underscores why so many of us call out the use of physical traits to establish sociological hierarchies of privilege based on prejudice.

It comes down to simple genetics - two dark haired, dark eyed parents are extremely unlikely to produce a blond hair, blue eyed baby. These parents are saying the child is genetically theirs.

It's called recessive genes. But it can freak people out -- including my father, who asked what my blood type was immediately upon seeing me. Even changed the name he planned to give me, because I was *supposed* to be dark-haired.

I am glad we aren't Roma, or I might have been taken away for DNA testing.

which is why I said unlikely instead of impossible. While both of my parents are dark haired, dark eyed, they both had one parent with blue eyes.

So hopefully you'd see that, especially as I told the story, that I've found a great deal of humor over the years in the fact I'm a recessive and I wasn't trying to be mean or anything. My father had no idea there were any redheads, or any folks with green eyes, in his family tree. He never really knew his father, and his mother was adopted. But she had dark hair, dark eyes, and a dark complexion, as did he. He also had no idea how to take care of a toddler with fair skin, leading to one horrific sunburn I remember as a two-year-old. As I grew older, it became obvious I was his daughter even with different coloring, and my little brother's coloring also differed (though he wasn't a full-on ginger).

Mendellian genetics also often fails, because my mother's parents were both blue-eyed, and hers are a dark golden color. The green gene may somehow be related to that, I think, because my older sister *and* my little brother have green eyes, too, but none of our parents have had green eyes (my older sister's dad is not my father). We know my grandfather was my Mom's dad, they look very much alike, and it was his side that had other gingers. Also, my grandmother was far too repressed to have a milkman in the closet.

blue eyes (maternal grandfather and paternal grandmother) to go along with my very dark hair. People just assume my eyes are also very dark but that's not the case - very light brown with gold flecks. I have a good friend in Florida who has gold eyes - I had only ever seen them in cats before her.

I really don't know what to say about this situation with this child. The parents are insisting the child is genetically theirs so a DNA test would clear that up but I could never support having to constantly prove your child is yours. From what I'm reading in the thread, paperwork is a problem with Roma adoptions so this situation could get ugly fast.

It's only a problem when there's no paperwork to establish a legal adoption, or no matching DNA.

In Dublin, they recently picked up a teen girl of "Eastern European" origin who was mute but was able to communicate via drawings that she had been prostituted repeatedly.

Horrific:

http://news.sky.com/story/1157739/dublin-abused-child-found-wandering-streets

The world--and not just the EU--has been slow to address the matter of human trafficking. It is an issue that has been ignored for far too long--the abuse these kids endure just has to stop. This is the 21st Century; slavery is illegal. Making little kids beg for eight hours a day is wrong. Putting young girls (and boys) out in forced prostitution is wrong. Forcing youngsters into thievery is wrong.

This will take an hour of your time, but it's well worth it:

And even that documentary indicates it's not as much a cultural thing as a product of the way society deals with the Roma. In Britain, all Romanian citizens are discriminated against in employment availability, not just gypsies. There are Roma from other Eastern European countries who do not beg in the UK, because they are able to work.

Are all of those women who were begging with their children perpetrators, or are some of them victims as well? Like in the FLDS case, it's hard for me to come down extremely hard on people who are essentially forced or coerced through circumstances to be collaborators, and women in poverty with children to support are *extremely* vulnerable to trafficking of all kinds. There are instances where the level of collaboration merits prosecution -- the "wives" who held the poor girl down in Texas, for example, particularly the one who traveled with Jeffs. Or women who are actually handlers of those children rather than the parents of those children. One of the documentaries in particular tried to track down one of the mothers, and she'd been forced into prostitution and then sent there with her own kids -- it's hard for me to see her as anything other than a victim and doing what she has to do to survive.

Benefits fraud? I'll be honest, that's the last priority in my mind, in comparison to forcing kids to beg.

DNA Testing will clear things up rather quickly.

Her husband is of Mexican descent and she is like a strawberry blond. Her son has a very light complexion and looks like her but her daughter is very dark and she says people had accused her of not being the child's mother because she is so light and "C" is so dark. I was a little surprised when I first met her because I had already seen "C" but then I figured her husband must have the darker complexion. I was right. Genetic parenthood shouldn't be assumed based on complexion. I read about a black couple not that many years ago who had a baby who was as white as me, and that is white. They did the DNA and the husband was indeed the father. Stranger than fiction.

