I saw a post over on political compass memes about how gypsies are terrible and commit most of Europe's crime, etc, etc, etc. I've never met a gypsy (or romani, as I've been told) in my life and have no idea what they're like, but the whole thing reeks of racism and most of what I've heard from that thread sounds an awful lot like horrible bile I've heard about other ethnic groups about whom it most definitely did not prove true.
So is Romani culture really that horrible? I prefer to judge individual people based on their actions, and I know romani people were targeted during the Holocaust, but unlike with antisemitism (the primary motive of the Holocaust), there was never really an effort to convince people of the evils of anti-romani hatred and anti-Roma sentiment continues to this day in Europe with no signs of stopping. Is this hatred in any way justified, or is this just bare-bones racism?
