So... My sister is marrying a traveller

[Arbi Trax]

Wow, feels like I'm trapped in a Sociology student's private puppet theater

OT:

I am indifferent towards the Gypsy/traveller community. I've only had limited dealings with them, not enough to form a first-hand opinion anyway. An old lady (Romani I think) once cursed me for not buying a lucky sprig of heather wrapped in tin foil...to keep the luck fresh I suppose...

 

[Mxrz]

The biggest douche in the world can still seem like a nice guy when he wants to. Like him all you want, but it is still a shitty lifestyle for your sister and niece.

 

[BoTTeNBReKeR]

Like the forced assimilation policy that England has had towards travellers since beginning the 80's at least?

I see, erasing a culture is not a crime i guess.

I still don't see how you can actually say these travellers have a culture.

As with most people on these forums, I've had nothing but bad experiences with them. One time one of those fuckers tried to mug my friend. Luckily he was meeting us a few dozen meters away, so we came to settle the situation and call the cops, first they tried to run but we were able to catch them and then when the cops arrived they said that we were mugging them.

So yeah, I have no love for these people. Living on the edge of society, not being productive in any way or form. Waste of space if you ask me.

 

[Magicmad5511]

I've never really encountered any travelers. I have really only heard about them through other people and while the stories are not great I have never been one for for judging people by stereotypes.

 

[Imperius]

Well your niece is going to be a pikey chav.

Congratulations.

Do yourself a favour and disown the little bugger now while you still can.

 

[Aureliano]

Awesome! Maybe he can teach you how to control warp fields with your mind too! Just be careful about letting your mom watch you practice that one or it may grant her wishes that try to kill her somehow.

NB: If I'm the only one who first read this as a strange TNG reference, then I'm sad for the world.

 

[Racistman3d]

I live in Australia so I'm not very experienced with gypsies, but when I was in Europe I was constantly harassed by them, and even had an old gypsy woman spit in my face when I didn't give her money, so I can't say that in my experience I liked what I saw of them, but I'm sure they all can't be like that.

 

[Eventidal]

Hm... you got me curious. I've honest-to-God never heard of modern-day travelers like these. I knew they were around oh-so-long ago, but never had a clue they still existed. Call me sheltered, but I've never lived outside Idaho, and never seen these kinds of people.

Where (continentally) do they reside? Is it mostly in the European nations, or are they around in other parts of the world? How do they live with their traveling lifestyles? Education, employment, food, etc must be hard to get if you're moving around a lot. It sounds like the stigma for them is pretty much universally bad, but obviously there's an occasional good egg in the bunch.

Sorry if I'm asking a lot of questions but I do find the idea of a modern-day nomadic group of people fascinating... even if they are lowest common denominator thieves and assholes 95% of the time.

 

[Arina Love]

traveller huh i instantly thought about him

+1 to nerd stat if you know who he is =)

 

[Enkidu88]

Well your niece is going to be a pikey chav.

Congratulations.

Do yourself a favour and disown the little bugger now while you still can.

I must say your avatar is quite fitting, since this the most disgusting and despicable thing I've read on this forum today. Too bad the Nazis and SS are no longer around, you'd have made a wonderful addition to their ranks.

 

[Jazoni89]

Well your niece is going to be a pikey chav.

Congratulations.

Do yourself a favour and disown the little bugger now while you still can.

Well i'm happy, she's happy, why should I?


It's her life at the end of the day.

 

[JediMB]

I don't disagree that the term "Gypsy" is derogatory, I just think that they shouldn't be named after a nationality that they don't belong to.

Well... Romani is also the Latin term for the ancient Romans, and a modern Italian term for inhabitants of Rome. And while the word might not be the best name for the "gypsies", it is also a word from their language, romani ćhib.

That's not prejudice, that's common sense. Nobody wants to put up with a fieldful of arseholes.
They occasionally squat on several pieces of parkland near my house. All kinds of trouble.

ah. theives are a bummer. i get it. still. never met any, so i have no first hand experiance. i like to imagine they are in old fashioned covered wagons in torn up pilgrim clothes.[/quote]

The Irish caravan people I had contact with had huge flat screen TVs and all sorts of other luxuries. Yet they still resorted to stealing and other fraudulent behavior, and had a habit of burning their garbage in a barrel out by the road. They also set up illegal fences around the caravan.

