how romantic :laugh:
yeah, we get them at the seaside as well, but they usually have monkeys and tiger cubs :bum:
yeah, they do the crappy fuckers. they ALWAYS steal metals (steel, mostly). even railroad tracks! i mean heck,i remeber a train going off the tracks because of this. and where my mom works (she's an engineer), they always see from their office window how they come and steal the metal bars the workers keep outside, cos they dont fit inside the warehouse. mom has even photographed them and send the photos to the police, but hell, they are UNSTOPPABLE.
:eek: this looks like a scene depicted near my appartment block! lol.
LMAO! this HAS GOT to be the funniest thing i've read in a while. allow me to: :laugh:
now, see, we should teach the foreigners. people, DO NOT give money to beggars, especially not gypsies. they dont get beaten up, they act all handicapped and shit when i saw one buying CIGARETTES from the money she's begged, while she had gypsy kids hanging hungry from her tits. puh-lease. and after qutting tit, they pick up smoking as well, at the tender age of 4 or 5.
yeah, no shit! :none:
:lol: oddly enough, gypsy music is the most popular here for a few years now :confused:

Are you saying that the only way France will integrate is if the country is invaded and ruled by some foriegn force or that France will allow opportunity if the immigrants are white?

Amber, African immigrants aren't conquerers, there aren't going to takeover France and call it "New Algeria" or call Paris "Senegaltown" or anything. Is that how you see all these immigrants as because that ultra-defensive mentality will get you nowhere.

As you might know, many Africans aren't from Europe, aren't Christian, and mostly importantly aren't white. So it's easy for those past immigrants to be successful and for you to accept them when they pretty much are all three of these things.

It's pretty much jobs. Good jobs that they are qualified for, that is all these new immigrants need. That and better living conditions.
Jesus Christ here people, there are human beings you know. They have dreams and aspirations that can't possibly be achieved from those ghettos. They aren't asking for free shit, just opportunities and that is something a country is obligated to give its citizens. They deserve a safe environment to live out ambitions, not some community where the only policing it gets are are cops in riot gear.

Stop telling me you aren't the US or South Africa. I know that. At least those countries accepted some, if not all, of the blame.
Maybe France isn't as overtly prejudiced as those countries once were and maybe your gov't has some good intentions, but painting all of those immigrants as villians is not proving your point.

I said Africans for a reason, to me it's not a question of skin color and religion. First of all, to me North Africans are white, i know that in the US even Latin people are considered 'non-white' which always leaves me totally stunned, in Europe Latin people are of course considered white and so are Arab people. There is little difference in skin color between people who live on the European Mediterranean coast and people who live on the African Mediterranean coast, of course they can easily be told apart because of obvious differences in facial characteristics, one group being of Indo-European descent and the other of Semite descent, but the skin color is similar, mainly caused by the local climate and not by their ethnic heritage. Many Italian, French, and Spanish people have actually been detained and questioned by US customs because they 'looked Arab', if those officers had been correctly trained they could have easily made the difference between people of Indo-European descent and people of Semite descent but whatever, i guess that anyone darker than a Scandinavian person looks Arab to them.

So anyway, North Africans are white, but obviously not christian. As for black African people, they are actually generally christian, even more so than French people, only 10% of French people attend church, the percentage is much higher among African immigrants. Whether they be Christian or Muslim, religion itself is not the problem, it's the level of zealotry displayed by those African immigrants that causes trouble, most French people don't take religion seriously at all, and the deeply conservative religious views of those African immigrants are seen as a threat to the rather liberal French society. We already fought religion 200 years ago after the French revolution, and we are not going to let them drag us back to religious conservatism.

