Black woman inundated with racist abuse while tweeting for @Ireland

Yixian

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/23/black-woman-inundated-racist-trolls-abuse-twitter-ireland

A black British woman who was chosen to tweet from the @ireland account for a week has been subjected to a barrage of racist abuse, forcing her to take a break from Twitter.

Michelle Marie took over the account which is curated by a different Twitter user in Ireland each week on Monday. She introduced herself as a mother, blogger and plus-size model.
Originally from Oxford in England, she wrote she had settled in Ireland and it has my heart .
However, just hours after taking over the profile which is followed by nearly 40,000 people the abuse began.

Sorry if already posted, I couldn't find the story.

Woke up and saw this headline and my heart sank. I'm Irish diaspora & citizen living in Britain, I also have family in France, and have spent a lot of time between all 3 countries. A recurring theme is to hear from people who have never been to Ireland that it's full of racism, which, in my experience, is the complete opposite of reality and this is having spent plenty of time all over the country with girlfriends of different races over the years.

Don't get me wrong I'm not claiming Ireland is some kind of infallible paradise or that it's anywhere near as multicultural as Britain or France, but i find it very rare to see the knee jerk "we don't want you over here" reaction that you tend to find in former imperial countries like Britain, and some reflection on Irish history giving greater sympathy for people of other races and opposition to institutionalised racism.

So to see a headline in a major newspaper read around the world making Ireland look yet again like some kind of racist backwater really depresses me, but on closer inspection at the abusive tweets this lady received, it seems that the vast majority were not from Irish people, native, or even diaspora, at all.. Simply right wing Americans and other Europeans who seem to think that being a "white country" means they as white racists are entitled to speak on Ireland's behalf.

Just wanted to rant and say how disgusting that is, dragging Ireland's name through the mud because they think they have more of a right to represent a country they may have never even been to than a woman that actually lives in Ireland, raises her kids in Ireland, pays Irish taxes and so on.

BoJack Horseman

Yixian wrote: »

Just wanted to rant

Well, good you got that off your chest I suppose.

iguana

I've never heard of the twitter account and would be surprised if it's a big thing here. It's run by Irish Central which is a website marketed at Irish Americans. And on the whole Irish Americans have a very romantic notion of what Ireland is and should be and often take very unkindly to the reality of modern Ireland. Especially our growing emigrant community, which is all kinds of ironic.

Jayop

Ireland is plenty racist. The amount of throwaway comments you hear people make fully convinced that everyone who will hear it will agree with them is staggering.

johnnyskeleton

Just wanted to rant

Mod note:

Unfortunately that isn't allowed in the Politics forum. But don't worry, I'll see if the good people of After Hours have any views on racism. I don't think its come up so far.