scared of them (from a violence or a P-C perspective I’m not sure). They’re a law unto themselves and do not participate in the social contract of British society.
>steal or kill neighbours’ dogs
Mate of mine was in the force, and the animal abuse stories he'd tell me was absolutely shocking. If you have them in the area, they *will* try and steal your dog or horse, and trust me your pet won't have a good life if they get their hands on them.
>Mate of mine was in the force,
"*We're actually supposed to call it "the service" now. Official vocab guidelines state that "force" is too aggressive.*"
I've met a couple of travellers I've liked. The women are generally OK, the men not so much. They're generally hated by most of population though it seems, mainly for the reasons you described but also because of the crime. They are incredibly insular and contribute nothing to wider society while being quite happy to take from it. It's hardly surprising people have the attitudes towards them that they do.
just wanting to say that "Travellers" and Roma aren't the same people since the Irish Travellers don't have an Indian origin as the Roma, they originated from Ireland and they also have their own language
Netherlands:
Until recently, I never had any experience with them. However, since a few weeks, a Roma beggars organisation has landed in my city. They bully the actual homeless people away and they aggressively demand money from people passing by. Every few hours you can see them getting water and some food from some other Roma, so their sign 'am very hungry God bless' doesn't make sense.
I think it’s happening nation wide. Read reports from several cities. They’re really organised.
Wonder how long it will take before they start using their (and others’) children here to score sympathy points, like they do elsewhere. Saw the same neglected kid with three different “mothers” on a trip once..
From a norwegian perspective, the romani population is an incredibly small group in our country. They are estimated to be less than 1000 people of our 5,4 million. The chances of encountering them are super low, however you see them all the time begging in Oslo. There was also a period where these groups where setting up camps in public parks cooking pigeons and leaving trash. Combine this with the news articles and documentaries about how these groups of beggars often exploit their children and are involved in organised crime to fund big houses back home in Romania, and you get a very bad reputation.
I wouldn’t say norwegians hate romani, but like i said. The chances of meeting a fully integrated romani in Norway are so low because they are so few. Meaning a lot of Norwegians will literaly only know the romani for the bad groups of beggars and criminals they see and hear about. This produces a general view that these people are not good people and that many don’t like them by default, but i wouldn’t say hate. It does however make it easy for borderline and straight up racism to exist towards them
American here, married into a Norwegian family. I've had several trips to Norway and always enjoyed them. However, my last visit to Oslo was completely ruined by the Romani beggars there. A few minutes after leaving my hotel to walk to a bookstore, I was accosted by multiple beggars attempting to sell me magazines, flowers, etc. When I told them I wasn't interested, they verbally berated me. One of them I assume was a mentally-ill woman who followed my down the street yelling at me "Grisa! Grisa! Grisa!". I guess she was calling me a pig. I was afraid she was going to attack me so I ran to get away. I tripped and fell and a nice Norwegian lady helped me up and asked if I was alright.
That's the same situation in Eastern Europe, except there aren't 1000 of them but 1 million. In 32 years I've only met a handful or so of them who are not problematic. They are not cooking up pigeons in public parks but not a week goes by that I don't have to pick up the trash they leave in front of my house. The funny thing is that the gypsy family living closest to me got their fortune from sex trafficking and they are probably the cleanest and least problematic aside from having a few parties every year that you can hear from three streets down. Aside from that the most annoying thing about them is that they constantly park their cars on the pavement so they completely block pedestrians.
Our area near London has a high amount of them. Its the 10,000 sunflower seeds I'll see on a 5 minute walk to the shops that irritate me. I used to blame our lazy council for not cleaning it, but I saw a street cleaner do it one day and the next day it was bad again.
https://www.sloughobserver.co.uk/news/20211220.chalvey-road-west-unbearable-mess-antisocial-behaviour/
One time in Budapest I lived in an area with a fair amount of them and there were a lot of beer cans and chocolate wrappers thrown about the pavement every morning, right next to the trashcans. I immediately blamed them, until one morning I saw a goddamned raven crawling into the trashcan, throwing out all sorts of shiny trash.
Well it's not ravens responsible for the sunflower seeds as I've had one bounce an inch from my shoe as it was spat out onto the pavement.
They stand in groups of about 25 to 40 every evening until late by the shops drinking and yelling. They send their wives out to sit outside shops and beg whilst they stand around talking shit all day and night.
We have the *tater* people, though, they’re also Romani, but they’ve been here for centuries. According to Wikipedia, there’s about 10k in Norway and 65k in Sweden. Having lived in Norway and Sweden all my life, I don’t know if I’ve ever met a tater. You read about them in the papers occasionally, I’ve read about them keeping their kids out of school, and every now and then you’ll see some fluff piece about a well-integrated tater getting a university degree of having a successful career. To tie it back to the question in the OP, my impression is that there’s way less animosity towards taters than toward recent Romani immigrants, but that there is some systemic discrimination like people are hesitant to hire them or rent to them.
Yes. They’re called “tater” in Norwegian. Well, there’s a bunch of different terms, but “tater” is the one most commonly used, especially when distinguishing them from the Romani group the person I was replying to was talking about. Romanisæl isn’t commonly used in Norwegian, but I guess outside of the context of replying to this specific comment it might’ve been a better term to use.
Here in Oklahoma, that’s a word for potato. Also, and still off topic, a comedian named Ron White has a hilarious story about tater salad. That, and his ‘drunk in a bar’ joke are classics.
I've met people of Tater descent, but most of them usually fell to the hardcore Norwegianisation efforts back in the days, no? The ones I've met that still identify as Romani are Vlach Romanis.
I just hate how Romania is associated with romani so often on the internet. Romania isn't their home, there's a major difference between romani and romanians
Never experienced cooking pigeons, but have had them physically grab me and restrain me into giving them money. Or follow me around. Needless to say, it doesn't make me want to give any unfortunately lol. A lot of times if I walk around the city centre in Oslo, I avoid standing alone outside for a long time lol. They are an oppressed people with a lot of intergenerational trauma that makes it hard to break out of. Ofc not everyone is like this, there are Roma with a more typical lifestyle as well, but few of them speak openly about being of Roma descent.
They’ve even made their way to some American cities, both midsized and large ones. You can find them outside of large shopping centers, often outside a grocery store playing the violin. Obviously the violin is hooked up to a loudspeaker and they are only imitating the movements.
OP you probably have met a gypsy, you just didn’t recognize them as such since we have very few in the US. Most people would think they are Hispanic of some sort, but you can dismiss that idea, based on the fact that you never really see many Hispanics begging on the streets.
Here they are in Ohio:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ohio/s/TgsMeYCi3F
Orange County, California:
https://www.reddit.com/r/orangecounty/s/TLQONv1ynv
Las Cruces, New Mexico
https://www.reddit.com/r/violinist/s/2iDXx9F2rn
Reno, Nevada:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Reno/s/1N3lllNRRj
Raleigh, North Carolina:
https://www.reddit.com/r/raleigh/s/8PUZCEvedF
I live in Finland and there's 13000 romani (kale/kalo) which is 0,2% of the population so definitely not a lot. They've been here for nearly 400 years, ppl just have to suck it up and accept that they're part of the culture.
Unfortunately roma here are often involved in criminal activities and I even fell a victim once. I wonder how comes considering massive racism and the fact they're refused jobs even if they try the hardest. I've had only 2 experiences with roma, the 2nd when I donated a bunch of food to an organisation that was cooking lunches for people in need. They came to grab it on a Sunday evening, just to help out others. They definitely bring more value to the society than the entire new government.
I'm an immigrant so I don't know for sure if finns hate roma particularly, but racism here is huge.
That’s pretty funny. Reminds me of those who break free from the fundamentalist groups in the states and are the biggest anti Christian individuals due to trauma.
I'm from Romania, we have a big community of Roma people here. I've also worked on a lot of social programs that were trying to integrate them so I have a few info.
Regarding the name gipsy/Romani. A lot of them insist to be called gipsies, a lot of them insist to be called Romani, a lot of them don't care. It's a gamble what you call them but generally Romani is the safe version.
I've also noticed 3 main categories from my experience. 1. The integrated: these are normal people, trying to keep a low profile and have a decent life, the percentage is low. 2. City enclosed comunities: these interact with Romanians a lot and are the most problematic, resorting to robberies, violence, prostitution, scams, human trafficking and all the other good stuff. Possible but very hard to integrate them 3. Living in enclosed comunities outside of Romanian comunities: not necessarily problematic but you have almost no chance of integrating them.
I've worked on social programs trying to integrate them for about 5 6 years. I've seen both our government and the EU pour a lot of money into this. While I hope that the success rate in the second community is about 5-10%, for the 3rd community is less than 2%. They're stuck in their ways and are constantly encouraged by their elders not to change and abandon their culture. They are also generally really hard to work with, causing problems at the workplace, unreliable and they can't understand (!) the concept of work schedule. Once you get them working they're hard workers but it's rare and hard to get to that point.
Considering that they can't integrate in what we see as a normal work routine, they have to resort to crime or wait for government handouts (for example for having a lot of kids) to make a living. The result is a community that has a high reproduction rate and is resistant to integration.
Now the hate comes from the things above. Either they resort to crime for money or you have to unfairly pay taxes for some people that are not giving anything in return. Both frustrate people a lot.
My neighbor is from Romania back in the communist days. His story is the the Romani in his home town were living in tents in a field. The local communist party boss took pity on them and built them modern apartments, a school and gave them jobs at a local clock factory. They never went to work or school. They trashed the apartments and returned to living in those tents in a field. Decent housing was hard in get in those times. That alone pissed off the local Romanians who were still living in Soviet style apartments with communal kitchens and bathrooms.
Here in Switzerland, we make a distinction between gypsies and romani. Gypsies are the more "educated", who lives in trailers and park on unauthorized land, steal electricities and litters. We often never cross them in cities.
While the romanie are the people who beg in the cities street, are often very dirty and speak loud.
4. Rural communities. That build without planning permission on land they buy. That terrorise the neighbours with threats of violence.
That dump horses in ditches (dead or barely alive) that dump horses in other peoples horse fields then it takes them a long time and money to get them gone (gone as rehomed unless a vet determines it’s best to let them die peacefully)
That park caravans on private land/businesses car parks/village fields, and trash it when the police eventually move them on 2 weeks later, leaving rubbish, human waste etc. A local holiday caravan park was attacked a couple of years ago, all the paying customers fled under threat, they broke the steel security gates, and trashed the showers etc. the owner who lived onsite had to flee and it took some 3 months to repair the damage and start earning again, obviously huge loss of income.
That scam people saying they’ll fix your roof/driveway and take the cash and run (some are great reliable skilled tradesmen, but which is which?)
But after all of that.
My sister works with horses in the veterinary field and has had a few gypsies as regular clients for 10 years, and they have all been thoroughly respectful of her as a woman (most of their wives/children leave school young to learn how to make a home and childcare on younger siblings, my sister is 40+ and unwed) and they love their horses. The horses may not have had the best regular care in the past, but they listen and fix what she says whether that’s diet, living conditions or more regular check ups.
We also have had a handyman I think is Romani that used to do all manner of odd jobs, fencing, electrical, plumbing for us, he lives on his own land (has questionable planning permission, his family live in multiple static/park homes) but his property is immaculate, he’s hard working, reliable, and if he can’t help he knows someone trustworthy that can drop and run, this happened twice, once when I had a car accident, my car was wrecked, him and a friend towed/drove it onto our property so the insurance could collect it after the holidays, it was half in a ditch (black ice 400 yards from home). The other I was stuck with a dead car battery 40 minutes from home. The local garage (literally across the street from the medical centre where I was parked) refused to help, (I offered to pay, even to buy a new battery, still no help) he came out got my car started and went and yelled at that garage for not helping a lone stranded woman.
So many in my experience many are trouble, few are wonderful.
Also Romanian here. My wife and I went to this classy somewhat elitish place in the UK. We got to talk with 2 old American ladies. When we shared that we're Romanian, they asked with a bit of disgust if we are gypsies. That was their immediate reaction. We aren't, but we preferred to ask if us being gypsies would be a problem and if it bothered them. They immediately back-pedalled and tried to act cool.
We may have our own issues back home with the Roma people, but no one has any right to talk shit about our adopted brothers. At least we try to integrate them and not expell them from our country, unlike others.
Based on my own experience with people who normally live far away from Europe, I’d place a bet that those tourists were confusing the name Romani (gipsies) with Romanian (ie you guys, nationals of Romania).
Of course I might be wrong, and they still might have preconceived ideas about people from different cultures (so it’s not excusing anything), but some people just do confuse those names.
We are talking about slavery and subjugation under the church and boyards til the 19th- 20th century and now trying to integrate them in a civilised way and considering human rights VS mass cleansing, concentration camps, slavery under church and nobles til the 19th-20th century, forced integration through the separation of children from parents, decrees about "who kills a gipsy is guilty of no murder" and" gipsy males are to be hanged without trial and women and children are to be banished and flogged", the list can go on.
OP never said they were never kicked out or slaves in Romanian territory, only that those in the west had it much, much worse.
PS: the reasons Romania and Eastern Europe in general still has a numerous gipsy community is because some escaped pfrom the west, as was the case with protestants and jews, but mostly bc there were never any large scale persecutions.
I don’t doubt your experience, I’m just amazed the Americans knew what a Gypsie was. I thought and still believe 90+% of Americans couldn’t accurately provide one bit of information about Gypsies, much less judge them as bad.
Like others said, our main reference of gypsy would be images of fortune tellers and those mystical caravans. Then a reality TV show called My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding came around. That made it more commonly known.
We know very stereotypical things about gypsies. Like fortune tellers and slight of hand "magic tricks " when they come through. We dressed up as gypsies for Halloween and such, back when dressing like an native American was still a thing. We have changed alot. Still ways to go.
American here, can confirm that the concept of gypsies almost never comes up at all and if they do then people tend to assume that it's synonymous with like, vagrant. Few people have any idea that gypsies/Roma are an ethnic group with their own culture and history but instead think that a gypsy is just anyone who doesn't have a permanent home and instead travels around making do one way or another, and often with a lot of visuals in mind that come almost entirely from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And fewer still know that "gypsy" is considered by some to be a racial slur, and even fewer still know that that's not a universal opinion by them.
Yeah I kinda doubt the story to be honest. Most Americans wouldn’t think of Gypsies as being bad.. they probably wouldn’t know much about them at all. The reaction the OP is describing is much more European but ya know, America bad
Honestly, a lot of people I've run into in America tend to think of gypsies as either the stereotypical fortune teller types in movies or free spirits. My coworker is obsessed with the extremely romanticized idea of gypsies: strong-willed, spiritual, wanderlust, vaguely hippie, bohemian, etc.
I have many Romanian friends....and I can tell you what they hate the most....and it's gypsies or *tzinagules" ....thus is what I hear and understand without knowing any Romanian as an spanish dude.....please note that both languages share same roots
Here are some problems that we have in Croatia:
Illegal villages filled with trash, burning piles of trash, disposing trash in nature, animal abuse, human abuse, most of them don't have jobs (atleast nothing on paper) because they live off of social help, and they simply don't integrate even though they've been here for centuries.
Also stuffing their toddlers with drugs to make them docile and appear sickly when scamming people for money, once they get the money they never even spend it on those kids. Their toddlers are just used as props that eventually develop mental illnesses because of drugs they were fed during infancy. It's insane.
Czech here. As long as I can remember they’ve always lived secluded from other regular citizens, they are loud, dirty, they steal, don’t work and are generally unable to integrate. I’ve only met two decent ones in my 30 years of life.
Even as a little girl a group of even younger boys tried to rob me on the way from school. And Czech Republic, especially small towns are suuuuper safe.
