Strangers in Strange Lands

Gypsies. The word has a romantic ring to most of us. Wanderers. Folks traveling lightly, below the radar of whatever society surrounds them. Many an American RV and pleasure boat has the word "Gypsy" plastered on its side. Gypsy Biker. Sensual music and hot tempers: Think of the gypsy woman in Il Trovatore who throws a baby into a bonfire, and Carmen's passionate, dancing cigarette-girl.

Beyond these romantic images, we don't think much about gypsies in the U.S., although an estimated one million gypsies live in this country. But, as an article in this week's issue of The Economist discusses, gypsies are a serious problem in most of Europe, where similarities to our own racial discrimination against blacks are obvious.

Gypsies, or Roma, originated in Rajastan, in India, a thousand years ago. Their language (now broken into many dialects) is based on Sanskrit. (They were called "gypsies" in English, because of a mistaken belief that they came from Egypt.) They are concentrated most heavily in eastern Europe -- over ten percent of the populations of Romania and Macedonia are gypsy. They have been nomadic throughout history, although most now live in settled camps. Historically, they have had a reputation for theft and various scams on the non-gypsy population, but in today's world they often specialize as collectors, sorters, and sellers of scrap for recycling.

Gypsies today are survivors of Hitler's holocaust, which targeted gypsies along with Jews.

For the most part, gypsies are impoverished and very poorly educated, a permanent and self-perpetuating underclass. Because their racial characteristics usually aren't so distinct as to separate them from other European ethnic groups, those gypsies who do succeed in entering the middle class tend to stop identifying themselves as gypsies. They "pass as white," so to speak. While understandable, this abandonment of their origins obviously prevents these more ambitious -- or less clan-loyal -- gypsies from serving as role models for the ones left behind.

The writer in The Economist points out that gypsies are feared and shunned by middle class Europeans. (I once knew a boy whose family came from Hungary -- he would humorously shudder whenever the word "gypsy" was mentioned.) Europeans pull their kids out of schools where gypsies are admitted, an analogy to "white flight" in America. Gypsies are family and clan oriented, moreover, and have no aspiration, in general, to assimilate into the culture of their host countries.

The lack of education -- or, at least, of the kind of education that is required to flourish in modern Western society -- is a key to their poverty and to their segregation. The Economist suggests that some form of affirmative action, similar to that used by American schools -- until the recent Supreme Court decision prohibiting its use -- may be the best long-term solution to the gypsies' ills. Unfortunately for that approach, although most gypsies would love a higher standard of living, they are not willing to sacrifice their own separate culture to attain it.

The Economist article ended with little optimism that a solution to the "gypsy problem" would be found in the near future. Their plight is a plight shared by hundreds of other less well known ethnic minorities outside of Europe. Being "different" in even the most open societies, including those of modern Europe, is rarely easy.