Talk:Romani people

Romani in Romania are not Muslim

I'm a Romanian. The statement "The majority of the population [of Roma in Romania] are Muslim and also speak Turkish" is ridiculously false. I don't have a citation to prove this, but I urge anyone interested in editing this article to check things out... Muslims in Romania are scarce, the vast majority of the population is Christian, including the Roma people. And they speak Romani or Para-Romani or Romanian or Hungarian, not Turkish. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:2F0E:FF:FFFF:0:0:4F77:6472 (talk) 04:15, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

You are right. As far as I know, the vast majority of the present-day Romani/Gypsy people is Christian (mostly Roman Catholic but also Eastern Orthodox). Gypsies speak in their own language (Romani language) plus the language of the country they're currently in (most frequently it's Polish, Slovakian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Hungarian, Romanian, or Spanish). Yatzhek (talk) 15:40, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Merger proposal

Discuss here: A request has been received for the merger of Roma (Romani subgroup) into the main article of this talk page. GenQuest ^{"Talk to Me"} 03:20, 18 November 2013 (UTC) Ceremonies and practices "Romanies often adopt the dominant religion of their host country in the event that a ceremony associated with a formal religious institution is necessary, such as a baptism or funeral (their particular belief systems and indigenous religion and worship remain preserved regardless of such adoption processes). The Roma continue to practice "Shaktism", a practice with origins in India, whereby a female consort is required for the worship of a god. Adherence to this practice means that for the Roma who worship a Christian God, prayer is conducted through the Virgin Mary, or her mother, Saint Anne—Shaktism continues over one thousand years after the people's separation from India.[126] Besides the Roma elders, who serve as spiritual leaders, priests, churches, or bibles do not exist among the Romanies—the only exception is the Pentecostal Roma.[126]" I'm actually Catholic, this is a misrepresentation of both Catholic and Romani beliefs (for one, Catholics only believe in one God and do NOT treat the Virgin Mary as a god or goddess) maybe someone should re-phrase it? 2601:0:4180:7D1:994C:B9E1:FF3E:441B (talk) 21:36, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Homophobia in romani culture

People are persecuted and driven out of romani communities for their sexuality. It is a very backwards culture. Why is there no mention of this in the article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.30.204.236 (talk) 21:54, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

You'll need to find reliable sources to support the addition of that in order to avoid violating Wikipedia's neutrality policy. – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 14:31, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Probably, but no more than conservative society at large as Gypsy groups are reserved even the subject of sex is taboo. In the 21st century you'll find non-gypsy groups are a lot worse. Homosexuals are shunned, imprisoned in Islamic nations, hanged in Iran, heads of state link gays to paedophiles [[1]] and have bigoted laws passed and forced underground in Russia, or attacked or killed on the streets around the world by youths because they are gay. You will also find society at large -including gay sub-culture- to have its fair share of bigots regarding gypsies as 'dirty thieves' or subhuman as well. In fact being a gypsy automatically gives society to place you on the lowest rung of the ladder and anti-gypsy views are ingrained in society at large and that would include the gay subculture too. Being gay hardly absolves you from being openly discrimatory against another group. I worked with a man who openly said to friends offhandedly 'You filthy gypsy' as an unsult, yet came out as bi-sexual six months later and still used the term. Gay lifestyle is hardly singled out by gypsy groups but you'll find non-gypsies do exactly that to the Gypsy/Travelleing peoples.Uthican (talk) 15:28, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

I propose a new section

Due to large Romani migration in EU from Romania to beg or make criminal deeds(not all Romani!!!), EU citizens are mislead by some right wing Hungarians activists and by the name they took, to be considered one and the same with Romanians. I also hear the insane thing in a UK tabloid that Romania name come from Romani people. Also the EU country's with large right movements as Dutch, France, UK, Italy are very hard on the gypsy and Romania, forghething that they decimate the gypsy in middle ages. Now they ask Romania to integrate a nation who migrated for 1000 years, and they make them a BIG problem ,instead to apply the law as for the other criminals. What Romania should do, force them to learn in school, bring them in camps like in 1940, or decimate them and hang them like in West Europe in middle ages? Now for the right information of the readers we must have a sections with difference betwen romans/romanians/romani. I ask this section to be added, mostly for gypsy sake, the romanians are very sick of this confusion and the society shows messages with " death to the gypsy". Now this messages start to flow when some idiots from France and UK started to name Romanians gypsy and other names. The issue is more complicated, because we are named racist by EU because we name gypsy ,rromi, rroma, rromani, with 2 r . Majority of those who accuse Romania not know that in Romanian language, "romani" means Ancient Romans and "Roma" means Rome, so that's why we put 2 r. And what nations wants to be confused?

