Occam's Butterknife: NYT on How Systemic Racism Keeps Gypsies from Getting the Education They Crave
RSS
Search Text Case Sensitive Exact Words Include Comments
List of Bookmarks
From the New York Times:
For Roma in France, Education Is an Elusive Path to Integration
By MARTIN de BOURMONT FEB. 9, 2017
This is quite an effort at avoiding Occam’s Razor: that the reason Gypsies in France (and most other countries) don’t get much education is because they don’t much like education.
I think you mean “don’t” much like education.
Come on, Steve. Everyone knows that Gypsies are just like the 17th century Puritans when it comes to education. I mean, just look at the schools and universities that they establish wherever they go…
This is quite an effort at avoiding Occam’s Razor: that the reason Gypsies in France (and most other countries) don’t get much education is because they DON’T much like education.
Gypsies were the first Indian H1Bs in the West. They were originally allowed in as skilled tradesmen following the population crash occasioned by the black death. Look how that turned out…
Initially, they were welcomed by the local nobility and given some charity and protection (because of their claims that they had been persecuted) until they took their new hosts be surprise by turning out to be die-hard thieves, whereupon they started their long European career of getting kicked out of one city after another and becoming pariahs exactly as they had been in India.Replies: @Jack D, @Jim, @Anonymous
Gypsy migration into Europe seems to correlate very well with the Muslim conquest of India - convoluted, I know, but bear with me - and the Ottoman expansion through Anatolia into the Balkans.
It is surmised that Persian based Muslim conquering armies of India took back, over the Hindu Kush a great deal of low caste Indians as slaves and camp followers. In Persia/Ottoman lands, these Hindus eventually banded together to follow a transient life, and basically followed the Ottomans to where 'the money was'.Replies: @Zenarchy
I’m done with it. Pattern established for a millennium, with little variation. Likely will continue.
Old and busted: Brawndo! It’s what plants crave!
New hotness: Educayshon! It’s what Gypsies crave.
Also, Steve, gypsy is not the preferred nomenclature. Romani-American, please.
The story I’ve heard is that they were brought, by the Turks, as slaves.
Oddly enough, somehow a bunch of them wound up in Augusta, Georgia. My great aunt and uncle were working at the Georgia Medical College decades ago when the "Gypsy Queen" fell ill and the Gypsies took over the lawn in front of the hospital for weeks. The queen eventually recovered, so they then went back to their quasi-nomadic lifestyle of doing subpar roofing repair throughout Georgia and the Carolinas.Replies: @2Mintzin1, @Buffalo Joe, @Jenner Ickham Errican
>>>>>Everyone knows that Gypsies are just like the 17th century Puritans when it comes to education. I mean, just look at the schools and universities that they establish wherever they go…>>>>>
Funny how the universities that Puritans establish are eventually populated by Jews and Asians.
So the very curious Puritans have the talent to create great institutions but they don’t have the talent to populate those same institutions. No soup for you!
Does anyone else recognize the obvious criminality of this situation. Whites in general are no longer qualified for top universities in America and concurrently the quality of education is cratering.
Winning!
What I’ve read in ethnographies about gypsies is that they started their career in India as musicians, fortune-tellers, and cunning thieves, then were kicked out of India when their thievery made them too notorious for the local rulers to tolerate any longer. They drifted into Europe around the time of the Renaissance and claimed to be Christians who had been persecuted in the east (a clever lie they adopted).
Initially, they were welcomed by the local nobility and given some charity and protection (because of their claims that they had been persecuted) until they took their new hosts be surprise by turning out to be die-hard thieves, whereupon they started their long European career of getting kicked out of one city after another and becoming pariahs exactly as they had been in India.
The Roma language shows signs of having been influenced both by Armenian and Greek suggesting they may have resided in Anatolia for a while before coming into Europe.
Stories about the Roma from Medieval times such as them claiming to be persecuted Christians should be treated with caution as the historical documentation concerning them is very slight.
Arthur
Funny how the universities that Puritans establish are eventually populated by Jews and Asians.
So the very curious Puritans have the talent to create great institutions but they don't have the talent to populate those same institutions. No soup for you!
Does anyone else recognize the obvious criminality of this situation. Whites in general are no longer qualified for top universities in America and concurrently the quality of education is cratering.
Winning!Replies: @Ivy, @Jack D
Old America believed in rules, like the Rule of Law. New America, and much of the world, is populated with arrivals and arrivistes who play by their own rules. Is it possible to reconcile those? Probably not given the inertia of our English fair play notions. Therefore, the solution is to stake out the high ground and not play the other guy’s game.
Funny how the universities that Puritans establish are eventually populated by Jews and Asians.
So the very curious Puritans have the talent to create great institutions but they don't have the talent to populate those same institutions. No soup for you!
Does anyone else recognize the obvious criminality of this situation. Whites in general are no longer qualified for top universities in America and concurrently the quality of education is cratering.
Winning!Replies: @Ivy, @Jack D
Was ancient Rome “stolen” from the Romans by the barbarians or did the Romans drop the ball? If you want to know who to blame for the deteriorating situation of whites in America, look in the mirror. If you are taking opiates instead of SAT prep courses, whose fault is that?
And you don't reserve any blame for the elites shoving all of this onto white Americans?
I’ve always heard that the Roma were originally from India, but the Indians got sick of their bullshit. Then they went to Persia, but the Persians got sick of their bullshit. Then, they went to Turkey, but the Turks got sick of their bullshit. Then, they went to Eastern Europe, but the the Slavs got sick of their bullshit. Then, they went to Western Europe, but the Western Europeans got sick of their bullshit, but then there was an Ocean.
