From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Gypsies/rom/Matt T. Salo
The division of humankind into two categories – Gypsy and non-Gypsy – informs almost every aspect of life in the Rom community. Gypsies are believed to be better, that is, cleaner, kinder, more pious, more intelligent, and so on. Non-Gypsies, by contrast, are considered to have dirty habits, to engage in cruel behaviour, such as beating or even killing their children, and to be less shrewd in business matters. A Rom will not, as a rule, readily enter into a social relationship with someone who is not a member of the community, although some friendships and occasionally even marriages have been formed. Interaction with the gaže is ideally restricted to the economic sphere, where the outsider is considered fair game for exploitation.
Most non-Gypsies have little accurate knowledge about the community and are conditioned by stereotypes gleaned chiefly from children’s books or movies. Little remains from early European oral tradition about the group, but concepts of the thieving or the carefree, romantic, singing and dancing Gypsy have survived. Among people who have never come face to face with a Gypsy, misperceptions about the group continue, such as the kidnapping of children, thievery, and irresponsibility.
The relations of the Rom with the other Gypsy or Gypsy-like groups is much more complicated and ambiguous. They recognize the existence, for example, of English, Romanian, Hungarian, and Spanish Gypsies, but admit them only grudgingly, saying that they are not really tšatše Rom, that is, “true Gypsies,” but half-breeds mixed with other nationalities. The Scottish and Irish travellers, generally lumped together under the rubric Gipsuria, are correctly identified as non-Gypsies. The Rom admire them for their business acumen, but mutual ignorance and suspicion of each other’s motives has kept their association to a minimum. A friendly exchange of “shop talk” has been the limit of their acquaintance; no marriages are known to have taken place between these groups in Canada.
Other Rom who are too distantly related for their kinship lines to be known have also been suspect, but their common language and customs have been acknowledged. One Rom, speaking of the Lowara Rom newly arrived from Europe in the early 1970s, remarked, “They are like real Gypsies used to be: long skirts, kintrintsa (apron), high-necked blouse, cook on spits.” On the other hand, his brother considered them stubborn, too wedded to their ways, and too primitive for modern Canada. After twenty years in North America, the Lowara have lost some of these differences, and marriages are beginning to occur between the groups.
Subdivisions among the North American Rom are often a basis for mutual avoidance. The true motives for the lack of friendly relations are most often economic, such as disputes over fortune-telling territories, but they may be expressed symbolically in terms of cultural details. These differences, rather than forming the grounds for considering the other person not a true Gypsy, are used to label the family as “no good,” criminal, dirty, or untrustworthy. The Xoraxane Gypsies (the term used by North American Rom to refer to a vitsa of uncertain origin and sometimes glossed in English as “Turks” or “Arabs”) were traditionally known by the colour of their tseras. The people in blue tents were mean; they would “kill people for a nickel.” The Tutus carried guns and were always spoiling for a fight; when any of them came to a wedding, “we just get up and leave the hall.”
The sense of a fairly homogeneous community that adheres to the rules of Romania does not in practice translate into mutual cooperation that would unite the different lineages in efforts to improve the life of the Rom as a whole. Recent attempts by some, mainly non-Gypsy, political activists to represent both American and Canadian Rom have lacked a grass-roots organizational base, though they have received some attention in the media. Most Rom know and care little about such activities, and their attitude is well summed up in such statements as “How can these people [the self-appointed leaders] represent me? I’ve never met them and don’t even know who they are.” Organization on other than a kinship basis remains an illusion; the basic egalitarian structure of Rom communities continues much as it has existed for several hundred years.
