I never considered it an ethnic slur because I didn't know until a couple years ago about the gypsies in Europe being Romani.
Always figured it was just people who chose that lifestyle like hobos and carnies.

I have this hanging in my bathroom. A friend gave it to me after he bought it at a flea market because my EX was named Mary.
It says occupation gypsy but no mention of Romani.

"like hobos and carnies" L O L that cracked me up

Thank you for sharing your perspective.

They don't sound any too ethnic either.

Using an ethnic term as a synonym for criminality or dishonesty (gypped) can hardly be anything else.

How niggardly of you, presuming the term is hardly anything else but "ethnic".

It's not a case of coincidentally having similar syllables, it's the actual word.

Of course its racial - those are the negative qualities associated with gypsies: corrupt, thieving, unreliable, insular as a group and treats all others as fair game etc etc, along with unstable, wandering and outside normal society.

When those terms were coined, that was a common understanding of what gypsy meant - it was a quick way to raise connotations of something untrustworthy and outside the norm. it was also an easy way to depict something not fixed or without its own place

The same way as 'play the white man' suggests an entire cultural understanding, so the use of gypsy as a prefix draws on a whole weight of cultural understanding which has just been absorbed into our language.

That cultural understanding has become watered down and lessened across generations, but some of it still persists - we may not have all those old assumptions, but we instinctively know what is meant when the word Gypsy is used - it means all of those traits - even if we dont connect the mental dots quite as directly as might have done a couple of generations ago.

A twofer...

To me the odd part of flint's story is that the business owner used the name, taking possession of the word turning it into something good but then didn't want the discussion which I would have thought would be the whole point of using it in the name.

Cultural side note, I think the stereotyping is more meaningful in Europe. It's been watered down in the States because of reduced contact. The old-timers at my (Irish) family reunions would use the term in all its negative glory threatening to sell kids to the gypsies which was a step up from letting the Indians take you. Yeah, my family is still pretty fucking racist.

Yeah yeah yeah, where does it say Gypsy is a race?
It says it's a lifestyle, an attitude, an honesty and caution alert, but it ain't racist without a race.

Also, If you think gypsies only refers to Romani people, what makes them a race and not just a culture?
Are Swedes a race? Are Jews a race?

Genetic findings appear to confirm that the Romani "came from a single group that left northwestern India" in about 512 CE.[63] Genetic research published in the European Journal of Human Genetics "revealed that over 70% of males belong to a single lineage that appears unique to the Roma"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people

I think we all agree that race as a construct is dumb, but they are unique as a nation-less nationality. Hitler killed the hell out of them...

Bah, if disliking a group for their lifestyle, ethics, and honesty, makes someone a racist, then it don't mean shit anymore.
I guess now I'm a racist for hating cauliflower. :rolleyes:

In the UK's Equality Act 2010.

It’s race discrimination if you’re treated unfairly because of one of the following things:

● color
● nationality
● ethnic origin
● national origin.

The courts have said that Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers are protected against race discrimination because they’re ethnic groups under the Equality Act.

USA USA USA

There's also the human race, just sayin'.