Thursday, February 08, 2018

Romani, traditional tribes and assimilation

I ran across an article where the SJW were upset that a "white" woman was cast as Esmerelda in the play Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Presumably they think gypsies are black.

However, a quick google shows that they are not "egyptian" (where the name Gypsy derives) but from northwestern India, a fact confirmed by both DNA and linguistic evidence.

the Wikipedia article mentions lots of "genocidal" stuff, but aside from the Nazis, who saw them as "untermensch" along with the Jews and Slavs, much of the "persecution" can be seen as a reaction to travelers who stole a lot of stuff in a time when poverty meant theft of food or animals or money could lead to death or starvation of the victims, and in days when prisons were few and justice was rare, it was easier just to kill everyone who threatened the wellbeing of the community.

No, I am not defending this, any more than I am defending the "Extrajudicial killing" by the cops or NPA here. I am, however, explaining what happens when "rule of law" is weak and there is no justice for ordinary folks.

A lot of the "persecution" seems to be countries trying to assimilate these folks who live in severe poverty at the margin of society and often a source of petty crimes against the community. Again, a lot of moderns get their knickers in a knot about "destroying" a culture, but then one asks: do you prefer malnutrition, a high maternal child mortality, no education, a culture who disdains working hard at a job, and a population who thinks stealing from strangers is okay? And to complicate things: Some itinerant groups are blamed for the drug problems.

How do you reeducate people to assimilate into modernity? And should you? And will education destroy their traditional culture?

Again, the same question can be asked of lots of other groups, mainly aboriginal groups, but also entire countries like Tibet (which is being modernized by China) or places in Africa, where colonial powers intervened. The traditional life has a lot of good things, and the change from traditional to modern ways is fraught with danger of complete assimilation and despair, but do you really want to work hard from dawn to dusk like women in traditional societies?

in checking out the Romani, I found a lot of other "iternerant" travelers were wandering around Europe.


here in the southern Philippines, we have the "sea gypsies", who are slowly being pushed out of their traditional ways, and the Aeta, the original dwellers here who have similar problems with losing their traditional lands and being pressured into assimilation.

we saw a lot of Aeta begging after Mt Pinatubo erupted, and they still migrate to town begging during fiestas.

Rappler article on their plight:

For the Pinatubo Aetas, the 1991 volcanic eruption that killed more than 600 people only made their plight worse.Deprived of their farms as well as game to hunt, about 35,000 Aetas moved to shelters clustered close to the main towns, according to government data.Many never left, with families reduced to begging on the roadsides."They also started to adopt the values of the lowlanders, they buy junk food, eat all these processed food and acquire the illnesses of lowlanders like high blood pressure and diabetes," Zayas said.Getting formal titles to their ancestral lands is not enough and Aetas must learn new skills by going to school, said Adaci of the ancestral domains office."If they embrace the mainstream they should have more stability, but that means they will no longer be able to roam," he added.

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