Dear Joe:
My mother's grandfather was born into slavery. His wife and he were bought and sold for the crime of their skintone. He sent both his sons to College when he came to America (though Mom remembers him as a blind and nasty cuss). My mother, the grandaughter of slaves became an executive and though she keeps vestigages of her traditions in the form of household coustoms she hid her ethnicity for fear of the sentiment in such songs like - don't rent to Gypsies. I stood up the New York City Council and addressed the issue of three hundred years of discrimination in the United States and almost a thousand years of discrimination in 41 nations. Joe, you and I have generally agreed on how disscussions take place, but please don't presume to tell me how to make my mother proud. The embarassment of the world's Roma is usualy expressed by silence. When you say shut up till you hear the words, when I hear that the song is about not renting to Gypsies because some Gypsies trashed her house, that says it all to me.
I was not served at John B. Keane's pub in Listowl - he took me for a Pavee because I spent most of my time in Listowl with Travellers. Because of my mixed heritage, I look like my cousins, Ireland's Pavees. I thanked him because I was unaware at the time that he was famous for his prejudice against Roma. I didn't want to suport an buisiness which discriminates.
Anti-Gypsy prejudice is the last socially acceptable prejudice. Did I have a bad day? How many days are there in one thousand years. In Scotland our men were hanged and our women and children drowned. In Auswtitz-Bergan Belsen our families were gassed and burned, At Lette in the Czech Republic, we were shot. Today scores of us are murdered in the Czech Republic and the average sentince, when there is a trial is four to six months for disorderly conduct while the power companies turn off the electricity to throw the homes of Roma into blackness before the skin head Czech mobs come to kill and burn us out. In eastern Europe a Roma girl, thriteen years old is stabbed seventeen times by her classmates while they chant dirty Gypsy. 200,000 Roma are targeted by Albainians and Serbs in Kosovo, while being denied aid by the UN, and denied asylum in the camps in Hungery, in Italy in every nation but Macidonia where some are let into the camps and they are set apon by Albanian mobs, who attempt to tear a 12 year old child limb from limb. In Rumanina, a short time after the counter revolution, the Catholic church in one town, held a mass to bless thouse where were going out to burn down the Gypsy quarter. In this land of freedom, the United States, only 15 years ago, in South Carolina, Bates and Leesville counties pass and still enforce a statute which reads in clear and unambiguos language - Gypsies are not allowed in the county. No dear friends, it has not been a good day, and Mythmaker, my friend, when you say it is a good song, I strongly doubt you are writing a paper about the discrimination and genocide which has colored every day of our peoples forced migration. Don't rent to Gypsies - Gypsies are not permitted in the County - Murder of Rom is Disorderly Conduct - No dogs or Gypos allowed in the pub, Get along, move along, SHIFT.
Amay ROMA, ROMA OPRE, and pround
Larry