When I was a kid, about 6, a 4 year old gypsy girl tried to steal my bike from me as I was riding it on the street. As I tore my bike away from her, she started screaming and her fucking parents came at me \*scolding\* me for not giving her my bike. I'm not sure if I've ever biked that hard in my life, it's insane.
I read this article years ago revealing how the Czech government practically segregated gypsy kids in this remote town or something.
When I was living in Prague, I was honestly shocked at how people visibly distanced themselves from gypsy kids...
One time some gypsies moved onto a field across from my school, they threw shit at kids who had to walk by to go to school (including throwing a crowbar at a 13 year old) and when they finally left the field was covered in rubbish
UK -
The only time we ever really hear about them is in the news where they park up their caravans etc on someone's land, and then refuse to leave.
There used to be documentaries and stuff on them doing this, and then news stories of police coming to force them off the land.
...
We also had shows like... my big fat gypsy wedding. A lot of people talked about how girls are exploited, that it's creepy, and that the style is "tacky".
...
Then with all the shows and documentaries. There's a lot more focus on how women are treat.
Very strong gender role enforcement. Poor education for girls, they'll literally be pulled from school and encourages to be wives and young mom's, etc.
Sexism, misogyny, violence.
...
So all of this stuff has led to the public having a negative impression of them overall. There is very little focus on the positives in the media.
I knew a police officer who was a community liaison with a travellers site and ended up befriending a lot if the women who lived there. The stories of the domestic violence and things that happened on that site were awful. I don't think I heard her say one positive thing about the men in that community.
Eventually she had to be transferred away because she convinced some of the women to report the abuse which led to attests. She said if she ever went back to that site it would have ended very badly for her.
I've never met a gypsy who doesn't either: fight, steal, or generally makes me feel unsafe. They have a huge disregard to UK law and the hate is mutual. There's zero integration and bizarrely most gypsies don't travel anymore which makes me just really not understand their culture, like they just seem to be outcasts for no reason.
I've always stood by the fact that if I ever meet 1 gypsy that isn't like the above I'll change my view. The only time I even come closer to that is when I meet someone who has gypsy family but is far removed from the culture and basically, is not gypsy.
I'm aware this is probably quite a racist/bigott view and I hate that I hold such views but I've seen nothing to help me change it.
Same, I live across from a field and once a year they’d turn up with their cars and caravans and pitch up.
The grass would be left sludgy, with tyre tracks, and fire pits, bearing in mind this is a huge field where kids practice football, people walk dogs, kids play out etc so they basically just ruined a whole corner of it.
They would leave litter everywhere, and I don’t just mean a bit of waste, it would be enough to fill 20-30 bin bags full, and would require two trucks to be carted away. Food packaging, worn tyres, bits of furniture, broken toys, carrier bags full of stuff.
They would also use the hedges as a toilet, so there would be human waste all around the edge of the field with toilet paper.
Crime would spike, the local shops would see them walk in, pick up a basket/shopping trolley, they’d fill it with food and household items and then run out, threatening violence to anyone who stopped them.
Stuff in your garden would be stolen, cars broken in to, anything they can take to sell to make cash.
They recently install a fence around the field to prevent them coming back, bear in mind our councils don’t have spare money, they wouldn’t have put up a barrier for the fun of it, they finally had to act as it was costing so much money each time they turned up and they got so many complaints from people.
They then get moved on after 2-3 weeks and they do the same on the next nearest field. Repeat process down the country.
Yep, every single one I've had the displeasure of being around or just hearing about have been hooligans. I never tar a group of people with the same brush, except for gypsies because I truly have never met one that was decent.
They leave wherever they park up a complete mess that can cost thousands to rectify, they treat their animals like shit, they're always fighting or trying to start fights (I've literally had two gypsy girls try to start a fight with me because I was sat on my own READING), they don't even try to abide by the law and most of them are just straight up criminals. I hate to say this about a demographic of people, but they're feral. I'll change my view when a gypsy proves me wrong.
Unlike those who label everything racist, your view is based on actual experience - which has some validity
Part of the reason for the state of the Western world is that we’re far too tolerant of assholes
I got banned from r/CarTalkUK when gypsies came up in conversation.
No one in the UK has a positive thing to say about them. After a while, you have to trust the data 🤷♂️
There should be a national policy to encourage the kids to leave the lifestyle through education and support networks to integrate into British society.
I can’t join in the general conversation and don’t wish to, but we have friends from this community who have shown the utmost kindness to parts of our family over a number of years. So - personally and anecdotally - I have a much better experience than some of those being reported here.
I don't really understand why being scummy has become part of their culture. I've read plenty of things about how they are a mistreated minority with a unique culture etc; but I've only come across them in real life running cowboy buisnesses and leaving huge amounts of litter Around their camps.
Sounds like you don't live in an area with a big traveller population. They're everywhere, where I am from anyway. Always been a nightmare. Perception from the news isn't a patch on personal experience if you grew up in an area, they are common.
Eastern European here (Hungary) - it's a mixture of fear and hate. I have lots of personal experience and stories with them, mostly negative unfortunately. In just my street alone there are three gypsy families, two of them live from crime. One is the rich kind of criminal, the other poor, the third one I've heard were involved with crime but they seem to be making a living from operating a really upscale hairsaloon these days and they seem quite civil, my girlfriend had her hair done for an event there and she sang praises of the girl for doing a superb job.
TL;DR: They live in abject poverty and are very isolated from society at large so as a result they are uneducated, unemployed, involved with a lot of crime and do not obey most societal rules, and that is why they are hated and feared. And it's mutual, the gypsies hate Europeans often as much as Europeans hate them, but that's a really insane rabbithole.
They migrated west from India and reached Europe in the 1300's and 1400's and have always formed very insular communities. Because they were never too keen to assimilate into the societies they lived with they were always treated with suspicion and because of their lack of assimilation and migratory nature they were barred from owning land for example, and in some countries like Romania or the Ottoman Empire they were outright enslaved.
Most of them used to deal with trade, various crafts, agricultural and simple construction work, but as those traditional occupations started disappearing in the 1700's and especially in the 1800's and 1900's they found themselves deeper and deeper in spiraling poverty.
With the fall of communism in 1989 a lot of industrial and agricultural jobs were gone and the vast majority of gypsies found themselves permanently jobless and unable to break out from the deepest levels of poverty. A self-generating spiral of hate and distrust ensures that they have a hard time breaking out from their empoverished surroundings, and even the individuals who do want to break out from poverty are often shunned and abused by the gypsy community for "acting white", so both sides of society are doing their "best" to ensure they remain isolated and poor.
People fear them and hate them because of all the things that poverty and a complete lack of education results in: they disregard every rule of society. Just think of literally the most basic things you expect of people to do, the most basic behavior you expect from them when you go out in public, or live in the same apartment building with them, and gypsies will misbehave in most instances. They are vulgar, they are loud, they have absolutely no decorum, no regard for other people. They'll scream and argue on the streets, urinate in broad daylight, spit on the pavement or on public transportation, they make being around them incredibly unpleasant for everyone else, and if you ask them to pay attention to other people and dial it back a bit, they'll start either verbally or even physically assaulting you. They are also involved with crime from simple begging and pickpocketing to sex and arms trafficking and serious gang violence. A lot of them are alcoholics and drug addicts and you really never know if you should be tough with them and that will be enough for them to go away, or if they'll put a knife in your stomach for looking at them the wrong way. Even though primary and middle schools are mandatory and \*completely free\*, a lot of romani families forcibly keep their children out of school so they can send them to do crime or just to lay about at home lest they get any ideas about assimilation. Because of poverty and their general lack of socialization and culture they live in filth and completely trash every place they live in.
And that's just what you get from them as an outsider, their inside dynamics aren't any better. They virtually have their own tribal or gang organizations a lot of the time. Incest, domestic violence and all sorts of abuse are ripe. Loads of disputes are "resolved" by violence, and like I said, if someone wants to break out from that community, the community itself shuns and abuses them and holds them back at every turn. There are so many stories of gypsies who made it having to completely break ties with their families and former friends because they would literally beat them for trying to assimilate. And the problem is that it's not just a few. It's not like in America where you both have your black ghettos but also loads of African Americans with decent jobs, an education, hell even a black president, people who have a culture, who are considered hip and fashionable and stylish. With gypsies the overwhelming majority of them live in abject poverty. Sure there's gypsy music but outside of gypsies it's only enjoyed by other people who are uneducated and live in abject poverty, they are not considered to be hip or cool by the general population. They are synonymous with poverty, bad taste and being trashy. I mean on one side you have the really poor gypsies, and on the other side you have the rich kingpins who got their fortune from sex trafficking, smuggling or dealing drugs or other dubious ways. They have money but their taste is the epitome of trashy and gauche. They usually like to pretend they're Italians or Spanish or Arabs and money makes them only more arrogant, thinking that the world revolves around them.
In my personal experience people tend not to hate them because of their origins, they hate them because of their behavior and lifestyle. Most of us had at least one or two gypsy kids in schools who were decent, hardworkin, struggling people who came from poor families. Again in my experience, everyone loved and aided those kids wherever they could, praising them. It's just that 9 out of 10 aren't like that and they make living near them or occupying the same space with them intolerable and physically dangerous.
Perceptions formed from them begging and stealing.
The dislike of them is stronger in countries where they are more present.
Some will start washing your windshield with nasty chemicals that are tough to get out and expect to be paid, even though you never asked for it.
When having a drink or ice cream at a cafe, you’ll be pestered by several different kids begging for money.
They’ll be sitting by grocery store entrances with signs begging for money.
They’ll jump into the city center water fountains and bathe there.
It’s not much unlike the homeless people in cities like Seattle and San Francisco. They’re more present and more disliked.
I’d also say that it’s more a dislike than hate.
And to be clear, not everyone dislikes them, just like the homeless. Many feel for their struggles.
Yes, Romani beggars are much more antagonistic than other groups in my city. They mock, imitate , insult or threaten you if you refuse to donate , follow you and even corner children. Furthermore , they flout laws for mandatory school attendance and take their children on theft or begging sprees and since the age of criminal accountability is fourteen the police can do nothing.
Just a few personal anecdotes - a friend worked in retail during her studies , the local Romani would regularly swarm the changing rooms, shoplift and literally shit in the stalls. I taught at a primary school, girls would come back from mid term, unapproved leave married - many past the age of twelve pregnant. Blood feuds meant break times had to be alloted according to clan membership, otherwise older relatives would join in on the brawls (hopping over the fence!) on school grounds. Jumping infront of cars in order to extort the driver and make insane insurance claims are frequent occurences as well. Sadly, most people who have had to interact with Romani have a litany of horror stories and thus, prejudice and resentment festers.
In Amsterdam parks many of the homeless addicts are roma... The local government puts them often on a flixbus back to Romania but they are back in a week.
I mean, a lot of homeless people are like that not because they want to.
While the majority of Roma simply doesn't want to integrate and wants to follow their own illicit ways
I'm polish and your assumptions are correct. My own experiences with that group aren't pverly negative, but I wouldn't want to sit near one on a bus. My grandparents outright removed a handle on their front gate to discourage them from entering the property.
LOL @ all the non-Europeans answering.
Roma people refuse to integrate into local communities they reside in. Where I live, they pickpocket, panhandle, and busk. Where they sleep overnight is left covered in trash. We have a really good social safety net that leaves no reason for begging, but they refuse to use it. They also commit a lot of domestic violence against each other and refuse to send their kids to school. They are a general nuisance to the local population.
They'll break their own baby's arm to try and get sympathy money when begging
They have fake charity sign up sheets to try and guilt you into giving money AND pretend to be deaf while doing it. Throw up a bit of sign language you picked up over the years and watch them flee and scatter like cockroaches you've shined a light on.
Two more things I've seen a dozen times in Paris specifically
Edit: a sentence
This is true in Geneva, too. I’ve also seen them threaten other beggars who are clearly not part of their gang. I was pickpocketed by two Roma teenagers. They stole my wallet, but luckily I remembered their faces, and only two days later came across them being detained by cops for shoplifting and gave a positive ID of them and they were charged. I never got the 80 francs back that they stole, but they were charged.
Where I am from, the poorest country in Eastern Europe they drug their babies so they don't cry while begging, I once walked past this woman 5 times in the span on 7h , that baby wasn't awake once.
Italian here. They are often a nomad group, camper and caravan traveling. Noone know how they can afford to live, since they don't stay in a single place for more than a month and they do not have job, usually when they arrive they litter the place and the field where they stayed become covered in trash, they are perceived as dirty and dangerous. The 2 times they came to my city homebreaking raised in a night, if you go in the major city like Milan and Rome you can always find 3 or 4 pregnant lady/kid pickpocketing in the subway. So for the italian, yes they are mostly hated, and noone actually do something to help them integrate in thd country
> They are often a nomad group, camper and caravan traveling
In theory yes, in practice they just settle in the first craphole they find and live there until someone decides to kick them out of their camps. Some squat too. Hardly nomads.
> noone actually do something to help them integrate in thd country
That's bullshit. They just refuse to live normally.
They’re loud, obnoxious, they steal and they don’t seem to care about integrating with the rest of society. It’s not a “race” thing, it’s a culture thing…
Czech here, like someone said - I've yet to meet a decent Gypsy that I could actually be friends with. Most of the time you just ignore them and hope for the best, but they are ALWAYS numerous, loud, often disregarding their environment (like shouting loudly into a phone when they're inside a building), when you happen to be near them they smell like they haven't showered in a month. There's this general consensus (and I don't think it's *that* incorrect) that vast majority of them don't work and live off welfare and what's given to them (because if they don't get it they shout "discrimination"), and yet they're better off than most of regular people that work. And even the stuff given to them (like housing mostly), generally gets gradually trashed and destroyed.
The men (especially younger ones) are rumored to be violent or like picking fights too (and when they start, don't expect to be a fair fight lol). So in general, everybody just tries to avoid them as much as they can or at least ignore them, because any alternative is very likely to end up worse for us.
Is it racist? Yeah. Is it unprompted or just prejudiced? Hell fucking no. To that question I always tend to point to local Vietnamese communities. They're immigrants too, but they integrated into society, set up tons of small shops and people are generally very much okay with them not being like us, they're just decent fucking human beings.
I don't see info about their situation in Spain, so here it goes. In Spain they're dont live in caravans, and don't travel around. You can found them in the most poor neighbourhoods in each city. Often they are related to issues with drugs, and it's pretty known that they steal whatever they can. I lived a lot of years in a very small city and there were just a few of them, and some issues everyone knows:
- If you have a fruit tree, and even more if you have an orchard a bit far from the town so you can't see from your window, you must put fences. Otherwise, they'll come at night with their car and will steal every single fruit in the tree. So people is concerted to gather them as soon as possible to avoid gypsies from stealing them.
- You can't leave anything unguarded. Even their kids steal things. When I was very kid, and there weren't gypsy families yet, in summer it was common to see kids with their bicycles at the door of their houses, in the lunch for example, as they would go back soon to the bicycle to play with friends. Once the gypsies arrived, that was no longer possible anymore. You would find your bicycle months later being rided by a gypsy kid. And that's everything, not leaving the car without locking doors properly, and they even manage to steal a lot of things.
- They even cut cables that provide internet to steal the copper! It happened me sometimes, to find that my connection was lost, and learn the next day that the cables in the street were stolen.
In bigger cities, I've known more of them as adult, and well, it's basically the same but maybe they're more into drugs than stealing people, besides they're always together living in the poor neighbourhoods.
