October 7, 2002
Travellers: Media coverage racist, unresearched
Group is 'the most family-oriented ethnic culture beside the Amish'
By SHEILA FLYNN Southbend Tribune Staff Writer
See Related Stories: Toogood saga unfolds...

As Madelyne Toogood returns to court today, Irish Travellers and some experts on their culture are alleging that media coverage of Toogood and Travellers over the past three weeks has been unfair, unresearched and nothing short of racist.

Toogood, an Irish Traveller, was videotaped by a security camera Sept. 13 apparently striking her 4-year-old daughter in the back seat of a vehicle parked outside a Mishawaka department store.

"The last time I remember reading this type of language was when the Nazis were rounding these people up to throw them into ovens," says Larry Otway, a political scientist who has studied Travellers and fought for their rights since the 1970s. "And I've only made comparisons to the Holocaust maybe two or three times in my life."

Otway cites phrases from various newspapers nationally, which spoke of Toogood and "her kind" and stated that the "obscure clan" should be rounded up and forced to stay in one place so they could be watched.

"There is a need for the recognition of rights," Otway says.

Richard J. Waters, who is of Traveller descent on his mother's side, expresses similar views on his Web site "Travellers' Rest: Fact and Fiction About Irish Travellers in the USA," at http://www.travellersrest.org/index.htm.

"Is the question, 'I just wanted to know if, from your experience, it is considered OK in (the Traveller) culture for parents to beat their kids so mercilessly?' one you would ask of a Chinese, or a Mexican, or a black under the same circumstances?" he asks. "Then why us?"

Although there are no definite statistics stating how many Irish Travellers live in the United States, estimates gauge the population to be between 10,000 and 40,000.

When combined with Scottish and English travelers and members of the roma clans, who are commonly referred to as "gypsies" and are of Eastern European descent, the number probably reaches to more than 1 million, Otway says.

"If, in fact, this was a criminal subculture, than everyone in the U.S. would have been robbed so many times by these people that they would not be able to maintain their existence," Otway says.

Reports of home repair scams are sensationalized, Otway says, adding that as in any culture, only a small minority of Irish Travellers are con artists.

"There are those who say that they (or perhaps we) are none but scam-artists and thieves," Waters says. "I say not, that I have been privileged to be kin to a clan of hard workers and survivors, by and large an honorable people.

"Are there grifters among us? Yes," Waters says. "But there are many among you who may also be justly called 'criminal.' Surely not all or even most of you, however. Nor most of us either."

Many accusations are brought against members of the group simply because they are Travellers, Otway says.

"Because of old stereotypes, they have criminalized certain things for Travellers that are not criminal for others," Otway says. "Overcharging on a paint job, which is a matter of art, is prosecuted as a felony, and I would challenge anyone in this country to try and bring felony charges against any other contractor who is not a Traveller."

Otway explains that most Travellers do not traverse the country scamming people, but rather travel to the same locations every year to work for an established clientele.

"The patterns of migration are not random," Otway says. "For generations, the same families have returned to the same places that they have gone before.

"They've done excellent work and as a result have built up a client base that they count on. The police have the idea that these are fly-by-night businesses. This is not reality. They are nomadic businesses.

"Frankly, scamming people is bad business."

Many Travellers acquire long rap sheets because, after being falsely accused of crimes or faced with overblown charges, they post bail and leave, Otway explains.

"If you arrest a Traveller and hold him for trial, his family has real hardship," Otway says. "They pay it back in order to go on with their life and their career, and then they develop these long rap sheets.

"I know very few Traveller criminals. But I don't know any Travellers that have not had their civil liberties abused."

He says that, amidst the hype of the Toogood case, an extreme injustice is being wrought upon Martha, the child involved. Authorities placed the girl with a foster family after Madelyne Toogood turned herself in.

"By the age of 4, a Traveller child has a complete sense of identity of a Traveller," Otway said. "Being a Traveller is as much a part of her as being human. When that child is placed with a non-Traveller family, the message that is sent to that child is that her community is incapable and unworthy of raising her.

"There is a syndrome of failure that follows that because we cannot remove one identity and replace it with another. Rather, we have a person that has no identity, and every expert will tell you that has a recipe for failure.

"That is a human rights abuse."

His ideas support Toogood's campaign to place Martha with family members, keeping her within the Traveller community and in a familiar lifestyle. Even their primary language is different from that of mainstream Americans; Travellers speak Scelta, which is a mixture of romani language and Gaelic. They speak English, too, but the linguistic difference marks a significant change in Martha's environment.

And the assumption that Travellers, as an ethnic group, are unfit to care for the child is another example of the racist attitudes toward them, Otway says. Children are extremely important to Travellers "like to any culture -- any human beings."

Waters also inveighs against what he calls biased media coverage.

"It seems a regrettable enough occurrence without that factor, but let's face facts: The widespread media coverage does make it worse, extending what was perhaps an isolated 30-second act by an individual to a mass indictment against the most family-oriented ethnic culture in the USA beside the Amish," Waters writes.

Staff writer Sheila Flynn:

http://www.southbendtribune.com/stories/2002/10/07/local.20021007-sbt-MICH-A6-Travellers__Media_co.sto

line breaks added by mudelf ;-)