| RACISM AND THE WEST (1) (The incident that led to the article below has been settled amicably out of court and I have therefore decided to remove all references to the parties involved) (excerpts) Even though being of a black origin which has been on the receiving end of racism since time immemorial, I am not one to give much thought to a racist conduct, remark or behaviour. I believe racism is borne out of poverty of mind. No person is born to a race or of a race because he chose to belong or because his forebears know how to copulate to produce the ‘right’ colour. It is all an accident of biological history. Facing a conduct that is a throwback from the apartheid regime in South Africa in a night club in Ireland is a constant reminder of the dilemma of the black race in a hypocritical world. .................................................................................................. I have no apology to anybody for my colour. Neither do I feel incomplete with my colour. I am not asking for acceptance. But if a society claims to be civilized it must behave like one in all respect. |
| Also published under the title 'Ireland and Racism' at OpinionEditorials.com |
| Another version of the article was published in the Irish Examiner of 22/09/06 under the title 'Bounced for the colour of my skin' |
| LEARNING FROM IRISH HISTORY I read with interest an article titled ‘I didn’t know what racism was before I came to Ireland’ in Saturday November 4, 2006 edition of the Irish Times, Weekend Review. It was the story of a woman whose nephew was seriously assaulted in Dublin in an apparent racist attack. Having recently been constrained to bring a complaint before the District Court on similar (though not as gruesome) grounds I was able to sympathize with the plight of Miss Neltah Chadamoyo and her nephew. (My case was against a nightclub for discrimination and was settled out of court at the instance of the Club on the 6th of November 2006. I will say no further about the matter here). Let me preface this piece article by saying that I do not argue that mainstream Irish people are racist. I personally have a couple of Irish friends and they are great people. But there are pockets of people across the country that seems to be more concern about the presence of other races in Ireland. I am a Nigerian and I have heard a lot of sad stories of racism from other Nigerians resident in Ireland including professionals who were contracted from Nigeria to work in the country. (I am not one to make a case for asylum seekers especially from Nigeria. It is my considered opinion that they are better off living in Nigeria, as imperfect as it is, rather than seeking to exist on the fringe of the society in the West.) Many of these incidents are subtle racism that is difficult to prove in a legal sense but then the victim can recognise the trend. A Nigerian friend recently narrated the ordeal he passed through trying to rent a suitable accommodation for his family where every advertised property seemed to be taken as soon as the advertiser realized that he is black. The sad fact for all immigrants especially from sub-Saharan Africa is that it may be difficult to live a wholesome life in these parts. However, I think if the Irish people are constantly reminded of their past and the kind of treatment they got from the British for centuries and in United States many years ago (which is not unlike the kind of racism blacks are now been confronted with in Ireland) they perhaps should be more sympathetic to the plight of the black immigrants in their midst. To illustrate the point I am making, I refer to Terry Golway’s book ‘For the Cause of Liberty: A Thousand Years of Ireland’s Heroes’ (p.97) where he described the perception of the Irish by the British as reflected in press publication of the time as follows: ‘ Now of all the Celtic tribes, famous everywhere for their indolence and fickleness… the Irish are admitted to be the most Idle and most fickle. They will not work if they can exist without it’… The Irish, Punch asserted, were “the missing link between the gorilla and the Negro” The stereotyping of the Irish in the early days of United States took the same form and the “no Irish need Apply” racist policy in the job market is well documented. Today things are different. Ireland and its people are now rich and prosperous. It has finally been accepted by its former tormentors as equals. But now it has the desperate of the world seeking to eat from the crumbs falling from its table. And if Ireland will remember its history it will treat its guests a bit differently. (Also published in OpinionEditorials.com) |
| LINKS 1. For an American Perspective on Racism visit Dave Myers website at www.discussrace.com |
Emerald bile: forty shades of green, acid-tinted with envy . . .
By Martina Devlin, Tuesday July 31 2007 on www.Independent.ie
WHEN the 'Holby City' television actress, Verona Joseph, fled Dublin after being serially subjected to racist abuse, it
was explained to her husband that her persecutors must have mistaken her for "an immigrant living off the State".
