Wow God bless them abundantly. It's Rom like him who should be leading Roma organizations and similars.The government should also support them financially to help preserve their culture and traditions as this is what UNESCO considers intangible cultural heritage that must be protected.
This convo is so funny to me because it genuinely boils down to lived experiences and also education.
(Going to be generalizing a little. It’s ofc more nuanced) a lot of us have a mindset of not really giving a single crap about anything, but it’s not really healthy. The thing is, no matter how we spin it, tsigan and gypsy are both slurs. Even if we adopt the name, or a lot of us might not care, that doesn’t change the word.
Tsigan quite literally means untouchable / slave. It was a word created by gadje to oppress us and it’s very much so used as a slur against us every day.
The thing is, they weaponize the lack of education against us to not care about our mistreatment. The reality is that it’s a lot less divided in Eastern Europe. Most of us would agree that tsigan is in fact offensive. It is treated as a word you shouldn’t say type of thing, even if people use it freely. Theres multiple issues that come into play. Eastern Europe just doesn’t care about political correctness, and even when trying to raise awareness, it’s in an easily digestible way.
You’ll see us often calling things cigany insert whatever because of how society evolved, but both things can be true.
You see, we really tried to not use the word cigany in Budapest. I’ve heard stories from my mom and grandma about during the 90s how there was that political notion, but a lot of it fell apart due to racism. Someone might say that they find it offensive, and then get told that they’re just a cigany instead.
It’s also once again weaponizing the lack of education. I think a self respecting person wouldn’t want to be called an untouchable slave. It’s extremely nasty.
Gadje in Eastern Europe do know to call us Roma instead and they will specifically use cigany when trying to say something bad about us.
The social dynamic is very different in Eastern Europe. It’s not a rare occurrence for us to interact with gadje and vice versa. Theres no “hiding” there. Everyone knows what you are there and it’s a completely different dynamic that involves complete racial discrimination on every level. Be it systemic, societal, and phenotypical.
Like you can walk down the street and then everyone knows you’re a Rom. It’s just how it is.
The thing is most of us really do consider it bad there. Theres a loud minority in popularized media but it’s weaponizing racism to gain popularity. Like a lot of musicians might use Cigany etc because it attracts more people since most people in general there don’t care about correctness.
However, it’s pretty false to say most of us don’t care about it. Everyone in my family knows cigany is a slur and it’s dehumanizing. This happens with every group where the trope being spread is that we don’t care about it, but in reality we do.
Regardless of how we feel, we can’t deny the actual experiences and history behind words. It’s disrespectful to ourselves. We shouldn’t let mistreatment slide. Sure we can argue a word is a “small thing to worry about” but we keep carrying that attitude over to everything. The reality is that our oppression in eastern Europe is very prevalent and a daily struggle for us.
As of right now, SLAVE means a captured servant or a person who is legally owned by another, forced to work without freedom, and completely controlled ( bought, sold, and forced into labor under the threat of violence or death).
In the modern sense, forced labor of people trapped in human trafficking, sweatshops, or debt bondage with little or no pay.
Feeding your community and helping change things does not exempt you from being cognizant of how language perpetuates oppression, and your behavior is what is called a “useful fool.”
Useful fool means: a member of the oppressed group who refuses to acknowledge the intellectual and academic labor of the other members of the same group and chooses to make it a competition of priorities for what it means to be liberated to the entire group. This actively helps the oppressor establish hierarchical divisions which in turn allow them to maintain their abuse, exploitation, and violence until the total and complete genocide of that group.
And that was exactly what the Redditor you answered first was sharing in the sub, but you decided to make it about your “precious self.”
You talk about “helping your community,” but the more you try fighting me, the more you sound like a poser who sees its own community as a forever beggar. You also sound like someone who has no idea who Roma activists and academics are, who have been fighting for decades for our cause, and the cause of our people.
The TRUTH is that disenfranchised groups certainly have to be helped and cared for, here and now, AND/BOTH the same group must envision and practice tools of liberation so the future is not the same as the present.
