Is the Roma reputation not based in reality? Like significantly moreso than other group stereotypes.
I have run into more than a few Europeans who wouldn’t so much as entertain a single racist thought, against Africans or East Asians or Indians etc.
But when it comes to the Roma, they suddenly turn extremely racist! But they don’t seem to consider it racism.
Some interesting cognitive dissonance going on. But I always chalked it up to the Roma thing being basically true and readily observable across Europe.
It's like everything, one small part of a groups give the rest a bad name.
There are a small group that "make the most noise" and give a bad impression. I can admit I did have n impression from bad experiences and did find myself generalising but after working with and meeting many more Romanians, great friends and great people overall, it sounds stupid saying it out loud now, but they're just like everyone else. Personally I try to be more aware of those conceptions, articles like this though just seems to want to put "Romas" into a group too.
> after working with and meeting many more Romanians
Just want to mention that Roma and Romanians are two different peoples. I have also worked with a bunch of Romanians, and I agree they are just like everybody else. Though I’m a little confused why there is both the Italian looking type of Romanian and the Dracula looking type. I’ve never looked into the history there. I don’t think either one is Roma broadly speaking (though there are Roma in Romania I believe, as there are in Germany and elsewhere).
I think the issue people have with groups like the Roma isn’t that they are fundamentally defective or something like that. It’s that they don’t consider themselves to be part of the broader national society, and so they put the interests of their own group above the interests of those outside of their group, to the extent that they may go so far as to harm those outside of the group to benefit those inside the group.
This is actually a very natural human tendency, and I think it has to be socialized out of most people during childhood, or else they would do it too (assuming they had a group to do it with).
It’s basically the same as how Americans put their interests above the interests of people from most other countries. Except instead of happening between people in different countries, it happens between people in the same country.
> Though I’m a little confused why there is both the Italian looking type of Romanian and the Dracula looking type.
It's self explanatory. Romania was the name of the Roman Empire, in vulgar latin, starting around Diocletian, and Romanians are descendants of Romans (lierarily colonists from spain, italy, the balkans, and anatolia mixed with what was left from the dacians), as documented by literarily all classic and modern historians starting 80 AD after the Roman invasion of the former kingdon of Dacia by emperor Trajan. Not even Romania's arch enemies dispute that.
Over thousands of years, the country was invaded by various peoples, including slavs, hungarians, and mongols - the latter bringing in Roma (Indians) as slaves. Thus the genetic mix and variation in apperance.
It feels like this article is classic misinformation and classic british anti Romanian propaganda. Does not belong on HN.
Edit: be great if whoever downvotes would actually disprove my comment with facts. I am happy to provide links ranging from Cassius Dio to modern historians to those interested in genuine facts.
I think I had assumed that modern Italians don’t necessarily look like OG Romans, what with all of the blending that AFAIK occurred as the empire progressed. So I wouldn’t personally assume that because someone looks Italian, this is because they originated from the area that is now Italy way back when. Are you saying that OG Romans and modern Italians do look roughly the same?
> I think I had assumed that modern Italians don’t necessarily look like OG Romans
> Are you saying that OG Romans and modern Italians do look roughly the same?
Let me rephrase - the reason you see italian looking romanians is because some romanians are descendants of italics and hispanics.
Italians, better yet their ancestors, were brought in along with anatolian greeks, ilyrians, celts, syrians, thraco dacians, semites, north africans, etc as colonists during the first invasion of the province of dacia. The list of legions deployed into Dacia seem to indicate that they have also included some italics and hispanics.
The second invasion, during Constantine the Great covered the south of Romania and likely led to another batch of colonists.
The north west of Romania, around Maramures, had another batch of italian colonists, "the old romans" (christan romans) that fled persecution by langobards.
The final somewhat relevant batch of italians moved to romania around the start of the great italian migration.
Having said that, the south of Romania also has significant influence, and a different skin tone, due to the influence of the eastern roman empire, followed by the byzantine empire, and then the ottoman empire.
The central european part, transylvania, is lighter in tone due to the presence of dacians, celts, gepids, ostrogoth, visigoths, west slavs, huns, and maghiars. The celtic presence was so intense that celtic villages are somewhat frequently discovered in the region.
Fun fact is that a german ethnic was the first to mention the name of Romania, for the territory that modern Romanians inhabit - Martin Felmer, Prima Linae i believe, 1779.
Moldavia, including the Republic of Moldavia which was part of the Dacian Province, and Scythia, had a stronger slavic influence and is reflected in people's looks. It also has a strong turkish influence due to the ottoman empire, slavic due to the russian empire, jewish due to a significant jewish presence until the second world war.
Then of course, all regions have a Roma influence, as those people, as the article points out - albeit a bit off in regarding to whom enslaved them (Romania was not a country back then, the regions were either Austrian-Hungarian, Ottoman vassals, or in the Russian Empire) - were distributed as slaves throught.
