Everywhere on the Roma(ni) networks there is the talk about the International Roma Day (April 8) that is being celebrated. However, does it not, calling it the “International Roma Day” thereby, as far as I see, purposely, exclude Sinti and Cale?
If I am not mistaken it all started as the International Romani Day and in the last couple of years, like with the International Romani Union itself, who is but the inventor of the International Roma Day, the word Romani has been replaced by the word Roma. This was all done rather incremental and no one seems to have noticed and slowly but surely all those that think the big boys know better have begun calling themselves Roma even when they are Sinti (though the majority of them still resist) and the Romanichals and Cale. Many of the British Rom call themselves now Roma and it really makes me laugh, though at the same time I want to hit them with something heavy po shero, for the only Roma in the UK are those that have come over here in the last decades as asylum seekers from the former Yugoslavia, Romani and Bulgaria and the former Czechoslovakia.
As they have the now the International Roma Day and thereby exclude, on purpose until such a time that the Sinti and others bow down to the altar of “Roma”, the Sinti and others, maybe we should start an International Romani Day or should we do an International Gypsy Day, LOL.
It does appear, to me at least, as if the PTB amongst the Roma(ni) “leadership” who run with the EU and such places will remove all Romani references soon and will try to force media, etc. to adopt the term Roma when referring to Gypsies (and Travellers). Yes, they will make it inclusive of the Travellers, for they already have included the Irish Travellers in the Roma and soon others will be added officially too. Then the word Roma will become synonymous with today's usage of Gypsy in the government circles such as in the UK and with the stroke of the pen, as it has been done here, all those Roma, then, that do not travel, with traveling in trailers being outlawed – wait for it, it is sooner or later going to happen – will no longer qualify for recognition as an ethnic group.
© M Veshengro Smith, April 2007
