Not really a post about racism - IBAR
Jul. 18th, 2006 04:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbI am informed that it is international blog against racism week. Urk, says I, pale child of a pale nation.
Suspicious as I am about these ‘"thingy" against "thing"’ things, I suspect that they work as a reminder to those of us who have the luxury of not having to think about racism – or at least be aware of it – every day of our lives to wake up and take a look around, and perhaps even reconsider our dearly held prejudices.
Me, I’m lucky. I’ve never been a victim of racism – or even significant prejudice or sexism, for that matter. For a long while I found it hard to believe that it actually exists, that it wasn’t simply something to be examined as part of a historical curriculum. In that, I was sheltered by Ireland’s somewhat less-than-multicultural demographics, and the fact that throughout our history, discrimination has tended to occur along religious, rather than ‘racial’ lines.
And, too, those of us who are aware of our own history remember that not a few Irish troublemakers ended up on Caribbean or American plantations during the 17th and 18th centuries. It ought to be a little harder to indulge in hatred of brown people if you recall that far enough back in the family tree, you probably have relatives who met similar fates. Of course, ‘ought to be’ isn’t always ‘is’.
Before the mid-1990s, Ireland was happily white, insular and provincial. And economically depressed to the point of suicide, but that’s beside the point. After we caught the economic Tiger and catapulted from ‘depression’ to ‘boom’ (and precisely how many people who were left out and left behind by the boom is a story for another day), we started to attract immigration.
Immigrating to Ireland? How strange is that?
Very strange, considering that up to that point we had been losing people – mainly to England and America and Australia – every year. With a rate of emigration that meant our population was steadily dropping.
And then bang came the nineties, and immigration from Eastern Europe and Africa and even the rest of the EU. And people complaining about ‘lazy foreigners’ who came here to steal our jobs and sit on the dole, and foreign students being beaten up at night.
It’s not racism the way USians understand racism, I think. The Nigerians and the Polish are equally suspect – though not quite, I think, as suspect as single mothers and Irish Travellers when it comes to people complaining about so-called Social Welfare ‘cheats’. It’s an aggravated form of provincialism, with a few dyed-in-the-wool racists having apoplectic fits every now and then. It’s fear of the Other, combined with fear of returning to a suicidal economy, and fortunately it seems to be going away as more and more people are exposed to people who aren’t like them in almost every particular.
It’s being replaced by concern about sex trafficking and identity fraud, but at least those are concerns with some basis in fact.*
About 50% of the people I’m working with at the moment are Polish or otherwise not-Irish**, and they’re some of the nicest people I’ve ever worked with. The primary schools in my area now have significant numbers of not-Irish, including lots of small brown people, and when I see the small people running up the road laughing and screaming together, it gives me a whole hell of a lot of hope that Ireland can have an integrated, multi-cultural future. Despite history’s obstacles, or maybe even because of them.
Call me an idealist. Call me a fool. I know a lot of my compatriots can still be prejudiced and blind. I know most of our recent immigrants and guest-workers and various other not-Irish still suffer unpleasant stereotyping. But I think it will improve, because in a few short years – less than a decade – I think it has already improved.
*There is, as far as I know, no dedicated Garda unit for investigating sex trafficking and sex slavery. There needs to be, because there are indications that it’s being imported wholesale from Eastern Europe, and with the women involved mostly unable to speak the language and prevented from coming forward – and with Gardaí unable to go undercover in Polish- or Lithuathian- or Latvian- or Russian- or what-have-you – speaking communities – no one has been able to get a handle on the scale of the problem.
**I suspect I should qualify my use of the phrase ‘not-Irish’ to describe people of whom some almost certainly have Irish citizenship. ‘Irish’, as far as I’m concerned, is a word on a passport. But it’s also a state of mind. It’s hating having to learn the language in school and still mourning its decline; it’s being by turns proud of and disgusted at the actions of our forebears. It’s being angry at the situation in the North on behalf of whichever party or none. It’s being asked, ‘Dev or Collins?’ and having the question make sense: it’s answering that question and having an almighty argument because of your answer. It’s knowing why the tricolour is green white and orange, and being pissed that the white had to separate as well as bridge. (Or, if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Catholic nationalist (a dying breed that I have to hope is nearly extinct), being pissed that the orange was ever there is the first place).
