It´s human nature to blame everything on a group that you can identify as "different as yourself". I blame every bad thing in my life on people without attached earlobes.

Just some thoughts I have been mulling over for a few years:

I´m not sure anyone is "blaming" any group.  Have we sunk so far into political correctness that we can´t just state the obvious?  I grew up in Europe and I do know a bit about Roma people.  They are different.  They have different social norms.  Some of these norms are very shocking to some people.  Why can´t we talk about how shocking it is?  Or do we need to confine our speech about Roma to how wonderful their music is or how fascinating their culture is?  I don´t know why it is so offensive to talk about how shocking some cultural differences are? 

It is very disturbing to me that a woman who has a child thinks it is perfectly OK for this child to have a baby.  Does that make this woman horrible?  I wouldn´t venture to say whether or not she is a good or bad person...but by our social norms she is an abomination to motherhood!  Does that make me a racist?  Well, if it does then I will happily accept the title. 

As for attached earlobes....scary VERY scary!!!

I wish there was an option to thank a poster bazillion times, this is how many thanks Lis would get from me for the above.

Political correctness cannot be equivalent of silent agreement to things standing in opposition to accepted norms and/or legal system

İt happened to know a small "comunity" of gipsies living in İstanbul for many years.. for them "being married" means "living together" . Doesnt mean they went and say that "İ do..blabla" thing. And they like to steal...makes me think this is in their blood. Father steeling cigaretts and encourage his daughter and nephews to steel from Carefoor because " the owners anyway have too much money to care about this". Of course im sure that not all can be the same but...

There is a difference between seeing the problems within a group (like the Roma) and addressing them, and blaming all of your own problems on that group. As a Roma from Poland, you can´t blame all of your problems on Roma from Romania. That was what my comment was refering to. This has nothing to do with being politically correct.

Roma in Poland are not too noticeable (but for their annual international folk festival), sure there are some issues but all in all it´s not bad. I´ve heard Czech and Slovakia had terrible experience with Roma people. I remember a sudden huge surge of Romanian Roma when I was in econdary school, the streets of my city were full of begging women and children who didn´t speak Polish. And hard shoulders were full of Romanian and Bulgarian prostitutes (not Romani). Then a few years later they disappeared and beggars are Polish while hookers are mostly Ukrainian or Belarussian