Yenish people
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
We had also a macedonian person in highschool that spoke some dialect that i could understand 10% of.
Not sure where I'm going with this story, but I do feel like I grew up in some pre-nationalism bubble where it was completely normal for everyone to come from very diverse backgrounds that were very well preserved despite all of us living together in the same society and getting along just fine.
People often liked discussing the similarities and differences between each other's cultures. I remember a gypsie person being fascinated by the fact that gypsies and jews share some customs, such as covering the mirrors when people die and putting away their shoes.
Yes, that's fun to do, if done without denigrating them.
>I remember a gypsie person being fascinated by the fact that gypsies and jews share some customs, such as covering the mirrors when people die and putting away their shoes.
Well, that makes a kind of sense, if you consider to be true the theory that gypsies came to Europe from north-west India (Rajasthan and nearby areas) by way of Iran, the Middle East, etc. Since the Middle East had many Jews, and migration would have been slow in those days (no fast modern transport), the gypsies may have picked up some Jewish customs like those you mentioned, by interacting with Jews while en route to Europe.
And going to Europe may not have been their original plan anyway. One guess is that they could just have slowly, organically, drifted further and further away from India, possibly staying in each place until they had to leave, for trading for livelihood, or because forced out, or for any other reason.
.
In eastern europe ethnic humor is much more popular than in the west. A lot of the jokes considered perfectly fine in the balkans and a bit up north would be very much a no-no in Germany. People of course draw the line at genocide and race. But other than that basically anything is fair game.
I used to hear this one a lot:
Q: You know what's the shortest Jewish joke in the world?
A: "I don't have" (in some languages this is expression is 1 word so it works better).
Old Believers (a new term to me) are Russian orthodox catholics that didn't fork with the rest of Russia in the eastern orthodox schism in the 17th century.
I don't know what the grandparent meant, but the official name of the Eastern Orthodox Church is "Orthodox Catholic Church", so the phrase "Russian Orthodox Catholics" is technically correct, if prone to confuse the uninitiated. It is possible their native language isn't English, and in their native language, (the equivalent of) "Orthodox Catholic" is a common phrase, as opposed to the confusing obscurity it is in English.
While in popular (English) parlance the Roman Catholic Church has somewhat of a monopoly on the word "Catholic", theologically speaking all Christian groups which accept the Nicene Creed claim to be (or to be part of) the "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church" in which that creed proclaims belief, and hence Orthodox and (creedal) Protestants officially believe they are Catholics too. (Some less ecumenically-minded Orthodox and Protestants will even go so far as to believe that they are the only real Catholics, and Roman Catholics are fake Catholics.)
> But I think the eastern orthodox church had some reforms that they did not agree with.
The Russian Orthodox Church decided to abandon some of its own liturgical traditions and replace them with imported Greek ones instead. This upset the Old Believers, and the Church refused to compromise, so they left. Later, it decided to become more tolerant, and allow individual congregations to keep the old practices, so some of them (the Edinoverie) returned. But other groups of Old Believers insisted the reforms were heretical, and hence the Russian Orthodox Church were a bunch of heretics and it was a sin to rejoin them, even if they were now willing to allow the old practices to be retained.
When I think of all those ruins lying beneath the hills of Dobruja. And some old tome in the basement of some church in the middle of nowhere is the only document attesting to the existence of those ruins.
There's gold waiting to be discovered everywhere around us if we're willing to dig.
You can use https://de-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Jenische?_x_t... if you don't read German.
If anyone knows more about this tradition, I would be keen to know.
That being said, a nomadic lifestyle sounds so interesting and romantic. Too bad most nomads are heavily discriminated against.
My ex will never be happy, as she is unable to recognize happiness when she’s there. My wife, on the other hand, enjoys the moment, despite her ambition. It’s a huge part of why I married her.