Every child born in Ireland – and every mother of every child born in Ireland – should be entitled to Irish citizenship and right-of-residence. But you have to grow up here for our stupid bloody history to ever make much sense, and for ‘Irish’ to mean more than a word on a passport. Which is not always a good thing. I wouldn’t trade my ‘Irishness’ for all the money in the world, but I won’t pretend that this country might not be a slight less bloody place if all Irish meant was a word on a passport.
Suspicious as I am about these ‘"thingy" against "thing"’ things, I suspect that they work as a reminder to those of us who have the luxury of not having to think about racism – or at least be aware of it – every day of our lives to wake up and take a look around, and perhaps even reconsider our dearly held prejudices.
Me, I’m lucky. I’ve never been a victim of racism – or even significant prejudice or sexism, for that matter. For a long while I found it hard to believe that it actually exists, that it wasn’t simply something to be examined as part of a historical curriculum. In that, I was sheltered by Ireland’s somewhat less-than-multicultural demographics, and the fact that throughout our history, discrimination has tended to occur along religious, rather than ‘racial’ lines.
And, too, those of us who are aware of our own history remember that not a few Irish troublemakers ended up on Caribbean or American plantations during the 17th and 18th centuries. It ought to be a little harder to indulge in hatred of brown people if you recall that far enough back in the family tree, you probably have relatives who met similar fates. Of course, ‘ought to be’ isn’t always ‘is’.
Before the mid-1990s, Ireland was happily white, insular and provincial. And economically depressed to the point of suicide, but that’s beside the point. After we caught the economic Tiger and catapulted from ‘depression’ to ‘boom’ (and precisely how many people who were left out and left behind by the boom is a story for another day), we started to attract immigration.
Immigrating to Ireland? How strange is that?
Very strange, considering that up to that point we had been losing people – mainly to England and America and Australia – every year. With a rate of emigration that meant our population was steadily dropping.
And then bang came the nineties, and immigration from Eastern Europe and Africa and even the rest of the EU. And people complaining about ‘lazy foreigners’ who came here to steal our jobs and sit on the dole, and foreign students being beaten up at night.
It’s not racism the way USians understand racism, I think. The Nigerians and the Polish are equally suspect – though not quite, I think, as suspect as single mothers and Irish Travellers when it comes to people complaining about so-called Social Welfare ‘cheats’. It’s an aggravated form of provincialism, with a few dyed-in-the-wool racists having apoplectic fits every now and then. It’s fear of the Other, combined with fear of returning to a suicidal economy, and fortunately it seems to be going away as more and more people are exposed to people who aren’t like them in almost every particular.
It’s being replaced by concern about sex trafficking and identity fraud, but at least those are concerns with some basis in fact.*
About 50% of the people I’m working with at the moment are Polish or otherwise not-Irish**, and they’re some of the nicest people I’ve ever worked with. The primary schools in my area now have significant numbers of not-Irish, including lots of small brown people, and when I see the small people running up the road laughing and screaming together, it gives me a whole hell of a lot of hope that Ireland can have an integrated, multi-cultural future. Despite history’s obstacles, or maybe even because of them.
Call me an idealist. Call me a fool. I know a lot of my compatriots can still be prejudiced and blind. I know most of our recent immigrants and guest-workers and various other not-Irish still suffer unpleasant stereotyping. But I think it will improve, because in a few short years – less than a decade – I think it has already improved.
*There is, as far as I know, no dedicated Garda unit for investigating sex trafficking and sex slavery. There needs to be, because there are indications that it’s being imported wholesale from Eastern Europe, and with the women involved mostly unable to speak the language and prevented from coming forward – and with Gardaí unable to go undercover in Polish- or Lithuathian- or Latvian- or Russian- or what-have-you – speaking communities – no one has been able to get a handle on the scale of the problem.
