later, ask me what I think about keen little gadgets in the shape of dismembered women. (Guess.)

[brown_betty]

So the other night, more or less by accident, kphoebe and I ended up watching Criminal Minds together. I had read the one sentence TV guide blurb, but honestly I had more or less forgotten about that by the time I started watching. Twenty minutes twenty three seconds later, (by my chat log) we were on AIM together boggling at the bafflingly insensitive

Comments

[ratcreature]

It's nice to hear that I'm not alone in my horror

[brown_betty]

I must have skipped what you posted about it because I was worried about spoilers. You're right that it doesn't make sense w/ the Roma, especially because its my understanding that its a very tight knit community with a lot of extended family and such.

And yes, exactly! What about the girls? Do they kidnap boy-children for them to marry? Leave them on doorsteps?

Really, this is a bit more like an X-Files episode than a CM ep.

[ratcreature]

Yeah my post is here

[brown_betty]

Yeah, there are Roma in North America, or at least, the US, I remember, from some research I once did for a Dick Grayson story I never wrote, but I honestly couldn't say I'm aware of ever having met one, or having seen one. And then this!

[ratcreature]

I honestly couldn't say I'm aware of ever having met one, or having seen one.

Well, outside of contexts like activism or folk performances and the like it also would be hard to tell? I mean, it's the same problem as with statistics when groups don't have separate nationalities, and ethnicity either isn't asked or people are with good reason suspicious to be cataloged that way, especially as miniority. And it's not like people go around announcing they are such-and-such in casual encounters.

[brown_betty]

Right, but I do meet people outside of casual encounters, and stuff, and I have never had anyone announce any kind of Romani background. Like, for contrast, I am certainly aware of having met many Jewish people, in that they made reference to that background themselves in the course of our acquaintance. So in an anecdata kind of way, I'm comfortable guessing there are fewer Romani than Jews in my general area.

bibbledy babbledy bleep

[wax_jism]

IIRC there are very few Roma in the US, and they probably don't wear traditional dress. In Finland they are easy to spot because the community is still traditional and active, and wealthy enough to be able to afford the (very expensive) big traditional dresses. I'm not 100% wrt how far the legislation has come, but I know there's an official position called the Roma Affairs Ombudsman or something to that effect, and a lot of discrimination cases are going to court and bringing convictions. At the same time, people at large think nothing of bleating horrific racist shit about them all the time, referring to them by the Finnish equivalent of 'gypsy' -- which is actually more like 'darkie', so that's fun for all. In general, Finns have far more specific prejudices against Roma than against people of African or Middle Eastern descent. They've been here a long time, and kept their culture from disappearing into the majority--obviously they are here to eat our babies, basically.