Gypsies are everywhere and come from many countries, not only from Romania. Only ours seem to be worse, as a result of positive discrimination, paradoxically. Actually, their origin is India, although some say they come from Iran, and they were brought in my country by the Tatars, during their raids. They were their slaves, and they had the statute of slaves in Romania until around the middle of the 19th century when they were freed. There were communist policies that gave the semblance of social equality to rhyme with the ideology on which communism was based, and they were treated as equals . They all went to school, at least in my time, everybody was obliged to go to school, if patents neglected it, the police, called militia, was at their door to force them to send their children to school, no matter the ethnicity. We had virtually zero illiteracy in the 80s. After the revolution, they were assigned special rights, in order to calm the spirits of Europe, who accused us of discrimination against gypsies because they flooded Europe asking for political asylum claiming that we deny them rights to work and life here. They adopted the denomination of Rroma or Romani, which resembles Romania very much, to take advantage of the confusion. They learned quickly that if they scream discrimination loud enough, they will get the upper hand. They have natural human reaction, though. They are a very interesting ethnic variety, I had many gypsy students who were really, really good. I have many friends among them, in fact my best friend is gypsy. He is a very intelligent man, when I go out and I know he is coming too, I prepare in order to be able face a discussion with him, although he doesn’t have university studies, unfortunately he decide to stop after highschool graduation. Yul Brynner was of gypsy origin-although Russian-born, and he was proud of it. What a man he was, I just loved him!

I blame myself, and shame myself on my denial of my nationality, but I guess it’s the survival instinct getting the best of me, given the things I’ve been through in my life and being all on my own, nobody to hold my back, most of the time. Because I’m not shaming only myself. There are over half a million Romanians in the States, there is a joke saying that the second language in Silicon Valley is Romanian. There are many famous people of Romanian descent — Harvey Keitel, Dustin Hoffman, Natalie Portman, Lauren Bacall, Edward Robinson, Fran Drescher, Julianna Margulies, Amanda Bynes, Mila Kunis (Menkeroth might have some beef me on this one), Nadia Gray, Rosemary Harris, Barbara Bach, John Lovitz and Johnny Weissmuller (he was my first crush). Even Pope John Paul II had Romanian ancestors.

And i deny mine.