I, too, have dreams of escaping to a log cabin in the woods, with nobody to tax me, nobody to bother me, and nobody to get in the way of the exciting things I want to do. Of course, if I did that, I’d quickly dive deep into depression; I’m an extrovert, who am I kidding?
But the dream remains all the same. :)
It could have worked. Travelers normally suck all support and benefits government provides and live relatively care free life.
I am so tired of the "social welfare queen" trope paraded around to argue against the poor and otherwise perceived minorities.
The bedouins in the Middle East have free rein to wander and they exist parallel to the modern world. I knew the desire was escapism.
The Bedouins don't need the state they only need people to live by the code of the desert.
I recently visited a museum in (Kingston upon) Hull - 'ull. The Streetlife one. A wall board managed to describe most of the wandering tribes hereabouts (UK and Éire), where they hail from, their modus operandi, a brief history and how to refer to them with a fair chance of not causing offence. I had no idea that Roma and Romany were not the same thing ... well it hadn't crossed my bows.
That is probably most people's approach - largely indifference and a fair dose of what is effectively racism - passive but nonetheless ... racist.
There are several TV series here eg "My big fat gypsy wedding" and some serious documentaries that are educating us and at least shining a light on travellers and travelling societies. The interplay between staid society and travelling societies has always been a tricky one. I think the world would be a much poorer place without travellers.
My house overlooks a park - its on the side of a valley. Our garden has a 40' drop to the lawn, with a zig zag path down. An urban stream (Dodham Brook, Yeovil, Somerset, UK) runs along the bottom. On the other side of the stream is the QEII meadow - about an acre of flatish ground, with a cafe at one end.
For a couple of years a bunch of travellers have rocked up on the meadow - Irish. I think. Their boy trotted his pony and trap up the path of the old railway line (long gone - cheers Mr Beaching) for a few quid. They repaired some cars and sat around a fire, long into the night. Funny thing is that late night noise went down. My new neighbours simply fitted in. All they left was some scorch marks on the grass, which was better than the twats who allowed a barbie to set fire to the meadow. There are some concrete BBQ stands less than 50m away.
The origin of modern schools is daycare while parents are away slaving at the factory and to make more obedient industrial cogs. The fact that kids are bunched up together randomly with each other to grow into bullies/bullied/abuse victims (and taught by strangers who let's be frank could not do better than teaching career) is not a concern.
Itinerant children in Europe are not getting anything like the education of an American child who's well-to-do parents decided to homeschool them. The boys learn the family trades and the girls learn to look after the household. Parents often have poor literacy and numeracy and are not capable of or interested in providing an academic education.
Whether or not that's enough is up to you, but the opportunities of children raised without anything resembling a modern schooling in today's society are limited. The failure to provide adequate education to the children of itinerant communities is a huge driving factor of their continued poverty.
If the only education the parents themselves got was walking a pony up and down a railway line, it's unlikely that they are in a position to effectively homeschool a child.
They aren't? Would you mind saying more about what this?
Probably the biggest split is a so-called North-South divide, with Romani people you'll find in the wider Balkan area being fairly distinct from those in the west-ish Europe, which themselves are distinct (but slighly less distinct) than those you'll find in the north-east-ish Europe (Belarus, Baltic states, Russia), with many smaller groups scattered across. They're pretty much all billingual and very used to borrowing words from the local languages, so it'd be rather difficult for two Romani people from opposite sides of Europe to understand each other. And we're trying to discuss them in English, which requires another translation on top of the Romani → local European language translation, which tends to get quite complicated rather quickly.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people
We had a talk about the Romani, the discrimination against them, and some other interesting topics.
I mentioned to him that, as a teenager, I had read a book titled Lavengro, a fictional work about a gypsy, by George Borrow.