**I suspect I should qualify my use of the phrase ‘not-Irish’ to describe people of whom some almost certainly have Irish citizenship. ‘Irish’, as far as I’m concerned, is a word on a passport. But it’s also a state of mind. It’s hating having to learn the language in school and still mourning its decline; it’s being by turns proud of and disgusted at the actions of our forebears. It’s being angry at the situation in the North on behalf of whichever party or none. It’s being asked, ‘Dev or Collins?’ and having the question make sense: it’s answering that question and having an almighty argument because of your answer. It’s knowing why the tricolour is green white and orange, and being pissed that the white had to separate as well as bridge. (Or, if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Catholic nationalist (a dying breed that I have to hope is nearly extinct), being pissed that the orange was ever there is the first place).
Every child born in Ireland – and every mother of every child born in Ireland – should be entitled to Irish citizenship and right-of-residence. But you have to grow up here for our stupid bloody history to ever make much sense, and for ‘Irish’ to mean more than a word on a passport. Which is not always a good thing. I wouldn’t trade my ‘Irishness’ for all the money in the world, but I won’t pretend that this country might not be a slight less bloody place if all Irish meant was a word on a passport.
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no subject
Date: 2006-07-19 12:03 am (UTC)I have to admit she did change some of her ways after I was born. Y'see, my mother is not Catholic and not Irish - and this, in the 1960s, Was Simply Not Done. My father married Out of the Neighborhood. She was shunned and given the cold shoulder by my grandmother and my aunt; once I came along, as first grandchildren often do, the ice was partially broken by my presence on this Earth.
She was an important figure in my early childhood, and she lived long enough to know that I'd visited Ireland (the first time, in 1981). My auntie took a little longer than her mum, and needed a second husband to train her in better behavior (the sainted Uncle George). My family are my Mom's relatives; I have relatives on my Dad's side that I might have met once and never again. Usually they don't bother to keep in touch when they find out that we're not Catholic. Or something. I don't really know, and I never cared all that much.
Since I can prove my grandmother's birth in Ireland, I do qualify for Irish citizenship -- or did, as of 1987, when we investigated the concept. We were worried about travellers being targeted on the basis of their passports, and the other passport that I qualify for -- an Israeli one - wasn't any better for protection. (Nobody hated the Irish.) But it still wouldn't have made me an Irishwoman, and it's why I don't claim to be Irish-American. I'm an American, of Irish and European Jewish descent. ;-)
I love Ireland and would visit it as often as I could. If I ever get a chance to visit where my other Grandmother was born, or even my Polish Grandfather's hometown, I'd jump at the chance too -- but there, I'll suffer slightly because I don't speak any of the languages in those areas. At least in Ireland I can understand the rellies. Well, most of the time, and the ones from Belfast are the most difficult, but eventually I caught on. The cuppa tea is universally understood, though. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-19 10:39 pm (UTC)We never escape our upbringing. Though the lucky among us occassionally overcome it.
You do, indeed, still qualify for an Irish passport. It's a handy thing to have if you ever plan to go travelling in the EU - open borders and all that, you know. :-)
You understand Nor'n Irish? More power to you. Ulster English is an entirely different dialect - closer to Scots, which used to be considered an entirely different language, than English. Which is the long way round saying most of their neighbours find it hard to follow Belfast-ese, too. :-)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-19 11:32 pm (UTC)The funny thing is, we've got a Scotswoman at work, and I do understand her. Not every word, but I can follow her fairly well. Now, if she were to switch modes and start in with her home dialect, I know I wouldn't understand a single thing. Her American husband has said he can't follow a word when she's on the phone with family.
We decided not to get Irish passports because -- back then -- income was taxed based on total income, not on Irish income -- and we would have been taxed out of existence. I might float the topic to Dad again, just for the heck of it. :-)
Grandparents -- can't live without them, can't live with them. :-)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-22 07:44 pm (UTC)Too true.