Oddly enough, somehow a bunch of them wound up in Augusta, Georgia. My great aunt and uncle were working at the Georgia Medical College decades ago when the “Gypsy Queen” fell ill and the Gypsies took over the lawn in front of the hospital for weeks. The queen eventually recovered, so they then went back to their quasi-nomadic lifestyle of doing subpar roofing repair throughout Georgia and the Carolinas.
On Long Island, their scams included coating driveways with fake sealer and frightening gullible old ladies into paying for unnecessary chimney "repair." A scam known locally as "chimney-shaking."
The women, of course, specialized in fortune-telling and other spiritual scams...for some reason, they are always named "Mrs. Adams" in advertisements.Replies: @jimmyriddle, @Hippopotamusdrome
this was totally false.
Initially, they were welcomed by the local nobility and given some charity and protection (because of their claims that they had been persecuted) until they took their new hosts be surprise by turning out to be die-hard thieves, whereupon they started their long European career of getting kicked out of one city after another and becoming pariahs exactly as they had been in India.Replies: @Jack D, @Jim, @Anonymous
If the Gypsies had been complete parasites they would not have been allowed to live in the old, pre-PC Europe. Rather they were nomadic people, with no fixed abode. The original RV’ers. As they traveled from town to town they had certain skills that a town could not support on a year round basis but if the gypsies showed up in your town for a week you could use them. They could mend your pots. They could tell your fortune. They could entertain you with music and dance. Then they would go to the next town and do the same. It’s only in the modern welfare state that they become complete parasites.
first they came for all the young western women who knew how to sew clothes at home for their family. But I remained silent, because I was not a "tailor".
Then they came for all the western guys who know to mend pots and pans. But I remained silent, because I was not a "tinker"
When they finally came for iSteve for being a guy who still uses ink blotters and 3x5 index cards, there was no one left to stand up for him.
It's ok, iSteve, i've got your back. i'm a prepper who's got a large cache of BellSystem-spec lubricant for rotary-dial telephones.
I’m shocked by Sailer’s ‘racism’. Doesn’t he know that Gypsy culture is zealously intellectual?
There was a study of Gypsy genetics a few years back. Consensus opinion was that the Gypsies are descended from low-caste Indians who crossed into Europe sometime around 1000 AD.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/9719058/European-Roma-descended-from-Indian-untouchables-genetic-study-shows.html
It was all said by Peter Maas, King of the Gypsies (1978). It’s not pretty, but quite fascinating. They are illiterate by choice and necessity. If you are literate, you have other choices. There are methods with which they were successful in maintaining identity for one thousand years in dozens of different environments. Mixing is not one of them.
I’ve known a few dozen gypsies, most of them musicians or traders, who are of the few who may be half out of the life. But all were illiterate. One was actually a great classical violinist, I do not know how. He was concertmaster of the Baltimore Symphony for one year, until they understood he was illiterate. He had learned to sign his name, but could not himself write out the check. Unbelievably talented, and somewhat coo-coo.
Average life span, 53.
Cowenism.
By Any Beans Necessary
The NYTwits found a representative Gypsy scholastic genius,* and whaddya know, she wants to be a lawyer specializing in getting bigger welfare payments for Gypsies! How sad that a brilliant Gypsy wants to use her talents merely for a fancier style of mooching.
Still, like the Amish, Gypsies illustrate Greg Cochran’s theory of small-group evolution. The Gypsies have been “boiling off” youngsters with intellectual traits or empathy toward non-Gypsies for centuries. More sociable, brainy, or sedentary Gypsies go to school, settle down, and assimilate into the surrounding population; the rest pack their caravans and move on. Gradually, most Gypsies end up with a passel of genes for footloose, xenophobic, not-too-bright phenotypes. Occasional sports are to be expected.
You have to give the Gypsies credit, though: their implicit group survival strategy appears able to preserve their group through centuries of turmoil. The USA (the polity, not the big region of North America) may well disappear before the Gypsies do. (I suppose forced genetic therapy may wipe the Gypsies out in the end. The Chinese might be willing to administer it.)
*Do you suppose some of her recent ancestors were kidnapped normals? She obviously won the recombination+mutation lottery.
No.
Gypsy migration into Europe seems to correlate very well with the Muslim conquest of India – convoluted, I know, but bear with me – and the Ottoman expansion through Anatolia into the Balkans.
It is surmised that Persian based Muslim conquering armies of India took back, over the Hindu Kush a great deal of low caste Indians as slaves and camp followers. In Persia/Ottoman lands, these Hindus eventually banded together to follow a transient life, and basically followed the Ottomans to where ‘the money was’.
Though, weren't they Afghani invasions.
Genetics also confirms they are from lower castes and from the NW of India (could be modern Pakistan), from either Punjab or Sindh regions. Rajasthan was an earlier suggestion, but that was due to Rajasthan having lots of their own gypsies who are different populations.
I live 300 yards from the nearest Roma settlement here in Europe. Fun times.
Not bad people overall, really, but only if they are treated like spoiled, insubordinate children. Leftist policies DO NOT WORK for these people, and they are worse now than 100 years ago when many actually worked.
Populations like them are often treated a bit harsh in India, but that's the only way they can be managed if you don't want them to manage YOU even more brutally.
A related story to the article, it’s old but interesting. A gypsy camp sets up shop near a housing project in the Paris suburbs. Jewelry & other valuables turn up missing. So residents form a gang, march to the camp & beat the culprit to a pulp.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/26/world/europe/beating-of-roma-boy-exposes-tensions-in-frances-underclass.html
A much expected compensation for his beating by youth of African origins is apparently slow to materialize.
I’m pretty sure that one day, there will be gypsy spaceships dropping by to patch up your orbital station in undocumented fashion for a slight fee. Afterwards you will notice that the oxygen generator has disappeared.
