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The Romani Diaspora, Part One
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16282 |
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CULTURE
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3 / 1989 |
5,805 Words |
| Author
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Ian Hancock
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Although serious published studies about Gypsies number in the hundreds, the average American is not likely to know a great deal about this ethnic minority, believing perhaps that they are either fantasy characters--something to dress up as at Halloween--or that being of a Gypsy means simply adopting certain "Bohemian" behavior. It would come as a surprise to such people to learn that Gypsies are in fact a distinct people with their own language and culture who first reached America with Columbus on his third voyage in 1498, and that there are more Gypsies in the United States than in any other single country in the world.
In any general treatment, it should be made clear right away that there are many different kinds of Gypsies. Nearly all of the books about them have dealt with only one particular group. Because of this, characteristics found among the Gypsy population described in each book are typically attributed to other Gypsy populations. Novelists and writers of popular nonfiction sometimes do this, ending up creating an image not quite like any group of actual Gypsies.
Although there are many different kinds of Gypsies, all Gypsies share the same distant origins and are ultimately related to each other. Nevertheless, the word gypsy is often used not to refer to a particular ethnic people, but to any migrants or nomads of any background. This is a mistake that should be avoided. The word should be used to mean only the people whose name for themselves is Roma or Romanies. There are some other names besides these that Gypsies call themselves; for many, the very word Gypsy is offensive.
One reason why the word is often used wrongly is that the history and identity of the Gypsies have not been well understood by outsiders. Although linguists and anthropologists working with Gypsies have been able to sort out many facts, the general public still gets most of its information from films, novels, and inaccurate news reports, and so remains ignorant of the real situation.
The ancestral home of the Gypsy people was India. Some scholars think that the original Gypsies left there about a thousand years ago, while others think that it was more like fifteen hundred years ago. There were probably a number of separate migrations. Today at least four major groups are recognized: the Banjara, who are still in India; the Dom, who live in the Middle East; the Lom, who are in Turkey and the Caucasus; and the Rom or Roma, who reached Europe and who have since spread out to other parts of the world. Whether these groups are related historically or have simply been grouped together fortuitously by scholars has still to be demonstrated conclusively. The Roma have no sense of connection with the other groups; this article will deal only with the Roma.
There are probably between eight and twelve million Gypsies throughout the world, perhaps six million of whom descend from the European Romani populations. But as will be shown, it is difficult to make accurate judgments about Gypsy populations. In the United States, for example, estimates of its size range from the U.S. Census Bureau's figure of about 1600 to that of the Illinois Police Department of "over a million"; another police report puts the number at two million. If we take all of the different groups together, there are probably somewhere between 750,000 and 1,000,000 people in America who identify themselves as ethnic Gypsies. Some groups do not regard other Gypsy
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