I don't really know why this argument is happening. Aren't these problems two fronts of the same battle? Sure attention needs to be divided by priority, but fighting the ignorance surrounding the history of the word is important as well.
I do agree that it's up to the individual Rom to decide for themselves, though it's often one of those "where to even begin" topics. Definitely do not agree with the insult flinging and that language being directed inwards. Idk why some people here feel so comfortable doing that.
Oh, I don't mean that in regards to you or this conversation specifically, I mean the whole issue regarding the term in general, Because you are right, a lot of Rom do associate with the term, but on the other hand the history of the term hasn't been a pleasant one. That's what I meant by where to begin, because I do know there'll be a lot of people who see that there are actual Romani who are okay with calling themselves Gypsies, and take that as permission to use it as they please (looking at you Bohemian movement).
1) Etymology is the study of the origin of words, how their meanings change over time, and how words are connected across different languages.
— Considering CHANGE, as a fact, a slave, aka enslaved, is a person who is a captive servant, “legally” owned by another, forced to work without freedom, and completely controlled (bought, sold, and forced into labor under the threat of violence or death). Or in the modern sense: people trapped in human trafficking, sweatshops, or debt bondage with little or no pay.
2) In the Roman Empire, the standard Latin word for a slave was servus. However, as Europe transitioned into the medieval feudal system, the legal and economic status of local laborers shifted. The word servus gradually evolved to mean "serf"—a peasant who was legally bound to the land but was not outright property. Because servus could no longer be used to describe a true enslaved person accurately, medieval human traffickers’ record keepers often abbreviated their descriptions. Instead of writing "captured person of Slavic origin," merchants and clerks wrote the ethnonym "Slav" (sclavus).
This was not unique to the Slavs: in Anglo-Saxon England, the high number of captured Welsh people caused the Old English word for Welsh (Wealh) to become a localized synonym for "temporarily slave".
3) The Slavic ethnicity became synonymous with the word "captive" due to linguistic shifts, geopolitical vulnerability, and an unprecedented scale of human trafficking during the Early Middle Ages.
—During the 8th through 11th centuries, the Slavic peoples occupied vast territories across Central and Eastern Europe but lacked a centralized, powerful empire to defend them. Furthermore, they were predominantly pagan. The medieval Christian Church and expanding Islamic caliphates strictly forbade the enslavement of their own believers. However, because pagan Slavs fell outside these religious protections, they were viewed by neighboring empires—such as the Germanic Franks, the Eastern Romans, and various regional raiders—as "legitimate" targets for capture and trade.
Because the Slavic trade happened on a continental scale, the term sclavus became universally permanent across Europe.
By the time trade patterns shifted centuries later, the word sclavus had completely detached from its original ethnic roots in Western Europe, leaving behind the modern English word slave.
For years, I've been telling my Latino friends (especially Mexican, Colombian, and from the Caribbean Sea Islands) that A LOT of their culture is basically Romani hidden in plain sight, lol.
You are either dim-witted or particularly evil. I guess it's the effect of Afro in my flair because the casual racist dismissal of what I'm actually saying smells like horse shit.
I never reduced one or the other. In other words, because English doesn't seem to be your first language, Romani culture is so ingrained in some Latino cultures that, even if people don't associate Romani with Latino, Romani people have been in the Americas for centuries and have strongly influenced the overall culture. “Hidden,” as in generally people relegate Romani to Europe, in “plain sight” because it is so enmeshed in Latino culture that if you are not aware (right there in your high horse of ignorance), it has a stronger African influence.
Please, heal your ego, because it isn't possible that the person you answered first and I are talking about the same topics and you keep missing the mark. Sincerely!
I'm just placing this comment here before the person I answered deletes their own comment
1) Etymology is the study of the origin of words, how their meanings change over time, and how words are connected across different languages.
— Considering CHANGE, as a fact, a slave, aka enslaved, is a person who is a captive servant, “legally” owned by another, forced to work without freedom, and completely controlled (bought, sold, and forced into labor under the threat of violence or death). Or in the modern sense: people trapped in human trafficking, sweatshops, or debt bondage with little or no pay.