In France, gypsy vans are said to be identifiable by the ladders mounted on the roof. To perform easier home visits. of course.
14 Jack D. > They could mend your pots.
first they came for all the young western women who knew how to sew clothes at home for their family. But I remained silent, because I was not a “tailor”.
Then they came for all the western guys who know to mend pots and pans. But I remained silent, because I was not a “tinker”
When they finally came for iSteve for being a guy who still uses ink blotters and 3×5 index cards, there was no one left to stand up for him.
It’s ok, iSteve, i’ve got your back. i’m a prepper who’s got a large cache of BellSystem-spec lubricant for rotary-dial telephones.
I have been looking at London property recently. I noticed that Houses right on Hampstead Heath are cheaper than those a few blocks away. This was not always so. The place with views over the Heath was always more prized. I assume that gypsies have set up camp on the Heath. I understand the Jewish community around Golders Green is none too happy. I am far away working through the Internet. Any Londoners care to comment?
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/26/world/europe/beating-of-roma-boy-exposes-tensions-in-frances-underclass.htmlReplies: @AndrewR, @a reader
The NYT studiously avoids giving the ethnicities of the individuals who allegedly attacked this boy, but it’s safe to say they come from immigrant communities.
Having been robbed myself in Roma by “Roma”, and having read a great deal about these people, I can’t say I feel too bad.
The native Europeans are apparently too cowardly to do anything about gypsy parasites, so it’s good that immigrant groups are doing jobs that French won’t do.
Goddamn you Churchill, Roosevelt, Truman and Stalin.
Still, like the Amish, Gypsies illustrate Greg Cochran's theory of small-group evolution. The Gypsies have been "boiling off" youngsters with intellectual traits or empathy toward non-Gypsies for centuries. More sociable, brainy, or sedentary Gypsies go to school, settle down, and assimilate into the surrounding population; the rest pack their caravans and move on. Gradually, most Gypsies end up with a passel of genes for footloose, xenophobic, not-too-bright phenotypes. Occasional sports are to be expected.
You have to give the Gypsies credit, though: their implicit group survival strategy appears able to preserve their group through centuries of turmoil. The USA (the polity, not the big region of North America) may well disappear before the Gypsies do. (I suppose forced genetic therapy may wipe the Gypsies out in the end. The Chinese might be willing to administer it.)
*Do you suppose some of her recent ancestors were kidnapped normals? She obviously won the recombination+mutation lottery.Replies: @Lurker, @Buffalo Joe
“Boiling off” – excellent!
https://www.unz.com/jthompson/gypsy-intelligence/Replies: @The most deplorable one
We could have fixed this in 1900. Britain controlled India and most Gyspies could have been shipped off there.
In Slovakia we have a population of around 500k of these people, which for a country of 5 mil. is not insignificant. In all those years, including communists, we were unable to even reliable teach them to read, and that’s not even an exaggeration, trust me, I wish it was, because we ourselves look like idiots because of it. I remember how when we ‘integrated’ into the EU, there were all kinds of smart-asses from Finland, through Denmark to France, accusing us of racism, bigotry, incompetence etc. for failing on our most vulnerable. Looks like the tables have turned:)
What they failed to realize is that most of these people are not even remotely interested in our way of life or governance. They live separately from us now, in near tribal organizations, on the verge of our towns. We didn’t use physical force, just market forces like the price of rent in the inner cities after the commies left.
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediafax.ro%2Fsocial%2Fancheta-familia-carpaci-care-a-preluat-o-cladire-a-spitalului-de-copii-timisoara-are-144-de-proprietati-foto-11668647&edit-text=&act=urlPhotos and videos of a family wedding here https://www.opiniatimisoarei.ro/nunta-mare-de-romi-bogati-cu-alai-de-masini-de-lux-in-familia-carpaci-la-timisoara-ministru-de-finante-isi-insoara-nepotul-cu-o-fata-din-clanul-ionelas-foto-si-video/05/08/2015There is a lot of money to be made there. The government has given back enormous tracts of land, forests and buildings, including in the middle of cities (where giving it back is impractical, like for hospitals and cemeteries, the government settles it at market value). Not just to Romanian citizens, but even to people who were the owners abroad of property when it was confiscated. Most claims are legit, but they are a huge burden and they create an incentive for major fraud.
Finns have their own Gypsies that they generally dislike. Finnish Gypsies usually live off the state, and make money on the side off gambling, horse racing and selling alcohol and cigarettes on the black market, though the Russian mafia is probably cutting in on that. The women wear expensive dresses and they all look like Indians, and the Finns call them Mustalainens, which translates to blackies or darkies. My understanding is that Gypsies entered Finland when the nation was part of the Russian Empire, but I don't know if that is true. Gypsies in Finland often take Swedish surnames and they love massive marble gravestones, often with horse art on them. That's Finnish Gypsies in a nutshell, and they are largely harmless, marginalized and taken care of by the state.
Central European gypsies are a different story, as Finns are now finding out. Scandinavians generally had a very smug attitude about their own kindness, tolerance, etc., until they got hit with waves of immigrants themselves. The last time I was in Helsinki, there were lots of scamming Romanian Gypsies, and there were warnings in the train and bus stations to watch for pick-pockets. I even got what appeared to be the "evil eye" from one old Gypsy lady when I didn't give her money! Needless to say, the smugness is wearing off pretty quickly.
The IRA ran them out of Belfast a few years ago – why is that referred to so rarely, lads ?
The IRA ran them out of Belfast a few years ago – why is that referred to so rarely, lads ?
I would say both sides have an obligation to help keep the wheels on civilization. One side could dial down the personal decadence and the other side could quit actively engaging in insurance fraud.
A friend who lives in a gypsy-fied neighbourhood here in Toronto was informed by a neighbour, a teacher, that the gypsy kids never come to school on Friday, because Friday is “Stealing Day.”
