![]() The transition came easier for better off Gypsies like the respected musician class. The self-hatred phenomena began appearing throughout the Gypsy camp, spreading like a virus as members of the clan began disguising their ancestry in an effort to assimilate. Their dignity was taking a beating and stirring new feeling of either disdain of the oppressor or idolization, which shows in the brewing tensions between field slaves and the better connected house servants, the so-called “Uncle Tom,” a term still thrown around today to denigrate “too much” assimilation. While film and literature were doing their magic by affecting the opinions of people who may never even have met a Black man or brown skinned Gypsy, these negatives were also reaching the bottom ranks and subtly stigmatizing the slaves into accepting a subservient role in society. Meanwhile, the Gypsies were being portrayed as flirtatious females, petty thieves, kidnappers of white babies, fortunetellers and pickpockets as portrayed in Caravaggio’s famous painting, “The Fortune Teller,” where the pretty Gypsy girl reading a young man’s palm slyly removes his ring. It is the slavery issue that begins the African American-Roma association and molds many of the cultural similarities that follow. It starts with the propaganda around the plantation labeling the slaves as “soulless” “talking animals,” helping to justify the lucrative trade against an increasing religious and political conscience declaring “all men are created equal.” These derogatory images went viral, creeping into popular literature, stereotyping the African American as a buffoon or the feared “black brute.” The Gypsy slaves – like the African slaves a few years later – were sold on the block to the highest bidder. He brought back nearly 12,000 Gypsy slaves from campaigns in Bulgaria during his reign in the 15th century. ![]() But even Dracula, called the Impaler, who usually chose staking his prisoners, preferred Gypsies with their heads on. In the East European country of Romania, land of iron-fisted ruler Prince Vlad Tepes, aka Dracula, the “undesirable” Gypsies were being systematically rounded up and enslaved. Gypsy history is a series of expulsions, beginning with an exodus out of India, across Persia, into the Balkans ‘til they were swept to the edge of the European continent, over gangplanks, onto ships sending them to the Americas. ((“The Roots of Anti Gypsyism: to the Holocaust and After,” Center of Romani Archives and Documentation, 1997)) Serbia, tsingani in Greece, tsigani in Bulgaria, tsyganski in Russia and cygan in Poland.)), the East-European equivalent of Gypsy, “which was a synonym for ‘slave’ during the five and a half centuries of Gypsy slavery in that country (Romania), is as offensive for Romas as the word ‘nigger’ is for African Americans,” writes Roma scholar Ian Hancock. Tsigan ((East European terms for Gypsy – all following the tsigan root – include tsigan in Romania, cigany in Hungary, cigani in ((Alan Parker,ĭirector, “The Commitments,” 1991)) But the real “niggers” of Europe aren’t the Irish that mark belongs to the detested Gypsies. I’m Black an’ I’m proud,” echoes a memorable quote of ‘90s cinema. “The Irish are the niggers of Europe … Say it loud.
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