I think Americans may have a hard time truly comprehending how Europeans, particularly Eastern Europeans, feel about the Roma. I feel there is more of a romantic sentiment towards gypsies in the U.S., a beautiful, musical, Esmarelda sort of fanstasy. The reality is a bit more complex, and not quite as beautiful.
I read an anthropologist's study of gypsies living around all of Eastern Europe. Isabel Fonseca wrote Bury Me Standing about her journey to various gypsy settlements. Even from her very sympathetic point of view, she found many things particularly difficult about gypsies. Their notions of 'fact' and 'law' simply do not match those of Westerners/most other cultures. She would ask questions seeking facts, and get the impression that their responses were simply what they thought she wanted to hear. Gypsies are often accused of being liars, and this may be true in this sense, though to them, it is not lying, it is simply story telling. Their culture is not a written culture, purely an oral culture. They tend to adopt the religion of their host country, while maintaining an extremely complex taboo system, with a primary point being the 'uncleanliness' of anything below the waist. As such, skirts and pants cannot be washed with shirts, different rags are needed to clean the seats of chairs than the backs of chairs. Menstruation taboos apply as well. Stealing is another concept which does not translate well between cultures- to gypsies, if it is not guarded carefully enough, it is probably fair that it should be taken from you.
From what I have personally observed, the gypsies love flashy, 'blingy' things. They build Gypsy mansions, multi-storied, turreted, embellished affairs. Women wear long, neon-toned flowery skirts, sweat shirts embellished with metallic letters, mixing and layering bright prints and colors. Men wear cowboy hats and pointed toed shoes. The gypsies that I most recognize seem to survive primarily by begging. It's a rather pathetic situation, yet they don't seem to be upset about it it some ways. They beg everyday, flaunting their babies and young, filthy children, to elicit some sympathy.
Romanians flat out hate gypsies. Few will ever even temper their disdain for the race. Coming from America, where we emphasize equality and civil rights and non-racism and acceptance, the openly blunt hatred is shocking in a lot of ways (Of course, Western Europeans could be considered more egalitarian in a lot of ways, though up until the last decades, they didn't have quite the level of immigration, etc, but I am writing purely from an American's point of view right now). Of course, racism and prejudice is common in the U.S. as well, but societal norms force people to temper or change their views.
As for the gyspises influencing other cultures- it certainly seems that there is a very fine line between certain popular or folk music in Romania and the gypsy music. There is, of course, higher quality folk music and gypsy music, but the common stuff really seems to bleed across the lines quite a bit (you're not allowed to say this, of course). Gypsy folk wear and the folk wear of various parts of Romania and the Ukraine and Bulgaria all seem rather similar in a lot of ways. The embroidery, the bright colors and patterns, etc, bear a lot of similarities. Even in popular clothing, the way Romanian men doll themselves up, minus a cowboy hat, bears a lot of similarities to the gypsies too (again, this is a verboten observation). Whether they like it or not, the gypsies have been in Romania for a very, very long time. They were kept as slaves by Wallachian and Moldavian princes to build castles and fortifications. They have been living next to or within Romanian villages for centuries.
Even within the Roma communities, there are a lot of biases. There are higher-classed gypsies and lower-classed gypises. Gypsies with a trade, like metal working or music, are generally better respected and settled in. Gypsies who beg as a living are disdained by gypsy and non-gypsy alike.
The Roma keep to themselves. They are not accepted into communities, nor do they try to integrate into communities. Children are rarely sent to schools, as the gypsies prefer to teach about their own culture to their own children.
The Romanians don't even view the gypsy issue as anything more than a pest-control issue. I sat in on a human rights high school course, and the kids are disinterested in human rights all together. They thought human rights had to do with vague issues relating to refugees or people in the Middle East, nothing having to do with them, therefore nothing worth their time or interest. Even the high school teacher didn't seem to understand the connection between "human rights" and the fact that, for example, Cluj has separate Romanian and Hungarian high schools, each taught in different languages (separate but equal??) and the whole disrespect for and discrimination against gypsies. Apparently, no, that has nothing to do with human rights. Hmm...
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I would say that things have got worse. The Gypsies are the "new Jews" in Eastern Europe. Think back to the Nazi era, when Romanians willingly rounded up their Jews and sent them to their deaths, but fell short of doing the same to Gypsies and indeed complained when "useful" Gypsies such as metalworkers were deported to Transnistria. (The Yad Vashem report on the Holocaust in Romania is relevant reading. It's easy to find on Google.) Now the Gypsies are regarded as the "principal menace to Romanian civilisation", when actually Iliscu et al deserve that acolade.
There are two other significant factors. After WW2, the Communists used the Gypsies as a "class ally", in Marxist Leninist theory a group who ought to support "the workers". So wealthier people had to accept Gypsies living in their houses, which of course were trashed. Many older people have hated Gypsies pathologically since then. After the fall of communism, peopl who had land confiscated were given some of it back. The Gypsies, who owned no land, were given nothing. Those who worked in state factories very often saw those factories close. Basically, nothing was done to give the Gypsies a legitimate (in a white European sense) way to make money. Their old form of employment - causual labour on big estates - had ceased to exist. Post-1990 they weren't able to function economically except as you see them doing now. Basically, incompetent and corrupt Romanian governments have allowed a situation to arise whereby they have a sizeable minority that is not really able to participate in the economy. This sits easily with ordinary Romanians, who are short on altruism (can they care even for their own orphans?) and quick to blame others for the results of their own faults.
I was also struck by the way in which Gypsy society is not mutually supportive. The various tribes (or, really, castes) do not stick together. The so-called "Partidul Romilor" represents the interests of a minority. Ditto the various "Kings of the Gypsies". The group that we call "the Gypsies" really are a group of ethnically related but incohesive castes that wish to live apart from normal society. Even a mature egalitarian democracy would have trouble in sensitively handling a million Gypsies.
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