Gypsy migration into Europe seems to correlate very well with the Muslim conquest of India - convoluted, I know, but bear with me - and the Ottoman expansion through Anatolia into the Balkans.
It is surmised that Persian based Muslim conquering armies of India took back, over the Hindu Kush a great deal of low caste Indians as slaves and camp followers. In Persia/Ottoman lands, these Hindus eventually banded together to follow a transient life, and basically followed the Ottomans to where 'the money was'.Replies: @Zenarchy
Yes.
Though, weren’t they Afghani invasions.
Genetics also confirms they are from lower castes and from the NW of India (could be modern Pakistan), from either Punjab or Sindh regions. Rajasthan was an earlier suggestion, but that was due to Rajasthan having lots of their own gypsies who are different populations.
I live 300 yards from the nearest Roma settlement here in Europe. Fun times.
Not bad people overall, really, but only if they are treated like spoiled, insubordinate children. Leftist policies DO NOT WORK for these people, and they are worse now than 100 years ago when many actually worked.
Populations like them are often treated a bit harsh in India, but that’s the only way they can be managed if you don’t want them to manage YOU even more brutally.
Headline fail. The Roma don’t want integration, they readily converted to the religions they had to, but kept on marrying inside clan and family.
It’s been between 900-700 years. People have tried being indifferent and proactive, they’ve tried being nice and genocidal. Nothing seems to work. The women are still dressed like they came straight out of the Sindh valley 800 years ago.
There is also, of course, the question of whether a host population would have much interest or see any benefit in integrating them and why that might be.
In the wars of population genetics, defeat of a powerful rival can be engineered through weakening, not just vanquishing. And soft hands need never get hurty.Replies: @Opinionator
Oddly enough, somehow a bunch of them wound up in Augusta, Georgia. My great aunt and uncle were working at the Georgia Medical College decades ago when the "Gypsy Queen" fell ill and the Gypsies took over the lawn in front of the hospital for weeks. The queen eventually recovered, so they then went back to their quasi-nomadic lifestyle of doing subpar roofing repair throughout Georgia and the Carolinas.Replies: @2Mintzin1, @Buffalo Joe, @Jenner Ickham Errican
“they then went back to their quasi-nomadic lifestyle of doing subpar roofing repair”
On Long Island, their scams included coating driveways with fake sealer and frightening gullible old ladies into paying for unnecessary chimney “repair.” A scam known locally as “chimney-shaking.”
The women, of course, specialized in fortune-telling and other spiritual scams…for some reason, they are always named “Mrs. Adams” in advertisements.
It confuses criminal records.
Kidnapped girl sold to gypsies for gold earrings reunited with mother after 16 years
New hotness: Educayshon! It's what Gypsies crave.
Also, Steve, gypsy is not the preferred nomenclature. Romani-American, please.Replies: @Romanian
There goes my national brand!
It’s how James Thompson phrases it. Boiling off… it has a certain elegance to it.
https://www.unz.com/jthompson/gypsy-intelligence/
Gypsies can make it if they have talent.
What they failed to realize is that most of these people are not even remotely interested in our way of life or governance. They live separately from us now, in near tribal organizations, on the verge of our towns. We didn't use physical force, just market forces like the price of rent in the inner cities after the commies left.Replies: @Romanian, @Ed, @OilcanFloyd
We had the same experience. The poor Gypsies do have it rough, living hand to mouth or from petty crime, though you do find the respectable sort that still practice legitimate trades and salute town luminaries and the elderly in the street.
But the rich ones, especially those involved in organized crime, have been running real estate rackets in the historical centers of places like Timisoara. Maybe they move next door and start making life hell for people until they sell cheaply to move out. Or they fake an inheritance claim on valuable property confiscated by the Communists 60-70 years ago and demand it back, through a fake heir. Or they contact real heirs and offer to fund their lawsuits in exchange for the property, and they will pay a percentage of it to the heir. The Cârpaciu Clan (the google translate link below says it means cobbler, but it’s more like someone who mends roofing or clothes) owns 144 buildings in the center of Timisoara, including hospitals from which they evacuated the patients.
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediafax.ro%2Fsocial%2Fancheta-familia-carpaci-care-a-preluat-o-cladire-a-spitalului-de-copii-timisoara-are-144-de-proprietati-foto-11668647&edit-text=&act=url
Photos and videos of a family wedding here https://www.opiniatimisoarei.ro/nunta-mare-de-romi-bogati-cu-alai-de-masini-de-lux-in-familia-carpaci-la-timisoara-ministru-de-finante-isi-insoara-nepotul-cu-o-fata-din-clanul-ionelas-foto-si-video/05/08/2015
There is a lot of money to be made there. The government has given back enormous tracts of land, forests and buildings, including in the middle of cities (where giving it back is impractical, like for hospitals and cemeteries, the government settles it at market value). Not just to Romanian citizens, but even to people who were the owners abroad of property when it was confiscated. Most claims are legit, but they are a huge burden and they create an incentive for major fraud.
If Islam didn’t exist, Gypsies would be the biggest obsession for the global Left. Some aspects of that alternate universe:
1) There would be a word “Romaphobia” which would be thrown around at anyone who even thought about questioning whether allowing people to set up unlicensed, unhygenic, squat settlements anywhere they please was a good idea. Anyone suspected of Romaphobia would be unpersoned, whereas anyone whose anti-Romaphobia credentials were stellar could be the biggest asshole in every other way but would still be thought of as a good, moral person.
2) Feminists who believe in microagressions and patriarchy would be amazingly silent about forced child marriage, bride abductions, and other shockingly misogynistic practices in the Gypsy community. Some prominent feminists would even refer to these as “liberating”
3) The archbishop of the Church of England would be encouraging the use of traditional Gypsy law to internally govern the rapidly growing Gypsy population in that country.
