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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/30/2015 2:08 PM, John Sweeney via
Callers wrote:<br>
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<blockquote
cite="mid:00a301d11357$2465aa20$6d30fe60$@contrafusion.co.uk"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Pleas could you clarify how you intend to pronounce "gyre"?
I have been saying "gyre" with a hard "g" as in "give" or "gimble".
But if it is related to "gyrate" then maybe people are using a soft "g" and
making it sound like "jire".
Which do you use? Thanks.
By the way, I am still having major problems with understanding why the word
needs to be changed. "Gypsy" is not inherently bad.
Just Google, say, "gypsy pope" and you will find countless articles in
countless papers and other media (including Vatican Radio) referring to
"gypsies". Are they and the pope all racist? And that is just one example.</pre>
</blockquote>
Here's an article from 2003 about a guy who was at the time the
official international ambassador of the Romani people to the United
Nations, which seems pretty close to being an official spokesperson.<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:00a301d11357$2465aa20$6d30fe60$@contrafusion.co.uk"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">
</pre>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.utexas.edu/features/archive/2003/romani.html">http://www.utexas.edu/features/archive/2003/romani.html</a><br>
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QUOTE:<br>
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<h1 style="font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold;
color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"><img name=""
src="cid:part3.03030206.09030608@slac.stanford.edu"
alt="What's in a Name?: Professor takes on roles
of Romani activist and spokesperson to improve
plight of his ethnic group" height="100"
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<p>Ian Hancock is not a gypsy. He is a Romani. The
difference in nomenclature is so important that
Hancock, a professor of English, linguistics and
Asian studies at The University of Texas at Austin
since 1972, has devoted most of his adult life to
dispelling ignorance about the ethnic group into
which he was born.</p>
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<td bgcolor="black"><img
src="cid:part4.08070508.09080208@slac.stanford.edu"
alt="Romanticized,
fictional representation
of 'gypsies' from cover
of song book" border="0"
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<p>Romanticized, fictional representations
of “gypsies” leave the general public
with little accurate information about
Romanies.</p>
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<p>“Most people don’t know that appending the name
‘gypsy’ to my people is both wrong and
pejorative,” says Hancock, the official ambassador
to the United Nations and UNICEF for the world’s
15 million Romanies and the only Romani to have
been appointed to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Council. “‘Gypsy’ is simply a shortened form of
Egyptian—that’s what many outsiders thought
Romanies were. Using a little ‘g’ in ‘gypsy’ also
compounds the problem because that indicates that
as a common noun it’s a lifestyle choice and not
that we’re an actual ethnic group.</p>
<p>“Most people don’t even have a minimal education
about Romanies. They don’t know that seventy
percent of the Romani population of Nazi-occupied
Europe were murdered during the Holocaust. Or that
we’re the largest ethnic minority in Europe but
have no political strength, military strength,
economic strength or a territory. Or, for that
matter, that there are over one million Romani
Americans.”</p>
<p>Educating the public about Romani history and
culture has been a colossal task for Hancock
because most individuals do, unfortunately, have a
graphic mental image of the “typical gypsy,” but
they have formed their ideas from all the wrong
information.</p>
<p>According to Hancock, most people are only
familiar with the surfeit of romantic fairytale
myths that surround the diverse collection of
individuals erroneously termed “gypsies.”</p>
<p>Novels, poems, plays, films and songs over the
past several centuries have portrayed ‘gypsies’ as
free-spirited, promiscuous, indigent criminals who
dance around campfires and are fortunetellers,
thieves and liars. ‘Gypsies’ are carefree and
enjoy an almost childlike innocence and release
from duty. ‘Gypsies’ practice witchcraft, steal
babies in the dead of night and are filthy and
unkempt, so the stories say.</p>
<p>“This ridiculous fictional image has taken on a
life of its own,” says Hancock. “The cliché
description of Romanies is so deeply rooted that
it may never totally be eradicated. There are
countless representations in films and books of
Italians as Mafia members, but no one actually
believes that all Italians are Mafia members. That
is not true for my people.”</p>
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<br>
So he doesn't like cap-g Gypsy because that implies its an ethnic
group and his ethnic group is called "Romani", and he doesn't like
small-g gypsy because that implies that it's a lifestyle choice,
etc. (The article goes on to discuss horrific oppression of Romani
people in Europe, etc.)<br>
<br>
I think this bolsters the idea that some 'gypsies' find the use of
the word 'gypsy' offensive and problematic.<br>
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<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:00a301d11357$2465aa20$6d30fe60$@contrafusion.co.uk"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">
It is only racist if you use tone or context to make it so. But that can
apply to just about any word.
And in a dance environment it is definitely not racist.</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
I don't think we can expect people to look into our hearts and tell
that we're not being racist when we use a term for their people that
they find offensive. (It's problematic. I might want to have a
discussion about a genre of music popular in the late 1800s and
early 1900s, usually written by white songwriters but in which the
speaker is black; they called these "coon songs". If you want to
have an academic discussion - what are the themes, what was the
demand for them, was the demand higher in the South than the North,
who performed them, all of which are interesting questions - can you
call them "coon songs" and expect black people to find that
completely inoffensive just because you're using the correct
historical name, which was at the time not intended to be any more
offensive than any other way of referring to black people in common
currency except perhaps "Negro" - because YOU know you're not being
racist? )<br>
<br>
<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:00a301d11357$2465aa20$6d30fe60$@contrafusion.co.uk"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">
If anyone ever asks me (and I doubt it will ever happen) I will tell them
that we call people who travel to dances "dance gypsies", just using the
word to mean someone who travels; the move likewise is just a move where you
travel around each other. No deep meaning!
</pre>
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Everybody's gotta make their own call on this. You haven't
convinced me; I doubt I'll convince you.<br>
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-- Alan<br>
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