Gypsies

I just recently decided to boycott a forum here in Germany on account of a particularly racist thread on gypsies. The thread started because there are some women around Alexanderplatz (downtown Berlin) who will come up to you, baby in arms and ask you "do you speak English?" If you say yes, they will show you a card which tells their tragic tale, and ask you for some money. Now, granted, I understand this is annoying. But it does not deserve the kind of comments made in this thread. To boot, I have some evidence that the women in question were not Roma (the accent they spoke with, their dress, and several other factors) but even if they were, this sort of thing is not acceptable. Now then, even though I know better than to feed the trolls, I had to comment with something. My grandfather was of Romanian gypsy decent. He was the first to come to America and went from having a traveling bear act to almost becoming one of the three stooges! So anyway, I told these racist idiots what anyone on the defensive side of a racist attack would- that they were ignorant and should all be ashamed of themselves. I doubt this did much, except make them more indignant and protective of their racist views and have since decided to abandon the conversation. It's hard for me to sit by on this issue and I've had to more and more while living in Europe. People tend to lump anyone of ethnicity who is a beggar or prostitute under the "roma umbrella" and considering the horrendous loads of shit people like my grandfather and his parents had to go through, it is almost intolerable for me. Among other things, an estimated one million five hundred thousand Roma and Sinti were murdered during the holocaust, frequently the victims of gross experiments and unnatural forms of torture. More recently, the Italian government has been accused of burning Romani camps in order to get rid of the "gypsy problem." All this, and yet Berlin has not completed the monument to the Sinti and Roma that was planned at the same time as the Jewish memorial. You can go to it now and all it is is a vacant dirty lot with a plaque. When asked why a proper monument has yet to be built 47 years later, they say there isn't enough interest. They mean tourists. Tourists associate the Sinti and Roma with beggars, thieves, and prostitutes. Never mind that they are also a culture from which several notable artists, musicians, and other professionals emerged, including my grand father. Yes, there are people in the Roma / Sinti culture who are beggars, thieves, and prostitutes, just as there are white people who are beggars, thieves, prostitutes, just as there are black people who are beggars, thieves, prostitutes, and just as there are people of every ethnicity who have had to do what they have to do to make a living. To label an entire culture based on a select group of individuals is racism. It is no different than the racism that has been faced by people of any other ethnicity. So to everyone who feels they have been "annoyed" by a Gypsy, and wishes they would just "go away" or get kicked out of whatever country, or starve and die in the streets until there are none left, you should perhaps realize that people like Adolf Hitler thought exactly the way you did, and do you really want to share the opinions of a mass murdering fuck head?

This post is in loving memory of my grand father.

-M