Why have the Romani been scapegoated for a thousand years?
Why have the Romani been scapegoated for a thousand years?
The “Gypsies” versus “civilized society”
Over a thousand years ago, scores of people left Ancient India and haven’t felt at home since.
They traveled through Asia, the Middle East, Byzantium, the Balkans, and Europe. As George Borrow wrote in his 1841 book The Zincali: An Account of the Gypsies of Spain,
“There is scarcely a place of the habitable world where they are not to be found; their tents are alike pitched on the heaths of Brazil and the ridges of the Himalayan hills, and their language is heard at Moscow and Madrid, in the streets of London and Stamboul.”
And everywhere, they became scapegoats.
The reviled Gypsies
The Romani people — also known as Gypsies in the Western world — have not been able to fit in for over a millennium.
The earliest historical accounts of their arrival in Europe sound a lot like the modern-day stereotypes against them: Thieves. Liars. Given every opportunity to participate in society and they reject it.
For centuries, the Roman…
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