I’m not sure, but does it seem like a stretch to suggest that current homeless problems in the West are part of some nomadic subculture, that’s framed within the medical model as mental illness?
that's a stretch the size of jupiter
Yenish people
81–90 of 116 posts
Re: Yenish people
#82I’m not sure, but does it seem like a stretch to suggest that current homeless problems in the West are part of some nomadic subculture, that’s framed within the medical model as mental illness?
I'd lean towards "BS" over "stretch." If you went up to every homeless person in SF, Chicago, etc and ask them why they're homeless, you'd have a hard time finding a single one who's in that situation by choice or cultural caste.
Re: Yenish people
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, while not defending taking children away from their parents, you think it has benefits? Interesting take.
I don't think it has any benefits to remove children from their parents. That's why I think that was a bad policy. 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 cou…
>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.
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?
Re: Yenish people
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For a while I really wanted to be a Bedouin. In the end it just didn’t seem to be realistic. I ended up getting a job like everyone else. It just didn’t seem right. It could have worked. Travelers normally suck all support and benefits government provides and live relatively care free life.
Have evwr seen how Beduins, and other nomads, live? Hardly comparable to our comfortable life style as full time employees im developed industrial nations... I am so tired of the "social welfare queen" trope paraded around to argue against the poor and otherwise perceived minorities.
I was spending my summers in the Middle East during college. I would walk from historic locations to historic location.
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.
Re: Yenish people
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
At least in recent history in "melting pot" Western societies it seems to be related to cultural practices that prevent integration into the broader community.
Care to share examples? Because wearong different clothing, speaking different languages and having a different religion are actually none. Discriminating because of those is actually illegal in most western democracies.
Obviously nothing justifies discrimination, but yes, I can easily provide examples of "cultural practices that prevent integration into the broader community" as your parent comment said. These are a few examples for Gitanos (Spanish Roma) as it's what I know, being from Spain.
- 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: Yenish people
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if, just bear with me, what if said traveller families do, again bear with me, not see theft as part of their culture? Because it is called root cause analysis and not "root cause speculation" for a reason...
A friend is a sociologist from the Balkans who has several times carried out fieldwork among Balkan Roma families who move seasonally to Western Europe and, being of Roma ancestry herself, has won interview subjects’ trust. She reports that her interviewees readily view stealing as a part of their culture; they themselves regard it and begging as the two pillars of their population’s economy and have a developed appr…
Spanish gipsies have their own "law" (unwritten shared rules) and "judges" (patriarchs). They have/had many archaic "laws", and one cornerstone used to be that a gipsy cannot work for a gadjé (non-gipsy). This internal "law" plus poverty results in criminal activity above the average for that poverty bracket because the only legal and "legal" employment is basically self-employment.
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.
Re: Yenish people
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it has any benefits to remove children from their parents. That's why I think that was a bad policy. 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 cou…
>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. 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 dependin…
But that would be digital nomads, or van life. That is hip, isn't it? And alos totally legal, those people don't steal or cause problems.
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
Re: Yenish people
#88I grew up in Eastern Europe among many minorities. I had friends who were Lipovans (Russian old believers who escaped persecution in Russia in the 17th century), Armenians that escaped the genocide by the turks, descendants of Phanariots (ottoman Greeks), and of course Gypsies both "white" and otherwise. We would refer to white gypsies as "blonde gypsies". I am pretty sure the guy who we would call "blonde gypsie" wa…
>People often liked discussing the similarities and differences between each other's cultures. 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 E…
> Yes, that's fun to do, if done without denigrating them.
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).
Re: Yenish people
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Care to share examples? Because wearong different clothing, speaking different languages and having a different religion are actually none. Discriminating because of those is actually illegal in most western democracies.
Obviously nothing justifies discrimination, but yes, I can easily provide examples of "cultural practices that prevent integration into the broader community" as your parent comment said. These are a few examples for Gitanos (Spanish Roma) as it's what I know, being from Spain. - Child marriage is common. You can see an (anecdotal) case here https://bnn.network/breaking-news/tradition-or-crime-parents... and some dat…
Too many people in the hospital, sounds like a very serious crisis that needs urgently beuig adressed.
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
Re: Yenish people
#90> The Kingdom of Prussia in 1842 introduced a law forcing municipalities to provide social welfare to permanent residents without citizenship. As a consequence, there were attempts to prevent Yenish people from taking permanent residence.[6] Recently established settlements of Yenish, Sinti, and Roma, dubbed "gypsy colonies" (Zigeunerkolonien), were discouraged and attempts were made to incite the settlers to move aw…
Well, it's less that the law led to difficulties and more that the law ignited pre-existing bigotry, similar to some poor white Americans being opposed to welfare out of biases against poor black Americans thanks to a successful (implicitly racial) hysteria about "welfare queens". 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 citiz…
The replies to this comment are a pretty good example of what I said: very good rational reasons and citing crime statistics and other surface-level analysis to say "well yes, but maybe they're just inherently bad".