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Do most brits confuse romanians with roma/romani?

There seems to be a lot of confusion between romanians and roma gypsies in Western Europe but especially the UK. These are 2 very different groups, racially and culturally.


Romanians are a nation and ethnic group native to Romania that share a common Romanian culture, ancestry, and speak the Romanian language as a mother tongue



The Romani people, also referred to depending on the sub-group as Roma, Sinti, Kale, Romani or Gypsies, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, who live primarily in Europe. They originated in the region of northwestern India and now Pakistan and left sometime between the 6th and 11th century, brought by Muslims to Europe as slaves and settled in Europe, Turkey and North Africa via Iran


The south asian looking people you see sleeping in the park next to you, lurking around your cash machine or selling ''Big Issue'' are roma/romani. The european looking ones creating some of the best software in the world and making up 10% of the IMO Hall of Fame are romanians.
Reply 1
Avatar for EULawguy
EULawguy
8
Yeah but that happens in most countries. Many problematic gypsies have Romanian nationality and as they are addressed as Romani, people think that all Romanians are gypsies.
Yeah but you can tell they look difference. Most Romani gypsies don't look Indian though. I live in very Asian area and you can tell I massive difference in features. Indians have extremely dark skin compared to gypsies.

Most people don't understand the difference. To be honest I don't care. If your Romani or Romanian. As long as your respectful and a nice person then that's all that matters.
Reply 3
Avatar for DanielDr
DanielDr
OP
Original post by EULawguy
Yeah but that happens in most countries. Many problematic gypsies have Romanian nationality and as they are addressed as Romani, people think that all Romanians are gypsies.


All the east-euro countries know the difference because they've had issues with the roma community not being willing or able to adapt for a long time. And from what I've read ans experienced other countries in the West are much better informed because the media over there isn't so PC and does identity them as a different people. I think a lot of the confusion is created by the UK media because they don't want to single them out as an non-white population therefore appear racist (when race isn't the issue at all here, it's the culture). Even Daily Mail used to simply call them romanians in every article they were bashing them. Although I have noticed in the last year or so that they are now being singled out as roma by the UK press, not sure what caused that change.
Reply 4
Avatar for Steezy
Steezy
15
No, I've always known the difference. But there are a lot of gypsies near where I live so I guess my area is a bit more educated on the matter.
Reply 5
Avatar for DanielDr
DanielDr
OP
Original post by Ambrosia_angel
Yeah but you can tell they look difference. Most Romani gypsies don't look Indian though. I live in very Asian area and you can tell I massive difference in features. Indians have extremely dark skin compared to gypsies.

Most people don't understand the difference. To be honest I don't care. If your Romani or Romanian. As long as your respectful and a nice person then that's all that matters.


Well, yeah , they don't look exactly inidan but you can tell they have non-euro features similar to south asians, even though their skin is lighter because of living in a different climate for many generations and mixing with local euros.
But most of the Romani have Romanian passports. So the fact that Romanians can now come here en masse means that the Romani can do so as well, so the problem still persists.
Most people know the difference, the government is just deliberately ignorant and happy to create animosity towards all Romanians and Bulgarians for the sake of a minority they daren't address.
Original post by tengentoppa
But most of the Romani have Romanian passports. So the fact that Romanians can now come here en masse means that the Romani can do so as well, so the problem still persists.


Well, they seem to have settled more in Italy, because of the whole historic Romanian/Romani/Romans/Rome thing and have faced a lot of negative media and persecution over there (Berlusconi proposed at one point fingerprinting all Romani children).
Reply 9
Avatar for EULawguy
EULawguy
8
The main problem about Romani is that the majority of the tribe actively refuses itself to integrate in Western societies for the sake of keeping their 'culture' which I'm sorry to say but most of the time it looks like they just want to party and not doing jack ****. The worst thing is that they drag their children into it so they sentence them to social exclusion. A lot of Romani don't even know how to write.
No.... most people I know can and do know the difference..... Plus we've kinda had our own Roma/Romani population in this country for hundred of years anyway :wink: My great grandmother was much more recent as she was a Roma from Romania who came over during the war due to what the Germans were doing. She was actually one of the only member's of her family to actually survive.

Obviously if they are Roma's from Romania then people "may" get confused, but generally people will know that a Romanian is not necessarily a Roma and a Roma is not necessarily a Romanian, although the largest population of Roma do come from the same country.
Original post by DanielDr
Well, yeah , they don't look exactly inidan but you can tell they have non-euro features similar to south asians, even though their skin is lighter because of living in a different climate for many generations and mixing with local euros.


Depends which Roma you talking about, british roma tend to have a slightly larger build than british folk and darker hair, that's about it.

Romanian Roma tend to look similar to what you described.
Reply 12
Avatar for DanielDr
DanielDr
OP
Original post by DanB1991
Depends which Roma you talking about, british roma tend to have a slightly larger build than british folk and darker hair, that's about it.

Romanian Roma tend to look similar to what you described.


Romanian ones.
Original post by DanielDr
Romanian ones.


Well they are the same ethnic group :P

Not sure whether they look more Indian due to the hotter weather and the long periods of time they spend outside.

Either way makes sense seeing they most likely come from an Indian decent.
I don't, and I'm aware of the difference. I can't make a general statement, as it would be based entirely on anecdotal evidence.
Original post by DanielDr
There seems to be a lot of confusion between romanians and roma gypsies in Western Europe but especially the UK. These are 2 very different groups, racially and culturally.

...

The south asian looking people you see sleeping in the park next to you, lurking around your cash machine or selling ''Big Issue'' are roma/romani. The european looking ones creating some of the best software in the world and making up 10% of the IMO Hall of Fame are romanians.


Prejudice detected.

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