Roots.

There is little that is new under the sun. A common biology has produced a uniformity in the peoples of the world, in their passions, in their behavior, in their values, that belittles differences. We are after all a species.

There is a group of us who are unique however. Alone, they claim no land, either now or historically. They are dispersed but unlike the Jews they do not have a homeland in fact or in group mythology. They are rootless. They are stateless by choice. They are an ethnically distinct, genetically identifiable, loosely self-identifying, subgroup traceable to a particular land area with which they do not self-identify, which they do not call "home." They have no self-recorded history, written or oral; they are less educated; they have a language and dialects which they speak less than others; a culture which they practice less than others. They are non-political. They are less governable wherever they are: they live on the fringes of respectability and in a gray area between law obediance and petty criminality. They are everywhere and nowhere, defined most clearly by that.

They are the most fascinating group of our species. They are unique. They are the Romani.