4) Churches in the US would have spent the better part of two decades sponsoring as many Gypsies as possible to settle in flyover parts.
5) The global Left and segments of the Right would be obsessed with how some minor country, I dunno maybe maybe Bulgaria, was supposedly treating its Gypsy population. In spite of that Gypsy population having one of the highest rates of population increase in the world, and in spite of their astronomical rates of homicide, idiots would throw around terms like “genocide” and “apartheid.” There would be widely believed pseudoscience and pseudohistory claiming that Gypsies were the original inhabitants of Bulgaria. Leftists would be advocating for a BDS against Bulgaria, and 85% of UN resolutions would be against that country.
https://www.unz.com/jthompson/gypsy-intelligence/Replies: @The most deplorable one
Except that the phrase “boiling off” does not appear anywhere in the linked article (at least not that ^F could find on two different browsers.)
I think at the time conventional wisdom was they originated in Egypt of course the Brits controlled Egpyt too so your point still stands.
What they failed to realize is that most of these people are not even remotely interested in our way of life or governance. They live separately from us now, in near tribal organizations, on the verge of our towns. We didn't use physical force, just market forces like the price of rent in the inner cities after the commies left.Replies: @Romanian, @Ed, @OilcanFloyd
Sounds very similar to the USA & how Northerners bash Southerners about their treatment of blacks. Of course when blacks started moving en masse to the North their tune changed quite a bit, not enough though.
Don’t let the outward appearance of looking poor fool you. They have surprising amounts of money that they come up with. At one cemetery over here which they’ve chosen as their burial place they spend $30-40,000, or more, on marble monuments to their deceased, complete with engraved portraitures. I notice their life expectancies don’t seem to be very high, early 60’s being quite common. They often have quite nice cars so they’re getting money from somewhere.
Oddly enough, somehow a bunch of them wound up in Augusta, Georgia. My great aunt and uncle were working at the Georgia Medical College decades ago when the "Gypsy Queen" fell ill and the Gypsies took over the lawn in front of the hospital for weeks. The queen eventually recovered, so they then went back to their quasi-nomadic lifestyle of doing subpar roofing repair throughout Georgia and the Carolinas.Replies: @2Mintzin1, @Buffalo Joe, @Jenner Ickham Errican
Ari, So succinctly stated. Europeans got sick of their bullshit and kicked them from country to country and, oh yeah, the Roma don’t want to assimilate. NYT needs another group of Euro abused victims, so victim du jour is the Gypsies. The Gypsies will get front page coverage worldwide when they start landing on Italian beaches dragging a limp child ashore with them.
Still, like the Amish, Gypsies illustrate Greg Cochran's theory of small-group evolution. The Gypsies have been "boiling off" youngsters with intellectual traits or empathy toward non-Gypsies for centuries. More sociable, brainy, or sedentary Gypsies go to school, settle down, and assimilate into the surrounding population; the rest pack their caravans and move on. Gradually, most Gypsies end up with a passel of genes for footloose, xenophobic, not-too-bright phenotypes. Occasional sports are to be expected.
You have to give the Gypsies credit, though: their implicit group survival strategy appears able to preserve their group through centuries of turmoil. The USA (the polity, not the big region of North America) may well disappear before the Gypsies do. (I suppose forced genetic therapy may wipe the Gypsies out in the end. The Chinese might be willing to administer it.)
*Do you suppose some of her recent ancestors were kidnapped normals? She obviously won the recombination+mutation lottery.Replies: @Lurker, @Buffalo Joe
Vera, I may be missing your comparison, but the Amish establish solid communities, albeit all Amish. Those who leave almost always move to or start another Amish community. The Amish rarely marry outsiders ,who they call “English”, so maybe in that way they are like the Gypsies.
Greg Cochran examines an article about Gypsies [link].Replies: @Buffalo Joe
My mistake. I was sure I read it there and just pulled it out of my bookmarks. Still, it’s an interesting article, no? It even has a comparison with Jews, where he notes similarities and differences between their group survival strategies.
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/
When one chills a group of weakly interacting atoms to micro-(about 100 nano-) Kelvin degrees of temperature, the last stage is via "evaporative cooling", when hotter atoms go away from magnetic trap, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_condensate .
Some of both? Didn’t one of the balls dropped have to do with Roman laxness about allowing their enemies to immigrate in bulk?
And you don’t reserve any blame for the elites shoving all of this onto white Americans?
What they failed to realize is that most of these people are not even remotely interested in our way of life or governance. They live separately from us now, in near tribal organizations, on the verge of our towns. We didn't use physical force, just market forces like the price of rent in the inner cities after the commies left.Replies: @Romanian, @Ed, @OilcanFloyd
I remember how when we ‘integrated’ into the EU, there were all kinds of smart-asses from Finland, through Denmark to France, accusing us of racism, bigotry, incompetence etc. for failing on our most vulnerable. Looks like the tables have turned:)</b
Finns have their own Gypsies that they generally dislike. Finnish Gypsies usually live off the state, and make money on the side off gambling, horse racing and selling alcohol and cigarettes on the black market, though the Russian mafia is probably cutting in on that. The women wear expensive dresses and they all look like Indians, and the Finns call them Mustalainens, which translates to blackies or darkies. My understanding is that Gypsies entered Finland when the nation was part of the Russian Empire, but I don’t know if that is true. Gypsies in Finland often take Swedish surnames and they love massive marble gravestones, often with horse art on them. That’s Finnish Gypsies in a nutshell, and they are largely harmless, marginalized and taken care of by the state.