In the history of Europe, there were several of these nomadic/itinerant groups on the margins of society. They had distinct languages/cultures/origins, but occupied similar societal niches. Due to that similarity, there was a certain degree of interchange/movement/intermarriage between these groups. Romani language and culture originally comes from northern India; the Yenish spoke a dialect of German. However, that dialect included Romani loanwords, suggesting a history of interaction/intermarriage with Romani and/or absorption of Romani into their community. Their language also includes some Yiddish loanwords, suggesting a similar history of interaction with some Jewish people
> He grew up on a trailer park, with him belonging to a Dutch cultural minority called the Woonwagenbewoners, with them sharing ties with Irish Travellers and the Yenish people, and often pretended to be Romário while playing football.
Yenish are only mentioned as "sharing ties" though.
There are two sources provided: one article in De Volkskrant, and one in The Mirror. However, both links are dead now, but available in the Web Archive. The one in The Mirror only very vaguely supports the claim:
> 2) He enjoyed a Romany lifestyle as a child and used to pretend to be Brazilian ace Romario in kick-abouts on the caravan park.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100901205748/http://www.mirror...
The cited article in De Volkskrant, a credible Dutch newspaper, is quite fuzzy as well, essentially saying the van der Vaart grew up at the trailer park "until he and his family moved to Beverwijk".
http://web.archive.org/web/20131005045224/https://www.volksk...
Van der Vaart's Dutch Wikipedia page (https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_van_der_Vaart) does not mention any of this.
There does not seem any support for van der Vaart's Yenish origin at all. I wonder about the origins and intentions of the claim...
- Child marriage is common. You can see an (anecdotal) case here https://bnn.network/breaking-news/tradition-or-crime-parents... and some data (not Spanish-specific, but European-wide) here: http://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra-2014-forced-mar... (page 13, right column): around 2% of Roma girls aged 10–15 are married and 16% of the population is married by age 16-17.
- A level of sexism in their culture that is not considered acceptable nowadays by the rest of society. As described in https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187704281... "During puberty, a gypsy girl is mostly groomed and educated for marriage, to care for and respect her future husband; it is a stage when she will go from being controlled by her own family to being controlled by her husband and his family. In the transition from puberty to marriage, a young woman is dependent on and under the control of her own family, with constant restrictions on her relations with young men except at family events", among other things (Google for "ajuntaora" and the pañuelo ritual, for example).
- Problems in hospitals are common, since they often insist that the whole extended family is with the patient (hospital rules typically only allow 1-3 people at the same time) and a dying patient often results in violence (https://www.libertaddigital.com/espana/2013-11-06/detenidos-..., https://www.elconfidencial.com/espana/2018-11-06/decenas-de-..., https://www.abc.es/espana/madrid/abci-altercados-fallecimien..., etc.). I don't think there is data collected on this, since Spain doesn't collect ethnicity stats (in general the American approach against racism is to collect race data everywhere, and the European approach is to not collect race data anywhere. Not sure what is best, to be honest). But this Roma source: https://www.gitanos.org/upload/15/90/1.7-GAR-gui_Guia_para_l... tacitly acknowledges the problems (they advocate for "enabling adequate spaces [in hospitals] for the stay of the extended gypsy family", encourage to "negotiate the compliance with regulations"). It also talks about an example of a violent incident and how it could have been prevented with intercultural mediation.
As I mentioned, nothing of this justifies discriminating anyone, but I hope it sheds some light on why the causes for racism against these collectives goes beyond just "different clothes, different languages and different religion", also tying to the comment on "failing to recognize the problem" elsewhere in the thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37378241).
Re marriage: Until 2006 people in France could marry aged 16, in Germany you still can if courts agree (so, pratically you propably cannot), and could as a woman with the ok of the parents until the 1970s. Just to pick two examples. Now, obviously most people do not marry that young anymore. If people want, for whatever reason, and it is legal, sure, let them do it. They follow applicable law, and are thus, as much as I may find it weird, pretty much integrated.
