Comment: Racism and taking an honest, courageous look at ourselves

Angel Marroquin

The same thing happens with racism in Ireland as happened to that man who lost his house key at night and was looking for it under a streetlight.

A man approached him and asked him what he was looking for.

- My house keys, the man said.

Where did you lose them?

- I don’t remember where I lost them.

Then, why are you looking for them here?

- Because there is light here.

After the most recent riots in Dublin and Belfast, Irish analysts are urgently trying to explain where the toxic racism that fuels these protests has come from. The kind of racism that has led to the destruction of shops, cafes and supermarkets owned by ethnic minorities in Belfast. Are these analysts, like the man in the story, looking for explanations not where they should look but where it seems easier?

Talking about and explaining racism requires honesty and courage to take a deep and honest look at ourselves as individuals and society.

When a phenomenon presents itself with the extent and virulence of Irish racism, as we have witnessed it for the past year, one wonders why it is so complicated for Irish people to accept their racism. Racism is not like COVID or a new virus that “arrives” unexpectedly, leaving everyone without answers and trying to understand where it came from and how to get rid of it.

Of course not. Social reality is much more complicated. Racism has been here, maybe expressed in “milder” forms in daily social interactions, forms such as paternalism, so familiar to see in the way white people interact with us, the non-white migrants.

The thing is, nobody has been looking in the “dark”, under the carpet or inside the mental closet where people hide their skeletons of prejudice, stereotypes and the “things we think about others but feel too afraid to say in public and face others’ judgement”. No. But now, the valve is open, the world has shifted 180 degrees, and today, people feel free to say what they before spoke in the intimacy of their minds.

So, to sum up, racism did not start yesterday, and—sadly—it is not the exclusive property of the far right. So, instead of taking the simplistic view of “us” and “them,” let’s take an honest and courageous look at ourselves to start changing things for real and work towards the anti-racist society everyone deserves.

Let’s return to the man searching for the key under the lamp. We have heard many explanations as to why Irish society would or would not be drawn to racism. But is it okay to trust the diagnosis provided by the sick person themselves?

Doesn’t the ill person rarely know what is wrong with them, especially when they believe they are not ill? The consequences of English colonialism, rural culture embedded in the culture of the country, cultural insularity, the ambivalent love-hate for English culture, and the history of Irish emigration have been given as possible explanations.

The Irish have experienced racism at the hands of their coloniser, even manifested until recently with the appalling ‘No Dogs, No Blacks, No Irish’. While this is a painful and undeniable part of a collective experience as a country, it does not immunise it against racism. And that is a huge part of the problem and the slow progress in addressing racism as a collective.

Again, we need that honest and courageous look at ourselves.One of the prerogatives of being an outsider is that one can appreciate the social phenomena of the country in which one lives with a particular detached perspective. That is why it seems to me that the racism manifested in the protests and riots in Dublin (and outside Dublin) and Belfast is due to a transversal unifying element: the dense nationalism and belief in cultural homogeneity and tradition. Nothing wrong with that until we believe all differences (of colour, religion, language) are coming to dissolve our way of life, and then we resist and … well, we have all seen the slogans. Of course, a large part of society enjoys and celebrates diversity and multiculturalism. But, I wonder if this adaptability is a way of denying that this country has a problem with differences and outsiders.

Not talking about it publicly only keeps racism as a private joke and feeds the anonymous mob of social media. Ireland is abysmally behind, compared to other European countries, when it comes to, for example, having systematic anti-racist programmes in primary and secondary schools.

Now, sadly, everything seems to have exploded. Why is it so difficult for the Irish to talk about their racism?

Why is it easier to ignore and see it in the other? Migrants and refugees are afraid. We – those who embody that difference – fear what might come next. Should we be afraid, or instead, are we allowed to hope for the luxury of being seen as equals?

- Angel Marroquin is a Community Worker based in Navan.

Article first published in Meath Chronicle 31/08/24.