Central European gypsies are a different story, as Finns are now finding out. Scandinavians generally had a very smug attitude about their own kindness, tolerance, etc., until they got hit with waves of immigrants themselves. The last time I was in Helsinki, there were lots of scamming Romanian Gypsies, and there were warnings in the train and bus stations to watch for pick-pockets. I even got what appeared to be the “evil eye” from one old Gypsy lady when I didn’t give her money! Needless to say, the smugness is wearing off pretty quickly.
According to an old gypsy legend a gypsy boy eased Jesus’s pain on the cross by stealing some of the nails. The grateful Jesus rewarded all gypsies by permanently revoking the seventh commandment for them. So “Stealing Day” is probabaly a reference to or based upon this legend.
On Long Island, their scams included coating driveways with fake sealer and frightening gullible old ladies into paying for unnecessary chimney "repair." A scam known locally as "chimney-shaking."
The women, of course, specialized in fortune-telling and other spiritual scams...for some reason, they are always named "Mrs. Adams" in advertisements.Replies: @jimmyriddle, @Hippopotamusdrome
It’s common in English Romany families for all the boys to have the legal name John Smith.
It confuses criminal records.
On Long Island, their scams included coating driveways with fake sealer and frightening gullible old ladies into paying for unnecessary chimney "repair." A scam known locally as "chimney-shaking."
The women, of course, specialized in fortune-telling and other spiritual scams...for some reason, they are always named "Mrs. Adams" in advertisements.Replies: @jimmyriddle, @Hippopotamusdrome
Don’t forget child-snatching. Who else is going to take misbehaving children off your hands?
Kidnapped girl sold to gypsies for gold earrings reunited with mother after 16 years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4j8vi6F6YkReplies: @Jus' Sayin'...
Gypsies, as other posters have noted, seem to have a genetic/racial gift for music. Django Reinhardt was a gypsy. A great documentary movie, Latcho Drom, traces the historic path of the gypsies from Northern India, across Europe, into the Iberian peninsula via musical and dance vignettes.
This clip
gives a poignant picture of gypsy musical talent and how they are both an integral part of yet socially isolated from from the broader community in Hungary and elsewhere. Other clips from this movie are well worth watching.
Parenthetically, the late ethnomusicologist and linguist, Dick Crum (another Dick Crum!) once told a group I was in how he would observe gypsy musicians at most Hungarian weddings but the priest would refuse to allow them on church grounds. They would accompany the wedding party to the church, wait outside, then accompany the wedding party (often including the priest) back to the wedding feast where they would provide further entertainment.
This is largely because almost all gypsies are profoundly "dyslexic" and so cannot very easily learn to read.Replies: @dr kill
Greg Cochran explains “boiling off” (a form of selection pressure on insular groups) [link].
Greg Cochran examines an article about Gypsies [link].
There’s a classic episode of Dragnet (the Big Clan) dealing with gypsies. Also Robert Duvall did a semi documentary about a gypsy boy called “Angelo, My Love”.
Oddly enough, somehow a bunch of them wound up in Augusta, Georgia. My great aunt and uncle were working at the Georgia Medical College decades ago when the "Gypsy Queen" fell ill and the Gypsies took over the lawn in front of the hospital for weeks. The queen eventually recovered, so they then went back to their quasi-nomadic lifestyle of doing subpar roofing repair throughout Georgia and the Carolinas.Replies: @2Mintzin1, @Buffalo Joe, @Jenner Ickham Errican
I think you’re confusing these people with these other people.
Nobody likes doing something for which they have little talent.
I’m sure they like some types of education. Who among us here would know how to make a living hustling, playing a violin or a trumpet, or stealing high-voltage copper cables for scrap metal without first learning how to do so?
It's been between 900-700 years. People have tried being indifferent and proactive, they've tried being nice and genocidal. Nothing seems to work. The women are still dressed like they came straight out of the Sindh valley 800 years ago.
There is also, of course, the question of whether a host population would have much interest or see any benefit in integrating them and why that might be.Replies: @Olorin
I think it’s more like other guest populations use them to inflict low-level/constant damage on the host population.
In the wars of population genetics, defeat of a powerful rival can be engineered through weakening, not just vanquishing. And soft hands need never get hurty.
For the purpose of our educating ourselves in the language of Biology's Century, please provide a citation.
So The Gray Hag, always on the lookout for more “victims”, has chosen gypsies as their next target for hand wringing. Must’ve been a slow day.
Greg Cochran examines an article about Gypsies [link].Replies: @Buffalo Joe
Vera, Thank you for the link.
Jus, Thanks for the story and the laugh. I wear a small crucifix around my neck and Jesus’ hands and feet are securely nailed, otherwise he would be swinging from one hand or the other.
ganderson, Gypsies played a big role in a James Bond movie, but I forgot which one….Help.
There was a movie called ” Time Of The Gypsies” from 1989 – set in the Balkans . Like ” Day of the Jackal ” there was a realness to it .
I would not be too giddy about the IRA kicking out the Gypsies… Let’s discuss how the Brits raped the Irish, now that would be something to get giddy about!
Yeah, but what they lack in education they make up for in street smarts, right?
Do they still sell snake oil and kidnap wayward children?
Gypsies are often phenomenally talented at music so long as they do not have to read music. Their illiteracy extends to musical notation as well.
This is largely because almost all gypsies are profoundly “dyslexic” and so cannot very easily learn to read.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/26/world/europe/beating-of-roma-boy-exposes-tensions-in-frances-underclass.htmlReplies: @AndrewR, @a reader
The latest news tell us young Darius (the alleged culprit) is now living, with his family, in a hotel, (sorry, French ) courtesy of the French taxpayer (till forever, supposedly).
A much expected compensation for his beating by youth of African origins is apparently slow to materialize.
It’s not unknown for Amish to become Mennonites.