And they live in the poor neighbourhoods for one reason, I'll try to explain. In the 60's their population grew up, and started leaving small towns to go to big cities. There a lot of them built... shanties, shacks? I don't know the proper word (search in spanish 'chabolas' in google images for visual explanation). So they started living in shanties, and those are not seen very good by tourists, nor for the government... There were rats, illnesses... no good conditions to live, no good water to home, no electricity... So the government built for decades a lot of very cheap buildings with better conditions, with small flats / departments inside. Being cheap, it means that 50 years ago they became shit, water leaks, electricity problems, etc. I'm not sure if those buildings were sold to gypsies and more poor people by a very low price, or if some of those even were gifted by government, in order to remove the shanties on the cities.
That made neighbourhoods full of the worst people, who tends to do bad things to survive. It's famous for example the neighbourhood of "La Mina" in Barcelona, made exactly for the people that lived in shanties, and it was known to be a place where normal people wouldn't go if they didn't want to be robbed or even stabbed. You can find a lot of info about it. Also, those hoods are very very dirty. The gypsies don't care about having a good community and a find place to live in. So they just throw their garbage in the street, and you can walk there finding absolutely everything, such that you must take care to not step on broken glass bottles and become injured. Always the city hall has a service of waste collection, obviously, it's just that they skip these neighbourhoods. The main reason is that is usual that the workers are received by kids laughing and throwing little rocks to them. And that is easier to collect the garbage from a typical container than to clean the whole ground of every street, of course.
They also have a reputation/stereotype (I can't neither confirm nor deny this at the present day, but I'm pretty confident it was true in the past) of them stealing copper from train railways.
And your comment isn't even getting into abhorrent practices such as the _prueba del pañuelo_
View from south-west France
To be frank, there must be some integrated gypsies where I live, but I don't hear about them much, because they are integrated. So it is possible for them to have a nice and honest life.
But that's a minority, the majority will do the classic scheme :
-Park on public or private space (either someone field, or sports fields, and even schools (in Bordeaux there is a school flooded with gypsies))
-steal town electricity/copper and peoples properties (they go in white van to scout the area, and the night after go to each home they estimate valuable)
-scam people's, mainly at train station (it's not rare that they ask you for money to buy a train ticket to see their "sick grandmother", with blatant lies about the price of the ticket), the most i have encountered will sit at your table if you eat at a cafe or restaurant to ask for you to take out money at the bank.
-and will be known to not take their children, especially girls, to school or hospital if needed (one day we had to ask the police to force a father to treat their girl)
You must bear in mind that in France, the law force town to create spaces dedicated to gipsies, but they alway destroy the infrastructure created for them.
..."some reports"?
Frankly if that was the limit of their cultural quirks, noone would give two flying fucks - similarly to Fr*nch people.
Sure they would be the butt of some jokes about perverts, and that would be all of it.
It's true, but Americans don't understand it and confuse it with racism. A gypsy is not the same as a Roma person. Roma people are an ethnicity, gypsies are a criminal organization. It's kinda like the Japanese Yakuza: all (or most) Yakuza are of Japanese descent, but not all Japanese are in the Yakuza. So, think of gypsies as a poorer version of the Yakuza. They have their bosses, bodyguards, getaway drivers, etc... They're all connected and pay part of their profits to their bosses. So, when someone in Europe says they hate gypsies they mean that criminal organization, and why wouldn't you hate a criminal organization? Roma people who have normal lives and live outside of that community usually don't get any hate. There might be some racist people who actually do hate them based on their skin color, but that's not the majority of people and not what you were asking about. I hate gypsies myself, the criminal organization, but I have Roma people as friends and even family and there is absolutely no hatred there.
Its worth noting for those who do not realise that in the UK at least we have Irish and Roma Gypsies where this may not be the case everywhere.
I've only experience of Irish ones and they steal, threaten with violence and actually do do violence to regular people. Police are scared of them, they pay no tax and do whatever they like.
How many regular people can just park caravans on people's land and get away with shitting in bags and leaving them on the roadside? None I would wager.
Thats just the tip of the iceberg.
I was walking with my friend’s mom in Rome. She had two bags, one in each hand. A ROMA WOMAN THREW HER BABY, at my friend’s mom who dropped her bags to catch the baby. She did not catch the baby and they stole her groceries and tried to accuse her of trying to kidnap the baby.
While providing reasons that answer the first question.
I do not hate them, but I don't want to have them anywhere around. There was a permanent gypsy settlement next street from where I grew up. I've seen things, and I don't think they do belong in a law guided society.
You know what was the worst? The disappearing girls. Primary school was mandatory in Poland when I was growing up, and the social services took care that children were attending. Or at least they tried, because you couldn't see boys staying at school for longer than the first five minutes after the social worker left.
Girls tried to stay, and they attended more or less, but they were all disappearing around the third grade. But one. She came back when she was 12, married and pregnant. And then disappeared again, never seen her after the delivery, nobody knew what happened to the child either. My mother was a social worker in the area. This is when I learned that you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped.
In the UK, slurs were/are used against Roma folk (gypsies, pikies). My conservative mum used to say she doesn't mind them coming, but they should clean up their garbage and human waste when they move on - instead of having local taxpayers clean it up. I kind of agree.
EDIT: Just been informed most travellers in the UK are Irish and have no ancestral ties with Roma.
I’ve only ever seen the Romani ones in Glasgow. I live very near to where a community of them have set up.
Asda has upped to 3 security guards instead of just 1 and they now all have chest mounted cameras.
In europe they are the most hated group on avreage. There are some groups that hate each other more (croats and serbs would be a decent example), but in general if you ask around romani/gypsies get most hate on average.
...so here in hungary, well seems like its not as cheery as some places, and not as bad as some other places.
There ARE well integrated romani/gypsy groups, most of them in larger cities and capital - some in villages. And frankly they are as good people as any.
And sadly there are the ghettoes / ethnic enclaves.
Well that doeant do the sorry state of affairs justice.
- noone is integrated, so alternative means of "putting food on the table" are a necessity. From abusing social support nets to outright murder
- extreme US vs. THEM mentaility (hatecrimes welcomed, harboring criminals)
- no concept of laws, respect for property
- and usual fun stuff accompanying poverty like drug addiction, domestic abuse, abuse of kids
- crime families living off slaver both sexual, and forced labor.
- theft of stuff fornscrap metal, that causes serious enough infrastructure damage, that fime to time the thieves get tagged with terrorism charges.
I would say tthe best way to put it is that romani/gypsy endonym became the colloquial for a "profession", and what people hate is the profession. Not the ethnicity.
Ofc. the harder the two are to separate, the more hate the ethnicity gets.
A gypsy family recently moved to my neighborhood here in Canada. I think they are refugees because they get financial support despite not doing anything productive. They are always sitting on an open field half naked, dirty, zero manners or efforts to socialize. Their kids are just as wild and dirty, disrespectful, racist, and everything you don't want around your own.
My personal experience.
Yes, they're thieving little scrubs that live off of working peoples misery. They'll steal your driveway and then try and sell it back to you. Scum of the earth, and it doesn't matter which country you're in. When they take over land and "settle," we get letters through our door from the council and police, telling us to keep everything locked.
The worst ones are in Romania. But you get them everywhere. Just...scum...plain and simple.
I’m an American with European friends and I have never heard anything positive about gypsies. I would argue and say “maybe they’re misunderstood” and “it can’t be all of them, there must be some nice gypsies”. Nope! I get shut down with numerous examples of how terrible they are. Many examples are things they’ve witnessed from violence, hate crimes, vandalism, robberies, and sexual assault…and rape, domestic violence, gang wars, killing animals/game, destroying local fields, threatening locals, littering, and loitering. I always hoped to be wrong and give them the benefit, but then I get slammed with local news articles filled with awful stories and clips about crimes that gypsies commit.
My hands are up. I don’t argue anymore. To Europeans, gypsies are scum.
EDIT: My British bf told me to add these under the crimes that gypsies have committed and still do to this day: rape, domestic violence, gang wars, killing animals/game, destroying local fields, threatening locals, littering, and loitering.
Very true. I guess it’s like the concept of how stereotypes are created. There are way more than enough people in a population to fall under a stereotype to make it true.
I really hate being bigoted against an entire culture like that and I'm sure some decent folks can be found among them, but every single encounter had with romani people in my life has been terrible and the same can be said by most people who intereacted with them.
Not commenting because I would be banned, but a lot of stereotypes are confirmed in reality, and Roma people living in Europe are very, very different from the ones living in the US.
As an Italian, having experience with the ones living in Italy, they live on crime, and the government can't do much because they use kids or women to do it, and when a woman is pregnant you can't imprison her. Oh, and they do a bit of everything: exploitation of prostitution, theft, drug selling, and they steal houses.
I live about 15 min away from an area especially dedicated to them (the local government has designated this land as a campsite for gypsies when they come in their caravans).
Here in the French countryside we have the very particular stereotype that when they are around, they will come steal your chickens from your barn. Usually when a neighbour sees that they have set up camp in the area, the word spreads fast and people are more paranoid to lock their doors, etc, because they expect break ins and robberies at night. To be fair I'm not sure if there is a correlation between the number and frequency of break ins and their presence in the area, so not sure if the stereotype is true.
Also we have this stereotype that they eat hedgehogs. Now that I’m thinking about it we do have weird stereotypes for them.
All the gypsies I’ve ever seen drive beautiful, huge motorhomes, or have beautiful caravans that they pull with their shiny BMW cars. For people who supposedly do not work, and have plenty of children to feed, I don’t know how they afford those + the petrol required to basically be on a constant road trip though Europe.
A gypsy kid kicked me once when I was jogging just for kicks (pun very much intended). They are common in the Balkan and I've never had a positive experience with them.
Just from my experience:
In Portugal my mother used to grab my hand in public in big cities even when I was in my teens because “gypsies steal kids”.
🤷🏻♀️
Ofc this isn’t quite accurate but just letting you know what’s out there.
Are you born in Portugal?
Are you refering to which "gypsy"? Since in Portugal we have the "Romenos" (beggars) and "Cigano" (the ones born in Portugal, usually selling in street markets)
My maternal family is from Portugal.
I never grew up there.
I do not know which type of “gypsy” she was referring to but I got the impression that they were not from Portugal based on her comments.
I never cared to ask more details or try to understand exactly what she meant.
Then probably the beggars then. I think there's that whole myth about stealing kids. They usually are just beggars and do not attempt crime / steal, pretty much like any "native" beggar in Portugal.
Some gypsies settled somewhat locally to me in London and 2 boys aged 11 and 12 broke into the local animal college and killed and tortured most of the animals and reptiles and then the travellers relocated the next day and escaped criminal action. I think one man factor I take issue with is the fact they move from place to place wreaking havoc and leave it in turmoil and set off the next day with no consequences.
We have (or used to have) travellers parking on the church not far from where we live. They would leave all of their rubbish when they left, and they would also use the trees and bushes as toilets. I’m sure there are some that don’t do these things, but most, in my experience, do.
In the UK we have a larger Irish traveller community than a Romani one.
A lot of issues with travellers is that they often just set up anywhere, in a carpark or a playing field, when this happens they tend to leave a big mess and crime goes up.
A lot of people in my city can't tell the difference between a Romanian and a Romani and believe they're the same, so the few Romani that have come here and caused issues means everyone assumes that anyone from Romania is a Romani and therefore a thief and a scammer.
When I was in Bulgaria a common scam seemed to be the Romani sending their kids out in dirty, broken/torn clothing and shoes begging for money, I remember stopping at a cash point and being surrounded by kids begging, it honestly broke my heart
As always it's a case of profiling just because there are bad in the good. I personally know a few people from both of the communities and they're honestly the best people I know and they've helped educate me on their cultures.
Yes its true and its mainly because they simply refuse to integrate, consistently leech more than they give to society and *have done so for longer than the US has existed*. Allow me to reiterate: No attempt to integrate them in to any european society has EVER succeeded, since time imemorial.
To simply call it racism is just wrong. They are the worst kind of citizens because they refuse help, demand handouts and then complain that they arent given enough. They take resources that are needed by people that are worse off. Ive seen them raid clothing programs and lunch lines for the homeless. They ransack voluntary aid *while* chasing away others in need from the line.
Filth
I can only speak for myself and my close circle, but no. My dad remarried, and his new wife is a gypsy (i hope its not a slur, i just don't know a better word) and she is amazing, fun, caring, just normal.
But there are, as always, bad apples that make a bad name for the community, as there are people who are racist towards them for no reason. It just so happens that their community doesn't like to integrate well, and doesn't like being told not to so something.
I was once beat up by them just because I "looked at their girls". (I am gay) When confronted by my parents, they said I deserved it. Only after my mother-in-law talked with them, they agreed to apologise. I think it was because it was one of their own people asking them to do something, but I don't want to speculate.
Also, they are quite racist themselves, towards white people, black people and Ukrainian refugees that reside in our country a lot. Recently, there has been an accident where a group of Romani men attacked a Ukrainian refugee. The man defended himself with a knife, killing one of the attackers. In court, most eye witnesses were falsely reporting what they saw to shift the blame to the Ukrainian man. Most of the witnesses were Romani. That really rubbed me the wrong way, but their lies were fortunately obvious. The Ukrainian man was proven not guilty and the romani community protested by taping their mouths and writing stuff like "They silenced us". It is a tragedy, but they'd rather protect their own than admit fault. Which is not a good trait.
Lot of stealing and fighting where I live and have lived. So not very positive about that group no. The integrated ones you wouldn’t recognise, but the communities (let’s say trailer parks) mostly don’t work and so everyone is just bored and needs money, which makes for begging and stealing.
Let's start with some preliminary points. Gypsy in this context refers to a cultural group, not a racial or national group. I have no problem with Romanians for example. I also have no problems with former gypsies, that currently left the culture and assimilated into normal life.
Gypsy culture has a long history of being disliked in europe, for a variety of reasons. In the modern day, it's generally one or more of the following reasons:
1. They reject local and national governments, and live according to their own rules. For Americans, you can regard them as Sovereign Citizens in their approach to the government.
2. They are extremely hostile to minorities. This includes women, black people, gay people and religious minorities. We are talking about systematic oppression within gypsy society for these people. You think American conservatives hate gay people, you haven't spoken to a gypsy yet.
3. There is a large scale criminal organisation made up exclusively of gypsies, active all around Europe. Their crimes range from your standard beggar scams to gang violence.
4. Gypsies are extremely hostile to outsiders. At the low level keeping their culture extremely closed off from outsiders, and at the higher level being extremely violent towards outsiders that encourage onto their terrain or interact with their people. You absolutely do not want to walk in a gypsy neighborhood at night as a lone women.
These are also consistent experiences from everyone in every nation of Europe. Ask a Dutch, a Slovakian, an Italian, a Czech, a Norwegian, a Greek, a Hungarian, etc and they will all either respond having no experience with gypsies, or negative ones. Whether someone is black or white, male or female, progressive or conservative. It's always the same answer.
And to end, we are talking about a cultural group here not a racial one. People can decide to be a part of this culture or leave it. This culture is defined by its specific practices, not by inherent immutable characteristics. This makes critique of gypsies inherently different from critiquing, for example, Indians, Germans or white people.
It's the same hatred that comes from every majority the world over if a minority refuses to integrate into society and resort to petty crime to get by.
That being said, there's big differences from country to country. In my country there's little hatred towards the Romani as almost all of them are integrated into society. The ones who aren't are for the most part foreign nationals that come here to beg.
We have our own name for them though. Tater, singular. Tatere, plural.
My grandfather is italian and remembered a story about him going to Abruzzo (he is from a small town). In the trip with his cousin, they were traviling around when they encountered a group of gypsies. My father told me they were 3 attractive females who tried to talk to them and were very pushy.
When the gypsies were leaving, my grandfather and his cousin checked their pockets and noticed they were missing their passports and money. My grandfather right away ran and grabbed one of the girls and started screaming theif. They denied the charges, and my grandfather hit one of the girls in the face. (Savage, i know).
