The anti-racism lobby in Ireland is angry with comments made by a local politician Darren Scully, a councillor, former mayor and member of the rightwing Fine Gael party.
The Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny is the leader of this political party. First forward; Scully said this week that he is not going to serve his black constituents because they are generically without manners and very aggressive. Scully also claimed that among the things he did not like about black people was their temperament when seeking services to their favour; they appeared to be blackmailing him and white people in general with the race-card.
In response to the race debate this has generated in Ireland, Scully has refuted claims of racism. He says that his words were taken out of context even though he stands by the same. This man has made like the racists of any prominence, a clichéd allegory rather than a reality of the black man or woman.
The kind of schoolboy antics that you hear from “I didn’t mean to say this” white folk in a bar: “Is it true what they say about black men?” So in what context does Scully want his audience to believe that his words really focused on – innocent, moderate and friendly description of black people or the opposite? It is also possible to conclude that he was actually carrying an unofficial predisposition of or message of his political party, which is in power now in Ireland.
That said, it is by no surprise that a classic reference to political correctness has also been attributed to Scully, he has dismissed the accusations about his racist statement as the work of political correctness as a belief system. Generally, right-wing political notions don’t go with the idiom, political correctness, the two don’t lie in the same bed and never will.
Of course racism in Ireland, the Republic and the North is not a new thing. It is becoming even more prevalent now that the population of black people is growing. Some white communities are blaming the competition for jobs between races rather than nationalities and the role played by the state; housing services, education and so on for invoking their common sense to adjudicate in favour of black people.
Some see it is as a dual struggle with incoming nationalities, ethnics, the other, religion, anything and everything that is not genetically white. In Ireland, this resentment among some of but not all of the white population has almost become a phenomenon. The media, political interests and other institutions are increasingly taking a right-wing view of anything black that has two legs and a brain.
What is wrong with the black skin? Why does it terrify so many? Is there something the racist is not telling us about what he feels in his or her own skin? Is he talking about immigration of blacks as a problem or the black skin itself and how does that transfer into a supposed black heritage or culture of what he calls aggression?
These are questions I prefer to give to Mr Scully, who was until November 22 2011, the Mayor of the Irish town of Naas town in County Kildare. Is he saying that all black people are the same that is of whatever whole description he prefers? Following that conclusion, does he then hypothesize that all people with white skin colour are also intrinsically similar?
Well if that’s the case, then we have a problem Houston, a big problem. Someone argued accurately in this fashion, “pit bulls are dangerous dogs, would you agree and has every single pit bull bitten someone?” That analogy can be applied to any situation, any colour, even on Scully himself. The results would be obvious.
“Don’t dare call me racist, one of my best friends is black”. This kind of defence is common in Ireland and of course Europe and elsewhere. There are thousands of black people, African, mixed-race and Asian, living in the republic of Ireland. The numbers are not phenomenal but many, especially in big cities like Dublin and in the North comparatively, Belfast.
When one crosses the border to Northern Ireland, the demographic of black people is rather small but gradually growing too. This minute detail is just to show that one is more likely to hear the “black friends” dictum repeated in the South rather than in the North of Ireland because of the numbers game.
The contrast is however, not that important in real time because of the fluidity of migrating non-citizen populations, the individual interactions between races and the non-scientific declarations about how to quantify racism in Ireland. Some in the white community have even argued in the past this falsehood; that there cannot be racism in Ireland or Northern Ireland because there were no black people.
Immigrants have and continue to really transform Ireland North and South. Pre-1999, only 2 per cent of the baby population in Ireland were foreign nationals. This figure has dramatically changed to two digit numbers and many of them are black as well as second generation or third generation immigrants from Eastern Europe.
In terms of how people perceive the black community in Ireland, there is almost a grey area in conservative and liberal understanding of black migration into Ireland. Liberals whites too have been known to be cagey about “too many” blacks in their midst, schools, healthcare, universities and so on.
It is true to say that Ireland, like Britain is adopting multiculturalism, rather than assimilation as in the case of France. According to the anti-immigration side of things, multiculturalism has its flows, often viewed as deceitful that a country is a melting pot and interventionist government is in agreement with positive discrimination in favour of migrants when providing services.
Whichever direction this debate takes, there is one thing for sure; it is not the last time a personal inferiority complex of a Caucasian male (Scully) or female appears in the news headlines in the form of racist diatribe. After all, compared to Britain, Ireland’s denial racism is equivalent to the same in England over half a century ago during the landmark period of the Windrush Caribbean journeys. Of course there were black populations in the UK then, but the new numbers sailing by the boat, the Windrush other ships of the similar economic function, opened a new chapter to fill the economic vacuum in Britain.
Even then, there were white British voices that spoke beyond being in denial that their society was racist, the Westminster politician Enoch Powell with his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech was one such person. What does this tell us, that Darren Scully’s racist declarations are a true template of Ireland which many of his ilk would be afraid to admit? Rather than keeping it under the wraps and not talk about it, revealing the real Ireland will help it make gradual advancement in diversity politics as is apparently taking place in some but not all parts of the UK.
It is astonishing that Ireland, which historically has gone through the same colonial experience that black populations endured around the world, adopts this western racial categorisation of people. Ironically, if racism is historically necessary for the reproduction of economic identity of other developed countries built on the sweat of slave labour, it not surprising that the same is on its way to build a social identity of Ireland.
In social terms, racism translates to prejudice and power in the same heartbeat. In economic and social terms, if Scully’s aim was to disenfranchise the black community because he feels they are bad-mannered, democracy becomes just an animal, privileged race against the marginalised race. It is astonishing indeed.
Elly is a Northern Ireland-based writer and researcher with extensive international experience. His portfolio includes political commentaries in the Londonderry Sentinel and Kenyan newspapers such as The Daily Nation and East African Standard.
