Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Largest Gypsy Ghetto in Europe – Stolipinovo, Bulgaria (2016)

yomadic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 258 posts

Re: The Largest Gypsy Ghetto in Europe – Stolipinovo, Bulgaria (2016)

#171

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

chefandy wrote: post #167
nickpp wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the culture. They’d let the clean clothes get soiled black rather than wash and keep them clean. They’d rather eat stolen food from garbage rather than have to work for a restaurant meal. My mother was a primary school teacher in a Gipsy village and saw this first hand: small kids being encouraged to beg or steal instead of study by their own parents, abandoning school for the street lifestyle their family lived…

Read the above comment about how locals would refuse to patronize a restaurant staffed by a Romani worker. If you're living in an environment where people go out of their way to make sure you don't have any economic opportunity no matter what you do, what the hell is the point of preparing your children for a workforce that is guaranteed to reject them? To try and gain respectability among people who are steadfastly…

Yes, you put your finger on it. I think the central issue really is a chicken-and-egg issue: the people who live around them put causal force on the Roma's anti-social behavior, the Roma put it on their rejection / exclusion by the people around them (or maybe they don't?). Nobody wins until somebody backs down. Whoever backs down pays costs. If the surrounding people back down and start treating the Roma well, the Roma will take advantage of them for a while. If the Roma back down and start behaving the way the surrounding people want them to, they won't get full credit for their efforts for a while.

Maybe there's some way to broker a detente. Maybe that's already happening.

Re: The Largest Gypsy Ghetto in Europe – Stolipinovo, Bulgaria (2016)

#172

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

purerandomness wrote: post #126
xyzzyz wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of very poor people and groups in Europe. Look at Ukraine, for example: majority of its population lives under what in the US would count as harsh poverty. Average wage outside of Kiev is around $2500 a year (a year, not a month), and even if you adjust it for purchasing power, it still buys you less than $10k does in US. And that’s average : most people survive on less than that, some even on half t…

A Ukrainian has no problems getting a job in a restaurant kitchen in Kiev, while it's virtually impossible for a Gipsy to get a job in the city, or a flat. This is not something you can compare. When no amount of grit, resilience, hard work or effort will give you any result, what would you do to survive?

It seems like one issue is that the Roma can be easily identified even when mostly or fully absorbed by the surrounding culture. That isn't true of poor Ukranians I bet. But my gut says there's some dynamic with the Roma whereby remaining separate and different is highly valued by the community, and they punish their own for doing things that erode that separation. Which may be self-sustaining, but it's probably bad for them in aggregate.

Re: The Largest Gypsy Ghetto in Europe – Stolipinovo, Bulgaria (2016)

#173

Post by dang »

apecat wrote: post #10
umvi wrote: post #2

I have quite a few European friends on social media and they always seem perplexed whenever racial tensions flare up in the USA. Some even have openly asked "why do Americans find it so hard not to be racist? It's not that hard." I always respond by pointing out that the citizens of almost every country are naturally xenophobic and/or racist, just not necessarily against people of African descent. In the case of Euro…

I came here to write pretty much this. Here's a picture to clarify even further. https://imgur.com/m88rKwx

Please don't post flamebait to HN. We don't need this here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The Largest Gypsy Ghetto in Europe – Stolipinovo, Bulgaria (2016)

#174

Post by dang »

s9w wrote: post #3
umvi wrote: post #2

I have quite a few European friends on social media and they always seem perplexed whenever racial tensions flare up in the USA. Some even have openly asked "why do Americans find it so hard not to be racist? It's not that hard." I always respond by pointing out that the citizens of almost every country are naturally xenophobic and/or racist, just not necessarily against people of African descent. In the case of Euro…

Do you know Roma?

Flamebait will get you banned here, especially on racial/ethnic topics. We don't want the predictable and toxic material that leads to. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, we'd be grateful. Note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

Most comments in this thread, even the ones with a negative tinge, show some evidence of earnestly wrestling with the topic. Your post does not. Please don't post like this here.

Re: The Largest Gypsy Ghetto in Europe – Stolipinovo, Bulgaria (2016)

#175

Post by dang »

eznzt wrote: post #31

I think it would be impossible to have a productive discussion about Roma in an American website.

HN is owned by an American company of course, but it is not a majority American community. The last time I ran the numbers, about 50% were in the US, and that of course includes many immigrants and expats.

