[panglott]

To clarify, I didn't mean that the discrimination/abuse of the Roma happened a long time ago. I meant that most discrimination/abuse of the Roma has happened in Europe, not in the US. Anti-Roma racism in Europe is obvious, ugly, and contemporary. In Europe, Roma people are a coherent social group of millions of people; in the US, without mass immigration, they are a scattered minority so small that the only thing most Americans "know" about them comes from "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". With nothing to refer to, the word has been bleached of reference to Roma people in American use.