Many people try to
camouflage their racism by prefixing it with the word ‘casual’, but some words
just do not belong together. ‘Casual racism’ is as mismatched a combination as ‘accidental
starvation’ or ‘inadvertent massacre.’
Trouble
is, we’re all casual about racism, in different ways. There are so many strains
of racism manifesting themselves at the moment, it seems natural, almost human,
to want to gauge it; measure it; describe this kind of racism as different to
that one. Yet there is no such thing as racism-lite.
I’d been planning to
write a piece about refugees seeking asylum in Ireland. A group who arrived in
2000 were assigned to a privately-run Direct Provision centre in Salthill. They
arrived here looking for freedom, safety, dignity and a chance to build a life,
the same basic human rights that the Irish have sought and gained all over the
world.
Upon arrival they were
told that their applications would be processed in 6 months, so I very much
doubt they thought they’d still be there 14 years later, having raised nearly
an entire generation on €19 a week per adult. Families are forced to eat food
that appears to them unhealthy and foreign, while being denied the basic human
right to cook for their children.
Then something
wonderful happened. Instead of having to wag my scribbling finger in an
unattractive way, the plight of refugees in Ireland became news. Having woken
up to the injustice being perpetrated, the Irish are marching on the streets to
protest.
For too long I feared
I’d have to watch a Prime Time Special at some indeterminate time in the
future, wherein the shameful plight of these people would be revealed, offering
Ireland another opportunity to self-flagellate on a national scale, muttering
about how this could have been possible, this awful terrible tragic way of
running things.
No offence, but ye
lads are great at that. Yet it didn’t happen because people like me and former
Supreme Court Judge Catherine McGuinness, who predicted that a future
government would end up apologising for the damage done by the current system,
were wrong.
Ireland’s on the case,
but it took a while. Our ‘casual’ racism of turning our collective heads for
years, allowing such a regime to survive, is no longer acceptable to the Irish.
We all agree that private companies running holding pens for humans is not the
way to go.
Yahoo! The times they
are a-chaaang-in’ and all that.
But oops - what’s
this?
Oh no.
My chin drops through
the floor, closely followed by my morale. Last week Declan Tierney wrote in
this noble rag about Councillor Michael Fahy’s wish that when they finally
build the Gort to Tuam motorway, the 500 construction jobs won’t go to ‘foreigners’.
Oh. Oh my god. So sad.
You might think it was
enough for him to blast the basic tenets of the EU to smithereens, while
leaving all vestige of civilised human decency dead on the floor, but Fahy wasn’t
done until he used every 1970s racist cliché in the book.
He had nothing against
people from northern Europe.
“The point I am making
is that they should go home and try and get jobs in their own countries."
Just when I thought it
could get no worse, Tierney reported that the Councillor’s arguments weren’t
even based around economics.
“It is 26 years since
we won an All-Ireland hurling title and the main reason is that some of our
best hurlers and workers are living abroad!” said Cllr. Michael Fahy.
“Hurling!” I shriek
out loud with disbelief.
“I told you Charlie,
return of the Gaels...” whispers my friend Whispering Blue in response from his
armchair across the room.
The Irish Council for
Civil Liberties decline to make any comment. This colyoom is however willing to
speak out against such vile bilge, because I know that somewhere there’s a
bloke standing up for casual racism.
“Ah sure, what would
this English bollox know? Yer man, he was only talkin’ about da hurling.”
How can we pretend to
be getting to grips with the ills of society when it is still acceptable for
our elected representatives to sound like the redneck forces of Ferguson,
Missouri?
There always has been
something casually racist about US society. Although poverty itself creates
ghettos of ethnic minorities, nowhere else have I seen anything like the urban
social housing complexes known in America as the Projects. Almost entirely
black, they are ersatz open prisons for those that US society expects to become
criminals. African Americans make up nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million
people in jail in the USA, six times the rate of white prisoners.
Just another statistic
that we’ve all become used to; become causal about.
Casual racism thrives
in England, where ex-Premier League manager Malky
Mackay was about to sign a contract with Crystal Palace when the club suddenly
rejected the deal. Mackay been sending racist texts. Hardly surprising, given
the casually accepted status quo in the English Football League, where nearly a
quarter of all its players are black, yet 98% of the managers are white.
Nothing
about racism is ever casual. The only casual thing is our attitude to the
plight of others. We need to be asking now why it takes so many years to
process the applications of those seeking asylum here.
As a
people who have suffered so greatly over the centuries I am saddened and
shocked that the Irish have up to now appeared so casual about withholding
basic human rights from others.
Your
politicians plead with US Congress to allow an amnesty to long-term Irish
illegals living and working in America, yet here in Ireland refugee families
share a room for 14 years, cannot send their children to 3rd Level Education
and cannot cook their own rice.
Time to
stop being so causal about human rights. Time to start seeking justice for
those on these shores.
©Charlie
Adley
07.09.14.
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