Ms Joseph, by the way, has black skin.
She is also the mother of a baby girl. When she and her family took a stroll in St Stephen's Green - home to
birth-of-the-nation shrines to the nationalist, pacifist poet, Tom Kettle, and the anti-imperialist freedom fighter,
Constance Markievicz - they were pursued by a man shouting "black bitches" at them.
The very next day, a gang of teenagers pushed up against them, again near St Stephen's Green, and spewed racial
hatred in their faces.
On yet another day, a man walked up to Ms Joseph in a street in Dun Laoghaire and cocked his middle finger in a
recognised gesture of vile aggression.
It does not require a vivid imagination to picture how she must have felt as she waited for her flight home at Dublin
Airport, her baby in her arms, kissing her white husband goodbye (he is contracted to remain in Dublin for work)
amid the heaving ocean of travellers. Having vowed to never return to this country, perhaps she had to stifle an urge
to exhort the cacophonous, milling strangers to get away as fast as they could from this putrid little country.
How many others waiting anonymously in Irish air and sea ports that day were also fleeing the xenophobic poison of
the Emerald Isle? State authorities report that complaints of racism are growing, findings that are backed up by
copious anecdotes. It seems that Ireland really does have 40 shades of green; every one of them an acid tint of envy
as - so the consensus goes - the indigenous "under class" jealously guards its quarter against the newcomer.
Only superficially is this true. The Irish are a traditionally hospitable people. When the extended Roma family
returned to Romania last week after their sojourn on an M50 roundabout, they were effusive in their praise of
individual Dubliners' kindness to them. Such evidence, however, appears irreconcilable with routine displays of
racism, an intolerance long manifested in the widespread contempt for Travellers.
These enmities fester because our elected leaders have chosen to play Pontius Pilate. They prefer to let the two
most stigmatised classes in society - the largely social welfare-dependent, crime-afflicted, poorly educated native
underprivileged, on the one hand, and the asylum seeker/immigrant on the other - battle it out at the war front.
Politicians preach the virtues of multi-racialism from the monochrome, mono-ethnic pedestal of Official Ireland in that
same do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do vein as when they injunct us not to seek pay rises while they pocket their own spiralling
salaries. The ranks of the have-it-all class stay resolutely shut to the non-national. At a time when the ruling echelon
should be giving leadership, there is not a black or yellow face in the newly elected Dail or Seanad; though 11pc of
the general population were born outside Ireland.
The same is true of the judiciary, the big churches, the mainstream media, the corporate boardrooms, trade unions
and the boards of state companies. We congratulate ourselves on the election of Rotimi Adebari, a native of Nigeria,
to the mayoralty of Portlaoise. But all thanks are due to the man himself who, when besieged with racist abuse on his
arrival in this country, resolved to work to make Ireland a better place. If only Leinster House had 166 Mister
Adebaris.
There is little chance of that, unfortunately. The political parties have shown scant willingness to encourage
assimilation by nominating election candidates drawn from the huge immigrant pool. They are too busy basking still
in the glow of Moosajee Bhamjee's mould-breaking election to the Dail in 1992.
There is nothing accidental in this creation of a monochromatic preserve for the country's most powerful and most
privileged.
While Minister for Integration Conor Lenihan proposes tinkering with the rent allowance system to offset the threat of
ethnic ghettos, property developers are licensed to buy themselves out of social and affordable housing quotas in
affluent areas.
There are many highly qualified people coming to live in Ireland (our hospitals could not survive without doctors and
nurses from overseas) but they have no foothold in the nation-shaping process. The civil service is still dominated by
middle-aged men with gaelgeoir names.
Genuine
Instead of treating people coming to this country as the cause of the problem (they cannot speak the language, put a
strain on the health service and retard the education system), it is time that Ireland extended a genuine cead mile
failte, from the top down. What we need is a formal regime of positive discrimination, with official quotas to be filled in
the civil service and on state boards by non-Irish nationals.
Positive discrimination is not a perfect tool, as any woman knows, but it works, both as a blunt recruitment instrument
and as a way of raising consciousness about prejudice. Until the new-Irish are free to participate fully in the nation's
life, we must wonder who is most afraid of integration? The teenager shouting abuse in the street? Or the masters of
the universe?