But the core reason why African immigrants do not integrate into European societies is simply because they belong to different civilizations. Black people in the US are not really 'African', they were brought there as slaves and lost their languages and cultures, 'African-Americans' are essentially Americans, they speak English and they share the same basic culture as 'European-Americans', skin color is indeed the main barrier in the US because culturally there's not much difference.
But contrary to the US, African people who immigrate to Europe are true Africans, they speak African languages and have African cultures, North Africans even though they are white clearly belong to the Arab civilization, and black Africans even though they are christian clearly belong to one of the African civilizations, and this is why they can't integrate into the European civilization, it simply doesn't work.

ok, i just woke up, so this might be a dumb question, but whats 'tiger cubs'?
we also have the ones with the snakes at the seaside :lol: the swedes always get trapped by those!

lol

i knooooooooooow, this is my FAV part as well.... i read again now and i am still cracking up! LOL 'they are working hard chopping wood' :lol:

:laugh: ohhhhhhhh, i have stories about that...
1st one: you know what you are local and pass by the same place every day you get familiar with things.. well, in the center of Sofia i used to pass by this underground every day in my high school days.... and there was a Gypsaaaaaaaaaa (sorry, i like the sound of that) begger.... who sits on the ground and appears to have one leg chopped off @ the knee... but it is conviniently covred up with his JACKET! the problem is, one day it would be the left leg, and another it would be the right one :lol: what a fucking... yeah!
2nd story... there is another 'famous' one, always in the ceter again.... and one day i saw him leave his 'spot' in the evening and a fucking MERCEDES pulled up and picked him up! hellooooooooo, do you see ME driving a MERCEDES!?

ohhhhhh, and your description of the gypsaaaaaaaaa kids is so accurate, except you forgot to say that around 6 they also pick up the art of sniffing GLUE from plastic bags.....by 12-13 they start having babies... by 20 they have a family of 7 and so on ....so watch out, they are gonna take over in no time with such rates, as bulgarians for example rarely have kids and usually not before they are in their 30s

ohh, and when sasha was in bulgaria and we were walking downtown, a gypsaaa kid tried to slteel shit from her bag ....lucky for her i wasnt fast enough, because she would've been in trouble!

Tiger babies, lol. ;)

oh, thanks :gigi: [ok, im on my way to get coffee, i think its needed!]

sooo, i am sorry, but i think i prefer bears to Tigers! :rolleyes:

By your reasoning then I can assume that it doesn't work because Europe is inherently intolerant to people of other cultures.
Bold statement I know, but not as bold as the statement you just made that Africans can't integrate because they're just different. France isn't the only country with African immigrants, believe it or not but the US has black people that are immigrants from the Carribean and all parts of Africa, and they are well integrated into their surroundings and are doing just fine. I'm from Eritrea (that is in East Africa) and I am a little more than integrated into Canada, I am straight up Canadian. I have cousins in Australia and they are doing just fine.
Perhaps it is because it just different in Europe, history and culture is just too strong there to really compare to Australia and North America. But then I remember relatives living in the UK and knowing they are doing ok. I am also aware that they had a rocky experience with integration during the 1980s but that they have grown from it.

Africans can, in fact, integrate. We don't have to become slaves and have our language, history, and culture removed from us, or least I hope that isn't what is expected from us. (Slice of advice, don't use slaves as examples of good integration). We can willingly, even enthusiatically, adapt into our new surroundings as long as it is accepting. We are doing it now, we'll do it again.

PS: Thank you KillaQueen, coolasfcuk, and Freddie I have really enjoyed reading about gypsies.
So educational!

well, i just hope you dont think we are bunch of racists, as i dont concider myself one, in fact id like to think that i am pretty open minded (though i do realize that humans are hypocrits to lesser or greater degree)...i just et angry when some westerner that knows nothing about the culture judges without any understanding of what is actually going on...:rolleyes:

i also wanted to add that my best friend (from high school)'s mom was a techer at a gypsy schoo (yes, they are dispersed among us, but they also like to stay in their comunes)... from her i know that gypsy culture is chategorized by:
1.) learning how to STEAL - it is concidered a disgrace if you dont learn how to being $ or goods home without having to work for them like other people
2.) if you are a woman and you arent married by the time you are 13-14 you are concidered a society 'drop out' ... and the brides are still usually sold
they choose to live in the conditons they live (for the most part)... i have this GREAT bulgarian callendar from my aunts work (its full of pictures from the companies emplyes and the theme is 'bulgaria through the lense of GloBul workers) ... i should scan a oic from it - a house in the gypsy neighborhood - a typical one, run down and NASTY... but... there is a mercedes parked in front :laugh: .. wonder if it is the SAME guy from my previous post now that i think of it! LoL

Let me guess, a respray and number plate change after stealing it?! :laugh:

