The Rittenhouse Review

A Philadelphia Journal of Politics, Finance, Ethics, and Culture


Saturday, February 05, 2005  

AN ETHNIC SLUR IS STILL AN ETHNIC SLUR
Even When the Long-Disregarded Roma are Involved

Lately around the blogosphere I've been seeing the words "gyp," "gypping," "gypped," and variants thereof -- including, in the case of Michelle Maglalang Malkin, "gipped" [sic] -- far more often than I can stand, even when the words were published in response to Andrew Sullivan and his latest scheme, "I'm laughing all the way to the I'll-Blog-No-More bank."

Frankly, I would have thought otherwise intelligent people by now would have known, or at least been vaguely aware, that the term "gypsies" refers to an identifiable group of people who now more properly are called the "Roma," and that the more commonly deployed, and now archaic, term "gypsies" is considered offensive, not only to the Roma but to others as well.

(Yeah, I know: Leave it Maglalang Malkin to get even her ethnic slurs wrong.)

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