When In Roma...

The Gypsies, who now prefer to be called Roma, are the new Jews of Eastern Europe. The Roma unfortunately appear to have all of the disadvantages of the Jews without any of their advantages. While the Jewish Question has largely been "solved" due to the mass murder of the Holocaust and mass emigration of the survivors, the Roma remain a large, stateless, and often persecuted people throughout the region.

Ethnic Romanians are not always thrilled about the group name change because Roma sounds like, well, Romanian. The Roma form a sizeable minority of Romania's population but no one quite knows how many Roma there are--estimates range from 500,000 to 2 million out of Romania's 22 million people. Slavery of the Roma persisted in Romania until the mid-nineteenth century. Many Roma were also murdered during the Holocaust....

Prejudice toward Roma often bears a striking resemblance to anti-Semitism where Jews become the symbol of the Other and are blamed for all of the world's problems. Just as Jews were often blamed simultaneously for capitalism and communism, Roma today are often attacked as wealthier than other people due to mafia-style activity and as dirty, poor people in the next breath....

The problems appear so huge and difficult to solve that it makes America's racial problems appear almost trivial in comparison. At least American blacks and whites share a largely common culture. As Professor Henry Louis Gates provocatively likes to point out, African Americans have far more in common culturally with David Duke than with most people in Black Africa.

[via The Gadflyer]