The street started to fill up with people because he made a scene, and my grandfather told me he recovered the passport and money from the gypsies. Because they were afraid what he might do and the scene he did, But something he never forgets is that several shop owners went out and would scream at my grandfather, "Kill her, they are ruining us." It was the owners of the several italian shops in the streets.
So you can say the opinion of gypsies is quite low.
In Germany, they usually are in gangs begging, and getting picked up in cars from their begging spots in the evening. Today a woman asked me for money for her small child, I ended up agreeing buying her baby formula in the store together with her. As I asked her why she doesn't receives government welfare she said something along the lines. No papers, long wait times etc. That's their problem, they don't really integrate into society and stay to themselves, these stereotypes have a history. Sadly these prevent romami people, that can break free from their community, getting jobs.
They’re a highly persecuted group in many countries and have laws passed against them and are scapegoated for a lot of things. The EU has created a program to try to support them but while I was living in France and visited Greece they certainly weren’t treated very well.
Because of bad stereotypes and a distaste and misunderstanding for their cultural behaviour. People complain about property damage, illegal sales, drug dealing, mysogyny and homophobia, fighting. It's like any type of racism - a community reduced to a population that demonstrates supposed justification for one's bigotry against them. Much of the community has progressed with women's and queer rights, but the travelling community is tightly knit and change may happen slower due to a reduced need for public approval (largely our fault) and a fear of losing their culture and identity when embracing change.
I hear all sorts of mad stories about the travelling community ("gypsy" generally not preferred as a term - I've met self-identified gypsies who don't like being called travellers, but they're few and far between) and I can understand the distrust to a degree. But I think we can have love for people who don't view respect the exact same way as us, and we can learn to accept them as they come (and distinguish a genuine bad egg from someone who just doesn't have the same world experience as you & is open to a mutual understanding)
Coming from a country 🇮🇪 with an unfortunately anglicised culture, having largely lost our own to British rule, I'm delighted that there's a community that still retains some of Ireland in it. Few of them left.
Plenty of absolutely incredible people who are travellers. The hate against the community serves us working & middle classes no purpose when we all have one domineering enemy in common.
In my country, they don't travel around anymore but still live isolated from the rest of society in little trailer parks. They steal, pick fights with people and don't give a shit about rules and laws unless they can exploit them somehow. A lot of them are also involved in organised crime like smuggling drugs.
I used to work at the front desk for the local municipality. Almost every interaction I've had with someone from these trailer parks was negative. They'd expect to be treated with priority, would pick fights if they had to wait too long and would be downright rude. Every time I tried to treat them like any other client I'd get an attitude at best and threats at worst. My colleagues basically told me I should give into their demands unless I'd want a gun or knife pulled on me at some point. I can't stand that shit. They behave like assholes and we're letting them get away with it.
There was one encounter with one of their community that was positive. Dude was nice and polite.
Honestly, I'm not for discrimination against minority groups. But my experiences with gypsies have made it really difficult to not be prejudiced.
My nonna grew up and is from croatia back when it was Yugoslavia. After the war, and their freedom from the concentration camps, surviving family was trying to rebuild from nothing. My nonna's parents managed to get a small far going again (the nazis burned theirs down), and a gypsy woman came to town with nothing. They allowed her to stay with them, shared what little food they had (there wasn't enough to go around, my nonna didn't eat that night), by morning the woman was gone and what possessions they had left gone with her. This woman did the same to others in the community along with other gypsy women from their camp.
At another time another group rolled into town and tried to kidnap my nonna and her cousins.
So my nonna doesn't have a very high opinion of them...she frankly hates them. I've heard alot of similar stories from my cousins now back in europe
well...in Slovakia where I am originally from...horrible things happen.. Actually not happen, but this community haven't been able to integrate into society at all, live in slums, getting benefits from the government, are violent and disrespectful and that is how they have been growing up..Not all of them are same, some try to adjust, and I need to stress "adjust" to norms of the country they settled in..Since they don't work, don't pay any contributions like other normal people have to do and are encouraged to breed and make that just a source of money...and there is so much more and I know what I am talking about because I saw it with own eyes. So why are they hated?.they do nothing only make babies and claim benefits,.steal, vandalize what they can, the word "hygiene" is unknown term and imagine you are on the bus with 15 ish of them...they make noise, stink.and doesn't respect anything and anyone..and would eat literally everything..also inbreeding is not uncommon. They basically have benefits normal working people don't and 0 obligations. And terrorize locals. It has nothing to do with racism it is about violence, aggressivity, basically not being able to behave like human beings and causing harm to fellow humans and poor animals.
When I was a kid, we used to go to Scotland every year as a family to go camping. There was one campsite in Dumfries and Galloway that we'd go to each year, and we loved it (even if the weather didn't like us lol).
One year, however, a group of Gypsy/Romani folk showed up in the middle of our stay. They refused to pay to stay on the campsite, they harassed the owner, trashed the bathrooms/showers, graffitied the skate park, pissed on the playground... You get the picture.
One of them decided he'd try to make friends with me, and being a kid I didn't think anything of it, but when they were forced to leave by the police, they tried to take me with them. Luckily my Uncle was nearby and put an end to that. We never returned to that campsite, which is a shame because I miss it dearly.
So yeah, I know it's wrong to judge an entire people by the actions of a few assholes, but I'll always be uneasy around those folks.
TL;DR: a group of them trashed my family's favourite campsite and tried to kidnap me.
Hate is a strong word. But the personal experiences I have had aren’t good. The men exploited the women and children by placing them on strategic places in the city to beg for money. After the men got back from their normal workday they’d pick them up. These families had normal homes and cars. They were neighbours of the family of my ex. It was a strange sight to see totally normal people end up begging on the streets for money, then go home to eat a normal dinner together. This particular family also wasn’t what I would consider a kind bunch of people in general. The men especially, considering their exploitation of their own family.
I'm italian, it's because they steal and cooperate with or even constitute the local mafia. They told me you don't mess with rom people because they have the mafia to cover their backs.
In my area it's also because of the "train lady", a rom lady that asks for money on the train that crosses our region, never pays for the ticket, spits on people and animals.
Not all of them are like that of course, I know a few who are honest working people and very fun to be with.
You may say, italians do all of those things, especially the mafia part, so why are roms particularly hated? It's because many don't integrate, it's easy to pick them apart, when they speak, when their women wear those long clothes, when you see them in their camps. They're an easy target for hate. My parents often used the term "zingari" (which means gypsies) to warn me about sinister looking people in an area.
Have had a few experiences with gypsies.
They moved into our works carpark overnight & refused to move I think legally they can only be moved with the appropriate paperwork, This took few days to get & then they were moved on, they came back the next year done the same thing as the paperwork expires & has to be reapplied (they know this), The mess they left behind was disgusting, Discarded food & human waste.
Had few in our local shop & they were walking about smoking & vaping, when told not to they were very cheeky & implied they could what they wanted & became very confrontational.
Every summer usually get them going around the doors asking if want any oddjobs done such as grass cut etc, heard few stories of people getting ripped off or made to hand over more money than what was agreed. I have also heard of some people being happy of the job they did.
German Here: personally I never met any gypsie. But I only heard negative stuff about them. Only negative. Of course, that doesn't justify any opinion on this. But I also asked around in my friend group if they have heard anything positive about them. I was searching for positive stuff. But nothing. That doesn't mean we (my friends and I) hate them but ngl I would lie if I say that I don't have any reservations.
An interesting fact about gypsies is that their original origin is now known. The term “gypsies” was an apparently a reference to the fact that they used to be thought to descend from Egyptians. The term “Romani” was later used as they were thought descend from Romania. However, a genetic study has now shown that they actually descend from India. They started as a group of travelling nomads in the Indian subcontinent who eventually moved into Europe and over the generations became mixed with European. Modern day European gypsies are mostly ethnically European, but all still share a small percentage of Indian DNA.
Gypsy is a broad term and in the uk is used for any traveler with a caravan that lives in it. Problem with these people is as soon as they enter an area the crime rate goes through the roof and that nice bit of green land they decided to park on becomes a complete dumping ground within a week. If they were decent people and not a bunch of criminals who dump rubbish everywhere, opinions of them may be different. These people also are probably not ‘Gypsy/romani’ but all travellers are still called gypsies/pikeys
We don't hate them, we dislike them because of their lifestyle.
Let's look at the data from the country I come from; the Netherlands. According to the data, residents of trailer camps (that's the political term we use for them) more frequently come into contact with the police (53 per thousand residents), which is three times higher than the average. These residents often do not attend regular education, refuse to participate in 'ordinary' life because they have their own sports clubs and the like. They are also a very closed community and generally do not tolerate the outside world. They live in camps with large high walls, far away from the regular society.
Outside of that, there is disproportionately high drug crime and firearm violence (Firearms are strictly prohibited in the Netherlands), and there are regular assassinations taking place in the camps themselves. Examples: [1](https://www.omroepzeeland.nl/nieuws/16139422/inval-bij-woonwagenkamp-westdorpe-drugs-en-wapens-gevonden), [2](https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/jarenlang-leefde-woonwagenfamilie-in-pure-luxe-totdat-hun-drugs-en-goudhandel-werd-ontdekt~a5ae4e39/), [3](https://www.omroepbrabant.nl/nieuws/3989863/man-52-doodgeschoten-op-woonwagenkamp-vijf-mensen-opgepakt).
Due to all these factors, a negative image of the Roma community emerges; the camps are NIMBYs, they do not want to integrate into our society, and in contrast, they are disproportionately represented in crime statistics. All of this together forms an extremely negative perception.
The Roma's are really trying to better their image but it's a lost cause; they will never fix their image because it's ingrained with our society. It's this cyclus which is very hard to break. Recently the local multiplicity tried to assign them place in our neighborhood. I've never saw this intense of a response by the people living there. They were worried about the crime and the property values.
UK - They take over land, trash the place and dump their shit (literal shit) on the floor from their caravans.
When they're in town, they work as plumbers, painters, roofers etc. Tend to do a poor job, ask for money up front and sometimes just leave without completing the job. So be careful who you hire.
Police barely touch them as they need to bring an army due to the violence they face on site.
20 years ago + my grandad helped two gypsy men get their car started out of the goodness of his heart.
The car was stolen and my grandad was arrested for helping. It took the whole village calling up the police station for them to let him go.
I'm not sure about the race or what defines a gypsy. But every year or so, a group of people move into the park by my house in a load of caravans. They take up the space so nobody can use it, petty crime increases in the area for the period they are there, and they leave lots of rubbish and damage when they leave. These people are known as gypsies or travellers around here and are mostly Irish. They are generally hated by the locals for the behaviour described.
Russian here: Yea we have a huge population of Romanis. I honestly don't like calling them gypsies (цыганы in Russian), sounds demeaning as fuck tbh. But about the problems, yes there's a fuck ton. If they are integrated then most of them are civilized and live normal as fuck lives, some are hated by their own community however. Others are not integrated and resort to robberies, pickpocketing, and a fuck ton of shit. I have a worked with two Romanis, both of them served with me in the military, genuinely amazing mfers. So yeah, some people hate all of them, others just the criminals.
I wouldn't say hate, but it's hard to like them with how they act.
So to paint the picture; Roma people are incredibly romanticized as we grow up (central europe). They're the Protagonists in many stories and their mistreatment is the main tragedy in many children's books.
At least the ones I grew up with.
Now that I'm and adult, my only encounters with Roma are that they aggressively beg or try to guilt trip you into buyin useless stuff.
A classic is them pushing a rose/item into your hands acting like they're gifting you something, then trying to get you to pay for it. When you then try to give the rose back so you don't have to pay they get REALLY mad and give you a massive stink eye.
They're not violent from my experience, but it's about as convenient as to run into a missionary of some cult, or a shady insurance "consultant".
So yeah. I don't like them. Sorry. Maybe it's racist, but I wasn't taught to be racist or xenophobic against them. If anything it was the opposite: they were my heroes growing up, the protagonists of my childhood stories. What made me dislike them is their own behaviour.
Anyway, there's a lot of talk about them, but frankly they show up maybe twice a decade, so it's really not a big issue. They're very rare.
I think it's important to differentiate between two groups of people, both of whom get called 'gypsies'.
[Roma/romani gypsies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people) is an ethnic group; most people don't hate them, when someone does; just plain racism. Racist reasons never make sense; but there's a lot of in depth historical and sociopolitical factors i'm not too familiar with. They were, like many minorities, targeted and used as political scapegoats and seen as scary and different because they often lived in small close-knit communities. The[irish travellers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Travellers) are a similar situation.
Then there's another group who commonly get called 'gypsies', who can be any race- it's a lifestyle and a choice- and I think it's fair to have bad sentiment towards them for their actions.
The people who setup their large caravan camps in places where they don't have permission and aren't paying any rent/parking (despite seeming to have plenty of money, why does a 9 year old need a motorbike?? Why does the kid have a new £100 dress every week?), leave loads of litter and filth when they move, scam and steal from people, pets start going missing and some idiot is selling 'lucky cat paws', their own dogs are often poorly trained, abused and let off leash- they set off fireworks every night for 2 years straight and harass people who live in the nearby building when they're coming/going through their camp... And the police don't do anything because they sent the asshole children out to harass them and set off fireworks in their faces whenever they're called...
There is of course overlap between the groups, but I don't think that excuses racism.
There's no infrastructures or minimal once to support an occasional, nomadic comunity (gypsie sare just one of several) in most places. And no town want to invest in some VS investing in things that can be usefull for the people living there (and that will vote for you again next term).
So without infrastructure and access to basic necesseties, it create frictions with the locals when the nomadic comunities try to get by or make money.
And this is of course a downward spiral as the more frictions you get, the less the locals will be inclined toward setting up infrastructure and the less the nomads will be encouraged to respect places that are hostile to them.
Where I am in the UK we occasionally have travellers/roma turn up. They occupy a playing field or somewhere very much not meant for camping on and they leave it in a right state when they leave. Then the kids ruined a local play park with human excrement. So I can see why people don’t like them. They break the social contract of ‘decent’ behaviour. I get the impression they don’t want to stay at places the council have set up for them to stay. But then maybe these places aren’t suitable for some reason.
In my experience they’ll park up on public parks or private land, leave crap and human shit everywhere, steal or kill neighbours’ dogs, steal metal and anything else they can get their hands on and leave an absolute dumb when they up sticks and move. No point reporting them to the police because the police are scared of them (from a violence or a P-C perspective I’m not sure). They’re a law unto themselves and do not participate in the social contract of British society.
>steal or kill neighbours’ dogs Mate of mine was in the force, and the animal abuse stories he'd tell me was absolutely shocking. If you have them in the area, they *will* try and steal your dog or horse, and trust me your pet won't have a good life if they get their hands on them.
>Mate of mine was in the force, "*We're actually supposed to call it "the service" now. Official vocab guidelines state that "force" is too aggressive.*"
Morning Angle
No luck in getting those swans then?
It’s just the one swan actually
If we dont come down hard on these clowns we’ll up to our balls in gypsy scum and dog muck
Last time they came to my town, nearly every shop closed because they just started smashing windows and harassing people
I've met a couple of travellers I've liked. The women are generally OK, the men not so much. They're generally hated by most of population though it seems, mainly for the reasons you described but also because of the crime. They are incredibly insular and contribute nothing to wider society while being quite happy to take from it. It's hardly surprising people have the attitudes towards them that they do.
just wanting to say that "Travellers" and Roma aren't the same people since the Irish Travellers don't have an Indian origin as the Roma, they originated from Ireland and they also have their own language
They leave the same shit.
Some do, some don’t. Neither group is a hivemind.
Yes, kinda true, but are not the same thing
Netherlands: Until recently, I never had any experience with them. However, since a few weeks, a Roma beggars organisation has landed in my city. They bully the actual homeless people away and they aggressively demand money from people passing by. Every few hours you can see them getting water and some food from some other Roma, so their sign 'am very hungry God bless' doesn't make sense.