Bottom line is that it is difficult to pin point a specific romanian look.
But those that look italian look so because of the above reasons.
Those that are not "citizens of Rome" even if they arrived hundreds of years ago, look, speak, and think, according to their own culture.
> articles like this though just seems to want to put "Romas" into a group too.
GP is well aware of the distinction but wants to erase the unique, Indian in origin, identity of Roma - classic european cultural genocide.
Also this article is a hit piece on Romania.
It claims:
"When slavery was finally abolished in 1856, the 250,000 Roma slaves – around 7% of the Romanian population at the time – received no reparations, while their abusers were handsomely compensated"
Yet Romania was founded in 1859.
Furthermore, Roma people were not enslaved by the Orthodox Church.
They were already enslaved when brought by the mongols from India during their campaigns of invasion.
And finally, many of these "palaces" are built using stolen money usually from western europe. Such acts have done great damage to Romania and Romanians.
> But when it comes to the Roma, they suddenly turn extremely racist! But they don’t seem to consider it racism.
It is because of the negative image of Romas and their interaction with the rest of society. It is a bit like segregation based on race in the US, with the difference that here Roma are not a "neighborhoud" but more of a "slum", so they don't have any influence on their destiny.
They just started, since 30 years, to have a "citizen" status in Romania (mostly due to the need of travel documents). Before that, most of them were not even registered (no birth certificate, no id) which led them to the edge of society.
Not all were like that, only the many unfortunate.
The things started to improve, slowly, in the latest years (regarding racism), but there is still a long way to go.
in Italy gypsies are associated with travellers that live in makeshift trailer parks. they dont have access to stable temporary jobs and the stereotype is that they steal to make a living. The sanitary conditions in 80% of the nomads parks i saw (~10) were appalling, expecially for the minors, often visibly dirty and disheveled. Obviously you cant call cps on such cases, its their "culture"
> Some families told me they had spent a lot of money on building a house, but their kids didn’t know how to do anything because they had spoiled them so much. In hindsight, they thought it might have been more important to send them to school.
Is the Roma reputation not based in reality? Like significantly moreso than other group stereotypes.
I have run into more than a few Europeans who wouldn’t so much as entertain a single racist thought, against Africans or East Asians or Indians etc.
But when it comes to the Roma, they suddenly turn extremely racist! But they don’t seem to consider it racism.
Some interesting cognitive dissonance going on. But I always chalked it up to the Roma thing being basically true and readily observable across Europe.
It's like everything, one small part of a groups give the rest a bad name.
There are a small group that "make the most noise" and give a bad impression. I can admit I did have n impression from bad experiences and did find myself generalising but after working with and meeting many more Romanians, great friends and great people overall, it sounds stupid saying it out loud now, but they're just like everyone else. Personally I try to be more aware of those conceptions, articles like this though just seems to want to put "Romas" into a group too.
> after working with and meeting many more Romanians
Just want to mention that Roma and Romanians are two different peoples. I have also worked with a bunch of Romanians, and I agree they are just like everybody else. Though I’m a little confused why there is both the Italian looking type of Romanian and the Dracula looking type. I’ve never looked into the history there. I don’t think either one is Roma broadly speaking (though there are Roma in Romania I believe, as there are in Germany and elsewhere).
I think the issue people have with groups like the Roma isn’t that they are fundamentally defective or something like that. It’s that they don’t consider themselves to be part of the broader national society, and so they put the interests of their own group above the interests of those outside of their group, to the extent that they may go so far as to harm those outside of the group to benefit those inside the group.
This is actually a very natural human tendency, and I think it has to be socialized out of most people during childhood, or else they would do it too (assuming they had a group to do it with).
It’s basically the same as how Americans put their interests above the interests of people from most other countries. Except instead of happening between people in different countries, it happens between people in the same country.
> Though I’m a little confused why there is both the Italian looking type of Romanian and the Dracula looking type.
It's self explanatory. Romania was the name of the Roman Empire, in vulgar latin, starting around Diocletian, and Romanians are descendants of Romans (lierarily colonists from spain, italy, the balkans, and anatolia mixed with what was left from the dacians), as documented by literarily all classic and modern historians starting 80 AD after the Roman invasion of the former kingdon of Dacia by emperor Trajan. Not even Romania's arch enemies dispute that.
Over thousands of years, the country was invaded by various peoples, including slavs, hungarians, and mongols - the latter bringing in Roma (Indians) as slaves. Thus the genetic mix and variation in apperance.
It feels like this article is classic misinformation and classic british anti Romanian propaganda. Does not belong on HN.
Edit: be great if whoever downvotes would actually disprove my comment with facts. I am happy to provide links ranging from Cassius Dio to modern historians to those interested in genuine facts.
Thanks for the interesting details.
