So wait... when when Europeans thumb their noses at America for being racist, do they understand that everyone here says the exact same bloody things about Blacks and Mexicans as they do about the Roma, and with exactly as much justification? No, your minorities aren't different. Ask anyone with privilege anywhere in the world about those who haven't got it, you'll get the same stupid sermon about how if you understood what "those people" are really like you'd see that their racism doesn't smell. The experience of the poor or landless is the same everywhere. The language of exclusion is the same everywhere in the world. Always angry, always smugly "factual", always dealing in absolutes, always dehumanizing. Utter rubbish.
I remember, pretty vividly, receiving a flyer from a bus driver in my hometown when I was a teenager. It was part of a local campaign to stop the construction of a mobile home park. At the time I was becoming fairly acquainted with anti-gay ideology, and what was striking was how similar this ridiculous local campaign against a mobile home park was: They'll bring STDs, crime, delinquency and garbage into our pristine middle to upper middle class community, was basically the claim. Oh yes, and teen pregnancy (granted, they don't usually accuse gays of that). I thought it was very disturbing, and particularly because this was from an otherwise very nice woman I had known since I was 5. Which goes to show, it isn't even necessarily about having a particular racial, ethnic or sexual status; this form of dehumanization can cross those boundaries.
Turning to the stereotypes discussed in this thread...begging and claiming a false disability, homelessness, etc? Check. Failure to keep up publicly subsidized housing? Check. Long running stereotype that one; my dad told me that the (usually very racist) families in his neighborhood growing up would complain that blacks were dirty and didn't keep up their houses. Public defecation? Here is a
nativist website accusing Mexicans of the same thing (note the overt comparison to the Roma).
Almost always it is the same: Consistently deploying the metaphors of animals, vermins, parasites, disease and pests. Things that have to be regulated, separated or exterminated. And it never leads anywhere positive.