- Martina Devlin
By Martina Devlin, Tuesday July 31 2007 on www.Independent.ie
WHEN the 'Holby City' television actress, Verona Joseph, fled Dublin after being serially subjected to racist abuse, it
was explained to her husband that her persecutors must have mistaken her for "an immigrant living off the State".
Ms Joseph, by the way, has black skin.
She is also the mother of a baby girl. When she and her family took a stroll in St Stephen's Green - home to
birth-of-the-nation shrines to the nationalist, pacifist poet, Tom Kettle, and the anti-imperialist freedom fighter,
Constance Markievicz - they were pursued by a man shouting "black bitches" at them.
The very next day, a gang of teenagers pushed up against them, again near St Stephen's Green, and spewed racial
hatred in their faces.
On yet another day, a man walked up to Ms Joseph in a street in Dun Laoghaire and cocked his middle finger in a
recognised gesture of vile aggression.
It does not require a vivid imagination to picture how she must have felt as she waited for her flight home at Dublin
Airport, her baby in her arms, kissing her white husband goodbye (he is contracted to remain in Dublin for work)
amid the heaving ocean of travellers. Having vowed to never return to this country, perhaps she had to stifle an urge
to exhort the cacophonous, milling strangers to get away as fast as they could from this putrid little country.
How many others waiting anonymously in Irish air and sea ports that day were also fleeing the xenophobic poison of
the Emerald Isle? State authorities report that complaints of racism are growing, findings that are backed up by
copious anecdotes. It seems that Ireland really does have 40 shades of green; every one of them an acid tint of envy
as - so the consensus goes - the indigenous "under class" jealously guards its quarter against the newcomer.
Only superficially is this true. The Irish are a traditionally hospitable people. When the extended Roma family
returned to Romania last week after their sojourn on an M50 roundabout, they were effusive in their praise of
individual Dubliners' kindness to them. Such evidence, however, appears irreconcilable with routine displays of
racism, an intolerance long manifested in the widespread contempt for Travellers.
These enmities fester because our elected leaders have chosen to play Pontius Pilate. They prefer to let the two
most stigmatised classes in society - the largely social welfare-dependent, crime-afflicted, poorly educated native
underprivileged, on the one hand, and the asylum seeker/immigrant on the other - battle it out at the war front.
Politicians preach the virtues of multi-racialism from the monochrome, mono-ethnic pedestal of Official Ireland in that
same do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do vein as when they injunct us not to seek pay rises while they pocket their own spiralling
salaries. The ranks of the have-it-all class stay resolutely shut to the non-national. At a time when the ruling echelon
should be giving leadership, there is not a black or yellow face in the newly elected Dail or Seanad; though 11pc of
the general population were born outside Ireland.
The same is true of the judiciary, the big churches, the mainstream media, the corporate boardrooms, trade unions
and the boards of state companies. We congratulate ourselves on the election of Rotimi Adebari, a native of Nigeria,
to the mayoralty of Portlaoise. But all thanks are due to the man himself who, when besieged with racist abuse on his
arrival in this country, resolved to work to make Ireland a better place. If only Leinster House had 166 Mister
Adebaris.
There is little chance of that, unfortunately. The political parties have shown scant willingness to encourage
assimilation by nominating election candidates drawn from the huge immigrant pool. They are too busy basking still
in the glow of Moosajee Bhamjee's mould-breaking election to the Dail in 1992.
There is nothing accidental in this creation of a monochromatic preserve for the country's most powerful and most
privileged.
While Minister for Integration Conor Lenihan proposes tinkering with the rent allowance system to offset the threat of
ethnic ghettos, property developers are licensed to buy themselves out of social and affordable housing quotas in
affluent areas.
There are many highly qualified people coming to live in Ireland (our hospitals could not survive without doctors and
nurses from overseas) but they have no foothold in the nation-shaping process. The civil service is still dominated by
middle-aged men with gaelgeoir names.