And my husband would have a red beard if he grew it out.

It would be very unlikely for that Greek couple to have produced a blonde, blue-eyed girl who is that pale. And the fact is, they didn't.

Except for my sister, she has been referred to as the mailman's kid.

the grandparents or cousins?

But she is the spitting image of my great grandmother.

Nothing extremely unlikely extremely unlikely.

something is true very likely something is true. You don't. Shrug.

The fluidity of the families. Also due to the number of settled who dont talk due to the very biases we see.

My sister has dark brown hair and dark brown eyes, her husband has dark brown hair and hazel eyes. Their daughter, my niece - blonde hair (and I mean white blonde!) and light blue eyes. Just recessives carried on both sides, that's all. It's not uncommon or "impossible" or even close to either.

so I'm not really sure what you're asking.

because they're Roma, with not much likelihood of recessive blond genes. I believe their ancestry goes back to India. Of course, there could be intermarriage, bringing in different genes, but still there would be less likelihood of recessive blond genes than in the general Irish population.

society. When I think of the likelihood of the blonde haired blue-eyed girl to be theirs, I think less of he idea of the parents being heterogeneous dark hair, dark eyed, but rather the likelihood that they both had parents who were either recessive or heterogeneous. It doesn't surprise me a bit in the United States among our many cultures and inter-marrying.

So even if marriage exclusive within those millions there will be variances.

My parents were both dark-haired, but two out of their three children were blonde until we were 7 or 8 years old.

I was blonde until 7 years old. I thought everyone was nuts when they kept laughing and calling me the milkman's child.

My mother who is 100% Mexican, was born a towheaded blonde. She grew to have very dark brown hair like the rest of the family. Good thing the milkman wasn't a Swede.

But since they're recessive they can turn up in the children of brown-eyed people.

I hope they can hurry the DNA test.

Most Caucasian babies at least are born with blue eyes. The pigment deposits on the iris are not developed enough at birth generally to know the end eye color, and they can change with age. My sister's blue eyes turned green when she was six years old, when enough of the pigment manifested to overcome the Rayleigh scattering enough to change them to noticeably green, but it was fairly late. Blue eyes are unlikely to turn a real brown at that age (but maybe a hazel or gray).

to continue through adulthood than blonde hair.

Two blonde-haired blue-eyed parents producing a dark-haired, brown eyed child. But we are all such mutts that it can get a bit complicated from a Mendelian genetics perspective.

parents. It turns out one of his grandmothers was brunette with brown eyes. His children from his first wife were blond and blue eyed. So it seems the genetic shuffle is hard to predict.

I mentioned my mom's eyes, and it shows that at least with eye color, it's not all just like peas. Her parents both had blue eyes, but not the more usual color of what I heard called "Irish blue" growing up -- Grandpa's eyes were a very pale blue, and Granny's were blue-grey. So Mom having golden eyes, but dark, was quite surprising. Since the green gene has come through her, though, I suspect that her unusual eye color has something to do with it.

If my grandmother was not such a ... well, she gave me a lot of sex education lectures growing up, and I gathered she was not at *all* fond of the act .... I'd have been far more questioning of my mother's paternity. But they have similar body builds, some similar facial features, and then the ginger gene apparently came from his side (of his 5 living siblings when he was born, two were ginger, and there were an awful lot of strawberry blondes on that side).

To find a blonde that stayed blonde throughout adulthood in my family, without any red, you have to go to two of my mother's nieces on her mother's side. They're both blonde and blue, their parents dark haired but both blue-eyed. My younger sister, who grown looks just like my paternal grandmother, was blonde as a child but it darkened, and always had dark eyes.

I wasn't a close friend so didn't know them well enough to be aware of their family trees. I just remember that everyone was very surprised; but I suppose it can happen, but rarely.

yet he was born (back in 1924) with straight blond hair which remained that way until he was about 4, and then his hair gradually darkened to straight brown. His great-great grandfather was a white slave-owner.

