I don't know a ton about Roma, but it always seemed like they have their own culture and a mild support system with each other in some way. I feel like being American homeless has got to be lonely as fuck most of the time.
Really? I feel like the homeless people, at least in SF also try to support each other pretty well
I see them chatting and hanging out pretty often, and a lot of times when I'm talking to them while handing out stuff they'll tell me to head over to where their friends' tent is
Roma are pretty cool and I've had the pleasure of calling some friends...but while they have a culture I've not seen the active hostility towards homeless people in the way even centrist Euros see the Roma.
Like talk to a balding French accountant and in the middle of a dinner he'll say he saw a Roma family playing football in a nearby courtyard and suggest someone set their house on fire while they were distracted. And not as a joke, as a suggestion for a fun evening activity that had to be gently dissuaded.
Like shit you associate with straight up Nazis or the pre civil rights kkk coming from people you know vote centre left.
It's not better or worse...but...there's an aggressiveness there and I think with homelessnes it's more "I don't want to see them and don't care how" instead of "I care how and it involves bullets"
The anti-Roma racism is so deeply ingrained in our society it's basically background radiation. Children are misbehaving? Scare them into obedience by threatening to "send them away to the [slur]s". Invite your normal looking centre left friends to the countryside for a barbecue? Casually get asked if the neighbors are colored. At family dinner with generic centrist parents? Random racist remark out of nowhere. Lunch break with white collar coworkers? Unprompted rant about how one of them saw a man who claimed to be [slur] say on the internet that he is okay with [slur] and this is why it's settled that it's okay to use [slur] instead of Roma and anything else is silly wokeness.
I worked with a bunch of Roma on the hop farm and they were honestly the best people I've ever worked with. There was a really strong culture of sharing food and Jan found me a banger of a VW Passat for only £500. Jan would disappear off into the woods every lunch and forage tons of cob nuts and apples and we'd all chow down together. Farm owner treated them like shit though which was fucking typical.
Many homeless folks band together and form community, though it's tough because it's often ripped apart by the state.
One good point is that Roma people share an ethnic identity, whereas the homeless in the US are the poorest and most in need across a whole set of ethnicities - though disproportionately the marginalized, as the function of marginalization is to make these violences, like being unhoused, tolerable to the rest of society. So Roma face a fundamentally racist and genocidal attitude directed towards them (a decent amount of their tradition of traveling is due to being forced out by various Euros - forced to adapt to that status quo).
Think of it like extremist religious communities. Sure, gypsies support each other, but they're also generationally perpetuating their way of living. For example even if they get a chance to attend schools they often get pulled out by their parents to get married and/or start working before they finish primary education. They live in tightly knit communities, speak their own language that's completely separate from the local one, and live in a drastically different culture.
In other words, your friends and relatives will help you to raise your five children, but your parents are the reason you started having them at fourteen and why you can barely speak the language of the country you're living in.
It's pretty fucked up all around, especially when you consider the fact that they had to call themselves "human" in their own language (rom), and popularise phrases like "gypsies also have souls".
Sure, [slur] support each other, but they're also generationally perpetuating their way of living
Wow what do you think culture is? You do know that eradicating culture is a form of genocide? Roma people keeping their culture is a good thing, not a bad thing. Being sedentary is not superior to being nomadic, and there's a huge bias against the Roma and other traditionally nomadic peoples from people with sedentary-supremacist mindsets.
Letting your children get educated, become literate, and have a chance to escape poverty is not genocide. If you can imagine shit like removing 13-14 year old girls from school to get married and bear children a nice cultural tradition, then you've got some serious issues. I've seen that happen to my peers, and it's not good for anyone.
In most Balkan countries Romani haven't been nomadic since around the 19th century. Now they're either just regular people or live in absolute poverty and have to fight to survive. In both cases they're sedentary, the only difference is whether they're living in a house made of bricks or out of cardboard.
At least over here the bias is against the sort of people who literally drug their babies to have them fall asleep. Otherwise they get a lot more governmental aide than the local population, as they genuinely need it.
Why don't you tell europeans to stop genociding the Romani, give them back their land and traveling rights, stop stealing their homes and camps when they move around, stop discriminating against them, stop over policing them... what the fuck why am I even talking to you
Sure, let me go tell my Romani relatives to give up their jobs and try to fullfill your noble savage fantasy. Maybe they can dance and make nice copper cups for your enjoyment.
Those people were destroyed over here centuries ago. You're not going to recreate them by changing a few laws, but I do support that idea if there are still any čergari left around somehow...
I've said nothing about giving up jobs, you brought that up and the racist stereotypes on your own. My point is that we should be blaming europe's shitty genocidal policies, not the victims of those policies. Also they haven't been destroyed, obviously Romani people are still all around the world today.
This person sounds exactly like how patsocs talk about indigenous people in the Americas, as though they aren't still here and deserving of their sovereignty.