Genuine
Instead of treating people coming to this country as the cause of the problem (they cannot speak the language, put a
strain on the health service and retard the education system), it is time that Ireland extended a genuine cead mile
failte, from the top down. What we need is a formal regime of positive discrimination, with official quotas to be filled in
the civil service and on state boards by non-Irish nationals.
Positive discrimination is not a perfect tool, as any woman knows, but it works, both as a blunt recruitment instrument
and as a way of raising consciousness about prejudice. Until the new-Irish are free to participate fully in the nation's
life, we must wonder who is most afraid of integration? The teenager shouting abuse in the street? Or the masters of
the universe?
- Martina Devlin
| The Utopia of the Racist Racism is not a problem limited to any particular group of people. It just happened that it manifests more in the ‘civilized’ world of the self designated ‘white’ people of the world and it just happened that the forced designated ‘black’ people of the world are at the most receiving end of the rabid ideology. Others are left in uncertain categories such as ‘yellow’ and other shades between white and black. What are the goals of the racist? What would determine when his/her goal is achieved? Does he/she simply want to get rid of a particular group in his/her society? Or does he/she want to rid the world of such group? And if he gets rid of the black, would he stop at that? Or go after the Asian? The Jews. The vituperation of the American Renaissance on their website may or the British National Party may reveal some of the rabid irrationality that informs such thinking. You keep wondering what makes some set of human animals think they are superior to the other. a.) Is it the colour for which they knew nothing about how they happen to have? b.) Is it the wealth for which their forbears established by plundering other nations and which they continued to do by the institution and maintenance of a skewed world order? c.) Is it the religion of which they themselves have denigrated to the extent that they can no longer recognize evil from good, right from wrong? d.) Or is it an I.Q test that they determine the parameters to convince themselves that they are superior? Ultimately, the racist is a person in search of a cause that would automatically project him above others without any basis. He/she is afraid of competition. He/she is afraid to compete with other humans at the same starting point but would rather want to create an undue advantage by claiming a self proclaimed superiority. He/she cannot come to terms with the fact that those he/she considered inferior could stand shoulder to him/her despite all the disadvantages of history. He/she does not think of an ultimate goal as he/she has none. However, the racist is mistaken. The world has changed and is changing. The slaves are no longer slaves. It is either the self proclaimed ‘superior’ accept to compete on the same starting point or provoke a global hatred which is sure to consume the whole of humanity. |
Nigeria Diaspora and Irish Institutions: Paradoxes?
“The Irish missionary work in Nigeria continues to resonate in contemporary discourse on Nigerians in
Ireland in spite of immigration policies that do not reflect the legacy of Irish humanitarian endeavor.
Additionally, the perception of Nigeria _ and the rest of Africa, for that matter _ as a place to which
Irish Catholic and Protestant charity is to be directed, whether through the historical missionary
presence or church collections for what was popularly known as the ‘black babies’, creates a
discordant circumstance when Nigerians are present in the nation. It is as if the charity were
contingent on their not being present, forever on the receiving end of good works done by the Irish at
home and abroad.”
Quote from: “Paradoxes of diaspora, global identity and human rights: the deportation of
Nigerians in Ireland”
Read this interesting research paper by Elisa Joy White of Univerity of Hawaii, USA in African and Black
Diaspora: An International Journal Vol. 2, No. 1, January 2009, 67-83
“The Irish missionary work in Nigeria continues to resonate in contemporary discourse on Nigerians in
Ireland in spite of immigration policies that do not reflect the legacy of Irish humanitarian endeavor.
Additionally, the perception of Nigeria _ and the rest of Africa, for that matter _ as a place to which
Irish Catholic and Protestant charity is to be directed, whether through the historical missionary
presence or church collections for what was popularly known as the ‘black babies’, creates a
discordant circumstance when Nigerians are present in the nation. It is as if the charity were
contingent on their not being present, forever on the receiving end of good works done by the Irish at
home and abroad.”
Quote from: “Paradoxes of diaspora, global identity and human rights: the deportation of
Nigerians in Ireland”
Read this interesting research paper by Elisa Joy White of Univerity of Hawaii, USA in African and Black
Diaspora: An International Journal Vol. 2, No. 1, January 2009, 67-83