 

[Enkidu88]

I love how this thread is filled with anecdotes of bad shit that gypsies have done, as if that somehow excuses all the hate that's being spewed around. I imagine this is exactly what a message board would have looked like circa 1950 if someone had said their sister is marrying a black man. "Oh, I'm not racist but once a black man stole from me, and thus they're all a bunch of criminals."

You know what? Fuck all of you (those of you piping in with anecdotes that is)and your smug superior attitudes. This is exactly the kind of shit that allowed racial discrimination to flourish in this country until 1964. The idea being thrown around here that a people that choose to live differently than the rest of us are somehow inferior, and thus deserving of contempt, is the same blight that has plagued humanity for its entire existence. It's this same kind of attitude that has let the Romani be persecuted since their arrival in Europe in the 12th century. 900 years and we're still in the same God damn place.

You ever think that maybe the Romani, and similar groups, decision to separate themselves from the rest of society stems from the fact that same society has repeatedly tried to drive them out, forcibly sterilize them, and full-on exterminate them for their entire existence?

Oh you think I'm talking about ancient history here? Well I am, as soon as they arrived in the Byzantine Empire they were made slaves of the empire, a tradition which continued until 1850. That's 600 years of enslaving an entire people, longer than the slave trade in Africa lasted. But since the blacks were allowed to integrate back into society after their slavery, it's no longer cool to hate them. The Romani weren't so lucky, and were expelled from the Ottoman Empire, forced into nomadic life as each subsequent country also expelled them.

More recently the Nazis gave it their best trying to annihilate them as well, coming close by exterminating 700,000 of an estimated 800,000 man population in central and eastern Europe.

And if that's still too ancient for you, many countries were forcibly sterilizing Romani women up until 1989... oh wait, no, a recent investigation found there were coerced sterlizations occuring as recently as 2001.

Still too far back? Well how about this: A Romani man killed a woman in Rome, a terrible crime, and what did Rome do? Well if you said prosecute the criminal, you give Italy too much credit. They went and declared that the entire Romani population in Italy should be expelled, following France's example of expelling them in 2010.

So yeah, you know what? Show a little god damn respect. Maybe if you treat them like normal human beings instead of immediately treating them like criminals and expecting the worst, you'll actually find they're decent people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people#Persecutions

Do yourselves a favor and educate yourselves.

 

[Baneat]

I imagine this is exactly what a message board would have looked like circa 1950 if someone had said their sister is marrying a black man. "Oh, I'm not racist but once a black man stole from me, and thus they're all a bunch of criminals."

I was waiting for someone to inevitably make this analogy. This isn't like that, more like OP saying his sister's marrying a black guy, who is a perfectly good person and such, and moving with the guy to the inner city, where it's shit. Then there are people that really are just saying that there are travellers that are arseholes, so if you stay with the decent guys you're still going to be immersed in that regardless.

Gypsies do get a lot of shit, though, and they still do.

 

[Enkidu88]

I imagine this is exactly what a message board would have looked like circa 1950 if someone had said their sister is marrying a black man. "Oh, I'm not racist but once a black man stole from me, and thus they're all a bunch of criminals."

I was waiting for someone to inevitably make this analogy. This isn't like that, more like OP saying his sister's marrying a black guy, who is a perfectly good person and such, and moving with the guy to the inner city, where it's shit. Then there are people that really are just saying that there are travellers that are arseholes, so if you stay with the decent guys you're still going to be immersed in that regardless.

Gypsies do get a lot of shit, though, and they still do.

People are assholes. Period. End of story. You get assholes in every walk of life. Move into white suburbia and I guarantee you'll find a load of assholes just ready to take a shit on you. That's life.

Telling her not to marry someone because his people have gotten the reputation of being assholes, is just plain old racism. That's his home, those are his people. He's not forcing her to marry him, and by the sounds of things she's met some of the members of this guys caravan. If she still wants to marry him that's her prerogative. Obviously she doesn't think they're assholes, maybe because she didn't immediately go into the situation assuming they were.