In the wars of population genetics, defeat of a powerful rival can be engineered through weakening, not just vanquishing. And soft hands need never get hurty.Replies: @Opinionator
In the wars of population genetics
For the purpose of our educating ourselves in the language of Biology’s Century, please provide a citation.
“Time of the Gypsies” by Emir Kusturica was indeed a brilliant film. You need to watch it with subtitles, not dubbed.
And if you want something quite funny – “White Cat Black Cat” is another of his Balkan Roma films.
You should watch them because in the West you cannot find films without political correctness when it comes to minorities.
The problems where I live are:
1. They preserve they Romani language, which wouldn’t be a problem, but most are either too dumb or too illiterate to be bilingual
2. Even with strict state laws, they find ways to take their kids out of school early
3. Even if they complete some education, the pressure is to marry a young teen and make at least 3, 4 babies (It’s the 3rd birth that starts to rake in the real dough around here) to start earning from state child support services… Together with an unemployment check, they don’t have to do much smuggling and thievery to do quite well for themselves.
This is largely because almost all gypsies are profoundly "dyslexic" and so cannot very easily learn to read.Replies: @dr kill
To this point, a very entertaining thread, a pleasant distraction. I’m going to blame your comment on the full moon tonight. Fun is fun, but you are getting carried away.
From Russia With Love
Great catfight.
Brutus, Thank you. I can imagine how sexy that Catfight would be today. Congrats on the Pats SB win and finally the Bruins look to be taking steps to becoming a winner again.
Gypsies occasionally did duty as the Victimized Minority of the Week on “serious” Western and dramatic shows of the Kennedy era, as a change-up from Indians and blacks. Rather amazingly, one 1960s comedy series chose to go in the opposite direction, take the gypsy stereotype as true, and milk it for as many laughs as possible.
That linked episode of Car 54 Where Are You derives a good deal of its laughs from its gleeful presentation of the Gypsies as outrageous thieves and liars; Nat Hiken, the great comedy writer who created the show and wrote most of the episodes, was a typically talented but left-leaning Jewish TV writer of the period, but unlike our current “humorists,” obviously put humor ahead of concerns about offending someone.
If only there was a parallel to the United States we could learn from…
“Gypsies, as other posters have noted, seem to have a genetic/racial gift for music.”
I’ve often heard the supposition that the gypsies were a defeated army or armies that were pushed or driven eastward along with all their camp followers (presumably including dancers and musicians, tinkers, etc.). Perhaps the entire army, along with its camp followers, was originally used as slave labour, but that circumstance must not have lasted all that long.
Some Gypsies factoids (Romani people:
The Dom seem to have left India earlier, but are mostly in the Middle East and North Africa.
Mahumud of Ghazni:
Ghazni (capital of the Ghaznavid Empire) is in what is now Afghanistan, pretty close to the border with Pakistan.
I’ve known several people who were of Amish or Mennonite descent but grew up in families of regular middle class people. One of their ancestors presumably decided to get off the farm after he saw Par-ee.
“…emigration from India may have taken place in the context of the raids by Mahmud of Ghazni. As these soldiers were defeated, they were moved west with their families into the Byzantine Empire…”
Given the time and history, it’s possible the population that became the gypsies were never refugees in the classic sense. Perhaps they were from defeated Indian defensive army camps and others taken prisoner by the Ghaznavid empire and then, given the state of warfare at the time, used as the equivalent of slave/convict labour battalions to do the brute labour involved in building fortifications or siege works (as when their slavemasters besieged fortified cities).
The Ghaznavids themselves were Mamluks (military slaves who have seized power).
But their slavemasters were themselves successively defeated, resulting in the slave corps being passed along as booty successively westward until they found themselves abandoned somewhere, perhaps in the Balkans, due to a local, perhaps Ottoman, defeat or withdrawal, with the victors too disorganized to have need of a slave construction corps.
Ghaznavids:
Initially, they were welcomed by the local nobility and given some charity and protection (because of their claims that they had been persecuted) until they took their new hosts be surprise by turning out to be die-hard thieves, whereupon they started their long European career of getting kicked out of one city after another and becoming pariahs exactly as they had been in India.Replies: @Jack D, @Jim, @Anonymous
The Roma language is most closely related to Aryan languages spoken in Northwest India. The genetic evidence indicates that they are of low-caste origin. I don’t think anything specific is known of their life in India. The first historical records of them in Europe are I think from the 14th century well before the Renaissance. However genetic evidence indicates they have probably been in the Balkans since the 12th century.
The Roma language shows signs of having been influenced both by Armenian and Greek suggesting they may have resided in Anatolia for a while before coming into Europe.
Stories about the Roma from Medieval times such as them claiming to be persecuted Christians should be treated with caution as the historical documentation concerning them is very slight.
It’s a hell of a lot easier being Mennonite than Amish. If you’re Mennonite you can use electricity, drive cars and wear colorful clothing.
Yes, there is a fair amount of out-migration from the Amish community. This makes the enormous growth in population of the Amish all the more remarkable since in-migration to the Amish is virtually zero except for rejoinders. The population growth is all internal not from converts.
Somehow I also remember “boiling off”, but from Greg Cochran,
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/
When one chills a group of weakly interacting atoms to micro-(about 100 nano-) Kelvin degrees of temperature, the last stage is via “evaporative cooling”, when hotter atoms go away from magnetic trap, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_condensate .
The reason the Gypsies are not longer in Northern India?
