Some days you just can’t even. You realise that the so called “free world” is so utterly cruel that you want to cry. Instead, you try to mitigate the harm it is causing.
One of the most marginalised groups in Europe are probably the Roma people. Even though they were just as prosecuted by the Nazis as the Jews were, this is apparently no reason to protect them today. The are still prosecuted, suffer pogroms and basically nobody cares. They have no future in their “home countries” and when they migrate, they suffer even more discrimination. For example, they cannot seek asylum in Germany, because, well, reasons I guess, and since they are often from non European Union countries, they cannot simply settle either, or get any welfare payments, except for the basic child subsidy.
We have a couple of Roma kids, and many of them live in absolute poverty. They live in homeless shelters, they live in run down houses. It is often difficult to talk to the parents, because we need an interpreter (thankfully there is a charity that works with us). therefore we often don’t even know what the problem is. One kid only came to school sporadically. She’s 11 years old, has lived in at least three different countries, can hardly read or write and is often sick.
Well, it’s not that the family didn’t want to send her to school, they send her whenever they have money for the bus. Oh, and they don’t have health insurance, so they cannot send her to the doctor, but if she feels ill it’s probably, because they have no food left. But if she fails in school, leaves without any qualification, marries young and has many children, it will of course be blamed on their culture. You know, because “those people” are like that.
Now that we know we can try to mitigate the effects. Get her a bus ticket, ask her if she’s had breakfast. The bus ticket is paid by a charity, the breakfast is something we just do among us teachers. Even if we can help her, what a poverty of humanism does this reveal in one of the richest countries on earth?
There is no “worst part” because it’s all so bad, but the part that makes me see red floaters is the old calumny about the Roma being thieves. Societies owe their members support if they are hungry, ill, or dispossessed -- yet one of the world’s sophisticated civilizations prefers to respond like barbarians.
Canada had residential schools to deal with this problem… and we know the fuss that arose.
I don’t understand how any civilized society can let people go hungry or homeless, especially children. Marcus said it best. It’s barbaric.
@Voyager -- Its because they have forgotten that there is only one group on this planet. We are all the same and there are those who refuse to see it. The reason why is no longer important. The fact that it is so is what we need to keep addressing. I don’t think that they are civilized at all.
@Fred Tully
Please explain what you mean by “fuss” and what you mean with “this problem”. Becaues I am not a Canadian and my knowledge about what you might mean is therefore limited.
The first result that I found through google was this Wiki Article -click- and I am pretty sure that that ghastly thing was NOT meant to deal with the problem Giliell is describing.
As a Canadian and resident of a First Nation, i would say that Fred I hope your response was sarcastic. The solution was evil, racist and was an attempt to wipe out a culture. Many of the survivors weren’t the only ones who suffered. Their children and grandchildren too.
Suffered. You should add that at the end of my comment.
Uhm , yes, Fred’s post needs some serious explanation.
Actually, CPS is the only agency we could involve and I absolutely don’t want to do that because removing the child is not a solution in this case.
As a Canadian, I find Fred Tully’s comment completely incomprehensible.
cherbear makes sense. The residential schools were the most shameful episode in Canadian history.
I came across another drive-by comment by Fred Tully at The Orbit, and quite a suspicious one too…
About the Roma, it’s awful to see just how much people everywhere discriminate against them, I see it a lot in Argentina as well. I remember the case in Dublin in which they took a little Roma girl away from her family because they thought she had been kidnapped by them. The evidence? She had blue eyes and blond hair! Unpossible!!!1! I knew from the beginning that this was just racism at work and I wasn’t surprised at all when the DNA test proved the whole claim was bullshit.
Oh shit, I remember that one as well. Racism and prejudice ftw.
Oh.
Oh, oh, oh.
Through my previous link I just found Tully’s blog. Just take a look at some of these gems:
There’s more out there; turns out our pal is quite the racist, with special contempt for indigenous peoples and Jews.
Ew, gross. I think that takes care of that!
Fred Tully will not be commenting on Affinity anymore. How anyone with such views came to read this blog in the first place is a mystery to me.
He is banned and should he resurface, he will be banned on sight.
Charly,
Thanks for dealing so swiftly with this today. Thanks also to Kreator for the legwork.
The residential schools in Canada were torturous places and were an attempt to commit cultural genocide. They are a shameful part of our history.