I think I had assumed that modern Italians don’t necessarily look like OG Romans, what with all of the blending that AFAIK occurred as the empire progressed. So I wouldn’t personally assume that because someone looks Italian, this is because they originated from the area that is now Italy way back when. Are you saying that OG Romans and modern Italians do look roughly the same?
> I think I had assumed that modern Italians don’t necessarily look like OG Romans
> Are you saying that OG Romans and modern Italians do look roughly the same?
Let me rephrase - the reason you see italian looking romanians is because some romanians are descendants of italics and hispanics.
Italians, better yet their ancestors, were brought in along with anatolian greeks, ilyrians, celts, syrians, thraco dacians, semites, north africans, etc as colonists during the first invasion of the province of dacia. The list of legions deployed into Dacia seem to indicate that they have also included some italics and hispanics.
The second invasion, during Constantine the Great covered the south of Romania and likely led to another batch of colonists.
The north west of Romania, around Maramures, had another batch of italian colonists, "the old romans" (christan romans) that fled persecution by langobards.
The final somewhat relevant batch of italians moved to romania around the start of the great italian migration.
Having said that, the south of Romania also has significant influence, and a different skin tone, due to the influence of the eastern roman empire, followed by the byzantine empire, and then the ottoman empire.
The central european part, transylvania, is lighter in tone due to the presence of dacians, celts, gepids, ostrogoth, visigoths, west slavs, huns, and maghiars. The celtic presence was so intense that celtic villages are somewhat frequently discovered in the region.
Fun fact is that a german ethnic was the first to mention the name of Romania, for the territory that modern Romanians inhabit - Martin Felmer, Prima Linae i believe, 1779.
Moldavia, including the Republic of Moldavia which was part of the Dacian Province, and Scythia, had a stronger slavic influence and is reflected in people's looks. It also has a strong turkish influence due to the ottoman empire, slavic due to the russian empire, jewish due to a significant jewish presence until the second world war.
Then of course, all regions have a Roma influence, as those people, as the article points out - albeit a bit off in regarding to whom enslaved them (Romania was not a country back then, the regions were either Austrian-Hungarian, Ottoman vassals, or in the Russian Empire) - were distributed as slaves throught.
Bottom line is that it is difficult to pin point a specific romanian look.
But those that look italian look so because of the above reasons.
Those that are not "citizens of Rome" even if they arrived hundreds of years ago, look, speak, and think, according to their own culture.
Roma and Romanians are two different things.
> articles like this though just seems to want to put "Romas" into a group too.
GP is well aware of the distinction but wants to erase the unique, Indian in origin, identity of Roma - classic european cultural genocide.
Also this article is a hit piece on Romania.
It claims:
"When slavery was finally abolished in 1856, the 250,000 Roma slaves – around 7% of the Romanian population at the time – received no reparations, while their abusers were handsomely compensated"
Yet Romania was founded in 1859.
Furthermore, Roma people were not enslaved by the Orthodox Church.
They were already enslaved when brought by the mongols from India during their campaigns of invasion.
And finally, many of these "palaces" are built using stolen money usually from western europe. Such acts have done great damage to Romania and Romanians.
> classic european cultural genocide
Umm.. What ?
> They were already enslaved when brought by the mongols from India during their campaigns of invasion.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, that all Romanians are Indian in origin ? You're grouping everything all in together as the article did.
> And finally, many of these "palaces" are built using stolen money usually from western europe.
Again im lost here as to what you're referencing, some links maybe to follow up with this.
[dead]
It's the last acceptable form of racism unfortunately.
Antisemitism is super popular these days! I guess a rising tide lifts all boats :)
> But when it comes to the Roma, they suddenly turn extremely racist! But they don’t seem to consider it racism.
It is because of the negative image of Romas and their interaction with the rest of society. It is a bit like segregation based on race in the US, with the difference that here Roma are not a "neighborhoud" but more of a "slum", so they don't have any influence on their destiny.
They just started, since 30 years, to have a "citizen" status in Romania (mostly due to the need of travel documents). Before that, most of them were not even registered (no birth certificate, no id) which led them to the edge of society. Not all were like that, only the many unfortunate. The things started to improve, slowly, in the latest years (regarding racism), but there is still a long way to go.
> They just started, since 30 years, to have a "citizen" status in Romania (mostly due to the need of travel documents).
What's the benefit in promoting this nonsense?
in Italy gypsies are associated with travellers that live in makeshift trailer parks. they dont have access to stable temporary jobs and the stereotype is that they steal to make a living. The sanitary conditions in 80% of the nomads parks i saw (~10) were appalling, expecially for the minors, often visibly dirty and disheveled. Obviously you cant call cps on such cases, its their "culture"
> Some families told me they had spent a lot of money on building a house, but their kids didn’t know how to do anything because they had spoiled them so much. In hindsight, they thought it might have been more important to send them to school.
There's a great YouTube channel by a Romani guy about Roma history and culture: https://m.youtube.com/@florida.florian/videos