Meaning that this whole (mostly European) fixation with faux genetics based on one's "phenotype" (expressed traits) continues to do harm worldwide and the (not so disguised) insinuation is, IMHO, just short of being analagous to the bullshit in the still-celebrated, purpoted "classic" movie "Birth of a Nation". I.e., they must "rescue" this poor blonde girl from the evil darkies.

If the conditions were so horrible for the girl in Greece, why didn't they take all of the kids in the camp that were living under the same conditions? Only the girl who looked suspiciously white and her siblings were deemed worthy of rescue, it seemed.

Two of us are blue-eyed, one hazel. My father has two other daughters from subsequent marriages -- one brunette, one ash-blonde, one blue-eyed, one green.

Recessives.

Isn't dark the dominant gene and blonde the recessive one?

It really rubbed me the wrong way. Nevertheless, I think these are legitimate cases of child trafficking.

I think that's what you're remembering.

I didn't know.

from whatever source I read very early this morning. Apparently Europe is discovering more and more families recording children being born into the family at anatomically impossible intervals.

While I think it more likely that an informal adoption occurred, quite likely from a northern or eastern European sex worker or non sex worker who couldn't afford a child or who couldn't tolerate the shame of having one with no husband around, they're unlikely to find many records and will always come down on the side of child abduction.

They're also unlikely to find parents who don't want to be found.

I've known a few Roma people as neighbors. The culture is largely closed and that alone raises suspicion. They also have very different ethics. While they might adopt children informally from parents who were unable to care for them for any reason to goose up their dole payments, they do care for these children.

Individuals may be "into some really shady things," but as a people they've been shit on hard for centuries.


Not commenting on the current case, though, because I know nothing about it.

Around his neck, then write an apology and burn it at dawn over coals of oak and you should be okay.

At the rate its going, every child who has gone missing over the past hundred years will now be blamed on the rom.

parents.

Here is where there is a problem, there is a real fear in the community and with reason that rom kids will be taken by the state. It has happened throughout history, and now with dna tests its harder for rom to claim the adopted kids as their own and with no paper trail there is a problem. Not sure how it will be solved, but thw adoptions will not end as this is ingrained for survival.

relevance?

They may very well be and dodgy paperwork is nothing new, a lot of kids are not born at hospitals etc and never registered. So having dodgy paperwork does not mean they are not the parents. I am simply giving info on how the adoptions etc work as there seems to be confusion and myth

Or simply the kid was born elsewhere and has fake birth cert. Both common scenarios. Or could be something more nefarious. Very seldom will a ROM use a real name with outsiders so you get confusion when it comes to the outside world.

If you're saying that's "not unusual", you're saying it's not unusual for the Roma to break the law - apparently for the sheer hell of it. They have other children who have not been taken into care; it doesn't seem they faked their birth certificates.

Its not unusual for the birth to not be recorded especially in the past, if thetr is paper trail its harder to find you. They may not be lying about a place of birth either, the date could be wrong. It seems people want to find stuff to be able to castigate with. Wjy the hell would you want to be able to be identified when the level of bigotry is so high against you.

for these children or they are going to continue to be taken away.

Their culture won't be allowed to trump the possibility that they may have obtained children illegally. The Greek case has certainly prompted other countries (like the new case in Ireland) to take a second look at this and the historic way of adopting children amongst the Roma is probably going to have to end. Or they will lose their children.

There are insurmountable issues with the paperwork thing, something as simple as names that wont be written down unless you allow every piece of paper to just be listed as john or jane doe you will never get compliance. There are so many impediments to having it work that you would have to rom totally destroy the culture and the belief system, effectively wiping out what makes a rom a rom.

with authorities - including registering birth certificates! Compare what happens with undocumented immigrants in the US.

To know who, what or where you are as it makes it easier to round you up.

Its just that after these two very public incidents, I presume the chances of police intervention happening again will be pretty high. Most regions aren't going to let a suspected abducted child simply remain in place without question. The girl in the Greek case looks pretty suspicious along with the other irregularities and conflicting stories about how she came to be in the family.

If the Roma want to keep the children they are claiming as family they are going to have to establish paperwork or leave.

Thats suits both societies.

And off the map.

But we have both the "paper trail" and an open adoption with a biological mother who could verify the adoption, if need be.