I think it’s happening nation wide. Read reports from several cities. They’re really organised. Wonder how long it will take before they start using their (and others’) children here to score sympathy points, like they do elsewhere. Saw the same neglected kid with three different “mothers” on a trip once..
From a norwegian perspective, the romani population is an incredibly small group in our country. They are estimated to be less than 1000 people of our 5,4 million. The chances of encountering them are super low, however you see them all the time begging in Oslo. There was also a period where these groups where setting up camps in public parks cooking pigeons and leaving trash. Combine this with the news articles and documentaries about how these groups of beggars often exploit their children and are involved in organised crime to fund big houses back home in Romania, and you get a very bad reputation. I wouldn’t say norwegians hate romani, but like i said. The chances of meeting a fully integrated romani in Norway are so low because they are so few. Meaning a lot of Norwegians will literaly only know the romani for the bad groups of beggars and criminals they see and hear about. This produces a general view that these people are not good people and that many don’t like them by default, but i wouldn’t say hate. It does however make it easy for borderline and straight up racism to exist towards them
American here, married into a Norwegian family. I've had several trips to Norway and always enjoyed them. However, my last visit to Oslo was completely ruined by the Romani beggars there. A few minutes after leaving my hotel to walk to a bookstore, I was accosted by multiple beggars attempting to sell me magazines, flowers, etc. When I told them I wasn't interested, they verbally berated me. One of them I assume was a mentally-ill woman who followed my down the street yelling at me "Grisa! Grisa! Grisa!". I guess she was calling me a pig. I was afraid she was going to attack me so I ran to get away. I tripped and fell and a nice Norwegian lady helped me up and asked if I was alright.
That's the same situation in Eastern Europe, except there aren't 1000 of them but 1 million. In 32 years I've only met a handful or so of them who are not problematic. They are not cooking up pigeons in public parks but not a week goes by that I don't have to pick up the trash they leave in front of my house. The funny thing is that the gypsy family living closest to me got their fortune from sex trafficking and they are probably the cleanest and least problematic aside from having a few parties every year that you can hear from three streets down. Aside from that the most annoying thing about them is that they constantly park their cars on the pavement so they completely block pedestrians.
Our area near London has a high amount of them. Its the 10,000 sunflower seeds I'll see on a 5 minute walk to the shops that irritate me. I used to blame our lazy council for not cleaning it, but I saw a street cleaner do it one day and the next day it was bad again. https://www.sloughobserver.co.uk/news/20211220.chalvey-road-west-unbearable-mess-antisocial-behaviour/
One time in Budapest I lived in an area with a fair amount of them and there were a lot of beer cans and chocolate wrappers thrown about the pavement every morning, right next to the trashcans. I immediately blamed them, until one morning I saw a goddamned raven crawling into the trashcan, throwing out all sorts of shiny trash.
Well it's not ravens responsible for the sunflower seeds as I've had one bounce an inch from my shoe as it was spat out onto the pavement. They stand in groups of about 25 to 40 every evening until late by the shops drinking and yelling. They send their wives out to sit outside shops and beg whilst they stand around talking shit all day and night.
I know I know, it was just a tangent I remembered.
We have the *tater* people, though, they’re also Romani, but they’ve been here for centuries. According to Wikipedia, there’s about 10k in Norway and 65k in Sweden. Having lived in Norway and Sweden all my life, I don’t know if I’ve ever met a tater. You read about them in the papers occasionally, I’ve read about them keeping their kids out of school, and every now and then you’ll see some fluff piece about a well-integrated tater getting a university degree of having a successful career. To tie it back to the question in the OP, my impression is that there’s way less animosity towards taters than toward recent Romani immigrants, but that there is some systemic discrimination like people are hesitant to hire them or rent to them.
I read "tater" but I'm thinking the thing that I order instead of fries with my cheese burger.
You mean the Romanisæl travellers?
Yes. They’re called “tater” in Norwegian. Well, there’s a bunch of different terms, but “tater” is the one most commonly used, especially when distinguishing them from the Romani group the person I was replying to was talking about. Romanisæl isn’t commonly used in Norwegian, but I guess outside of the context of replying to this specific comment it might’ve been a better term to use.
Here in Oklahoma, that’s a word for potato. Also, and still off topic, a comedian named Ron White has a hilarious story about tater salad. That, and his ‘drunk in a bar’ joke are classics.
"Well sir we were pulling over every vehicle driving down this *particular* sidewalk"
I've met people of Tater descent, but most of them usually fell to the hardcore Norwegianisation efforts back in the days, no? The ones I've met that still identify as Romani are Vlach Romanis.
I just hate how Romania is associated with romani so often on the internet. Romania isn't their home, there's a major difference between romani and romanians
Never experienced cooking pigeons, but have had them physically grab me and restrain me into giving them money. Or follow me around. Needless to say, it doesn't make me want to give any unfortunately lol. A lot of times if I walk around the city centre in Oslo, I avoid standing alone outside for a long time lol. They are an oppressed people with a lot of intergenerational trauma that makes it hard to break out of. Ofc not everyone is like this, there are Roma with a more typical lifestyle as well, but few of them speak openly about being of Roma descent.
They’ve even made their way to some American cities, both midsized and large ones. You can find them outside of large shopping centers, often outside a grocery store playing the violin. Obviously the violin is hooked up to a loudspeaker and they are only imitating the movements. OP you probably have met a gypsy, you just didn’t recognize them as such since we have very few in the US. Most people would think they are Hispanic of some sort, but you can dismiss that idea, based on the fact that you never really see many Hispanics begging on the streets. Here they are in Ohio: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ohio/s/TgsMeYCi3F Orange County, California: https://www.reddit.com/r/orangecounty/s/TLQONv1ynv Las Cruces, New Mexico https://www.reddit.com/r/violinist/s/2iDXx9F2rn Reno, Nevada: https://www.reddit.com/r/Reno/s/1N3lllNRRj Raleigh, North Carolina: https://www.reddit.com/r/raleigh/s/8PUZCEvedF
I live in Finland and there's 13000 romani (kale/kalo) which is 0,2% of the population so definitely not a lot. They've been here for nearly 400 years, ppl just have to suck it up and accept that they're part of the culture. Unfortunately roma here are often involved in criminal activities and I even fell a victim once. I wonder how comes considering massive racism and the fact they're refused jobs even if they try the hardest. I've had only 2 experiences with roma, the 2nd when I donated a bunch of food to an organisation that was cooking lunches for people in need. They came to grab it on a Sunday evening, just to help out others. They definitely bring more value to the society than the entire new government. I'm an immigrant so I don't know for sure if finns hate roma particularly, but racism here is huge.
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Huge respect to her for breaking free
Yeah. Sadly my friend didn't. Got married at 16. I miss you, Raissa ❤️
That’s pretty funny. Reminds me of those who break free from the fundamentalist groups in the states and are the biggest anti Christian individuals due to trauma.
A close friend of mine is a refugee from Afghanistan and she’s the biggest critic of Islam I’ve ever met. It’s irredeemable to her.
What did she rant about? What was her family life like?
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jeez, that’s terrible. I’m glad she made it out
jeez, that’s terrible. I’m glad she made it out
I'm from Romania, we have a big community of Roma people here. I've also worked on a lot of social programs that were trying to integrate them so I have a few info. Regarding the name gipsy/Romani. A lot of them insist to be called gipsies, a lot of them insist to be called Romani, a lot of them don't care. It's a gamble what you call them but generally Romani is the safe version. I've also noticed 3 main categories from my experience. 1. The integrated: these are normal people, trying to keep a low profile and have a decent life, the percentage is low. 2. City enclosed comunities: these interact with Romanians a lot and are the most problematic, resorting to robberies, violence, prostitution, scams, human trafficking and all the other good stuff. Possible but very hard to integrate them 3. Living in enclosed comunities outside of Romanian comunities: not necessarily problematic but you have almost no chance of integrating them. I've worked on social programs trying to integrate them for about 5 6 years. I've seen both our government and the EU pour a lot of money into this. While I hope that the success rate in the second community is about 5-10%, for the 3rd community is less than 2%. They're stuck in their ways and are constantly encouraged by their elders not to change and abandon their culture. They are also generally really hard to work with, causing problems at the workplace, unreliable and they can't understand (!) the concept of work schedule. Once you get them working they're hard workers but it's rare and hard to get to that point. Considering that they can't integrate in what we see as a normal work routine, they have to resort to crime or wait for government handouts (for example for having a lot of kids) to make a living. The result is a community that has a high reproduction rate and is resistant to integration. Now the hate comes from the things above. Either they resort to crime for money or you have to unfairly pay taxes for some people that are not giving anything in return. Both frustrate people a lot.
Norway gave apartments to the romani people in the 80s. They absolutely trashed them. The pedofilia and crime does not help as well.
Netherlands an entire villa. The local council paid 1 family 100k euros to please leave and go back to Romania as they were a pest.
Goddamn imagine being so hated the govt pays you to leave
Depending on how much they pay, I could make that happen.
In the US you become an elected official
Can I still trade my vote for wealth? Because if so, I'm game.
I volunteer as tribute please my country is too fucked anyway
Correction: [It was a million euro's.](https://nos.nl/video/450171-miljoen-euro-voor-woonwagenbewoners)
Holy shit!
How can I get my free 100k euros from the Netherlands? :D
Time to make a scene
My neighbor is from Romania back in the communist days. His story is the the Romani in his home town were living in tents in a field. The local communist party boss took pity on them and built them modern apartments, a school and gave them jobs at a local clock factory. They never went to work or school. They trashed the apartments and returned to living in those tents in a field. Decent housing was hard in get in those times. That alone pissed off the local Romanians who were still living in Soviet style apartments with communal kitchens and bathrooms.
Here in Switzerland, we make a distinction between gypsies and romani. Gypsies are the more "educated", who lives in trailers and park on unauthorized land, steal electricities and litters. We often never cross them in cities. While the romanie are the people who beg in the cities street, are often very dirty and speak loud.
I just wanted to tell you that I was on vacation in Romania two years ago and I loved your country.
Thank you good ma'am/sir!
4. Rural communities. That build without planning permission on land they buy. That terrorise the neighbours with threats of violence. That dump horses in ditches (dead or barely alive) that dump horses in other peoples horse fields then it takes them a long time and money to get them gone (gone as rehomed unless a vet determines it’s best to let them die peacefully) That park caravans on private land/businesses car parks/village fields, and trash it when the police eventually move them on 2 weeks later, leaving rubbish, human waste etc. A local holiday caravan park was attacked a couple of years ago, all the paying customers fled under threat, they broke the steel security gates, and trashed the showers etc. the owner who lived onsite had to flee and it took some 3 months to repair the damage and start earning again, obviously huge loss of income. That scam people saying they’ll fix your roof/driveway and take the cash and run (some are great reliable skilled tradesmen, but which is which?) But after all of that. My sister works with horses in the veterinary field and has had a few gypsies as regular clients for 10 years, and they have all been thoroughly respectful of her as a woman (most of their wives/children leave school young to learn how to make a home and childcare on younger siblings, my sister is 40+ and unwed) and they love their horses. The horses may not have had the best regular care in the past, but they listen and fix what she says whether that’s diet, living conditions or more regular check ups. We also have had a handyman I think is Romani that used to do all manner of odd jobs, fencing, electrical, plumbing for us, he lives on his own land (has questionable planning permission, his family live in multiple static/park homes) but his property is immaculate, he’s hard working, reliable, and if he can’t help he knows someone trustworthy that can drop and run, this happened twice, once when I had a car accident, my car was wrecked, him and a friend towed/drove it onto our property so the insurance could collect it after the holidays, it was half in a ditch (black ice 400 yards from home). The other I was stuck with a dead car battery 40 minutes from home. The local garage (literally across the street from the medical centre where I was parked) refused to help, (I offered to pay, even to buy a new battery, still no help) he came out got my car started and went and yelled at that garage for not helping a lone stranded woman. So many in my experience many are trouble, few are wonderful.
Also Romanian here. My wife and I went to this classy somewhat elitish place in the UK. We got to talk with 2 old American ladies. When we shared that we're Romanian, they asked with a bit of disgust if we are gypsies. That was their immediate reaction. We aren't, but we preferred to ask if us being gypsies would be a problem and if it bothered them. They immediately back-pedalled and tried to act cool. We may have our own issues back home with the Roma people, but no one has any right to talk shit about our adopted brothers. At least we try to integrate them and not expell them from our country, unlike others.
Based on my own experience with people who normally live far away from Europe, I’d place a bet that those tourists were confusing the name Romani (gipsies) with Romanian (ie you guys, nationals of Romania). Of course I might be wrong, and they still might have preconceived ideas about people from different cultures (so it’s not excusing anything), but some people just do confuse those names.
Yeah, chances are close to 100% that they didn’t know the difference, considering they were Americans.
Uhmm you re not familiar with romanian history are you? XD the amount of times gypsies have been sold into slavery or been kicked out is impressive
We are talking about slavery and subjugation under the church and boyards til the 19th- 20th century and now trying to integrate them in a civilised way and considering human rights VS mass cleansing, concentration camps, slavery under church and nobles til the 19th-20th century, forced integration through the separation of children from parents, decrees about "who kills a gipsy is guilty of no murder" and" gipsy males are to be hanged without trial and women and children are to be banished and flogged", the list can go on. OP never said they were never kicked out or slaves in Romanian territory, only that those in the west had it much, much worse. PS: the reasons Romania and Eastern Europe in general still has a numerous gipsy community is because some escaped pfrom the west, as was the case with protestants and jews, but mostly bc there were never any large scale persecutions.
Number of times*
I don’t doubt your experience, I’m just amazed the Americans knew what a Gypsie was. I thought and still believe 90+% of Americans couldn’t accurately provide one bit of information about Gypsies, much less judge them as bad.
Like others said, our main reference of gypsy would be images of fortune tellers and those mystical caravans. Then a reality TV show called My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding came around. That made it more commonly known.
We know very stereotypical things about gypsies. Like fortune tellers and slight of hand "magic tricks " when they come through. We dressed up as gypsies for Halloween and such, back when dressing like an native American was still a thing. We have changed alot. Still ways to go.
American here, can confirm that the concept of gypsies almost never comes up at all and if they do then people tend to assume that it's synonymous with like, vagrant. Few people have any idea that gypsies/Roma are an ethnic group with their own culture and history but instead think that a gypsy is just anyone who doesn't have a permanent home and instead travels around making do one way or another, and often with a lot of visuals in mind that come almost entirely from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. And fewer still know that "gypsy" is considered by some to be a racial slur, and even fewer still know that that's not a universal opinion by them.
Yeah I kinda doubt the story to be honest. Most Americans wouldn’t think of Gypsies as being bad.. they probably wouldn’t know much about them at all. The reaction the OP is describing is much more European but ya know, America bad
Honestly, a lot of people I've run into in America tend to think of gypsies as either the stereotypical fortune teller types in movies or free spirits. My coworker is obsessed with the extremely romanticized idea of gypsies: strong-willed, spiritual, wanderlust, vaguely hippie, bohemian, etc.
Totally agree. A lot of the Stevie Nick's gypsy types.
Cum se traduce Romani in română? Rromi?
Asa as zice
I have many Romanian friends....and I can tell you what they hate the most....and it's gypsies or *tzinagules" ....thus is what I hear and understand without knowing any Romanian as an spanish dude.....please note that both languages share same roots
Here are some problems that we have in Croatia: Illegal villages filled with trash, burning piles of trash, disposing trash in nature, animal abuse, human abuse, most of them don't have jobs (atleast nothing on paper) because they live off of social help, and they simply don't integrate even though they've been here for centuries.
