ours is just a little sorrow: A Brief History —
Gypsy is the name given to Roma since they appeared in Europe in the thirteenth century, refugees from the widespread warfare that had overtaken their native India as part of the expansion of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. Europeans took these newcomers from the East for…
I still use gypsy to describe my heritage because when I say, “Roma” people look at me like I am making it up. I haven’t found a way around qualifying roma with gypsy and I would really really like to because I feel like my ancestors are crying/ rolling over in their graves. D:
Yeah I dunno, maybe you could say to those people, “Roma is the better word for it because ‘gypsy’ is inaccurate”. Most people aren’t even aware that it’s kind of a gross word to use though.
There was this one post I read where someone wasn’t really so much offended by the word because of its incendiary derogatory nature (like the n word for example) but because people use it to lump together Romani and the other ethnic groups, then made a weird homogenous racial stereotype. You could go for that angle I guess, if you’re patient enough haha.
But the people I was talking about referred to Romani as “Europe’s white trash”. I just side-eyed them so hard.
UCLA serves a breakfast sandwich at all of it’s counter service breakfast locations called the “Gypsy Sandwich.” (It’s like, an Egg McMuffin with Sausage. wtf.) I don’t know if I should complain because I am not Roma, but it makes me sad every time I see it.