The Rom, if they want to continue "adopting" kids, are going to have to learn to do the paperwork . . . for survival.

are noted for their red hair - I'm not at all surprised if one child is blonde! My mother and her parents had dark hair, she had dark eyes, but I have blue eyes and red hair ( well, it used to be red - now it's going white!).

I think the Travelers in Ireland are a different group from the Roma. A lot of Irish went out on the roads during the famines (yes - that's famines, plural!). Many were itinerant farm workers (as were my grandparents' families. My family was wealthy - the women stayed home on the farm while the men went on the road. )

I am uncertain whether the Travelers may have deeper roots - possibly from Medieval times?

Also red hair is found in eastern european rom as well. A lot of the irish traveler families have close links to the romanicals of wales and england and family connections, with many travelers having their blood changed.

so it's no wonder some of the children look more like other ethnicities.

than their share of persecution and bias against their lifestyle. But this case, which has been making headlines all over Europe, appears not to work in their favor. Here is some background on the case generally. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/blond-angel-given-to-roma-family-by-mother-leader-says-1.2158484

The whole case is interesting, especially because it does not seem that anyone ever reported the child missing.

I believe that there is so much media focus on the girl's "blondeness" because that feature is quite striking in contrast to the darker skins of her parents, as can be seen in the photo with the article. Whatever that focus may imply ....

FWIW. my opinion is that if a) no one ever reported the child missing; b) no parent/relative with a DNA match can be found who would be any better a parent than the Roma couple; c) there is no evidence of abuse; and d) the girl was happy with the Roma couple/lifestyle, they should be given legal custody and allowed to adopt her without being punished simply for being who and what they are.

But I am perhaps a maverick in this regard.

The town where the Greek Maria lived was raided because of guns/drugs/stolen property -- and all of the foregoing were found.

The couple who had possession of Maria have turned on one another, each accusing the other to save their own skin. They now have separate lawyers.

The neighbors say that the child may have been bought for 850 pounds.

Witnesses say the child was observed begging in the nearby town two weeks before the authorities took her into custody. All that is in this article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2470998/Blonde-Angel-Maria-Mystery-child-bought-850.html

There's also the matter of SERIOUS benefit fraud (in cash-strapped Greece, too) to the tune of more than three grand a month. That alone will put them in jail for a bit, even without the theft/drugs/guns, and even without any suggestions of child abduction or trafficking.

Now the speculation is that she was to be sold to a Greek family in an illegal adoption, but that fell through, so she was dumped with the people who had possession of her:

all the details. I do believe, however, that I inserted several caveats before coming to that conclusion.

Balance your coverage (from the Daily Mail - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dailymail - hardly the place for hard facts) against this: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/22/angel-kidnapped-by-gypsies-libel-replayed

There does need to be more light than heat in this situation generally.

husband and wife turned on one another, each accusing the other of illegally acquiring the child, and before the reports that the child was used as a begging machine in the nearby town came to light.

Also, I think the author of the comment piece was unaware that the purpose of the raid wasn't to "rescue" the "blonde angel" but to investigate a theft/drug/guns ring (and that investigation bore fruit--the kid was just a bonus).

There wasn't an "absence of facts," except in the hands of the woman writing the opinion piece. The two people who had custody of the child lied repeatedly, down to when they got her, where they got her, how they got her. The Greeks think the kid was supposed to be an "illegal adoption" for a Greek or other couple that went sour, so the kid (a hot property) was dumped on the Roma at a discount price. The child was, like it or not, trafficked. It wasn't an "informal adoption." The kid was livestock, even if well cared for. The parents lied and said they got the kid from a Roma woman of Bulgarian origin as a newborn in 2009, but the kid was a year or two old in 2009, based on tests to verify her age, so there's something "off" in their explanations.

The latest working theory is that they intended to sell her into marriage in a few years: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/greece-girl-maria-bought-investment-2485445

And they may have found the mother, who trafficked/sold the child: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/greek-girl-marias-brother-sister-2488048

I hope the kid ends up in a safe place. Right now it doesn't look like a safe place is with the people who bought her or the mother who sold her.

Unfortunately, there are all too many such sad stories in impoverished societies.

