0606s: reflections on my romani identity

i'm romani... i learnt it when i was young.... and i've learnt these last few months to be proud of it..., my dad always spoke ill of the children and teenagers that sold small items like socks and trash bags in the street, he would call them gypsies, and my mom would always respond "you also are a gypsy"... half a look into my family tree, into my family history or the surnames of my grandparents showed it all clear as glass,,, my mom's family is full of basque surnames on one side, and gallego (gallician?) surnames in the other side, she explained that always, always,,, even if she didn't know it when she was young, the presence of her romani ancestry was present, on the food, on poverty of her childhood and the strong will of looking for whatever job anyone in the family could get... on my grandpa's songs after frugal suppers... on my father's side the presence of the romani heritage is impossible to not see, be it on the face of my family members, be it on the clothes of my aunts, be it on the poverty that struck his teenager years, be it that during his unfinished years of school, people would call him a "chilote" (name for someone from the chiloe archipelago in chile), be it that he says to hate chileans when he has a thick chilean accent, and always spoke with a speech filled with chilean slang. 

the romani are an ethnic group you might know as gypsies. gypsy is an ethnic slur... one of the sadder ethnic slurs (cuz no one takes you seriously when you say it's an ethnic slur; saying it is gets treated into that same exagerated sensibility that people used to atribute to queer teenagers during the covid-19 epidemic), i remember around 2022 or 2021 some people actively wanted to let people know that the word gypsy is an ethnic slur, and those people were absolutely mocked and laughed at,,, not at the moment, but some months later. people would ask stuff like "is gypsy still a slur?" as if an ethnic slur could be a trend of a couple months.  

i saw a video the other day, i'm pretty sure it was a fragment of a documentary or a movie, anyways, it was about a neighbourhood of sevilla, in spain, las 3000 viviendas. the clip showed scenes of the daily life of the people of the neighbourhood, women singing, children entertaining themselves by making fire on the street, people talking about the conditions of living in such a place, the lack of jobs, the abandonment of the elders, the discimination, it's a very marginal neighbourhood, and in that whole video... and specially the comments, the word romani or gypsy wasn't mentioned,,, but it was very implied,, on the flamenco songs women sang,, on the mural of camaron de la isla on the wall. people in the comments would say stuff like "they sing too much and study too little", "my dog contributes more to society", "they talk about necesity but they probably have marble walls and 80 inch tvs", "a lot of complaining and too little working".

any of those people look like people i could've seen in a family gathering, like people i could've hugged in my aunt's funeral. that's what pained me the most deeply about this video. i'm from argentina and those people were from spain, but they look so familiar all because we're connected by shared romani blood.,, and it's that same romani blood that makes people despise them, talk about their songs like they're a waste of time, complaining about them complaining...