for all those who were 'gypsies' in their past lives..
Since so many people use this term, let's start with the origin of the word 'gypsy'..
Gypsies are an actual ethnic group (not a lifestyle), just as Swedish people or Chinese people or African Americans are. Our proper name is 'Romany' (or 'Romani', sometimes shortened to 'Roma'). Some say we came from India, originally.. wherever we originated, due to persecution and racism over the years, we have migrated to just about everywhere in the world. During our early migrations, people assumed we came from Egypt, and called us 'Gyptians', which was later shortened to simply 'Gypsies'. We suffered slavery, forced sterilization, and were the only other ethnic group singled out for extermination in the Holocaust (WW2). Over one million Sinti & Roma (seperate nations of Romanies) died in the concentration camps alongside the Jews, and in the surrounding forests and cities. There is still, to this day, forced sterilization of Romany women in places like Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic.
The word 'gypsy', (especially when not capitalized) is a derogatory term to many Romany people - it is akin to using the word 'Nigger' to describe an African American. While some Romanies (like myself) do not have a negative attachment to the word, it should still always be capitalized, to signify that it is accurately describing an ethnic group, and not a lifestyle - the Romany people are not a band of free-spirited, dancing, wandering hippies... we moved about frequently because we were forced to, not by choice. We were not accepted anywhere we went, and were always forced to leave, hence the incorrect belief that we chose to be a nomadic people..
If you would like further information, please see the following links.. it is unnerving to be treated as either subhuman (Hitler's classification of the Romany people during WW2) or a cartoon character in a Disney movie. In many parts of the world, Romanies still face staunch racism and brutal attacks, which are ignored (and in some places even condoned) by the governments in which they reside. In American, we are a joke, with people thinking they can 'become Gypsy' or that they were 'Gypsy in a past life', or that simply living a certain way makes them a Gypsy. You are either born a Gypsy, or you aren't. It's like someone saying they're Chinese because they like Asian cuisine. Put in that context, it sounds ridiculous, but this is how Romanies feel when their culture and heritage is mocked on a daily basis.
People see the romanticized image of the Gypsy as portrayed in fiction; a Gypsy who has nothing in common with the reality of our lives and probably never had anything in common with the harsh and hard life that most of our People have led, the persecutions that our People have had to endure thru the ages culminating in the Nazi Holocaust and which they still have to endure - with the world standing by and watching and doing nothing - to this very day. But that is not the Gypsy that they see and want to see. That, in their eyes, is the "dirty Gyppo". They also see a romanticized outlaw who lives by his wits, steals a little here, smuggles a little there, poaches a little in this or that Lordship's estate, etc. but is really, otherwise, a gentle and lovable rouge. That Gypsy does not exist. It is a figment of some writer's imagination. But it is that Gypsy that they want to see and portray and to those ends they want to learn our Ways, our Practices and even our Language.
OUR CULTURE AND OUR HERITAGE ARE NOT FOR SALE
You cannot become a Gypsy. You have to be born one, and it has to be in this life and not a previous one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roma_peoplehttp://www.geocities.com/~patrin/http://www.judentum.net/kultur/romany.htmhttp://www.historywiz.com/roma.htmhttp://www.photomythology.com/pages/links.html
