I'm not sure that it ever pays to stereotype people as there's good and bad in all walks of life. I grew up in a village in Sussex which was home to my Mother's side of the family for several generations and where, when she was a child, half of the population were gypsies, some settled, others not. In fact my Granddad, though not a gypsy, spoke their language and my Grandmother, though not from a gypsy family had a gypsy maiden name. So, obviously there was a time when, in that part of the country at least, traveling communities and settled communities tolerated and mixed with each other more kindly than they do today.
Of course, like most modern settled sorts, I generally have very little to do with travelers. About 15 years ago, however, I was employed by the Norfolk Travelers Education Service to illustrate two children's books, the first of which was specially designed to be appropriate to kids that live on Gypsy sites. To do the research for this I had to spend half a day with my camera on a travelers site and meet a family that were chosen to be the characters in the book. All I can say is that they were all very courteous and friendly and made me feel very welcome. I'm not so sure that they would have made me as welcome had I turned up unannounced but this experience did give me a somewhat different perspective on travelers than I had previously.
The second book was intended to be aimed at settled traveler's kids, who while living in houses alongside everyday communities, basically still saw themselves as travelers. That was also an interesting experience as I spent half a day with a settled traveler family, after which I was taken on a tour of one of the Norwich suburbs and had the houses of various settled travelers pointed out to me. Half of these houses looked extremely affluent, with many of them also having full sized caravans parked in the grounds. Various other things were pointed out, such as the symbols travelers use to signal their identity. This included stone horses heads set on the gateways and wagon wheels on the wall of the house. If I hadn't had this pointed out I'd have had no idea just home many gypsies live amongst us.
As for racial prejudice, which is what we are talking about here, I also learned that the travelers also have their own prejudices, with almost their own cast systems seemingly being in operation, with Romanies at the top and Irish Tinkers apparently considered to be scum.
