this week's Criminal Minds

[ratcreature]

I'm really pissed off that the whole episode was built around the bizarre idea that Romani, in some kind of insulated subculture thing, were stealing children and murdering their parents, (not to mention live on petty crime, but that prejudice is fairly omnipresent).

IMO it made no dent at all in their racist message that, iirc, in two instances it was described as "perversion of Romani culture", considering that the end revealed that it wasn't just a single family passing on serial killer traditions, but a whole group of people and going on for a long time. Considering that the "gypsies will steal your children" is the kind of traditional prejudice that was used to justify systematic oppression and violence against Romani over centuries, I can't believe they went there. The mind boggles. I mean, in present day that is rather "out there" on the ridiculousness-scale of racist urban legends (I guess kind of like "Jews sacrifice babies"), and I don't think it's that present anymore in this extreme form (unlike the idea that all Romani were thieves and generally criminals, uneducated and superstitious, all those are alive and well, at least here), but still. WTF?

Seriously, Romani activists are still fighting against systematic (and sometimes even today still legislated) discrimination, there have been laws aimed at destroying their culture for a long time, not just during the holocaust when they were murdered (and afterwards the survivors weren't even acknowledged as victims for a long time, but still painted as criminals), but also all the laws aimed against itinerant lifestyles and so on. The assimilation politics aimed at destroying Roma culture continued after WWII and sometimes still do, and pretty much the only ones stealing children were authorities taking children from Roma families to force them into these assimilation schemes, like when they put Roma children into institutions and separated them from their families. Roma were also victims of forced sterilization programs in some countries, some of these have continued into the 1970s, iirc. And the racist prejudice against Romani are still bad and widespread. And from this episode it doesn't seem that Romani in the US are much better off in their public image than in Europe.

Comments

[elynross.livejournal.com]

I was really unhappy about it when they went there, although in the moment I allowed myself to be more comforted by the "perverted the culture" comments by deciding that they weren't Romani at all, but... that was totally in my head, and even if it weren't, it's a red herring, because as you say, the association is still going to be there.

I wonder if they could have done it without involving the mention of Romani at all, just a creepy family tradition that somehow got started by some sociopath who raised his family up in it. Probably not; the way of life would still be reminiscent of Romani. Although maybe they could have had someone bring the similarity up and have shot it down completely.

Sigh.

[ratcreature]

To me it felt like a lipservice, that didn't make much difference at all. Twice or so someone says "Romani culture isn't like that, this is a perversion of it" (and now that I think of it this still kind of implies that this is somehow descended from it, rather than just a Romani being a serial killer), but the whole episode they *show* us something else, and then aren't even content to let it be a single event, but make it a group thing.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I kind of wanted to read it like that as well, but then there were the language issues.

but really, the fact that they took a prejudice like "stealing your children" and ran with it seemed much worse than just any ole crime...

[elynross.livejournal.com]

Oh, good grief, the language. I'm just dumb; that definitely supports ratcreature's realization that even what they did say still implies it descended from Romani culture. So I completely abdicate any claim that they were even giving lip service to it not being connected to Romani. Utter Fail.

[gwendolen.livejournal.com]

I wonder if they could have done it without involving the mention of Romani at all, just a creepy family tradition that somehow got started by some sociopath who raised his family up in it. Probably not; the way of life would still be reminiscent of Romani. Although maybe they could have had someone bring the similarity up and have shot it down completely.

That was my thought as well. Why go the Romani-direction and not just go with a family of drifters that have developed into this? It could work. It would have worked much better than this storyline did, if you ask me.

I know I read a crime-novel last year that dealt with a similar topic (a family traveling all over the US, kidnapping couples, killing the husband, waiting for the woman to give birth, killing the mother and then selling the baby. That family had also been doing this for decades and the new killers were actually the children of the original couple.) I can't remember which writer it was. I thought it was Kathy Reichs because I vividly remember a scene where the heroine is digging and finding skeletons but... hah, it's Tess Gerritsen.

Anyway, CM might have gone that way and pulled it off without hitting the Romani-angle and all the racial issues and the prejudices inherent in it. That was one of the worst episodes in ever.

[elynross.livejournal.com]

I think maybe it could work? But I wonder if the constellation of stereotypical elements (stealing children/living in RVs/shop-lifting/superstitions) might not have still made the association. And the use of the Romani language, which I completely blanked out at first; I suppose they could have had her whisper so that we heard, and the team didn't, but... It's just kind of iffy.

But it definitely could have been better done. Maybe. *g*