"He lives right here! The king of the Gypsies lives right here!"
The middle-aged woman's boyfriend and I can't keep from laughing as we pass through a nondescript residential intersection in outer Northeast. The thought of the king of the Gypsies living in a semi-suburban ranch home, lurking behind the drawn curtains and managing his covert empire of colorfully dressed fortune tellers and pickpockets, is a bit much. I express my amazement that he lives in Portland.
"Well, I don't think he's the king of all of the Gypsies in the world, just the ones around here," she says, and this sets us back to laughing.
"I'm completely serious!" she exclaims. The Gypsies, apparently, are no joke. Despite what we may think, she explains to us that real Gypsies aren't nomadic livestock thieves, but in fact have been living in her neighborhood for decades. And they're very bad neighbors.
"When I was a little girl, I was twirling my baton over at my friend's driveway, and the Gypsies next door ran out, stole my baton, and started beating me with it! And when they go to Safeway, they just yell at each other all the time! It's the adults making a distraction so that the kids can steal as much as possible! Their whole family structure revolves around who can lie, cheat and steal the best," she explains.
"Sounds like they'd make good cab drivers," I respond.
We all laugh.
Americans "bad neighbors" and refer to them as a population whose "whole family structure revolves around who can lie, cheat and steal the best" on the basis of one uneducated family? There are Romani Americans who are professors, lawyers and politicians. You have insulted all of us.
The Hon. Ian F. Hancock
Director, The Romani Archives and Documentation Center
Nowlin Regents' Professor of Liberal Arts
The University of Texas at Austin
Romani Representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council and to UNICEF
Member, International Romani Parliament
I have many Romani friends throughout Europe, who are some of the smartest, most accomplished people I know. When I moved abroad, they were the first to show me around Budapest. They were the most hospitable and kindest people I met, and also had an amazing amount of integrity. Maybe these are the types of stories you should publish, instead of the trash that is written above.
If you'd really like some more info on Roma, I recommend speaking with Professor Hancock, or perhaps visiting the sites below:
European Roma Rights Center www.errc.org
RomNews Network http://romnews.com/community/index.php
I also didn't realize that a 300-word column in the back of the classifieds was usually the prime example of good journalism. Shame on you, NC3, for not holding yourself to this standard.