In North America people are less openly prejudiced against the Rroma than in Europe, but I’d imagine there’s still a lot of mistrust, because the stereotypes of ‘thieves’ are so widespread. Many Rromani Americans don’t disclose their ethnicity for this reason, because they have no idea how people might react to them. And they probably don’t want to have deal with people’s questions either, because there’s so much confusion and ignorance. So it’s easier to just let people assume they’re some other ethnicity.
I have never heard of anybody being racist against Rromani, ever in North America. And just like several people in this thread, I never even heard of the Rromani race and I'm like to think that most Americans are this way.
But anyhow, I'd like to bring up another point:
I worry for this newest generation of people. They all want safe spaces, they want to remove everything that offends them, they want to shut out opposing ideas...
The problem with this is quite simple: If you don't use your muscles, they will atrophy. If your immune system is never attacked much (like, with germophobes), it will atrophy.
The mind is no different. If you avoid all confrontation and if you avoid anything that offends you, and if you shut out all opposing viewpoints, your mind will get weak and you will have a very warped perception of the world. This is why such is usually referred to as an "echo chamber" where a person living in one only hears what they themselves believe, and it colors the entire world based upon their perception.
These people are emotionally stunted, and they never develop any guts, spine, or backbone. How could they? They avoided anything that challenged them mentally and emotionally. They sought out their safe spaces, so that they could huddle in their bubbles that they constructed for themselves, and they hid from adversity, rather than facing it head on and overcoming it, and you can just
tell when you talk to these people, the moment they get offended, they quickly dissolve into either tirades or tears and are incapable of debating you on anything they disagree with, without resorting to personal attacks.
You see it everywhere today in the new generation of "adults", though I put quotes on that word because emotionally, they act like children anytime they run into something they don't know how to handle, because they were coddled when they were growing up.
I am not making fun of such people, I actually feel rather sad for them, and I wish there was a way to help them, but sadly their emotional growth was stunted back when they could have been getting stronger. And this notion of having to remove everything that is offensive from all media is only perpetuating this madness.