Reply #83: The old cliches [View All]

- As a culture, we have always resisted integration into "the system"
- The old myths about our being thieves (true, we have a different concept of ownership to the West but the Rominaya still makes it explicit that stealing from want, rather than need, is a crime)
- The myths of baby-stealing
- The myths of being dirty (we actally have strict cleanliness and hygene laws)
- Poor, mostly powerless and usually unpopular, we make for easy victims if you can catch us.

Take your pick. There's never been a shortage of people who hate us mainly for being who we are. Pogroms were still commonplace in Eastern Europe less than a decade ago. Romania only stopped because they wanted to get into the EU. There was an anti-Roma rally in Germany in 1992 where one questioned woman actually said "We are not racist, we are just against gypsies".