Integration goes both ways: One side adapts to existing rules and norms, and the other side accepts weirdness as long as it is legal. Changing laws to make said weirdness illegal would be a poster case example of xenophobic laws. E.g. passing a law making it illegal to have more than X people visiting a patient, whem knowing full well who will be the only group affected by it. Making accomodations for larger family visits so, that would be a good example or actively working towards integration.
Reminder: Integration =|= Assimilation
Regarding marriage, in Spain it's like in Germany, you can marry at 16 with the explicit permission of a court. I don't really agree with that (it makes no sense to me that people who are not considered mature enough to drink or drive can marry) and anyway I doubt courts would authorize arranged marriages, but let's set that aside, and focus on "around 2% of Roma girls aged 10–15 are married". 16+ is debatable, but surely we can agree that marrying before 16 is not okay? And 2% is of course a minority, but far from rare (in Spain we would be talking about something in the order of hundreds of such marriages per year).
Regarding hospitals, of course it's not a problem of huge importance, but it's an example of how clashes can occur in everyday life and can cause laypeople to reject these cultures. In Spain, each public hospital room typically houses two patients. Being there with a sickness that calls for peace and silence and having 20+ people packed in the room or crowding the corridor to be with your roommate is not a pleasant experience, and this is rather common (as in, I know several people who have experienced it).
Limitations on visits are not a specific law, they are just hospital policies for capacity and operativity reasons, which are even more limiting in cases like ICUs or during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, they affect everyone. It can happen for example that a parent of five dies, and not all of their children can be with them at the moment of death. This is frustrating for some people, but it's how it works. So while I can understand that integration takes some effort by the majority population, what do we do? Allow 30 people to visit for a given collective but people not from that collective could still be denied being in their parent's deathbed? Allow it for everyone, which would need an exaggerated amount of resources? I see no reasonable solution other than just enforcing the rules, to be honest.
This is an interesting article on Cagots from the 1880s: https://zenodo.org/record/2119746/files/article.pdf
The Romani, disparaged as "Egyptians" and demonized as criminals, were ordered on pain of execution in the 16th c. to settle or leave England. Perhaps British of that era lacked the words in their lexicon: "racist", "classist", "conformist", and "Hobson's choice."
Source: http://www.sifaz.org/Engelbert_Wittich_jenische_Sprache.pdf page 7 (German)
I'd imagine before the 20th century the situation would be different than now.
A law meant to help a group lead to more difficulties for said group. Why does that sound all too familiar?
The Prussians were "fine"[0] with travelers as long as they were second-class citizens who didn't have access to welfare. As soon as citizenship stopped being a requirement, they were no longer fine with them and "they just want to live her to get our money" became a compelling narrative to fuel the bigotry against them.
As a German it hurts to admit this, but Europeans are still extremely bigoted against travelers (and yes, if you prompt them, they will have very good rational reasons and cite crime statistics, which may sound familiar to Americans and suffers from the same limitations of surface-level analysis of social problems). It's just that we successfully deported and murdered enough of them in Germany that the discourse usually only involves Sinti and Roma people nowadays.
[0]: "Fine" in the sense most conservatives say they are "fine with homosexuals", i.e. "as long as they keep to their own".
Let me reiterate it, because it is crucial: liberal policy of pretending that the problem doesn't exist is what created all those garbage political organization. Which, interestingly, are often co-financed by Russia.
Of course, most of Europe’s Roma are themselves now a sedentary population that deserve effective invention to improve infrastructure and quality of life instead of being automatically labeled criminals. But a population of travelers remains.
Again, the fallacy people make is assuming that any Roma is a criminal, when the Roma today are a largely sedentary population, and one deprived of effective public services. But some level of theft among groups maintaining a traveler mode of life is exactly what one would expect after centuries of documented interaction between travelers and sedentary populations (and not just in Europe and not just involving Roma).
Of course you can throw your hands up and say that "crime is part of their culture", and find a basis to support racism. You can also spend resources on integration and education. Today, gipsies in Spain can work like gadjés without being shamed by fellow gipsies (or to the contrary even get praised for making a career), and all without losing their cultural identity.
