Andre’s Reviews > All Change!: Romani Studies Through Romani Eyes > Status Update

The Afterword and his talk of why he is against Roma unification and what they should rather focus on was a bit of a saving grace for this book.

Gosh this guy is the worst of them all here. If this guy hadn't turned out to have "gypsy" ancestry he would have latched on to something else to adress his alleged always felt feeling of estrangement which he seems to assign to his ancestry. Which is pretty racist if you ask me. You can feel estrangement for all sorts of reasons over time. And you can modify your memory, very easily.

I know that persecution exists, but this here sounds as if they took it as their identity.

Ok, now I am confused, how did he get from diapsora to notions of gypsy purity? That is odd.

Oh great, this was exactly what I feared I would get to hear from this Le Bas guy the moment he mentioned his interest in Jewish history. He only mentioned the Roman power and so suggests that prior to 70 AD most Jews lived in Judea, when in fact, most lived outside of it and had done so for a very long time. Even the BBC show Rome already mentioned Jews in Rome and that one played when Julius Cesar was alive.

I have the suspicion that this author who allegedly wants to write about the history of Roma in Russia is more concerned with finding some mythic romani homeland. I don't think he could take it if it turns out that there is none, respectively that there is a homeland, the one he lives in.

So the early soviet state recognised Roma as a national Minority with the right to be educated in their native language.

Wy hshould Roma accept India as their motherland? Their "ethnic" identity did not form there. It was formed in Europe and the Byzantine Empire.

I think he is a tad naive about the Black Panthers.

Ok, this has gotten a bit better now an he talks mainly about his dislike of other defining his "gypsy identity" and so on, but this still feels like way too much talk, way more than is necessary.