Two of my five brothers were blonde as children, while the rest of us (all seven) had dark hair. Without a DNA test, hair color proves nothing.

Its like people believe that over the centuries there has never been new blood brought into the families and everyone marries their biological family.

but this made me think of a blonde-haired blue-eyed girl I saw when I was on patrol in Iraq. The majority of her family looked like every other Arab I saw and she really stuck out.

[IMG][/IMG]

The explanation that was given to me was that she was one of the genetic relics left over from when Alexander the Great and his Army pushed through the region thousands of years ago.

(By the way, that person in uniform is not me in the picture)

Especially in the eyes, nose, and cheeks.
Her hair will probably go brunette as she gets older. My little brother had hair and eyebrows just like that from my mother's Laplander side. His ash-blonde hair and brows had turned into mahogany brown by the time he turned 17.

Haele

They were still somewhat present when I was a kid, though most of us understood it was just a tale to frighten kids (just as woolves, ...).

But it is sad to see them reappear in the 21rst century. This is certainly not progress.

There may be something wrong with this family, but the focus on the fact they are Roma is just racist.

What if it turns out the child actually was kidnapped?

If they have a proof the child was kidnapped, they should sue, but the implication here is that their ethnic background has something to do with it. I have a serious issue with that and we all should.

To me it looks like the media jumped on it, look, ANOTHER gypsy couple with a suspicious blond child!
The Greece story from 3 days ago was such a huge international media sensation, this Ireland story is like a second scoop.

Particularly with what they're doing to their children.

Two different BBC documentaries that are extraordinarily eye-opening...

Its a minority of a minority, its that simple.

There are millions of Roma people, but what we are discussing here is NOT all of them but the HUGE subset of Roma GYPSY people that have spread throughout Europe exploiting their children, who do not work, and who live in horrible filthy camps in those countries that allow them.

We're talking specifically about Roma GYPSY culture. It's you that has been insisting that we've been discussing in all these threads about ALL Roma people, and we are not. We're talking about the large contingent of traditional Roma GYPSIES that still follow centuries old tradition of being nomadic clannish people that have spread out through Europe building utterly filthy shanties from whatever materials they can find or steal with no sanitation, no drinking water, no heat, no electricity unless they steal it by illegally tapping electrical lines, etc. that live under a hierarchy where no one works at a job, and they finance themselves and their higher-ups with money made by scams, theft and begging and where it is their own children they exploit that makes the money most of which goes back to the higher-ups in each clan all the way up to the headman who is filthy rich and lives in a palace. And these people living in these horrible conditions are NOT poor. They have cellphones, stereos, plenty of food to eat, plenty of modern clothing, etc.

Most Roma people have assimilated into the society where they live and put down roots. They have regular jobs with normal housing, etc., but we have not been talking about them. Geez, the family in Greece and now this one in Ireland are part of the GYPSY Roma culture, not the "Roma culture" nor even the "Romani culture" since there is no such thing.

Yet you've been plowing through all these threads trying to sell the notion that the abusive subset of Roma GYPSIES are nothing more than the majority of ethnic Roma people that are NOT gypsies and have joined the modern world of working honestly for a living and not exploiting their children or their females. It is this SUBSET that ARE that we've been talking about while you've been trying to excuse them while also getting all irrational about insisting that we're talking about ALL Roma people when we are NOT.

And the very problem with this subset of Roma gypsy culture is that it is freaking HUGE and spread through almost all of Europe. Hundreds of children being forced by their own families to beg and steal and are abused when their minders who are most often their own mothers aren't satisfied with the day's take in ONE city of ONE country of Europe is grotesque. Add in all the cities and all the other countries throughout Europe living in filth and exploiting their children and females they marry off at 12 or 13 years old there is no question whatsoever that that subset is fucking STAGGERING.

Even when settled the is still customs etc. the stereotyping in your post would be disgusting no matter if it was Jews, muslims, Irish or sny other group, but people feel safe when it comes the rom with their bigotry.

Probuably a gypsy ate my hamster or something similar.

how many hundreds of infants were taken from their mothers and put up for adoption in the US?

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/2000-Irish-children-were-illegally-adopted-in-US-from-Magdalene-Laundries-189789961.html

as commodities, and taken from their mothers by force.