Re: The Largest Gypsy Ghetto in Europe – Stolipinovo, Bulgaria (2016)

#176

Post by hechang1997 »

umvi wrote: post #2

I have quite a few European friends on social media and they always seem perplexed whenever racial tensions flare up in the USA. Some even have openly asked "why do Americans find it so hard not to be racist? It's not that hard." I always respond by pointing out that the citizens of almost every country are naturally xenophobic and/or racist, just not necessarily against people of African descent. In the case of Euro…

I would go so far as saying people are born racist and can only grow out of it.

Re: The Largest Gypsy Ghetto in Europe – Stolipinovo, Bulgaria (2016)

#177

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #85
marton78 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that many Europeans are racist towards Roma and the other gypsy peoples. Much of what they say will be pure nonsense (e.g., they are stupid, not fit for work, etc), but other common statements you might hear also have some truth to them. For example, "they all steal" is of course a gross simplification, as many Roma are well integrated and live a regular life. However, if you are surrounded by a group of peop…

Came here expecting to find this, because THIS is in fact what happens in every online discussion of Roma I see, not some other "pure nonsense", but just this. In America, if people say "The things people say about Black people are a gross simplification HOWEVER", it's usually something really racist that's about to follow. Say, "Sure many Black people are fine, but if you find yourself surrounded by Black people in…

The reality is that people are not wrong when they act as if Black people in the U.S. are more likely to commit violent crimes. Black people are ~20% of the population, but commit ~55% of the murders, making for a per capita murder offense rate among Black Americans that is ~5x (yes, 500%) of the rate for the remainder.

That said, people pay way too much attention to murder and violent crime in public discourse and in their private lives for the most part. Sure, Black people may murder at 5x the rate of non-Black people, but murder is really, really rare. What about we worry about, I dunno, diabetes? Education? Population growth? Climate change?

Re: The Largest Gypsy Ghetto in Europe – Stolipinovo, Bulgaria (2016)

#178

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #138
crispyporkbites wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s complicated. Ultimately it’s rude to refer to anyone by their skin colour, ethnicity or racial “group”. There are almost no situations where it’s appropriate.

In the US and certain upper-middle class echelons of other Western nations, maybe. Outside of that bubble, though, it ranges from neutral to positive to acknowledge a person's ethnicity.

This is how I understand the world to be too

Re: The Largest Gypsy Ghetto in Europe – Stolipinovo, Bulgaria (2016)

#179

Post by TT3351 »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #59
mrtksn wrote: post #11

In Bulgaria, Gypsies are viewed as a huge problem and people are often openly racist against them, even on national TV. The stereotype is that the gypsies will steal whatever they can, trash and start fights and many other things. My grandma would hide her stuff if sees a gypsy, on the other hand there's a subset that she would adore. The subset, according to her, are the "tradesmen" gypsies and she would often buy s…

There is a lot of "racism" talk on this thread, but criminal Roma gangs are an undeniable fact in Europe as they are regularly dismantled by the police. One cannot defend the exploitation of the poor, young kids, the disabled, the old, sent to western Europe and forced into begging, stealing or mugging locals and excuse that with "cultural relativism". These ones live in shanty towns, do not send their young children…

I don't think you have to "defend the exploitation of the poor..." to argue that the problem is these people are not being integrated into the social/government networks the rest of Europe benefits from. The criminal gangs fill a vacuum. Insularity results from centuries of maltreatment.

Re: The Largest Gypsy Ghetto in Europe – Stolipinovo, Bulgaria (2016)

#180

Post by natmaka »

purerandomness wrote: post #126
xyzzyz wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of very poor people and groups in Europe. Look at Ukraine, for example: majority of its population lives under what in the US would count as harsh poverty. Average wage outside of Kiev is around $2500 a year (a year, not a month), and even if you adjust it for purchasing power, it still buys you less than $10k does in US. And that’s average : most people survive on less than that, some even on half t…

A Ukrainian has no problems getting a job in a restaurant kitchen in Kiev, while it's virtually impossible for a Gipsy to get a job in the city, or a flat. This is not something you can compare. When no amount of grit, resilience, hard work or effort will give you any result, what would you do to survive?

Those who are integrated in a modern nation and only see the benefits (or, at best, neglect the side effects) cannot understand those who reject it because they hate various ordeals implied by the corresponding underlying system.

See Aesop’s "A Wolf and Dog" ( https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/35/aesops-fables/381/the-dog-and-... )

Roms do observe us, and may conclude that we aren't happy.

In a way Roms behavior "terraforms" a virtual Zomia ( http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/12... ) inside the very geographic zones we occupy.

Post reply on HN