Roma Community
Posted Wednesday, June 24, 2009 by Karis Morrall
For most Americans, the word ‘Gypsy’ brings to mind a story-book character. Dressed in bright, flowing clothes with elaborate jewelry, the American idea of a Gypsy is a fantasy. In Romania there’s an entire population of people known as gypsies, though their proper name is Roma. It’s a population that has suffered from hundreds of years of discrimination in Romania, and although the government was supposed to make life better for them, the Roma say they have yet to see a change.
Shaina Humphries has the story.
Revealing Romania - Roma Community from UI-7 on Vimeo.
Filed in:
Page 1 of 1 pages
Dear reporters and readers,
My name is Delia. I am a Romanian student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I would like to express my deep disappointment regarding the posted video and text reportage about Romania. I believe that it provides biased information about Romania and its people. For example, one of the above clips show that gypsies are discriminated by Romanians. It is totally not true!
Why doesn’t the reporter show what Romanians or others have tried to do for gypsies?
I’m from a small city on the north side of Romania. Close to the city there was a small population of gypsies living in tents and basically outside. After our 1989 revolution against the communism many Europeans thought (as you do right now) that we are not doing anything to help them. So a group of Dutch volunteers came and worked for a whole summer to build houses for gypsies. Everybody was happy: the Dutch that they helped the gypsies, Romanians because we thought that MAYBE the gypsies would stop stealing, and the gypsies because they had houses. However, it did not last long! In a couple of months the houses were ruined: the gypsies burned all the materials that could be burned and then they sold the bricks piece by piece. Today there are no houses. Is it our fault???
That’s how they are. The majority of them steals, destroys, and continue their style of living. I know a few gypsies that went to school and that are respected people in the society. But most of them are still thieves.
They come and steal cherries and apples from my parents’ garden. Whenever my mom nicely asks them not to break the branches off the trees (they can have the fruits), they start cursing at her and threaten to hit her.
There are many other videos that show information about Romania in a biased manner. Those implied that there is graffiti everywhere… Exactly where? In the bad areas of the cities? Isn’t it like that everywhere? I do not remember to have seen any graffiti in my city. Also, videos show that the schools have a different entrance used by professors. Yes, it’s true. This is a heritage carried over from the communism era. However, this information is portrayed as something negative towards us.
Again, I’m deeply disappointed and my heart is crying.
Romania is my country and I’m proud of it!
Delia
Posted by Delia on Friday, July 10, 2009 at 07:28 AM