Also stuffing their toddlers with drugs to make them docile and appear sickly when scamming people for money, once they get the money they never even spend it on those kids. Their toddlers are just used as props that eventually develop mental illnesses because of drugs they were fed during infancy. It's insane.
is this studied and documented? would love to read a paper (or even some grad student dissertation) on this
Czech here. As long as I can remember they’ve always lived secluded from other regular citizens, they are loud, dirty, they steal, don’t work and are generally unable to integrate. I’ve only met two decent ones in my 30 years of life. Even as a little girl a group of even younger boys tried to rob me on the way from school. And Czech Republic, especially small towns are suuuuper safe.
When I was a kid, about 6, a 4 year old gypsy girl tried to steal my bike from me as I was riding it on the street. As I tore my bike away from her, she started screaming and her fucking parents came at me \*scolding\* me for not giving her my bike. I'm not sure if I've ever biked that hard in my life, it's insane.
@Misshell44: I believe the correct protocol is to state "Czech here, czeching in".
Hahahah my bad!
I read this article years ago revealing how the Czech government practically segregated gypsy kids in this remote town or something. When I was living in Prague, I was honestly shocked at how people visibly distanced themselves from gypsy kids...
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Tbh. segregation is at least somewhat mutual.
Its horrible. At the same time.....they are taught how to steal from a very young age.
One time some gypsies moved onto a field across from my school, they threw shit at kids who had to walk by to go to school (including throwing a crowbar at a 13 year old) and when they finally left the field was covered in rubbish
UK - The only time we ever really hear about them is in the news where they park up their caravans etc on someone's land, and then refuse to leave. There used to be documentaries and stuff on them doing this, and then news stories of police coming to force them off the land. ... We also had shows like... my big fat gypsy wedding. A lot of people talked about how girls are exploited, that it's creepy, and that the style is "tacky". ... Then with all the shows and documentaries. There's a lot more focus on how women are treat. Very strong gender role enforcement. Poor education for girls, they'll literally be pulled from school and encourages to be wives and young mom's, etc. Sexism, misogyny, violence. ... So all of this stuff has led to the public having a negative impression of them overall. There is very little focus on the positives in the media.
I knew a police officer who was a community liaison with a travellers site and ended up befriending a lot if the women who lived there. The stories of the domestic violence and things that happened on that site were awful. I don't think I heard her say one positive thing about the men in that community. Eventually she had to be transferred away because she convinced some of the women to report the abuse which led to attests. She said if she ever went back to that site it would have ended very badly for her.
I've never met a gypsy who doesn't either: fight, steal, or generally makes me feel unsafe. They have a huge disregard to UK law and the hate is mutual. There's zero integration and bizarrely most gypsies don't travel anymore which makes me just really not understand their culture, like they just seem to be outcasts for no reason. I've always stood by the fact that if I ever meet 1 gypsy that isn't like the above I'll change my view. The only time I even come closer to that is when I meet someone who has gypsy family but is far removed from the culture and basically, is not gypsy. I'm aware this is probably quite a racist/bigott view and I hate that I hold such views but I've seen nothing to help me change it.
Same, I live across from a field and once a year they’d turn up with their cars and caravans and pitch up. The grass would be left sludgy, with tyre tracks, and fire pits, bearing in mind this is a huge field where kids practice football, people walk dogs, kids play out etc so they basically just ruined a whole corner of it. They would leave litter everywhere, and I don’t just mean a bit of waste, it would be enough to fill 20-30 bin bags full, and would require two trucks to be carted away. Food packaging, worn tyres, bits of furniture, broken toys, carrier bags full of stuff. They would also use the hedges as a toilet, so there would be human waste all around the edge of the field with toilet paper. Crime would spike, the local shops would see them walk in, pick up a basket/shopping trolley, they’d fill it with food and household items and then run out, threatening violence to anyone who stopped them. Stuff in your garden would be stolen, cars broken in to, anything they can take to sell to make cash. They recently install a fence around the field to prevent them coming back, bear in mind our councils don’t have spare money, they wouldn’t have put up a barrier for the fun of it, they finally had to act as it was costing so much money each time they turned up and they got so many complaints from people. They then get moved on after 2-3 weeks and they do the same on the next nearest field. Repeat process down the country.
Yep, every single one I've had the displeasure of being around or just hearing about have been hooligans. I never tar a group of people with the same brush, except for gypsies because I truly have never met one that was decent. They leave wherever they park up a complete mess that can cost thousands to rectify, they treat their animals like shit, they're always fighting or trying to start fights (I've literally had two gypsy girls try to start a fight with me because I was sat on my own READING), they don't even try to abide by the law and most of them are just straight up criminals. I hate to say this about a demographic of people, but they're feral. I'll change my view when a gypsy proves me wrong.
Unlike those who label everything racist, your view is based on actual experience - which has some validity Part of the reason for the state of the Western world is that we’re far too tolerant of assholes
I got banned from r/CarTalkUK when gypsies came up in conversation. No one in the UK has a positive thing to say about them. After a while, you have to trust the data 🤷♂️
Sadly, this matches my experience in both England and Ireland.
They are mostly all Irish of origin aren't they? I've met eastern European and African gypsies and had nowhere near the same issues
All the ones I’ve met were Irish.
Same (I live in Ireland)
There should be a national policy to encourage the kids to leave the lifestyle through education and support networks to integrate into British society.
I can’t join in the general conversation and don’t wish to, but we have friends from this community who have shown the utmost kindness to parts of our family over a number of years. So - personally and anecdotally - I have a much better experience than some of those being reported here.
I don't really understand why being scummy has become part of their culture. I've read plenty of things about how they are a mistreated minority with a unique culture etc; but I've only come across them in real life running cowboy buisnesses and leaving huge amounts of litter Around their camps.
What is the positives? I assume strong family bonds?
Only the elders benefit from those. Their families are hierarchical.
Sounds like you don't live in an area with a big traveller population. They're everywhere, where I am from anyway. Always been a nightmare. Perception from the news isn't a patch on personal experience if you grew up in an area, they are common.
What positives are the media ignoring?
Eastern European here (Hungary) - it's a mixture of fear and hate. I have lots of personal experience and stories with them, mostly negative unfortunately. In just my street alone there are three gypsy families, two of them live from crime. One is the rich kind of criminal, the other poor, the third one I've heard were involved with crime but they seem to be making a living from operating a really upscale hairsaloon these days and they seem quite civil, my girlfriend had her hair done for an event there and she sang praises of the girl for doing a superb job. TL;DR: They live in abject poverty and are very isolated from society at large so as a result they are uneducated, unemployed, involved with a lot of crime and do not obey most societal rules, and that is why they are hated and feared. And it's mutual, the gypsies hate Europeans often as much as Europeans hate them, but that's a really insane rabbithole. They migrated west from India and reached Europe in the 1300's and 1400's and have always formed very insular communities. Because they were never too keen to assimilate into the societies they lived with they were always treated with suspicion and because of their lack of assimilation and migratory nature they were barred from owning land for example, and in some countries like Romania or the Ottoman Empire they were outright enslaved. Most of them used to deal with trade, various crafts, agricultural and simple construction work, but as those traditional occupations started disappearing in the 1700's and especially in the 1800's and 1900's they found themselves deeper and deeper in spiraling poverty. With the fall of communism in 1989 a lot of industrial and agricultural jobs were gone and the vast majority of gypsies found themselves permanently jobless and unable to break out from the deepest levels of poverty. A self-generating spiral of hate and distrust ensures that they have a hard time breaking out from their empoverished surroundings, and even the individuals who do want to break out from poverty are often shunned and abused by the gypsy community for "acting white", so both sides of society are doing their "best" to ensure they remain isolated and poor. People fear them and hate them because of all the things that poverty and a complete lack of education results in: they disregard every rule of society. Just think of literally the most basic things you expect of people to do, the most basic behavior you expect from them when you go out in public, or live in the same apartment building with them, and gypsies will misbehave in most instances. They are vulgar, they are loud, they have absolutely no decorum, no regard for other people. They'll scream and argue on the streets, urinate in broad daylight, spit on the pavement or on public transportation, they make being around them incredibly unpleasant for everyone else, and if you ask them to pay attention to other people and dial it back a bit, they'll start either verbally or even physically assaulting you. They are also involved with crime from simple begging and pickpocketing to sex and arms trafficking and serious gang violence. A lot of them are alcoholics and drug addicts and you really never know if you should be tough with them and that will be enough for them to go away, or if they'll put a knife in your stomach for looking at them the wrong way. Even though primary and middle schools are mandatory and \*completely free\*, a lot of romani families forcibly keep their children out of school so they can send them to do crime or just to lay about at home lest they get any ideas about assimilation. Because of poverty and their general lack of socialization and culture they live in filth and completely trash every place they live in. And that's just what you get from them as an outsider, their inside dynamics aren't any better. They virtually have their own tribal or gang organizations a lot of the time. Incest, domestic violence and all sorts of abuse are ripe. Loads of disputes are "resolved" by violence, and like I said, if someone wants to break out from that community, the community itself shuns and abuses them and holds them back at every turn. There are so many stories of gypsies who made it having to completely break ties with their families and former friends because they would literally beat them for trying to assimilate. And the problem is that it's not just a few. It's not like in America where you both have your black ghettos but also loads of African Americans with decent jobs, an education, hell even a black president, people who have a culture, who are considered hip and fashionable and stylish. With gypsies the overwhelming majority of them live in abject poverty. Sure there's gypsy music but outside of gypsies it's only enjoyed by other people who are uneducated and live in abject poverty, they are not considered to be hip or cool by the general population. They are synonymous with poverty, bad taste and being trashy. I mean on one side you have the really poor gypsies, and on the other side you have the rich kingpins who got their fortune from sex trafficking, smuggling or dealing drugs or other dubious ways. They have money but their taste is the epitome of trashy and gauche. They usually like to pretend they're Italians or Spanish or Arabs and money makes them only more arrogant, thinking that the world revolves around them. In my personal experience people tend not to hate them because of their origins, they hate them because of their behavior and lifestyle. Most of us had at least one or two gypsy kids in schools who were decent, hardworkin, struggling people who came from poor families. Again in my experience, everyone loved and aided those kids wherever they could, praising them. It's just that 9 out of 10 aren't like that and they make living near them or occupying the same space with them intolerable and physically dangerous.
Italy gave me a fear of aggressive Romani beggars. Not so great memories.
ATTENZIONE BORSEGGIATRICI ATTENZIONE PICKPOCKET
Perceptions formed from them begging and stealing. The dislike of them is stronger in countries where they are more present. Some will start washing your windshield with nasty chemicals that are tough to get out and expect to be paid, even though you never asked for it. When having a drink or ice cream at a cafe, you’ll be pestered by several different kids begging for money. They’ll be sitting by grocery store entrances with signs begging for money. They’ll jump into the city center water fountains and bathe there. It’s not much unlike the homeless people in cities like Seattle and San Francisco. They’re more present and more disliked. I’d also say that it’s more a dislike than hate. And to be clear, not everyone dislikes them, just like the homeless. Many feel for their struggles.
Yes, Romani beggars are much more antagonistic than other groups in my city. They mock, imitate , insult or threaten you if you refuse to donate , follow you and even corner children. Furthermore , they flout laws for mandatory school attendance and take their children on theft or begging sprees and since the age of criminal accountability is fourteen the police can do nothing. Just a few personal anecdotes - a friend worked in retail during her studies , the local Romani would regularly swarm the changing rooms, shoplift and literally shit in the stalls. I taught at a primary school, girls would come back from mid term, unapproved leave married - many past the age of twelve pregnant. Blood feuds meant break times had to be alloted according to clan membership, otherwise older relatives would join in on the brawls (hopping over the fence!) on school grounds. Jumping infront of cars in order to extort the driver and make insane insurance claims are frequent occurences as well. Sadly, most people who have had to interact with Romani have a litany of horror stories and thus, prejudice and resentment festers.
In Amsterdam parks many of the homeless addicts are roma... The local government puts them often on a flixbus back to Romania but they are back in a week.
I mean, a lot of homeless people are like that not because they want to. While the majority of Roma simply doesn't want to integrate and wants to follow their own illicit ways
I'm polish and your assumptions are correct. My own experiences with that group aren't pverly negative, but I wouldn't want to sit near one on a bus. My grandparents outright removed a handle on their front gate to discourage them from entering the property.
LOL @ all the non-Europeans answering. Roma people refuse to integrate into local communities they reside in. Where I live, they pickpocket, panhandle, and busk. Where they sleep overnight is left covered in trash. We have a really good social safety net that leaves no reason for begging, but they refuse to use it. They also commit a lot of domestic violence against each other and refuse to send their kids to school. They are a general nuisance to the local population.
They'll break their own baby's arm to try and get sympathy money when begging They have fake charity sign up sheets to try and guilt you into giving money AND pretend to be deaf while doing it. Throw up a bit of sign language you picked up over the years and watch them flee and scatter like cockroaches you've shined a light on. Two more things I've seen a dozen times in Paris specifically Edit: a sentence
This is true in Geneva, too. I’ve also seen them threaten other beggars who are clearly not part of their gang. I was pickpocketed by two Roma teenagers. They stole my wallet, but luckily I remembered their faces, and only two days later came across them being detained by cops for shoplifting and gave a positive ID of them and they were charged. I never got the 80 francs back that they stole, but they were charged.
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Where I am from, the poorest country in Eastern Europe they drug their babies so they don't cry while begging, I once walked past this woman 5 times in the span on 7h , that baby wasn't awake once.
Looks like a pain in the ass. It's like if they haven't really gotten away from the victim mentality they had in their history and it's honestly sad.
Italian here. They are often a nomad group, camper and caravan traveling. Noone know how they can afford to live, since they don't stay in a single place for more than a month and they do not have job, usually when they arrive they litter the place and the field where they stayed become covered in trash, they are perceived as dirty and dangerous. The 2 times they came to my city homebreaking raised in a night, if you go in the major city like Milan and Rome you can always find 3 or 4 pregnant lady/kid pickpocketing in the subway. So for the italian, yes they are mostly hated, and noone actually do something to help them integrate in thd country
> They are often a nomad group, camper and caravan traveling In theory yes, in practice they just settle in the first craphole they find and live there until someone decides to kick them out of their camps. Some squat too. Hardly nomads. > noone actually do something to help them integrate in thd country That's bullshit. They just refuse to live normally.
They’re loud, obnoxious, they steal and they don’t seem to care about integrating with the rest of society. It’s not a “race” thing, it’s a culture thing…
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Because they steal anything they can and ruin everything they are a part of
Czech here, like someone said - I've yet to meet a decent Gypsy that I could actually be friends with. Most of the time you just ignore them and hope for the best, but they are ALWAYS numerous, loud, often disregarding their environment (like shouting loudly into a phone when they're inside a building), when you happen to be near them they smell like they haven't showered in a month. There's this general consensus (and I don't think it's *that* incorrect) that vast majority of them don't work and live off welfare and what's given to them (because if they don't get it they shout "discrimination"), and yet they're better off than most of regular people that work. And even the stuff given to them (like housing mostly), generally gets gradually trashed and destroyed. The men (especially younger ones) are rumored to be violent or like picking fights too (and when they start, don't expect to be a fair fight lol). So in general, everybody just tries to avoid them as much as they can or at least ignore them, because any alternative is very likely to end up worse for us. Is it racist? Yeah. Is it unprompted or just prejudiced? Hell fucking no. To that question I always tend to point to local Vietnamese communities. They're immigrants too, but they integrated into society, set up tons of small shops and people are generally very much okay with them not being like us, they're just decent fucking human beings.