Also, viewing something as part of a culture, and actually doing it are still two different things. Also, I'd love to see claims like thqt, when if backed by interviews, further being put into context by actual numbers, especially from a field sociologist. You know, the whole strong claim, strong evidence thing.
I’m not linking to said friend’s research here lest I dox her and myself on a subject that seems contentious enough for some HN readers to possibly cause trouble for her.
Crime exists, different crimes are committed by different groups. Saying those crimes are inherent, dor whatever reason, to certain groups is just a bad take. Those groups migjt be more prone to commit certain crimes due to circumstances, but than those circumstances need being further analyzed. And yes, property crimes, with an already frightingly low rate of successful police investigations, is easier for people being constantly on the move.
One thing that is also true: marginalized, discrimintaed and sidelined groups are more likely to commit crimes. So, one reason would be to offer alternatives, and as a society accept them as they are. Doesn't mean zero crime will be committed, but then again crime is a general problem that will never ever go away ever.
Edit: You just created this account for what exactly?
Also it's not a maths problem that somehow some people got wrong, it's a problem with entire neighborhoods where it's dangerous to go to.
Also, we kind of discuss travelers, somehow I think this group doesn't have their own neighborhoods....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulnerable_area
Granted, it's not nearly as bad as say south american favelas, where the government has no power whatsoever, not even to charge for utilities. But the point is that such places used to not exist at all in some countries.
BTW, this is not just a "white people" problem. Perceived or real lack of safety creates unsavory political options everywhere. If tomorrow, somehow, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict were to be magically resolved, Hamas would probably disappear overnight.
And hell, one can even spend vacation in some favelas. Jesus...
Edit: From your own source
>> The increase is reported to be due to better reporting, not a changing situation.[5] The overall trend is that these areas are improving.[6]
>> Work on improving the areas requires cooperation with several parties like local landlords and organisations, but fear of gentrification may cause problems.[10] -> If done well, that cpupd adress some.of the underlying social problems, I fear it might just lead to even more gentrification and make everything worse for everyone. Except rich investors, that is.
So seriously, what the heck?
As for the claim that "ignoring the problems" is a "liberal policy" - that's a made up strawman.
2) You're wrong. Example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulnerable_area
> In April 2019, the publication of the list by police was criticised by municipality politicians as it was stigmatising and dissuaded investors. Police responded that they saw no reason to make the list a secret, and that the list served the purpose of providing a uniform basis of evaluating districts across the country. Interior minister Morgan Johansson stated that the list will continue to be public information.
You can find many other such examples if you try.
This was true 20 years ago. But I found that the meaning of the word has shifted more and more since then.
Funny enough, 'neoliberal' has also shifted a lot over its life, but that shift happened much earlier.
A 'neoliberal' used to be someone who like the 'social market economy', like Ludwig Erhard. Instead of both unfettered 'Manchester capitalism' and socialism.
Of course, these days 'neoliberal' ostensibly means someone who wants markets über alles, but is mostly used as an insult against anyone who dislikes markets slightly less than the speaker.
I'm here to point out that bigotry is often stronger than well-meaning laws.
B. We should stop creating a war between settled peoples and wanderers.
> From the 1920s until the 1970s, the Swiss government had a semi-official policy of institutionalizing Yenish parents and having their children adopted by members of the sedentary Swiss population.
I think however it would be beneficial for the children if their parents adapted their lifestyle to fit the modern society and better integrate into society. 150 years ago their lifestyle might have made sense, but less so today where they could get better jobs if they had a better education and they could also get support from society if needed. It's sad to see these parents taking away so many opportunities for their children.
Today, there are expats and mobile internet. Doesn't the world change? With automated production processes, workers won't be needed locally. Like many pensioners today, society could change and the majority could travel depending on seasons.