I propose a new section

Due to large Romani migration in EU from Romania to beg or make criminal deeds(not all Romani!!!), EU citizens are mislead by some right wing Hungarians activists and by the name they took, to be considered one and the same with Romanians. I also hear the insane thing in a UK tabloid that Romania name come from Romani people. Also the EU country's with large right movements as Dutch, France, UK, Italy are very hard on the gypsy and Romania, forghething that they decimate the gypsy in middle ages. Now they ask Romania to integrate a nation who migrated for 1000 years, and they make them a BIG problem ,instead to apply the law as for the other criminals. What Romania should do, force them to learn in school, bring them in camps like in 1940, or decimate them and hang them like in West Europe in middle ages? Now for the right information of the readers we must have a sections with difference betwen romans/romanians/romani. I ask this section to be added, mostly for gypsy sake, the romanians are very sick of this confusion and the society shows messages with " death to the gypsy". Now this messages start to flow when some idiots from France and UK started to name Romanians gypsy and other names. The issue is more complicated, because we are named racist by EU because we name gypsy ,rromi, rroma, rromani, with 2 r . Majority of those who accuse Romania not know that in Romanian language, "romani" means Ancient Romans and "Roma" means Rome, so that's why we put 2 r. And what nations wants to be confused? Vasile iuga (talk) 13:20, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

It seems like you want to add something about alternate spellings? If so, you should probably find some reliable sources for making these claims. Also see WP:REFB for a tutorial on citing sources. – FenixFeather ^{(talk)(Contribs)} 14:36, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Term usage: Word: often

I am opening this section to discuss the validity of removing the term OFTEN from a key sentence in the article. Here is the section is derives within the article.

This exonym is sometimes written with capital letter, to show that it designates an ethnic group.[49] The term 'gypsy' appears when international research programmes, documents and policies on the community are referred to.[citation needed] However, the word is often considered derogatory because of its negative and stereotypical associations.[37][38][39][40][41][42][50]

The word is highlighted in bold. This term of often and words very similar in meaning are used in multiple cited sources on the page. Removing the term often changes the meaning of the sentence, and it also takes the sentence out of context alignment with cited sources. One such source is reference number 50, Roma Report. In this report, often is specifically used in section 2.2.9 Quoting from the article to illustrate. The term Often and words that reference the same meaning are highlighted for ease.

This report uses the term Roma although the term 'Gypsy' appears when international research programmes, documents and policies on the community are referred to. However, as a term ‘Gypsy' is considered derogatory by many members of the Roma community because of negative and stereotypical associations with the term. by Louise Lesovitch

This passage was also taken from the same cited source:

2.2.9 The Roma are frequently referred to as Gypsies by non-Roma majority societies. Although some Roma use the term Gypsy, it is generally considered incorrect (and often derogatory) for non-Roma people (known as Gadje or Gazho (plural) by Roma)28 to use the word Gypsy when referring to someone from the Roma community. The Roma language is known as Romani or Romanes. ‘There is no Romani word for ‘gypsy’. Roma means, literally, ‘people’.29 The term Roma is the plural of Rom, which means an adult member, man or people. Romni refers to female members of Roma groups and the wider female Roma community.

This is just one source. I have read 4 sources cited on this page and the Wikipedia page for Gypsy and Gipsy that carry similar wording suggesting that most will find it offensive, but not all. It cannot be a proven fact that all Romani people are offended by the term 'gypsy' unless a perfect vote is cast by each and every one of them stating it is offensive. Then the removal of the word often would be valid. Kevintampa5 (talk) 05:14, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

The uses of 'Gypsy' with capital 'G' is not at issue. This has already been brought to the attention of the above editor, and apparently accepted. The addition of the qualifying weasel-word 'often' with 'gypsy', small 'g', is not supported by the references that directly address this question. The full preceding discussion is at User talk:Kevintampa5#Romani people. RashersTierney (talk) 08:22, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Religion

It says in the article: "Most Roma people in Serbia are Muslim, but the Gurbeti community, as it has been designated, are Christian." In the supplied reference it states: "Today most of the Gypsies in this region of southeastern Serbia (the regions of Niš and Vranje) are Muslims" not that most of them in whole country are. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.87.172.42 (talk) 21:54, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

