Comment on Thursday SOTD Thread - March 7th, 2024
walden@sub.wetshaving.social 6 months agoMy references to other brands were tongue in cheek, but maybe still in bad taste.
I keep hearing people say it’s racist, but I can’t find anything on the internet about it. All I can find is that in Italy it’s sometimes used as an offensive word, but it also just means “Gypsy/Roma” or is used to describe someone who likes to travel. Being an American, I have no reference to how the word is used in other parts of the world, but all of the articles I can find don’t paint the same picture as what people are saying on Reddit.
Words can have multiple meanings and it heavily depends on the intent.
Maybe I’m naive, but is it similar to “gringo”? I’ve been called gringo while traveling and it doesn’t bother me, but at the same time that word can be used as an “offensive” word.
There are 4 businesses within 50 miles of me that use Zingari or Zingaro in their name. It’s not done to be offensive.
Antônio Carlos Jobim, a very talented and respected musician, write a song called “Zingaro”. Again, not offensive.
There’s an opera called “Zingari”. Again, not meant to be offensive in that case.
The word Zingari simply isn’t used in America (aside from the restaurants that popped up in a search), so if someone is searching for what to call their soap business and is presented with the same Google results that I’ve seen… I see nothing wrong with it.
djundjila@sub.wetshaving.social 6 months ago
“Gringo” may be offensive, but there’s no history of oppression there. (Like “cracker” vs the nword, they’re not the same).
Ion the case of Zingaro, Tsigani, Zigeuner, Gitan there is. The history of oppression includes systematic attempts of eradication and forced family separations similar to the situation with the Canadian Indian residential schools.
I mean, the first sentence on English Wikipedia:
This may be more of a European thing, but systemic racism against Roma is very much still alive and causing a lot of harm.
I get that Heather had some romantic traveller and adventure image in mind, but that feels a lot like the seemingly benevolent racism behind the noble savage narrative about native Americans?
walden@sub.wetshaving.social 6 months ago
I guess so. I have to do my “research” online because other than the hive mind of social media, I have no other reference to the word. Obviously the best thing to do would be to go out and find some Roma people and ask them what they think, but from what I’ve read online I’d get different answers from different people. Wikipedia is the only place that says it’s 100% derogatory, and even then there’s no official “page” for it.
Wiktionary, Collins Dictionary, Cambridge Dictionary, and Oxford Dictionary only go as far as to say it might be considered offensive depending on who’s listening, who’s saying it, and how they’re saying it.
The word gypsy has gotten more and more unacceptable during my lifetime, despite the fact that some Roma people still call themselves that. Gypsy has worse etymology than zingaro. It’s similar to how Native Americans get called Indians because people thought they were from India. Roma people were thought to be from Egypt, so they got called Gypsies. So here I am trying to defend Heather, when all of a sudden…
I had never heard the word Zingari/Zingaro until I started wetshaving. Ignorance isn’t an excuse, but I’m trying to do my research here and all I can find is “it’s offensive if used in an offensive manner”.