Comment: The Many Facets of Racism Part 2

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June 28,2004--It is a universal human trait to seek the perceived weak or negative characteristic in another to seek to humiliate him or her. When my son was ten years old, I took him to a Munster Gaelic football final between Cork and its neighbouring county of Kerry. I was among Cork supporters who viewed the referee as a lackey of Kerry. He was an individual on the field, dressed in a black kit and nobody knew him from Adam. Whether his grandfather had stolen sheep in days past, nobody could tell. However, there was one feature which provided fodder for the red-shirted Corkmen who were baying for his blood. A Cork supporter beside me kept spluttering with venom: 'You baldy fucker!' It brought to mind the story of the tumultuous Democratic Party Presidential Convention in 1968, in the city of Chicago. Protesters against the Vietnam War were battling police on the streets and long time mayor Richard J. Daley ( father of the current mayor) was on the main floor when Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut began speaking from the podium. Ribicoff called on Daley to withdraw his 'Gestapo troops' from the streets and bedlam was let loose. Amidst the din, an incandescent Daley shouted towards the podium: 'You Jew son-of-a-bitch! You lousy motherfucker! Go home!'

National stereotyping where one nation/country slags off another is common but generally different to racism as it seldom results in intense hatred of others and a knee jerk reaction to typecast an individual negatively without being prepared to make a rational judgement based on a person themselves. For example Chinese Malaysians often criticise Singaporeans who are primarily of Chinese origin. Malaysia is no longer the poor relation of its island neighbour but there is the view that the Singaporeans regard themselves as superior because of their longer period as a successful economy. There is also the view that Singaporeans like Honkies-natives of Hong Kong,  have adopted too many Western values to the detriment of their Chinese culture. In Europe, past wars have given way to friendly but often biting stereotyping. It can be funny to hear a Belgium term the Swiss the 'most boring people in Europe' or the Swedes call the Finns 'a nation of drunkards.' However, there is a dangerous stereotyping that is common worldwide. The peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa as a group are the target of a racism that unites the rest of the world. The impact that AIDS has had on the continent, the poverty, wars and the stereotyping of Africans as being prone to criminality, is a serious issue. Ask an African immigrant in Ireland about the experience of finding a house rent share with others of non-African nationality and you will realise that it is a serious problem.        

We live in a world today where the Grand Wizard of the American white supremacist organisation, the Ku Klux Klan, has traded in the white bed sheet and burning cross for political correctness with an emphasis on separation of the races being in the best interests of everyone. This is the public face but racists sometimes inadvertently drop the mask. The former English football manager Ron Atkinson's racist comment about a black Chelsea player was picked up by an open microphone when Atkinson thought that he was off air. British retail entrepreneur Philip Green who is currently bidding for retail group Marks and Spencer, was upfront with his anti-Irish comment last year. It is interesting that both Atkinson and Green later used the standard clichéd mea culpa.

Irritated by questions from the Guardian's financial editor Paul Murphy, Green said: 'He can't read English. Mind you, he is a fucking Irishman.' Murphy is a native of the UK. Green later said that he had good Irish friends including financier Dermot Desmond. Both Atkinson and Green had undoubtedly revealed their true prejudices with their racist comments. Green's brand of racism was far from uncommon when Ireland was a poverty stricken backwater and Irish immigrants in the UK were primarily labourers.  Wealth does matter and in the Middle East, Japanese are the top of the league of respect for foreigners while Filipinos who generally do menial work, are among the bottom. I encountered an interesting form of racism when an American referred to Colin Powell the Secretary of State, as an 'oreo.' The Oreo is the popular Nabisco brand cream filled black coloured biscuit (cookie). So the message was that Powell is white on the inside. Anger and drink are the usual triggers for people's true feelings to be unmasked. Too often, people are tolerant of the ignorance of others.

Racism reared its ugly head in the prosperous Ireland of the 1990's. We had for long identified ourselves as an oppressed people but our experience in the United States in particular showed that we as victims were not also averse to racism. In the first half of the 19th century, up to three million Irish emigrated to America, trading a ruling elite of Anglo-Irish Anglicans for one of WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestant). Harvard University lecturer Noel Ignatiev asserts that the Irish were initially discriminated against in the United States and 'became white' by embracing racism, In the years surrounding the Civil War, the Irish evolved from an oppressed, unwelcome social class to become part of a white racial class which pushed blacks out of  lower-class jobs and neighbourhoods they had originally shared. And though many Irish had been oppressed by the Penal Laws, they opposed abolition of slavery even when Daniel O'Connell, 'the Liberator,' threatened that Irish-Americans who countenanced it would be recognized 'as Irishmen no longer.' In 1863, the Irish rioted in New York against the Union Army draft and in the greatest civic disorder in American history, African Americans bore the brunt of the carnage.

While the first term of abuse that children pick up in society is the word 'gay,' young people in general provide hope that racism is understood to be synonymous with ignorance. Society needs to be open about the issue and when hundreds of travelling people move into a small town site without sanitary facilities, as happened in Wexford recently, it must be understood that reasonable rules of society should apply to everyone. Problems sometimes arise when the children of parents from traditional societies, who grow up in an open Western culture, revolt against strict rules. Earlier this year, a UK court found a Kurdish man guilty of murdering his 16 year old daughter in an 'honour killing' because she had moved in with her English boyfriend. Tolerance and individual freedom within the accepted norms of Western societies, must remain inextricably linked. 

- Michael Hennigan

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