NPOV Dispute

This article is heavily biased in favor of the politically correct view of the Romani people as a "poor persecuted ethnic group" without giving any information that might seem unfavorable to them. There is absolutely no treatment of the lifestlyle and the economic activities that many Romani communities engage in and which are considered as objectionable by the communities surrounding them. In particular, the association of Romani people with petty crime is treated as a "stereotype", while there is strong evidence that many Romani communities had (and still have) a history of engaging in certain specialized non-legal activities. It would be more accurate, and also more interesting from an ethnological point of view, to give some information about Romani communities economic foundations, which usually involves a blend of legal and non-legal activities. A lot of evidence exist that point to the fact that most Romani groups engage in a kind of "self regulated" form of crime in which they allow themselves to perform certain minor illegal activities while avoiding more serious offences in order to avoid provoking extreme backlash from the host community. I believe it would be fair to quote such evidence. For example: this BBC story or this article, this book, etc. Fi11222 (talk) 06:03, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Haven't looked at this in depth, just responding to your action based on general knowledge/maturity. The standard will be the treatment of other groups that have been persecuted, regarded negatively, jews, dalits, etc. The criminal element in this case is special but the overall standard of objectivity and uniform practices should resolve this. 108.183.102.223 (talk) 11:40, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Finding a negative news article from 5 years ago, as in the first example, and doing a search in Google Books with the search terms 'Romani theft culture' as in the third are not reflective of NPOV. Asking why an article to which, as far as I can see you haven't previously contributed to any great extent, isn't reflective of this attitude is frankly ridiculous and is in fact exemplary of POV. RashersTierney (talk) 06:22, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Categories

The category Indian Diaspora was added by an IP, then removed by RashersTierney because the article Indian diaspora redirects and is primarily about persons of Indian origin and ethnic Indians which, as RT said, is not applicable. I had previously accepted the pending change which added the category because the target article contains two paragraphs about the Romani and their origin. I'm not wedded to the idea, but it seems to me that the category is not altogether inappropriate as a means of aiding navigation around WP. Comment? Cheers, Lindsay^Hello 09:00, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

That is a fair reflection of recent edits. RashersTierney (talk) 22:04, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Possibly i'm overly thick, but which is the antecedent for your that ~ the removal of the category or putting it back? Cheers, Lindsay^Hello 21:23, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Diaspora implies a personal connection to a modern nation state which in this case is not applicable and is certainly not 'value neutral'. RashersTierney (talk) 23:00, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Exonyms in lead

I have removed the 12 non-English European exonyms for Roma from the lead. Their inclusion is unwarranted because the lead is supposed to summarize the article, not provide in-depth detail (see WP:LEAD). Moreover, there is an article already dedicated to the names used for Roma, found at Names of the Romani people, which is already linked as {{Main}} in Romani people#Name. This article is about the Romani people, not the etymology of exonyms (see WP:COATRACK). EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 01:16, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Table and picture of Romani population are wrong and misleading

The table regarding Romani population, next to "Contemporary issues" has many flaws. 1. First of all, it is unclear what the percentages represent. They are supposed to represent percentages of the total Roma population in Europe, divided by country, but without an accurate description it may seem like it's how many Roma there are in each country (out of the total population of those countries). 2. The web links are misleading. The table points to Reference #147 - "Roma on the rubbish dump". CIA World Factbook. There are two links there, one to an article in a British newspaper about a Roma community in Romania, and another one to the wiki article about the CIA Factbook. None of those say anything about the Roma population in Europe, but Reference #147 makes it look like the info in the table is verified/vouched for by the CIA. 3. The numbers are wrong. The percentages in the table seem to nave been taken from Reference #148 - The (now deleted) page of a European Roma meeting in preparation. There is no indication that meeting ever took place, or that the figures presented there were legit. The numbers on that web page come from various sources, from national census - to private estimates and those made by NGOs, and some of those are not entirely reliable. The final numbers are "average estimates" and have nothing to do with official, verified sources, such as the census. For example, for Romania, the census says 600.000 Roma, while estimates vary from 1,2 to 2,5 million. The "average estimate" therefore climbs up to 1,8 million - 300% the official figure. For the Russian Federation, the "average estimate" is 395% the official number. This is also the basis on which the picture under the table was generated. The explanation under that picture is also misleading. It states that the numbers are the "average estimates of the European Council" when in fact they are an average of different estimates made by other entities. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Razvan mod (talk • contribs) 10:50, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Ref #148 is the Council of Europe. Are you suggesting their figures are 'biased'? RashersTierney (talk) 23:00, 6 August 2014 (UTC)