In other words, isn't the sedentary population missing out on receiving advice from hundreds of years of traveling? If the traveling children lack opportunities, shouldn't we find a way to offer those opportunities because sooner or later, many children will be traveling?
Unless, of course, they do. Working without proper visas is illegal and tax fraud, for example. But those a white collar crimes, so obviously it is less bad. /s
I think that a child primarily belongs to itself and not to the parents. A child has rights that limit what the parents can do with their child.
Society should take care that children’s rights and freedoms are respected.
Going to school is such a right.
There are ways to live on the move and still send your kids to school. If a child doesn’t go to school, I think society is responsible for making sure it does.
Me supporting that form of publoc education flies in the face of the "public schools bad fpr reasons home schooling better" crowd. Funny so, that a lot that crowd seem to have a harder time allowing minority groups to home school their children. Either way, whatever parents and their children can do and decide is usually very well defined in various laws. As long as those laws are not discriminatory in nature, whatever is allowed is not anybodies business when it comes to other families. How society sees those things, well, the only way to codify that is througj laws. And those have to got through the normal, democratic, legislative process. Everything else is just an opinion. And those become dangerous sometimes if acted upon, especially if backed by well meaning, knowing better than you, convictions. Because those convivtions give moral high ground, and that allows tp cope with all kinds of attrocities in the name of the higher good.
Examples: Every single church run orphanage, home for single mothers in Ireland, boarding schools (including those for minorities) in Canada, the US, Australia, the various adoption programs (including the one Switzerland)...
I hope you see the problem.
Laws should be indiscriminate and should be evenly enforced.
They should not be driven by moral outrage about what other people do with their lives.
They should focus on what is best for the child, while still considering the needs of the parents.
Going to school is important, it provides personal formation, liberty and opportunities.
That being said, a lot of school systems are really bad and underfunded - that is a problem, too!
That being said, a lot of school systems are really bad and underfunded - that is a problem, too!
Have you ever worked at a poorly-managed startup? If someone had given that startup a ton more money, without any accountability, would that have made things better or worse?
Adding money to a poorly managed organization (whether a school system or a private company) allows the root causes to thrive.
I don't know where you live, but if you imagine that you need about 2 teachers to teach a class of 20 pupils at a salary of 100K, this alone is 10K per student, per year.
Plus there is maintenance staff, the buildings, materials, canteen staff...
Imagine I were to offer you $100k to teach for 36 weeks, but you also had to organize everything for the year, including deciding how to use another $200k to procure everything you will need. How would you spend that $200k over the 36 weeks?
For me, it might be something like:
$1.5k/week for a teaching assistant
$1.5k/week to rent a space
$1.0k/week for catering
$0.5k/week to rent furniture
$0.5k/week for materials
If your teaching assistant gets 54K from you (in SF!!) and then has to work odds jobs during the summer, you're going to get the rare idealist and a bunch of ppl who are bad at making decisions.
Even if it were solely to do with the teachers, this doesn't mean that all (or even the majority) of teachers are bad.
Even if we're the case that all teachers in SF are bad, this would be more likely to do with the hiring standards (e.g. you have to have gone to teaching college) and firing standards (LIFO), than to do with salaries offered to newly-hired teachers.
(I don't know the broader point you're responding to or trying to make here, so don't take me as trying to refute whatever that is; I just noticed the "Chicago" mention, and that your data point is broken; your larger point might still be fine.)
Our politics about housing and homelessness are probably very similar, but "you will not find a single person in Chicago who is currently unhoused by choice" is simply false. There may not be anything useful to do with that information! It may have no public policy implications at all! But it's still not a good idea to try to build arguments out of premises that can be quickly falsified.
The people I'm thinking about are not, like, schizophrenic and incapable of making the choices I'm talking about.
I'm certainly no fan of Emanuel's.
† (I edited this a bunch of little ways but also in one big way, to make it more clear that I'm not personally involved in any of the outreach stuff I'm talking about.)