:lol: thats a possibility... but really, i think its more like... they steal, make whatever deals (not like bulgarians dont, lets not start talking about the damn mafia...), but he(i would say she as well to be politically correct, but that is NOT true about bulgaria.. and esp. gypsies) could actually afford a benz :eek: .. but they still chose to live in a NASTY house with no plumbing for example! ...cause his comune is all there ..habits you know

That is so strange :none:

I will never understand that mentality :none: I'd rather be clean, live in a nice house and have some self respect than give all that up for a Merc :bum: It doesn't make sense LOL

Oh well, I guess you have to be one to understand the madness they are thinking LOL

people think differently. no point in trying to understand *why* steal. some do it for $ and some do it cause they are starving. either way, i don't do it. and...well frankly i don't really like benz so i wouldn't steal one.

YEAH! they especially do that. we call them 'aurolaci' [aurolach], dunno if there is a word in english for this. probably not :laugh:

I didn't mean that Lux, re-read my post ;)

Every place and country has it's dumb-ass people with stereotypes and prejudices too ingrained in themselves to accept others. And while it may seem like things get better, I agree with madeldoe that in the US, it's just less obvious and much more complex.

But what is obvious and i'm so fcking TIRED of is being treated different because i'm WHITE! :mad:
If you criticize somebody hispanic or black, you're a racist, but if you criticize someone white and you aren't white, you get away with it (in the SOUTH atleast...damn this place has racial tensions....) so i'm tired of people not understanding "RACISM": having prejudices to anybody of a different race than your own.


I've seen it too many times where people of other races treat white people differently and think it's perfectly ok when treating ANYBODY differently is plain wrong in any circumstance.



living in the South just drives me crazy sometimes. :ill: too many people with too much drama.

that's a very interesting perspective cirrus, as it comes from the opposite end of the spectrum. disenfranchising as it may be, the south is viewed to be racist, prejudice, discriminatory and the list goes on. that is, jokes so run about how many of the people with these characteristics reside in the south. it doesn't mean there aren't people like that in the north, but that most of them are in the south. it reminds me of the republicans who didn't agree with bush, and how that disenfranchised them from the party itself. sucks.

Lux, yep, the South is a strange place. Lots of bad history. Thankfully there's a variety of open and welcoming people in Atlanta from all backgrounds and walks of life, but out in the country.........even i feel scared!!! :gigi: damn rednecks whatever skintone they may be.

I would say the racial tension is the same in both the North and South....one is just more obvious then the other....

racial tensions ... i could write reams about this, living in south africa. racism is still very prevalent here. i cant really say which groups are most racist towards each other since there is so much between black and white, coloured and indian, black and black [indigenous black people vs nigerians/zimbabweans/kenyans/angolans/zambians who emigrate to here], black and coloured, black and indian, white and coloured, white and indian etc etc you get the picture.

people here also have a tendency to think its ok to be racist if they were a previously disadvantaged group. [reminds me of what cirrus said]

apartheid wasnt made illegal that long ago, so i still remember what the segregated beaches / buses / trains etc were like. but funny, when youre young ... you dont really realise how unfair a specific systems is. then you get a little older and the full force of it hits you. one of the first things the last apartheid govt did was make certain previously "all white" schools into something they called "model c" which meant that coloured/indian/black children who could afford the school fees [i.e. middle to upper class non white people] would be allowed to attend schools with white children. this lead to an exodus of rich white children from these model c schools into impossibly expensive private schools -- many white parents didnt want their children mixing with the "others" you know.

the saddest part is, non white people rushed to send their children to model c schools and craved the acceptance of the white parental counterparts. keeping up with the joneses reached a whole new level.

i remember terrible things about apartheid. my sisters being blacklisted from their teaching posts for being pro ANC. my dad and i spending weekends tearing up anc pamphlets and anc member lists because his house was going to be raided by the security branch of the sap [south african police] since my sisters were suspected of treason against the [apartheid] goverment. my cousin being thrown into jail for 11 months for having a poster of nelson mandela on his bedroom wall.

anyway, its bed time. more stories at another time if anyone is interested.

i think the racial tensions b/w north and south are not the same at all. even if people in the south are vociferous about it, i don't think they are just doing what the people in the north are thinking...in the north things are quieter yes but people are also far more liberal. and liberal thinking means more open mindedness and tolerance.