>Also several well-educated and seemingly intelligent Americans who hold strong racist opinions. But that's another subject.
Bring up Muslims or Roma people to a European and you'll find this isn't a uniquely American problem.
Bring up Muslims or Roma people to a European and you'll find this isn't a uniquely American problem.
And anti-Gypsy sentiment is so socially normal in the UK that I have only ever witnessed (in person) two people defending them as ‘not a problem’.
[1] and possibly Christianity, though I never actually checked.
When "gypsy" groups camped in my village as a child they destroyed an area of woodland, left it strewn with litter and faeces. The kids came to our school, threatened people, disrupted lessons, etc..
Now, as an adult, when "gypsies" come to my town they cause masses of damage to the environment, again with the litter everywhere; petty thefts increase in the immediate area, etc.. There are designated sites, but they get trashed, the facilities ruined. And these are people avoiding contributing to local taxation - often materially wealthy (owning several expensive vehicles, mobile homes, etc.), not poor at least.
It's nothing to do with being "gypsies" it's antisocial behaviour, not paying taxes but causing large costs; not respecting the environment, particularly leaving mess; not having regard for the property and freedoms of others.
Muslims - I've never met one I didn't get on with. But, the more I've learnt of Mohammed, and having read the majority of the Koran and Hadith: I refuse to accept Islam or pay any respect to its founder, he and his invention are truly anathema to me.
If it's anything like that Jeremy Corbyn scandal, I'd say it's just a tad bit overblown..
Case in point, when a Roma family settles down, they can in theory just be another Eastern European family to those who don’t know their background. 28 years since the Berlin wall fell, Western European people are now pretty much used to mingling with Eastern Europeans. It’s the hardcore differences in lifestyle that makes a lot of people afraid of others, and those can change - e.g. see the integration of immigrants from Kosovo. I don’t think Syrians who stay will have a much different fate 20y from now.
Also, I've never met a Roma person, but it's my understanding that they can trace their genetic ancestry to Asia, and that they look significantly different compared to the average European. So I'm curious as to your comment about it not being a genetic difference, and that they can easily assimilate if they wanted to?
I’m being intentionally obtuse but there has to be a line somewhere. Or not and people should be free to argue without fear of the label “cultural discrimination”.
FWIW I have no idea what the answer is.
At what point do we accept that SE Asians don't want to have democratic governments, and just let them do their thing?
OR do we never accept that, of any culture, and keep pushing them to be democratic because it's "better"?
I would argue that individuals should be treated on their own individual merit, and not on the merits of their race/religion/nation/culture.
If you meet a Saudi person who doesn't allow his wife/daughter to drive cars, feel free to shun him all you like. If you meet a different Saudi person who does treat his wife and daughters with equality, I would hope that you would give him a fair shake.
So yes, if a Roma family joined mainstream British culture it would be difficult to tell them apart from any other British family.
On the other hand majority of the Roma refuse to assimilate, and on a much deeper level than pretty much any immigrant at that, so it's possible to imagine why this prejudice lives on.
But I've never met a European traveler who expresses an anti-Roma opinion. I've met several US travelers who have expressed some really severe anti-African-American comments.
So, yes, the prejudice is probably the same, but the level of hatred, and the willingness to express it, is not.
It really could not have been made more clear. It explicitly referred to individuals that marcus has personally met. As an American myself, I find these anecdotal claims totally believable and unsurprising.
Seriously, how did your mind manage to filter this so severely?
I hope you're at least willing to submit your own speech to the same sort of language-policing. A brief look at your comment history shows that you paint with a similarly broad brush at times:
> In fact, a great part of [Christianity in the US] runs counter to the actual teachings of Christ.
> It's very weird to me that a society [the U.S] that currently has, for example, a huge anti-gun movement, based on ideas like "every child deserves to grow up in a safe community", would at the same time treat the deaths of 10,000 people as a rounding error. But that's literally how we are.
> The ex-Soviets I've talked to about this pretty unanimously relate that they were raised to think the USSR was the best country on earth, just like we are in the US.
>Calling it merely a "human" problem ignores the strong relationship between racism and the legacy of European and American colonialism.
Framing racism solely in terms of American and European history is woefully ignorant of the extensive world/human history of ethnic discrimination/slavery/murder/genocide. Have you only ever studied American/European history??
There are a lot of minority groups that look down on other minority groups. It's part of human nature.