(The Nationalist, c. October 2001)
Is Ireland a racist society? The question was asked in a recent survey. What a question! It was as foolish as asking: is water wet? Are we living completely in cloud-cuckoo land? We are a racist society and have been for a long time. Racism is so deeply ingrained in us that we don’t even recognize it.
Long before emigration turned to immigration we had attitudes of superiority to others. We had them towards the British: we had not been big, bad colonizers like they were, with their politics of divide and conquer. True, we weren’t, but was it because we were morally better or simply lack of opportunity? Irish people in the USA, Africa and Australia were as racist as others towards black people and aborigines.
How about our treatment of immigrants? Repeatedly and consistently they recount incidents of being publicly insulted – especially if they are black – by people who seem to take it for granted that they have a right to do so. And we make them the victims of a Catch 22 situation: if they work, we say they’re taking all the good jobs; if they don’t, we say they are sponging off the social welfare system. Have we so quickly forgotten that for two centuries we were a nation of emigrants, asking for and being given a place in other societies? Now that the same request is being put to us, we seem to be answering ‘No’.
For our own sake we need to break out of the narrow tribal loyalties which exclude others because they are not like us. Immigrants are a blessing. They bring with them their own particular human qualities, their gifts and talents, and they can enrich us with those if we have the humility to receive them. I am glad to see Africans, Romanians, Russians and Bosnians on the streets of Ireland. They are an asset to society and we are the better for them. If we don’t begin by welcoming them as an opportunity we will end by fearing them as a threat.
I am a sort of immigrant myself, having returned to Ireland after 27 years abroad. My experience was that Ireland of the Welcomes was a slogan on tourist brochures but not a reality. ‘If you have ideas, keep them to yourself’, was a widespread attitude. There is smugness, complacency and self-satisfaction. ‘We’re fine as we are; we’re not going to change; leave us to our closed world; we have nothing to learn’ was the message, sometimes spoken, sometimes un-spoken but just as clearly expressed in other ways. It reminds me of a snatch of a poem in Irish that I learned at school many years ago: ‘Táimse im’ chodhladh, is ná dúistear mé’. [‘I’m asleep; don’t wake me up.’] We can do better than that! Let’s grow up and stop acting like spoilt children who want all the toys for themselves!