You did an amazing job turning the blame on the Roma themselves.
So a lot of this discrimination is based on culture. Which is something which can and often does change. Especially since several of the things I mentioned in the comment above are things which are widely considered to be incompatible with Western society (disrespecting property rights and children's rights).
What I can tell you is that if the discrimination is just to be blamed on the majorities (Romanians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, etc.), then it is a feeling which is widely spread and becomes even wider spread as Roma migrate to other countries (there's rising backlash from France, Sweden, Norway, Germany, etc.). And some of the countries listed are considered among the most tolerant in the world (Sweden, Norway).
We have a saying which goes something like this: "If 1 person tells you that you're drunk, you can ignore her. If 2 persons say it, maybe it's time to go to bed".
Anyway, it is a super complex topic and I have no idea how it can be fixed. There has to be a looooot of tolerance and willingness to interact and advance together for both groups and it's hard to do that from such a long history of bad blood.
Is this hackernews or did I just accidentally open up the comment section of daily mail?
From my own experience and dealing with NGO's that are trying to turn the tide, I can witness the same.
This is hacker news, a place where I hope more value is placed in facts than in feelings. If the facts - which can easily be found out, there are many published studies and books on the subject - don't fit your vision of society that is a problem for you to solve - or ignore. Facts and the implications thereof can be discussed but it does not make sense to deny them, nor to try to shift the attention away from them.
But yes, you could reeducate that kid- but are you actually saying that a destructive culture should be dissolved by reeducating? Mao would be so proud off you. Speared on his own mental censor-scissor!
In all seriousness, the most interesting thing that was dissolving these anti-modern Regressor-cultures are smartphones and the old, non censored internet. If everyone can look over the fence, even the children, suddenly the conspiracy stories are difficult to entrench.
Isn't this the main idea behind modern jails? (Idea, not implementation)
So you know, I'm generally anti-left. But I've also had good training from hanging out on Wikipedia and I try to be fair about things and I definitely don't try to be ostentatiously anti-left.
I personally agree with you that there's serious problems with the way that the left perceives, reasons about, and talks about both cultures and consequences, at a distance and otherwise. I furthermore believe that you could be downvoted or called a racist xenophobe on these pages, simply for expressing true facts and reasonable opinions.
And I downvoted your comment.
I also downvoted the grandparent comment and the great-grandparent comment, and for the same reason: because they didn't seem very conducive to a productive conversation. The original poster doesn't deserve snarkily being called out for "victim blaming" for a reasonable post which relatively-neutrally explores the cycles that perpetuate the status quo. The reply "What makes you think they aren't to blame?" doesn't add anything productive to the conversation and just increases the temperature.
Your approach as exemplified by this comment - pigeonholing all critics into a conspiracy - is worthless, unproductive, raises the flame-war temperature, and is generally harmful to the cause of Reason as well as any particular cause you're hoping to promote. If Hacker News is leftist-zone full of oikophobes, well then, you should be all the more prepared to apply Principle and Rigor to your arguments, a property which is mostly welcome here. (Outside of a few disturbing incidents like the Brendan Eich witch hunt, anyway.)
In summary, you got downvoted 'cuz you're doing HN wrong.
It got so annoying I started taking screenshots of the front page when it first started years ago. Before the new mods, before Altman took over Ycombinator, before the new algorithms, as proof of increasing left-leaning articles that have nothing to do with tech or startups. I should dig up the evidence and release it someday. I ran from the propaganda of conservatism and Fox News from the exposure to it in my teens with the other "Generation-4-Chaners/Anonymous" and now find I'm having to escape liberalism. What happens when there's no place left to go?
I think i'm done with this community. I left Digg for Reddit, Reddit for Mashable and TechCrunch, left those for HN, and now I see no point. There was a time when there were "Show HN" submissions all over the front page. Now they are far and few in between. Tech hangouts all turn into Huffingpost eventually. HN was a sort of last bastion due to the algorithm changes every now and then but it's starting to creep back. The Fall of HN is often laughed at, denied, and explained away using cherry picked evidence. It isn't until you flash a screenshot of HN 7 years ago and compare the headlines that the shock hits you. And each time someone brings this up someone who's also a long term member explains it away. It's useless.
Did you see what happened to Paul Graham when he published his articles on Inequality, Women, and the Problem with foreign accents in startups. All of his articles were honest and accurate and based on the reality of things, and immediately he was attacked by left leaning media. When he stepped down and replaced himself with Sam Altman he was asked about the attacks and he specifically said and I quote "that part I won't miss".
Saving a community on the decline means saving the people who made it decline. What's the point? Let them suffer in their own stench.