[Callers] Gypsy Synopsis

Fri Oct 30 15:36:09 PDT 2015

On 10/30/2015 2:08 PM, John Sweeney via Callers wrote:
> 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.
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.
http://www.utexas.edu/features/archive/2003/romani.html

QUOTE:

  What's in a Name?: Professor takes on roles of Romani activist and
  spokesperson to improve plight of his ethnic group

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.

Romanticized, fictional representation of 'gypsies' from cover of song book

Romanticized, fictional representations of “gypsies” leave the general 
public with little accurate information about Romanies.

“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.

“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.”

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.

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.”

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.

“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.”

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.)

I think this bolsters the idea that some 'gypsies' find the use of the 
word 'gypsy' offensive and problematic.

> 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.

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? )

> 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!
>

Everybody's gotta make their own call on this.    You haven't convinced 
me; I doubt I'll convince you.

-- Alan

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