If this were about a girl marrying a black guy, and moving to the inner city, I'm assuming a lot less people would be piping up with anecdotes like "They're nothing but criminals because XYZ happened to me at ZYX". Why? Because it's a lot easier to see the racism in that statement when its a socially accepted group like Blacks, and not when it's someone who society is still telling us is A-Okay to discriminate against. Instead we would be seeing a lot of arguments about why the inner city isn't safe, poverty levels contributing to high crime rates, you know, logical and valid arguments. I don't think we would see half as many people piping up with such nuggets of wisdom as "Stealing shit is all they know how to do."

 

[Kukakkau]

So she's continuing the line of uneducated, theiving people who refuse to conform to the surrounding society and thing laws and regulations don't concern them? Oh joy

Quick story related - my dad when he was a pest controller was called to a travellers site since it was swimming in rats. Second the van doors opened the kids stole all the equipment. Eventually the equipment was returned after explaining they came to help but after that no pest control company would help them and they got to live with their rats

Also remember a news story recently where a traveller community built houses without any planning permission on owned land and when told they had to leave since they broke the law they went up in arms about it, even though they knew it was against the law and they didn't care. /facepalm

I can tolerate people acting/believing differently. But people who don't teach their kids morals and don't give a shit about the people they are imposing on? *cocks gun*

Damn... I love what you hate about them. That sounds sensible to me. "That land is owned." No, it's undeveloped and no one is doing anything with it. I'm setting up a house. What a great attitude. Own the land you're on. No person is better than another person just because they have money enough to "buy" the land.

That was the thing though, there was planning permissions being sent while the traveller's were building, so that government housing estates could be built on the land. But since the traveller's had slapped their own housing on they couldn't build them without bulldozing the traveller community down and being seen as assholes.

 

[RewardMe]

Heh. Pikeys are a strange bunch aren't they? That story that came out about those gypsies keeping slaves for 15 years made me giggle.

 

[seamusotorain]

*Sneep

Irish Traveller ≠ Romany Gypsy.

In Ireland, Travellers are legally considered a social group, rather than an ethnic group. I agree that Travellers are second-class citizens in this country. They're often barred from local businesses or shops, and are generally treated with suspicion everywhere they go. Like I said in an earlier post, the only way this'll change is if both communities make an effort to integrate.

 

[El Poncho]

How I feel about gypsies, hmm, not in a good light.

My dad hired one to patch up a hole in the roof, my dad gives him half the money at the start and was planning to give him half when he finished, my dad goes inside so they can get working on the roof, they just leave taking the money.

At my primary school gypsies tended to go there for a few months then away then a few more months, they wouldn't be very clean yet when I seen them get into their parents cars they had nice fancy cars, are they just too lazy to wash themselves?

I know this isn't true for all of them but this is my experience with them.

Now subsitute "gay" or "black" for "gypsies" above and you will see how racist that story is. While you claim not to be susing that small number as a reflection as a whole, you clearly are.

In fact it's not racist... It's my experience with that culture and so I am weary of that culture, it's learning not to make a mistake.

I also pointed out that I know not all are like this but I haven't met one who isn't so how can I not be cautious?

If my only experience with gays was that they tricked me then I'd be cautious then, however someone who is gay has never did this to me and I get along well with them, same with blacks.

If my only experience with cats was that they were hostile and scratched a lot then I'd assume that until proven wrong which I have been proven wrong and so I am less cautious with cats now.

I have yet to be proven wrong not to be cautious so I will always be cautious around gypsies until I meet one who has proven my feelings wrong.

I don't prevent gypsies from doing stuff others do, I don't refuse to talk to them, I didn't treat them any different through primary school, but I am cautious because of my experience with them.

There are people around my area called Neds, these people are mostly those who flunked school, do drugs and would randomly assault people on streets, wrecking cars etc.
Are you telling me I won't be allowed to be cautious of them just because I have identified them as a ned, they are the same race as me, have grown up in the same area as me, the same school as me but with my experience with them I am cautious of them, but that couldn't be racist could it.