Like many articles on TheJournal.ie, the real reading is not in the actual text, rather below in the comments section.
Take this one titled “‘People throw bananas at you or tell you to go back to your country just for asking to see a ticket’“. The inspiration for the article is a campaign run by the Immigrant Council of Ireland, Transport for Ireland and Dublin City Council to promote “a message of zero tolerance” towards racism in Ireland.
Of course this debate is particularly timely what with President #DoubleDownDonald having one of his classic press conference meltdowns where he tried to suggest that not all those who protested the statue in Charlottesville were neo-Nazis. By the way, in that tirade, the president alluded to something he called the “alt-left” which proved the very point I made a couple of days ago about false equivalency.
But returning to Ireland, the Journal article cites numerous experiences of racism by public transport drivers of various origins. It’s not all violent, most of it isn’t. But particularly in an area like this, ie racial hatred, the violence is the tip of the proverbial iceberg, and to understand where it comes from you first must acknowledge what lies beneath the water, and there are several examples in the comments section of this piece, much as we’d expect.
The first category, and the easiest to dismiss, is captured by this one…
Yawn!! The Journal is really laying it on today. Its endless. Are they being cynical and using it all for clickbait? Can you not see it just a quango justifying it’s continued existance (and big saleries) by portraying a subjective and selective number of allegations. Whether they are true or not doesn’t really matter as it is about the above. The Journal also love these type of press releases as they get a lot of comments.
Spelling atrocities aside, this is classic conspiracy theory nonsense…much easier to blame those calling out the racism than to acknowledge it.
Next we have the soft denier.
Sadly, we have racists in Ireland but I like to think that the racists are a minority. Of course, one would have to be of a different race to know the reality in everyday life. The actual lived experience is the most revealing.
Did I miss something? Has anyone suggested that racists were in the majority? But at least this person appreciates that they haven’t experienced this kind of racism personally, unlike this final genius of a commenter, a “hard” denier if you will…
The poor foreign taxi men will be on next telling us all how hard their life is and what a bunch of racists us Irish are… Give me strength… If your gonna work dealing with the public especially on crammed public transport your gonna have to listen to a bit of crap every now and again whether your black, white, orange, Irish, Polish, Russian or whatever.. That’s the nature of human interaction, mostly good but sometimes bad, that’s never gonna change no matter how many posters you put up so either accept that your in a foreign land and a minority of people aren’t going to like you, either get used to that fact or get a job in an office…
There is racism all over the world. But it’s not a bloody competition. We can’t justify what happens on our own shores because of what happens elsewhere. We stand up and call it what it is whenever we see it. And like I said earlier, it’s not just the violent incidents we need to call out.
Ever been on a bus when a driver was verbally abused? Or in a shop when it was an employee? Or in a taxi when an Irish driver was telling you stories about scary activities by black drivers? Or at a family gathering when an elder relative used the ‘n word’? I have. And I’m ashamed to say that too often I failed to speak out. I’m actually part of the problem, I freely admit.
Of course I’m not saying we should put ourselves in any danger when out and about but the simple fact is that if we do nothing at all, it will continue.
But one thing we can definitely do is accept that it’s happening, and that will cost us nothing. JLP
#IANWAE
First Person Plural 