I am working on a shared document, if only because it takes a lot of time and work to educate people and I'd like a resource with lots of links that people can easily share. If you'd like to positively contribute, please email me directly contraron at gmail dot com.
It's the 21st century. We're smart people who love history, right?
"G*psy" has its etymology back to mistaking olive-skinned peoples from India and Persia for Egyptians. It's _always_ been a racial term, and it's always been a slang that was put on Romany. While some groups have reclaimed the term, this is not the majority, and, like f*ggot to LGBTQ people, or the N word to Africans and African Americans, the word simply isn't white people's word, even if someone has "given you permission" to use it.
When Cecil Sharp introduced it, so far research I've seen shows he didn't use "gip" it in the racial sense. It was a Morris dance word that had no roots in Romance languages. Sometime after in the 20th century, probably because of homonym confusion, other callers and dancers assumed it was "g*psy".
Romancing nomadicism:
So, y'all have Jewish friends, right?
You all know the diaspora, and thousands of years of nomadicism by Jews was _forced_, right?
You know that it was forced because of racism and anti-Semitism, and Jews have suffered greatly, culminating in the Holocaust, right?
It's nearly identical to Romany oppression. Their nomadicism has been forced. They have the same myths, same racist stereotypes of baby stealing and dark magic. They've been denied citizenship and forced to relocate century after century in Europe. They suffered over a million deaths in the Holocaust.
Why, then, would we romanticize their forced nomadicism?
In dance,
Ron Blechner
Hey Jeff,
Not **us** non-roma folk, thank you. My family on my mother's side were a part of the culture and none of us appreciate the folks telling us not to worry and that we don't need to be offended.
Isaav
But Isaac… isn’t that what people on BOTH sides of the issue are doing? There are VERY few Roma in the contra community, and we’ve heard from very few overall on this issue. Mostly it’s just us non-Roma folk arguing amongst ourselves about what WE perceive how a majority of the Roma people feel about this. And that does apply to people who are both for and against using the term “gypsy” to describe a contradance move. Aren’t we ALL saying what is right or wrong for people who are from another heritage?
And now I am bowing out of this controversy as it seems never-ending and very divisive.
Jeff
> On Oct 8, 2019, at 5:57 AM, Isaac Banner via Callers <callers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:
>
> Hey John,
>
> If the N word was also a move that somehow wasn't connected to the slur, you wouldn't dare argue that it's different or that you should get to call it, so drop the argument please. Just because you don't think I should be offended about the word and how it reflects on my heritage doesn't mean you get to dictate whether I actually am. I would ask you not to decide for others how they ought to experience and respect their racial identity, thanks.
>
> Isaac
>
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