r/romani

Hi everyone! I’m a freelance tech journalist based in Brussels (not Romani) doing research about digital exclusion affecting Romani communities in Europe, including how AI systems and automated decision-making may reproduce bias or discrimination.

I’m at an early stage and would be grateful for any personal experiences you’re willing to share.

Please feel free to comment here or DM me.

I’m happy to speak confidentially and will not use anyone’s personal story without consent.

Thank you!

When I was young, literally every couch or sofa, and even mattress, would remain covered in the initial plastic wrap so that it was cleaner/easier to clean. Bringing bags or shoes etc from outside into the living areas or kitchen was forbidden too. I only really realised this wasn't practiced by gawje too once I started visiting gawje friends' homes at like 10 lol.

So out of curiosity, what are some things you grew up doing or with, and only later realised wasn't done by gawje as well?

I have a question about my background because even my family is not really sure.
My mom is from eastern Serbia on the border to Romania. We speak Vlachski, its kinda like an old romanian dialect. My family also looks more like roma people, they have dark hair, eyes and their skin is also darker. We have similar traditions to roma people especially when it comes to funerals (mourning is a very big deal). My great grand parents also used to travel in order to sell their work , they created bowls and stuff like that out of wood if i'm correct.

so culturally and look wise we are very similar to roma people but we do not speak the roma language, like at all. When I ask elder family members about our identity they just say we a "cigan" so gypsis. we kinda created a term for our self because we really are not sure how to identify ourselves and its "daj nostri", which just means "one of ours".

So if anyone is also from eastern Serbia and has a similar family history or culture, maybe you have more insight

xx

I’ve recently learned I’m Romani (specifically bohemian Romani, I think) and know that with topics like this I’d way rather read a history book written by a Romani person then some random British dude. So if anyone knows good books I’d love to read some stuff about this! Thanks!

Hey, everyone. I started learning about this culture and I want to know more about it. Does does anyone know of any Romani cultural festivals or organizations around southwest Pennsylvania? (I don’t wanna get too exact for safety and all)
There is just so much more I would like to learn (in a respectful manner ofc)

Apparently Shes 14 or 15 Shes from Kansas and been missing for a week everyone is saying that she ran away with a boy but there was no phone call to the family her mother and father is Chris and Claudia they put amber alert, and everything, her bb (im assuming it’s her bb) she made a TikTok saying “Alison you keep viewing my TikTok’s” so from there we know she’s alive but keep her in prayer hopefully in Jesus name they can find her (by the way I’m not talking about Peyton Shes 18 and went to her guyshay friends Tyna she’s safe)

My grandad and my auntie were driving me from their city back to my village (known in my county for being a romany town), on the way there we stopped for a smoke break in a random little gorgia village that looked pretty posh, we were just perched on a fence enjoying the beautiful (public) view of the fields at Golden hour until this blonde lady comes out of her property from behind us with a big long hunting gun yelling at us to "GO BACK TO (my village name) NOW", my grandad has been through this many times in his life so he just politely apologized and got back into the car with my aunt, but as we were walking away she called us "pikee's" which in the uk is worse than the g word. I started yelling at the lady because it was literally fathers day and she threatened my grandfather and his family with a gun after our celebration meal, But my auntie had a go at me for feeding the woman's prejudice🙄

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This is in england btw and I haven't heard of stuff like this happening since my grandad was young, so it was shocking and very scary, but I wanna know if this is actually still a common occurrence or if we just got unlucky😭