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The Amazing Race has been having an amazing season … until last night. No, we’re not talking about the unfortunate elimination of the middle-age couple—he’s a recovering addict, she’s as solid as a rock. 

We’re talking about a word.

It popped up in the name of one of the challenges posed to the globe-trotting teams of Americans.

Here’s how CBS sums it up: “In Gypsy Moves, teams had to travel to a gypsy settlement where they needed to load all of a family’s belongings onto a horse-drawn cart. Then, they had to navigate the cart to the family’s new encampment where they had to unload the belongings.”

Ian Hancock told us why he does not use the word gypsy to describe his origins. He is a professor of Romani studies at the University of Texas at Austin and author of We Are the Romani People.

What is wrong with the word gypsy?

There are two problems. One is that it’s like calling Native Americans “Indians.” It’s based on a mistake. It comes from Egyptian. Our ancestors didn’t come from Egypt. They came from India.

Secondly, the word comes fully loaded. If you look it up in the dictionary or stop anybody and ask, “What is a gypsy,” you get a very stereotypical response. Most people associate it not with an ethnic population but with a behavior: footloose and fancy free, maybe stealing, mostly movement.

Is Roma an acceptable alternative?

The word “Roma” is creeping in. It’s a legitimate word. But in our language, it is a plural masculine noun. It’s not an adjective. It’s in the subjective, not the objective case. You cannot talk about the Roma language, a Roma woman.

What term should be used?

The best thing is to say “Romani. The Romani people. She is a Romani woman. They speak the Romani language.

And the language comes from India, like your ancestors?

It’s akin to Hindi. It’s very much like Hindi.

In other words, it has nothing to do with the country Romania.

I just got a rather rude e-mail from a Romanian from Buffalo, New York, this morning. He was telling us to stop calling ourselves Roma, that we stole the name from Romania.

How did the word “Gypsy,” as a shortened form of Egyptian, take root?

When the first Romani showed up in Europe, it was where Turkey is, around 1300, the Europeans had a pretty vague idea of who was who in Asia. They tended to apply the word Egyptian to various groups.

How did so many negative traits get attached to the term “gypsy?”

In the literature of the 1800s, the gypsies came to represent the unspoiled children of nature: living in the forest, stealing rabbits and chickens to stay alive, telling fortunes. Of course, the actual Romani population had no idea that this image was being created. And it’s really replaced reality in people’s minds.

Has this image caused problems for the Romani people?

It’s done an awful lot of harm. We are not taken seriously as a people, and because we’re not taken seriously, our problems aren’t taken seriously.

What kind of problems?

The Romani people in Europe are facing a hard time. There are murders, attacks, calls for expulsion. The website errc.org has more information.

Does it surprise you that CBS did not bother to check and see if “gypsy” was a problematic term?

I’m not surprised. I’m hurt and disappointed, but I’m not surprised.

And the image on the show – Romanis living in a seemingly rootless, roadside settlement – that doesn’t reflect your life!

I’m a university professor, a United Nations representative, a presidential appointee to the Holocaust Museum. I’m not unique by any means. But it’s a fact that most of us are not educated. Most of us don’t have the means to fight back. There’s nothing we can do to stop [the use of the term “gypsy” and the stereotyping] and the producers of these TV shows know this. They know that any protests we make can be ignored.

-Marc Silver