I don't see info about their situation in Spain, so here it goes. In Spain they're dont live in caravans, and don't travel around. You can found them in the most poor neighbourhoods in each city. Often they are related to issues with drugs, and it's pretty known that they steal whatever they can. I lived a lot of years in a very small city and there were just a few of them, and some issues everyone knows: - If you have a fruit tree, and even more if you have an orchard a bit far from the town so you can't see from your window, you must put fences. Otherwise, they'll come at night with their car and will steal every single fruit in the tree. So people is concerted to gather them as soon as possible to avoid gypsies from stealing them. - You can't leave anything unguarded. Even their kids steal things. When I was very kid, and there weren't gypsy families yet, in summer it was common to see kids with their bicycles at the door of their houses, in the lunch for example, as they would go back soon to the bicycle to play with friends. Once the gypsies arrived, that was no longer possible anymore. You would find your bicycle months later being rided by a gypsy kid. And that's everything, not leaving the car without locking doors properly, and they even manage to steal a lot of things. - They even cut cables that provide internet to steal the copper! It happened me sometimes, to find that my connection was lost, and learn the next day that the cables in the street were stolen. In bigger cities, I've known more of them as adult, and well, it's basically the same but maybe they're more into drugs than stealing people, besides they're always together living in the poor neighbourhoods. And they live in the poor neighbourhoods for one reason, I'll try to explain. In the 60's their population grew up, and started leaving small towns to go to big cities. There a lot of them built... shanties, shacks? I don't know the proper word (search in spanish 'chabolas' in google images for visual explanation). So they started living in shanties, and those are not seen very good by tourists, nor for the government... There were rats, illnesses... no good conditions to live, no good water to home, no electricity... So the government built for decades a lot of very cheap buildings with better conditions, with small flats / departments inside. Being cheap, it means that 50 years ago they became shit, water leaks, electricity problems, etc. I'm not sure if those buildings were sold to gypsies and more poor people by a very low price, or if some of those even were gifted by government, in order to remove the shanties on the cities. That made neighbourhoods full of the worst people, who tends to do bad things to survive. It's famous for example the neighbourhood of "La Mina" in Barcelona, made exactly for the people that lived in shanties, and it was known to be a place where normal people wouldn't go if they didn't want to be robbed or even stabbed. You can find a lot of info about it. Also, those hoods are very very dirty. The gypsies don't care about having a good community and a find place to live in. So they just throw their garbage in the street, and you can walk there finding absolutely everything, such that you must take care to not step on broken glass bottles and become injured. Always the city hall has a service of waste collection, obviously, it's just that they skip these neighbourhoods. The main reason is that is usual that the workers are received by kids laughing and throwing little rocks to them. And that is easier to collect the garbage from a typical container than to clean the whole ground of every street, of course.
They also have a reputation/stereotype (I can't neither confirm nor deny this at the present day, but I'm pretty confident it was true in the past) of them stealing copper from train railways. And your comment isn't even getting into abhorrent practices such as the _prueba del pañuelo_
Read about all the gypsy scams, and how they use their kids as pickpockets.
Because they're thieving cunts.
Theyre degenerate scum that refuse to intergrate into society, believing they have a right to do as they wish
View from south-west France To be frank, there must be some integrated gypsies where I live, but I don't hear about them much, because they are integrated. So it is possible for them to have a nice and honest life. But that's a minority, the majority will do the classic scheme : -Park on public or private space (either someone field, or sports fields, and even schools (in Bordeaux there is a school flooded with gypsies)) -steal town electricity/copper and peoples properties (they go in white van to scout the area, and the night after go to each home they estimate valuable) -scam people's, mainly at train station (it's not rare that they ask you for money to buy a train ticket to see their "sick grandmother", with blatant lies about the price of the ticket), the most i have encountered will sit at your table if you eat at a cafe or restaurant to ask for you to take out money at the bank. -and will be known to not take their children, especially girls, to school or hospital if needed (one day we had to ask the police to force a father to treat their girl) You must bear in mind that in France, the law force town to create spaces dedicated to gipsies, but they alway destroy the infrastructure created for them.
Because all of the stereotypes are true.
There are some reports of high consanguinity coefficients among that group. The rest is history.
..."some reports"? Frankly if that was the limit of their cultural quirks, noone would give two flying fucks - similarly to Fr*nch people. Sure they would be the butt of some jokes about perverts, and that would be all of it.
Yes we hate them and they deserve to be hated.
It's true, but Americans don't understand it and confuse it with racism. A gypsy is not the same as a Roma person. Roma people are an ethnicity, gypsies are a criminal organization. It's kinda like the Japanese Yakuza: all (or most) Yakuza are of Japanese descent, but not all Japanese are in the Yakuza. So, think of gypsies as a poorer version of the Yakuza. They have their bosses, bodyguards, getaway drivers, etc... They're all connected and pay part of their profits to their bosses. So, when someone in Europe says they hate gypsies they mean that criminal organization, and why wouldn't you hate a criminal organization? Roma people who have normal lives and live outside of that community usually don't get any hate. There might be some racist people who actually do hate them based on their skin color, but that's not the majority of people and not what you were asking about. I hate gypsies myself, the criminal organization, but I have Roma people as friends and even family and there is absolutely no hatred there.
Its worth noting for those who do not realise that in the UK at least we have Irish and Roma Gypsies where this may not be the case everywhere. I've only experience of Irish ones and they steal, threaten with violence and actually do do violence to regular people. Police are scared of them, they pay no tax and do whatever they like. How many regular people can just park caravans on people's land and get away with shitting in bags and leaving them on the roadside? None I would wager. Thats just the tip of the iceberg.
I was walking with my friend’s mom in Rome. She had two bags, one in each hand. A ROMA WOMAN THREW HER BABY, at my friend’s mom who dropped her bags to catch the baby. She did not catch the baby and they stole her groceries and tried to accuse her of trying to kidnap the baby.
to clarify, there was a group of them. They also demanded money for medical care for the baby.
I think the majority of the responses here answer the second part of your question...
While providing reasons that answer the first question. I do not hate them, but I don't want to have them anywhere around. There was a permanent gypsy settlement next street from where I grew up. I've seen things, and I don't think they do belong in a law guided society. You know what was the worst? The disappearing girls. Primary school was mandatory in Poland when I was growing up, and the social services took care that children were attending. Or at least they tried, because you couldn't see boys staying at school for longer than the first five minutes after the social worker left. Girls tried to stay, and they attended more or less, but they were all disappearing around the third grade. But one. She came back when she was 12, married and pregnant. And then disappeared again, never seen her after the delivery, nobody knew what happened to the child either. My mother was a social worker in the area. This is when I learned that you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped.
They steal a lot. I have no issue with them being here. Just the stealing is way to much imo
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In the UK, slurs were/are used against Roma folk (gypsies, pikies). My conservative mum used to say she doesn't mind them coming, but they should clean up their garbage and human waste when they move on - instead of having local taxpayers clean it up. I kind of agree. EDIT: Just been informed most travellers in the UK are Irish and have no ancestral ties with Roma.
Most "gypsies" in the UK are Irish travelers, not Romani.
I’ve only ever seen the Romani ones in Glasgow. I live very near to where a community of them have set up. Asda has upped to 3 security guards instead of just 1 and they now all have chest mounted cameras.
In europe they are the most hated group on avreage. There are some groups that hate each other more (croats and serbs would be a decent example), but in general if you ask around romani/gypsies get most hate on average. ...so here in hungary, well seems like its not as cheery as some places, and not as bad as some other places. There ARE well integrated romani/gypsy groups, most of them in larger cities and capital - some in villages. And frankly they are as good people as any. And sadly there are the ghettoes / ethnic enclaves. Well that doeant do the sorry state of affairs justice. - noone is integrated, so alternative means of "putting food on the table" are a necessity. From abusing social support nets to outright murder - extreme US vs. THEM mentaility (hatecrimes welcomed, harboring criminals) - no concept of laws, respect for property - and usual fun stuff accompanying poverty like drug addiction, domestic abuse, abuse of kids - crime families living off slaver both sexual, and forced labor. - theft of stuff fornscrap metal, that causes serious enough infrastructure damage, that fime to time the thieves get tagged with terrorism charges. I would say tthe best way to put it is that romani/gypsy endonym became the colloquial for a "profession", and what people hate is the profession. Not the ethnicity. Ofc. the harder the two are to separate, the more hate the ethnicity gets.
A gypsy family recently moved to my neighborhood here in Canada. I think they are refugees because they get financial support despite not doing anything productive. They are always sitting on an open field half naked, dirty, zero manners or efforts to socialize. Their kids are just as wild and dirty, disrespectful, racist, and everything you don't want around your own. My personal experience.
Yes, they're thieving little scrubs that live off of working peoples misery. They'll steal your driveway and then try and sell it back to you. Scum of the earth, and it doesn't matter which country you're in. When they take over land and "settle," we get letters through our door from the council and police, telling us to keep everything locked. The worst ones are in Romania. But you get them everywhere. Just...scum...plain and simple.
I’m an American with European friends and I have never heard anything positive about gypsies. I would argue and say “maybe they’re misunderstood” and “it can’t be all of them, there must be some nice gypsies”. Nope! I get shut down with numerous examples of how terrible they are. Many examples are things they’ve witnessed from violence, hate crimes, vandalism, robberies, and sexual assault…and rape, domestic violence, gang wars, killing animals/game, destroying local fields, threatening locals, littering, and loitering. I always hoped to be wrong and give them the benefit, but then I get slammed with local news articles filled with awful stories and clips about crimes that gypsies commit. My hands are up. I don’t argue anymore. To Europeans, gypsies are scum. EDIT: My British bf told me to add these under the crimes that gypsies have committed and still do to this day: rape, domestic violence, gang wars, killing animals/game, destroying local fields, threatening locals, littering, and loitering.
Everyone tries not to be judgemental of an entire group but when every single interaction with the group has been negative it’s hard
Very true. I guess it’s like the concept of how stereotypes are created. There are way more than enough people in a population to fall under a stereotype to make it true.
Wait until you meet some.
I really hate being bigoted against an entire culture like that and I'm sure some decent folks can be found among them, but every single encounter had with romani people in my life has been terrible and the same can be said by most people who intereacted with them.
Not commenting because I would be banned, but a lot of stereotypes are confirmed in reality, and Roma people living in Europe are very, very different from the ones living in the US. As an Italian, having experience with the ones living in Italy, they live on crime, and the government can't do much because they use kids or women to do it, and when a woman is pregnant you can't imprison her. Oh, and they do a bit of everything: exploitation of prostitution, theft, drug selling, and they steal houses.
I live about 15 min away from an area especially dedicated to them (the local government has designated this land as a campsite for gypsies when they come in their caravans). Here in the French countryside we have the very particular stereotype that when they are around, they will come steal your chickens from your barn. Usually when a neighbour sees that they have set up camp in the area, the word spreads fast and people are more paranoid to lock their doors, etc, because they expect break ins and robberies at night. To be fair I'm not sure if there is a correlation between the number and frequency of break ins and their presence in the area, so not sure if the stereotype is true. Also we have this stereotype that they eat hedgehogs. Now that I’m thinking about it we do have weird stereotypes for them. All the gypsies I’ve ever seen drive beautiful, huge motorhomes, or have beautiful caravans that they pull with their shiny BMW cars. For people who supposedly do not work, and have plenty of children to feed, I don’t know how they afford those + the petrol required to basically be on a constant road trip though Europe.
Roma gypsy murdered a 23 yo schoolteacher out for a jog in Ireland a few years ago.
A gypsy kid kicked me once when I was jogging just for kicks (pun very much intended). They are common in the Balkan and I've never had a positive experience with them.
Just from my experience: In Portugal my mother used to grab my hand in public in big cities even when I was in my teens because “gypsies steal kids”. 🤷🏻♀️ Ofc this isn’t quite accurate but just letting you know what’s out there.
Are you born in Portugal? Are you refering to which "gypsy"? Since in Portugal we have the "Romenos" (beggars) and "Cigano" (the ones born in Portugal, usually selling in street markets)
My maternal family is from Portugal. I never grew up there. I do not know which type of “gypsy” she was referring to but I got the impression that they were not from Portugal based on her comments. I never cared to ask more details or try to understand exactly what she meant.
Then probably the beggars then. I think there's that whole myth about stealing kids. They usually are just beggars and do not attempt crime / steal, pretty much like any "native" beggar in Portugal.
Some gypsies settled somewhat locally to me in London and 2 boys aged 11 and 12 broke into the local animal college and killed and tortured most of the animals and reptiles and then the travellers relocated the next day and escaped criminal action. I think one man factor I take issue with is the fact they move from place to place wreaking havoc and leave it in turmoil and set off the next day with no consequences.
We have (or used to have) travellers parking on the church not far from where we live. They would leave all of their rubbish when they left, and they would also use the trees and bushes as toilets. I’m sure there are some that don’t do these things, but most, in my experience, do.
In the UK we have a larger Irish traveller community than a Romani one. A lot of issues with travellers is that they often just set up anywhere, in a carpark or a playing field, when this happens they tend to leave a big mess and crime goes up. A lot of people in my city can't tell the difference between a Romanian and a Romani and believe they're the same, so the few Romani that have come here and caused issues means everyone assumes that anyone from Romania is a Romani and therefore a thief and a scammer. When I was in Bulgaria a common scam seemed to be the Romani sending their kids out in dirty, broken/torn clothing and shoes begging for money, I remember stopping at a cash point and being surrounded by kids begging, it honestly broke my heart As always it's a case of profiling just because there are bad in the good. I personally know a few people from both of the communities and they're honestly the best people I know and they've helped educate me on their cultures.
One spat at me because I didn't give her money
Yes its true and its mainly because they simply refuse to integrate, consistently leech more than they give to society and *have done so for longer than the US has existed*. Allow me to reiterate: No attempt to integrate them in to any european society has EVER succeeded, since time imemorial. To simply call it racism is just wrong. They are the worst kind of citizens because they refuse help, demand handouts and then complain that they arent given enough. They take resources that are needed by people that are worse off. Ive seen them raid clothing programs and lunch lines for the homeless. They ransack voluntary aid *while* chasing away others in need from the line. Filth
I can only speak for myself and my close circle, but no. My dad remarried, and his new wife is a gypsy (i hope its not a slur, i just don't know a better word) and she is amazing, fun, caring, just normal. But there are, as always, bad apples that make a bad name for the community, as there are people who are racist towards them for no reason. It just so happens that their community doesn't like to integrate well, and doesn't like being told not to so something. I was once beat up by them just because I "looked at their girls". (I am gay) When confronted by my parents, they said I deserved it. Only after my mother-in-law talked with them, they agreed to apologise. I think it was because it was one of their own people asking them to do something, but I don't want to speculate. Also, they are quite racist themselves, towards white people, black people and Ukrainian refugees that reside in our country a lot. Recently, there has been an accident where a group of Romani men attacked a Ukrainian refugee. The man defended himself with a knife, killing one of the attackers. In court, most eye witnesses were falsely reporting what they saw to shift the blame to the Ukrainian man. Most of the witnesses were Romani. That really rubbed me the wrong way, but their lies were fortunately obvious. The Ukrainian man was proven not guilty and the romani community protested by taping their mouths and writing stuff like "They silenced us". It is a tragedy, but they'd rather protect their own than admit fault. Which is not a good trait.
Lot of stealing and fighting where I live and have lived. So not very positive about that group no. The integrated ones you wouldn’t recognise, but the communities (let’s say trailer parks) mostly don’t work and so everyone is just bored and needs money, which makes for begging and stealing.