Mahmud of Ghazni, Ghaznavid campaigns in Indian Subcontinent:
Mahmud of Ghazni, Attitude on religion and jihad:
The ancesters of the Gypsies might have been mercenaries, not slave troops… or near forced to serve by Mahmud of Ghazni of necessity (perhaps like those Afghani Hazaras fighting for Iran in Syria today):
So maybe they weren’t slave battalions but locals who joined up for loot and plunder. Perhaps assisted by the old mamluk military slave ruler conundrum. Whom around here can I trust to be loyal to me? I’m surrounded by schemers and thieves…
So you could have had a small mercenary army that would probably sign up with whoever looked like a winner, but, due to lack of much notice in the historical record, were probably more suited to plunder than effective military troops. But somebody cheap was probably needed to stand guard in the backwaters at the horse watering holes.
In the end it might not have made much difference if they were cheap mercenaries or a slave labour corps. The Venetians who purchased them as serfs probably just saw cheap ag labour.
Evidence that suggests the Gypsies in Europe were slave labour, perhaps many originally taken as prisoners of war and then sold onward:
Slavery in medieval Europe, Slavery in Moldavia and Wallachia:
Slavery in Romania:
I did not realize slavery had such an extensive history in Romania. 7% of the population is roughly similar to the black (ex-slave) proportion of the US population (about 10%).
Slavery in medieval Europe, Slavery in Moldavia and Wallachia:Slavery in Romania:I did not realize slavery had such an extensive history in Romania. 7% of the population is roughly similar to the black (ex-slave) proportion of the US population (about 10%).Replies: @Steve Sailer
Could you get much work done with Gypsy slaves?
“Could you get much work done with Gypsy slaves?”
I don’t see how, though maybe Vlad Dracul could 😉 .
“Could you get much work done with Gypsy slaves?”
Slavery in Romania, Status and obligations:
They wanted really cheap labor, they got people.
The big slaver economy on the Black Sea was the Crimean Tatars (who had been a sub-group of the Mongol Golden Horde). They raided what’s now the Ukraine and Russia for Slav slaves that were sold to the Islamic Ottoman empire. Slaves from Crimea were often shipped by Venetians and Genoese to what’s now Turkey, the mid-east, and North Africa. This went on for a long time. Part of “the Mongol Yoke” in what’s now Russia seems to have been acceptance of slavery.
Romania is pretty close to Crimea, so access to slaves would have been easy. It was also part of Rome at one time and later the Ottoman empire, so slavery would have been accepted.
Crimean–Nogai raids into East Slavic lands:
This is all pretty much widely know. But for how much earlier had Crimea been a big slave port? Was there a thriving slave trade along the Silk Road? Were the Mongols big slavers? If so, the Gypsies likely didn’t come from northwestern India as refugees, but as slaves. That would also explain why they remained an isolated population and there were no records of a refugee wave.
It’s well known that Gypsies spread into Europe from the Balkans and Romania, but
I’m gobsmacked that I’ve never heard that up until the 1860s the Roma (Gypsies) were almost all slaves and that the Romanian Gypsy slave population was roughly as large a percentage as the US African slave population. Maybe this was an old commie secret?
It all seems so familiar:
“The Roma Business 160 years since the end of Roma slavery in Romania”, 9 April 2016, International Viewpoint (from Bilten “Romski biznis: 160 godina od ukidanja ropstva u Rumunjskoj”.):
It seems India became a big source of slaves after the Arab expansion and that continued under the Mongols. The Gypsies could have simply been sold on the international slave market:
Slavery in India, Islamic invasions (8th to 12th century AD):
As with black African slaves, the local Indian rulers (although in this case Islamic invaders) sold “their own” people into slavery for the money and presumably, as in Africa, it was perhaps the least desirable, prisoners, etc., who were sold:
So, with Romania now in the EU the Europeans now have their own Ex-Slave South. Maybe we can exchange notes.
Romania is pretty close to Crimea, so access to slaves would have been easy. It was also part of Rome at one time and later the Ottoman empire, so slavery would have been accepted.
Crimean–Nogai raids into East Slavic lands:This is all pretty much widely know. But for how much earlier had Crimea been a big slave port? Was there a thriving slave trade along the Silk Road? Were the Mongols big slavers? If so, the Gypsies likely didn't come from northwestern India as refugees, but as slaves. That would also explain why they remained an isolated population and there were no records of a refugee wave.
It's well known that Gypsies spread into Europe from the Balkans and Romania, but
I'm gobsmacked that I've never heard that up until the 1860s the Roma (Gypsies) were almost all slaves and that the Romanian Gypsy slave population was roughly as large a percentage as the US African slave population. Maybe this was an old commie secret?
It all seems so familiar:
"The Roma Business 160 years since the end of Roma slavery in Romania", 9 April 2016, International Viewpoint (from Bilten “Romski biznis: 160 godina od ukidanja ropstva u Rumunjskoj”.):It seems India became a big source of slaves after the Arab expansion and that continued under the Mongols. The Gypsies could have simply been sold on the international slave market:
Slavery in India, Islamic invasions (8th to 12th century AD):As with black African slaves, the local Indian rulers (although in this case Islamic invaders) sold "their own" people into slavery for the money and presumably, as in Africa, it was perhaps the least desirable, prisoners, etc., who were sold:So, with Romania now in the EU the Europeans now have their own Ex-Slave South. Maybe we can exchange notes.Replies: @Steve Sailer
Maybe the Gypsies were the Marielitos of a thousand years ago.
Initially, they were welcomed by the local nobility and given some charity and protection (because of their claims that they had been persecuted) until they took their new hosts be surprise by turning out to be die-hard thieves, whereupon they started their long European career of getting kicked out of one city after another and becoming pariahs exactly as they had been in India.Replies: @Jack D, @Jim, @Anonymous
Bill P. has uncritically accepted the racist account of Romani history. Take a look at Hancock’s Danger! Educated Gypsy and We Are the Romani People both on amazon.com. for the facts. Gypsies are real by the way. Proper noun. Capital letter.
Arthur