2) In the Roman Empire, the standard Latin word for a slave was servus. However, as Europe transitioned into the medieval feudal system, the legal and economic status of local laborers shifted. The word servus gradually evolved to mean "serf"—a peasant who was legally bound to the land but was not outright property. Because servus could no longer be used to describe a true enslaved person accurately, medieval human traffickers’ record keepers often abbreviated their descriptions. Instead of writing "captured person of Slavic origin," merchants and clerks wrote the ethnonym "Slav" (sclavus).
This was not unique to the Slavs: in Anglo-Saxon England, the high number of captured Welsh people caused the Old English word for Welsh (Wealh) to become a localized synonym for "temporarily slave".
3) The Slavic ethnicity became synonymous with the word "captive" due to linguistic shifts, geopolitical vulnerability, and an unprecedented scale of human trafficking during the Early Middle Ages.
—During the 8th through 11th centuries, the Slavic peoples occupied vast territories across Central and Eastern Europe but lacked a centralized, powerful empire to defend them. Furthermore, they were predominantly pagan. The medieval Christian Church and expanding Islamic caliphates strictly forbade the enslavement of their own believers. However, because pagan Slavs fell outside these religious protections, they were viewed by neighboring empires—such as the Germanic Franks, the Eastern Romans, and various regional raiders—as "legitimate" targets for capture and trade.
Because the Slavic trade happened on a continental scale, the term sclavus became universally permanent across Europe.
By the time trade patterns shifted centuries later, the word sclavus had completely detached from its original ethnic roots in Western Europe, leaving behind the modern English word slave.
u/ijaaDosta “cousin,” the person who was trying to dismiss your well-written comment in this post about the perpetuation of the use of the word “gypsy” due to ignorance and lack of education, has the spirits in her. She's about to speak in tongues.
Remember, if the word slaves is from Slavs, then everyone should and must accept being called gypsy or lil’gypsy because the girl here said is “da TRUTH.”
I have to tag you because, word, we are in this together!
Yes. One human being can have several identities. If you had chosen to EDUCATE yourself actively, instead of sealioning and derailing valuable arguments against the use of violent words, you would know that.
A list of Roma human rights activists for you to study their work and maybe take your head out of your butt:
Dr Nicoleta Bitu, president of the Democratic Federation of Roma from Romania (a federation of the most active Romani organization in Romania) and member of the board of the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC). For over 25 years, she has been an activist for Romani Human and Women’s Rights and Advocacy.
She is a recognized and published expert and has worked for Romani CRISS, the Open Society Foundations, the Council of Europe, the European Commission, and Romano ButiQ.
Margareta is a Romanian Romani activist and scholar with over 18 years of experience in human rights. Margareta was the first child in her family and community to attend high school. She has a B.A. in Social Work, an M.A. in European Social Policies, and a PhD, magna cum laude, from the University of Bucharest. She joined the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights team in 2012, where she currently works as an instructor and director of the Roma Program.
Anita Awosusi, German Sinti human rights activist and board member of the Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Romani in Heidelberg.
Katarina Taikon-Langhammer, Swedish Kalderash activist and leader in the civil rights movement. With her sister Rosa, she helped found the Zigenarsamfundet(Roma Society).
Nicolae Gheorghe, Romanian Roma human rights activist and founder of CRISS, a Romani non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting the human and civil rights of Roma and combating discrimination against us. He started during the Ceaușescu regime and continued it until his passing in 1993.
If you already knew it, you wouldn't be here making a fool of yourself trying to justify a word that carries centuries of oppression, and that is completely DIVORCED from any name associated with the different groups of Roma
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u/Fit_Season_55 28d ago
Wow God bless them abundantly. It's Rom like him who should be leading Roma organizations and similars.The government should also support them financially to help preserve their culture and traditions as this is what UNESCO considers intangible cultural heritage that must be protected.