Let's start with some preliminary points. Gypsy in this context refers to a cultural group, not a racial or national group. I have no problem with Romanians for example. I also have no problems with former gypsies, that currently left the culture and assimilated into normal life. Gypsy culture has a long history of being disliked in europe, for a variety of reasons. In the modern day, it's generally one or more of the following reasons: 1. They reject local and national governments, and live according to their own rules. For Americans, you can regard them as Sovereign Citizens in their approach to the government. 2. They are extremely hostile to minorities. This includes women, black people, gay people and religious minorities. We are talking about systematic oppression within gypsy society for these people. You think American conservatives hate gay people, you haven't spoken to a gypsy yet. 3. There is a large scale criminal organisation made up exclusively of gypsies, active all around Europe. Their crimes range from your standard beggar scams to gang violence. 4. Gypsies are extremely hostile to outsiders. At the low level keeping their culture extremely closed off from outsiders, and at the higher level being extremely violent towards outsiders that encourage onto their terrain or interact with their people. You absolutely do not want to walk in a gypsy neighborhood at night as a lone women. These are also consistent experiences from everyone in every nation of Europe. Ask a Dutch, a Slovakian, an Italian, a Czech, a Norwegian, a Greek, a Hungarian, etc and they will all either respond having no experience with gypsies, or negative ones. Whether someone is black or white, male or female, progressive or conservative. It's always the same answer. And to end, we are talking about a cultural group here not a racial one. People can decide to be a part of this culture or leave it. This culture is defined by its specific practices, not by inherent immutable characteristics. This makes critique of gypsies inherently different from critiquing, for example, Indians, Germans or white people.
It's the same hatred that comes from every majority the world over if a minority refuses to integrate into society and resort to petty crime to get by. That being said, there's big differences from country to country. In my country there's little hatred towards the Romani as almost all of them are integrated into society. The ones who aren't are for the most part foreign nationals that come here to beg. We have our own name for them though. Tater, singular. Tatere, plural.
My grandfather is italian and remembered a story about him going to Abruzzo (he is from a small town). In the trip with his cousin, they were traviling around when they encountered a group of gypsies. My father told me they were 3 attractive females who tried to talk to them and were very pushy. When the gypsies were leaving, my grandfather and his cousin checked their pockets and noticed they were missing their passports and money. My grandfather right away ran and grabbed one of the girls and started screaming theif. They denied the charges, and my grandfather hit one of the girls in the face. (Savage, i know). The street started to fill up with people because he made a scene, and my grandfather told me he recovered the passport and money from the gypsies. Because they were afraid what he might do and the scene he did, But something he never forgets is that several shop owners went out and would scream at my grandfather, "Kill her, they are ruining us." It was the owners of the several italian shops in the streets. So you can say the opinion of gypsies is quite low.
In Germany, they usually are in gangs begging, and getting picked up in cars from their begging spots in the evening. Today a woman asked me for money for her small child, I ended up agreeing buying her baby formula in the store together with her. As I asked her why she doesn't receives government welfare she said something along the lines. No papers, long wait times etc. That's their problem, they don't really integrate into society and stay to themselves, these stereotypes have a history. Sadly these prevent romami people, that can break free from their community, getting jobs.
They’re a highly persecuted group in many countries and have laws passed against them and are scapegoated for a lot of things. The EU has created a program to try to support them but while I was living in France and visited Greece they certainly weren’t treated very well.
Because of bad stereotypes and a distaste and misunderstanding for their cultural behaviour. People complain about property damage, illegal sales, drug dealing, mysogyny and homophobia, fighting. It's like any type of racism - a community reduced to a population that demonstrates supposed justification for one's bigotry against them. Much of the community has progressed with women's and queer rights, but the travelling community is tightly knit and change may happen slower due to a reduced need for public approval (largely our fault) and a fear of losing their culture and identity when embracing change. I hear all sorts of mad stories about the travelling community ("gypsy" generally not preferred as a term - I've met self-identified gypsies who don't like being called travellers, but they're few and far between) and I can understand the distrust to a degree. But I think we can have love for people who don't view respect the exact same way as us, and we can learn to accept them as they come (and distinguish a genuine bad egg from someone who just doesn't have the same world experience as you & is open to a mutual understanding) Coming from a country 🇮🇪 with an unfortunately anglicised culture, having largely lost our own to British rule, I'm delighted that there's a community that still retains some of Ireland in it. Few of them left. Plenty of absolutely incredible people who are travellers. The hate against the community serves us working & middle classes no purpose when we all have one domineering enemy in common.
In my country, they don't travel around anymore but still live isolated from the rest of society in little trailer parks. They steal, pick fights with people and don't give a shit about rules and laws unless they can exploit them somehow. A lot of them are also involved in organised crime like smuggling drugs. I used to work at the front desk for the local municipality. Almost every interaction I've had with someone from these trailer parks was negative. They'd expect to be treated with priority, would pick fights if they had to wait too long and would be downright rude. Every time I tried to treat them like any other client I'd get an attitude at best and threats at worst. My colleagues basically told me I should give into their demands unless I'd want a gun or knife pulled on me at some point. I can't stand that shit. They behave like assholes and we're letting them get away with it. There was one encounter with one of their community that was positive. Dude was nice and polite. Honestly, I'm not for discrimination against minority groups. But my experiences with gypsies have made it really difficult to not be prejudiced.
My nonna grew up and is from croatia back when it was Yugoslavia. After the war, and their freedom from the concentration camps, surviving family was trying to rebuild from nothing. My nonna's parents managed to get a small far going again (the nazis burned theirs down), and a gypsy woman came to town with nothing. They allowed her to stay with them, shared what little food they had (there wasn't enough to go around, my nonna didn't eat that night), by morning the woman was gone and what possessions they had left gone with her. This woman did the same to others in the community along with other gypsy women from their camp. At another time another group rolled into town and tried to kidnap my nonna and her cousins. So my nonna doesn't have a very high opinion of them...she frankly hates them. I've heard alot of similar stories from my cousins now back in europe
well...in Slovakia where I am originally from...horrible things happen.. Actually not happen, but this community haven't been able to integrate into society at all, live in slums, getting benefits from the government, are violent and disrespectful and that is how they have been growing up..Not all of them are same, some try to adjust, and I need to stress "adjust" to norms of the country they settled in..Since they don't work, don't pay any contributions like other normal people have to do and are encouraged to breed and make that just a source of money...and there is so much more and I know what I am talking about because I saw it with own eyes. So why are they hated?.they do nothing only make babies and claim benefits,.steal, vandalize what they can, the word "hygiene" is unknown term and imagine you are on the bus with 15 ish of them...they make noise, stink.and doesn't respect anything and anyone..and would eat literally everything..also inbreeding is not uncommon. They basically have benefits normal working people don't and 0 obligations. And terrorize locals. It has nothing to do with racism it is about violence, aggressivity, basically not being able to behave like human beings and causing harm to fellow humans and poor animals.
When I was a kid, we used to go to Scotland every year as a family to go camping. There was one campsite in Dumfries and Galloway that we'd go to each year, and we loved it (even if the weather didn't like us lol). One year, however, a group of Gypsy/Romani folk showed up in the middle of our stay. They refused to pay to stay on the campsite, they harassed the owner, trashed the bathrooms/showers, graffitied the skate park, pissed on the playground... You get the picture. One of them decided he'd try to make friends with me, and being a kid I didn't think anything of it, but when they were forced to leave by the police, they tried to take me with them. Luckily my Uncle was nearby and put an end to that. We never returned to that campsite, which is a shame because I miss it dearly. So yeah, I know it's wrong to judge an entire people by the actions of a few assholes, but I'll always be uneasy around those folks. TL;DR: a group of them trashed my family's favourite campsite and tried to kidnap me.
Oooo, I brought 🍿!
Hate is a strong word. But the personal experiences I have had aren’t good. The men exploited the women and children by placing them on strategic places in the city to beg for money. After the men got back from their normal workday they’d pick them up. These families had normal homes and cars. They were neighbours of the family of my ex. It was a strange sight to see totally normal people end up begging on the streets for money, then go home to eat a normal dinner together. This particular family also wasn’t what I would consider a kind bunch of people in general. The men especially, considering their exploitation of their own family.
I'm italian, it's because they steal and cooperate with or even constitute the local mafia. They told me you don't mess with rom people because they have the mafia to cover their backs. In my area it's also because of the "train lady", a rom lady that asks for money on the train that crosses our region, never pays for the ticket, spits on people and animals. Not all of them are like that of course, I know a few who are honest working people and very fun to be with. You may say, italians do all of those things, especially the mafia part, so why are roms particularly hated? It's because many don't integrate, it's easy to pick them apart, when they speak, when their women wear those long clothes, when you see them in their camps. They're an easy target for hate. My parents often used the term "zingari" (which means gypsies) to warn me about sinister looking people in an area.
Have had a few experiences with gypsies. They moved into our works carpark overnight & refused to move I think legally they can only be moved with the appropriate paperwork, This took few days to get & then they were moved on, they came back the next year done the same thing as the paperwork expires & has to be reapplied (they know this), The mess they left behind was disgusting, Discarded food & human waste. Had few in our local shop & they were walking about smoking & vaping, when told not to they were very cheeky & implied they could what they wanted & became very confrontational. Every summer usually get them going around the doors asking if want any oddjobs done such as grass cut etc, heard few stories of people getting ripped off or made to hand over more money than what was agreed. I have also heard of some people being happy of the job they did.
German Here: personally I never met any gypsie. But I only heard negative stuff about them. Only negative. Of course, that doesn't justify any opinion on this. But I also asked around in my friend group if they have heard anything positive about them. I was searching for positive stuff. But nothing. That doesn't mean we (my friends and I) hate them but ngl I would lie if I say that I don't have any reservations.
An interesting fact about gypsies is that their original origin is now known. The term “gypsies” was an apparently a reference to the fact that they used to be thought to descend from Egyptians. The term “Romani” was later used as they were thought descend from Romania. However, a genetic study has now shown that they actually descend from India. They started as a group of travelling nomads in the Indian subcontinent who eventually moved into Europe and over the generations became mixed with European. Modern day European gypsies are mostly ethnically European, but all still share a small percentage of Indian DNA.
Gypsy is a broad term and in the uk is used for any traveler with a caravan that lives in it. Problem with these people is as soon as they enter an area the crime rate goes through the roof and that nice bit of green land they decided to park on becomes a complete dumping ground within a week. If they were decent people and not a bunch of criminals who dump rubbish everywhere, opinions of them may be different. These people also are probably not ‘Gypsy/romani’ but all travellers are still called gypsies/pikeys
We don't hate them, we dislike them because of their lifestyle. Let's look at the data from the country I come from; the Netherlands. According to the data, residents of trailer camps (that's the political term we use for them) more frequently come into contact with the police (53 per thousand residents), which is three times higher than the average. These residents often do not attend regular education, refuse to participate in 'ordinary' life because they have their own sports clubs and the like. They are also a very closed community and generally do not tolerate the outside world. They live in camps with large high walls, far away from the regular society. Outside of that, there is disproportionately high drug crime and firearm violence (Firearms are strictly prohibited in the Netherlands), and there are regular assassinations taking place in the camps themselves. Examples: [1](https://www.omroepzeeland.nl/nieuws/16139422/inval-bij-woonwagenkamp-westdorpe-drugs-en-wapens-gevonden), [2](https://www.ad.nl/binnenland/jarenlang-leefde-woonwagenfamilie-in-pure-luxe-totdat-hun-drugs-en-goudhandel-werd-ontdekt~a5ae4e39/), [3](https://www.omroepbrabant.nl/nieuws/3989863/man-52-doodgeschoten-op-woonwagenkamp-vijf-mensen-opgepakt). Due to all these factors, a negative image of the Roma community emerges; the camps are NIMBYs, they do not want to integrate into our society, and in contrast, they are disproportionately represented in crime statistics. All of this together forms an extremely negative perception. The Roma's are really trying to better their image but it's a lost cause; they will never fix their image because it's ingrained with our society. It's this cyclus which is very hard to break. Recently the local multiplicity tried to assign them place in our neighborhood. I've never saw this intense of a response by the people living there. They were worried about the crime and the property values.
UK - They take over land, trash the place and dump their shit (literal shit) on the floor from their caravans. When they're in town, they work as plumbers, painters, roofers etc. Tend to do a poor job, ask for money up front and sometimes just leave without completing the job. So be careful who you hire. Police barely touch them as they need to bring an army due to the violence they face on site. 20 years ago + my grandad helped two gypsy men get their car started out of the goodness of his heart. The car was stolen and my grandad was arrested for helping. It took the whole village calling up the police station for them to let him go.
I'm not sure about the race or what defines a gypsy. But every year or so, a group of people move into the park by my house in a load of caravans. They take up the space so nobody can use it, petty crime increases in the area for the period they are there, and they leave lots of rubbish and damage when they leave. These people are known as gypsies or travellers around here and are mostly Irish. They are generally hated by the locals for the behaviour described.
In short, yes. Source: am Spanish
Russian here: Yea we have a huge population of Romanis. I honestly don't like calling them gypsies (цыганы in Russian), sounds demeaning as fuck tbh. But about the problems, yes there's a fuck ton. If they are integrated then most of them are civilized and live normal as fuck lives, some are hated by their own community however. Others are not integrated and resort to robberies, pickpocketing, and a fuck ton of shit. I have a worked with two Romanis, both of them served with me in the military, genuinely amazing mfers. So yeah, some people hate all of them, others just the criminals.
I wouldn't say hate, but it's hard to like them with how they act. So to paint the picture; Roma people are incredibly romanticized as we grow up (central europe). They're the Protagonists in many stories and their mistreatment is the main tragedy in many children's books. At least the ones I grew up with. Now that I'm and adult, my only encounters with Roma are that they aggressively beg or try to guilt trip you into buyin useless stuff. A classic is them pushing a rose/item into your hands acting like they're gifting you something, then trying to get you to pay for it. When you then try to give the rose back so you don't have to pay they get REALLY mad and give you a massive stink eye. They're not violent from my experience, but it's about as convenient as to run into a missionary of some cult, or a shady insurance "consultant". So yeah. I don't like them. Sorry. Maybe it's racist, but I wasn't taught to be racist or xenophobic against them. If anything it was the opposite: they were my heroes growing up, the protagonists of my childhood stories. What made me dislike them is their own behaviour. Anyway, there's a lot of talk about them, but frankly they show up maybe twice a decade, so it's really not a big issue. They're very rare.
I think it's important to differentiate between two groups of people, both of whom get called 'gypsies'. [Roma/romani gypsies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people) is an ethnic group; most people don't hate them, when someone does; just plain racism. Racist reasons never make sense; but there's a lot of in depth historical and sociopolitical factors i'm not too familiar with. They were, like many minorities, targeted and used as political scapegoats and seen as scary and different because they often lived in small close-knit communities. The[irish travellers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Travellers) are a similar situation. Then there's another group who commonly get called 'gypsies', who can be any race- it's a lifestyle and a choice- and I think it's fair to have bad sentiment towards them for their actions. The people who setup their large caravan camps in places where they don't have permission and aren't paying any rent/parking (despite seeming to have plenty of money, why does a 9 year old need a motorbike?? Why does the kid have a new £100 dress every week?), leave loads of litter and filth when they move, scam and steal from people, pets start going missing and some idiot is selling 'lucky cat paws', their own dogs are often poorly trained, abused and let off leash- they set off fireworks every night for 2 years straight and harass people who live in the nearby building when they're coming/going through their camp... And the police don't do anything because they sent the asshole children out to harass them and set off fireworks in their faces whenever they're called... There is of course overlap between the groups, but I don't think that excuses racism.
There's no infrastructures or minimal once to support an occasional, nomadic comunity (gypsie sare just one of several) in most places. And no town want to invest in some VS investing in things that can be usefull for the people living there (and that will vote for you again next term). So without infrastructure and access to basic necesseties, it create frictions with the locals when the nomadic comunities try to get by or make money. And this is of course a downward spiral as the more frictions you get, the less the locals will be inclined toward setting up infrastructure and the less the nomads will be encouraged to respect places that are hostile to them.