It's terrible that this sort of thing is STILL happening in this century, and it's happening all over the world.

It is infuriating and horrific to imagine what those poor women suffered in the laundries.

A very dear friend of ours was of Hispanic origin, was rather dark-complexioned with black hair. He married a very fair, very blonde lady. When their (fraternal) twin boys were born, one was as dark as dad and the other as fair as mom! He said (his words): "Wow - I got a Mexican and a Gringo at the same time!"

Just a little (true!) levity

I serious.

schools ?

No more "declaration of two witnesses" to register a birth in Greece--good thing, too.

I guess Greece is going to go back several years and require that parents take this step.

by suggesting the child might not actually be theirs, because that would be racist.

They need to leave these poor people alone and investigate nothing, without investigating they can have no proof and they shouldn't get any because these people aren't Irish.

So far at least in the Irish case, there have been no allegations of abuse or neglect, and the other children were allowed to remain in the home (and for UK/Irish child protection, that says something).

Its Dublin which is Republic of Ireland.

Almost too good, if you recall all the women accused of killing their babies because a doctor said SIDS could not occur twice in the same family....

We've had some appalling cases here over the past few years where they have not been doing their jobs well enough. I won't quote examples : they piss me off too much.

Pretty much like anything there are good parts of the social services and then bad and the bad seems to get the press, much like we see in these stories.

Roma is a group name.

I wasn't aware of that.

Updating one's culture to fit into the twenty-first century can be quite painful, but in the era ahead, when there will be so many more human beings, we really will need to learn to understand each other and cooperate with each other if we are to survive. Many ancestral groups did lose some valuable traits and customs. Actually, 100% of all human beings on this planet are descended from such groups, and many of them were kicked from pillar to post for hundreds or thousands of years. This is true even of groups you don't suspect, such as the English and the Scots, only longer ago. Perhaps that is why some of them are acting so bullheaded, although really I do think it is high time they got over it already. When you open up a little, there are some wonderful advantages to be gained, and sometimes you can learn new skills that enhance your culture and maybe you have skills and knowledge that the rest of us need to learn. And, as the Polish, Native Americans, Israelis, Welsh, and Irish have shown, it is possible to go back and retrieve valuable parts of one's culture, including language and social structure. What if you could just agree to expand your cooperation a little with the outside world, in exchange for certain guarantees of safety and respect to be given to you?

Of course, the rest of us should strive to understand that this suggestion must be terrifying, if, like the Roma, you are part of a group that has been targeted a number of times for extermination, in Asia and in Europe, most notably by the Nazis, and sometimes persecuted in America as well. Be comforted, Roma, you are not alone in this experience. Can you see how you could actually be getting tricked into helping vicious people such as child rapists without even realizing it? Some of us outside have been developing these cooperative verification systems to thwart these psychopaths. Who knows, you may have unique skills that could really help us to safeguard everybody's children. Being visible can mean that you will find out you have many more secret sympathers and admirers than you ever dreamed possible. And not just for superficial things like cute clothes and fancy dances, but for deeper things such as the social networks that have been described recently and the ingenuity, courage, and perceptiveness that have been observed even when you guys thought nobody else was noticing you. You are not really as invisible as you think you are, and, if you are having trouble or facing persecution, maybe these friends could help?

Last edited Wed Oct 23, 2013, 02:44 AM - Edit history (1)

In all honesty I would not trust those guarentees as I knoe they would mean nothing, a classic example Americans will get is the treaties signed with the native Americans. Who would you trust with guarentees, the international community who watched a million Rwandans butchered in mere months, the EU which has member states with specific laws that discriminate against the rom. Hell i would not even accept them if DU was the guarantor after reading some of the posts here, how could you accept them from authorities that are far right wing or may become so. Sorry but as much as your post is an excellent post it would never happen. I would rather hide than trust my family to this.

The reaction if cps did the same thing here?

For whom there is no record of birth at the hospital the parents claimed she was born at?

What kind of reaction are you imagining?

To a call from someone who was comolaining the a minority couple had a lilly white child.......

There really is so much bigotry about this, if this was any other minority du would be up in arms but for some reason its not. Go figure.

Source: The Guardian