Interesting article about Travellers by a Traveller

Akrasia wrote: »

Most people don't really care that much about travellers horses.

It's more to do with the violence and anti social behaviour that everyone I know has direct personal experience of from members of the traveling community. I have had things stolen from me, I have had knives drawn on me out of nowhere just because I was playing pool with my friends, I have been sucker-punched walking home with my wife by a group of traveller children. I was attacked by dogs running wild every morning when I cycled to school. My mother is living a few doors down from a traveller family with two caravans in their driveway filled with their relatives currently engaged in an active campaign of violence and intimidation of an entire estate.
Travellers shoplifted from our family business routinely and brazenly. Kids used to sit just outside of the gate to our shop forecourt and when they saw an opportunity, they ran into the shop, grabbed stock and ran out. These are just things that I have personal direct experience of. Never mind the countless high profile incidents of violence by travellers whenever they have a wedding or a funeral or decide to chase each other through primary schools with slashhooks or stab taxi drivers for daring to ask them to pay for their ride home.

Traveller camps have destroyed areas of natural beauty and cost hundreds of thousands in cleanup costs where they fly tip their rubbish on the sides of our roads...

I have enormous sympathy for traveller children. They will suffer a lifetime of prejudice and discrimination, but this is not irrational prejudice. It's caused by genuine concerns.

There are seven times more white people in the USA than African Americans. Yet there are six times more African Americans in US prisons than there are white prisoners.

Does this enormous, disproportionate difference in rates of commission of crime and imprisonment, justify some Americans in saying the same things about black people, as you say about Irish travellers?

Swanner wrote: »

This has been dealt with a couple of times already on this thread. It's not a valid comparison. For the same reasons given above..

It's an awkward comparison, not an invalid one. I think it's perfectly legitimate to compare discrimination faced by different groups.

Permabear wrote: »

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No offence, but the level of thought contributed by this, and other posts, is comparable to pointing at someone and saying 'he can't spell good'.

Everybody, on both sides, keeps defining the problem. Traveller illiteracy. Crime rates. Domestic violence. Unemployment. Suicide. We know.

Why is this happening? Why is Clodagh, the author of this article (I don't know her surname) an outlier?

Many decades ago, it began to dawn on most intelligent Americans that the fundamental reason for high crime rates and weak attainment of college education among African Americans was one of dire race relations, both at the individual and institutional levels. Steps were taken to improve this, with limited success, mostly on the institutional side.

In Ireland, we still seem to be scratching our heads. It is implicit throughout this thread there there is something malicious at the heart of the traveller community, there is an intolerance of their way of life. They have to change, they have to get themselves better, and when they're the same as us, then we'll do our bit. .

Threads concerning travellers are invariably the laziest, most knee-jerk threads on this website. And this generally reflects wider social discourse. Nobody is getting to the nub of why these problems are endemic within traveller communities, because everyone is constantly repeating how awful it all is, repeating the problem over and over.

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

Many decades ago, it began to dawn on most intelligent Americans that the fundamental reason for high crime rates and weak attainment of college education among African Americans was one of dire race relations, both at the individual and institutional levels. Steps were taken to improve this, with limited success, mostly on the institutional side.

In Ireland, we still seem to be scratching our heads. It is implicit throughout this thread there there is something malicious at the heart of the traveller community, there is an intolerance of their way of life. They have to change, they have to get themselves better, and when they're the same as us. There is no real effort put into it.

Threads concerning travellers are invariably the laziest, most knee-jerk threads on this website. And this generally reflects wider social discourse. Nobody is getting to the nub of why these problems are endemic within traveller communities, because everyone is constantly repeating how awful it all is, repeating the problem over and over.

I never get this.

Decades ago in places like Australia and America they looked at the treatment of certain ethnic groups in their societies, looked at consequences such as higher crime rates, illiteracy, alcohol abuse etc., accepted they had a responsibility, and set about trying to improve matters. Not very successfully it should be said, but at least there was a recognition of the issues.

Here, we are still in the dark ages of "their fault, they don't integrate", even on a thread where a traveller speaks of her treatment long before she was capable of doing anything bad, or being to blame for anything.

Permabear wrote: »

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So are you saying discrimination does not exist because travellers were not kept as slaves? Aborigines were not traditionally kept as slaves like African Americans and did not face burning crosses. Does this mean that they too were fine?

Incidentally, you might not be aware in the South of the USA, but the freebies you suggest were handed out to travellers were actually handed out to huge swathes of the Irish population. Entitlements like like social welfare come from being a citizen, it is no special treatment at all.

Again, the absolute refusal to draw parallels between discrimination here and elsewhere is really based on the obvious, awkward issues it raises. We can at least all agree that the EU described travellers as the most discriminated against ethnic group in Europe, can we? Well maybe that alone means that they can and should be compared with groups in other continents, and debate not stifled on the basis that they didn't face burning crosses.

Permabear wrote: »

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But neither was any African American alive today kept as a slave.

You seem to accept that discrimination can have longitudinal, intergenerational effects when it comes to African Americans, but not when it comes to travellers?

There are some obvious parallels, especially when it comes to weak educational attainment, which itself is positively correlated with criminal behaviour and unemployment.

On the contrary, the Irish state has bent over backwards for decades to extend every possible opportunity and advantage to travelers -- social welfare, free education, free housing, and numerous other benefits, all paid for by the "settled people" who are derided as the problem

And for a few generations now, the same can be said of African Americans born in the USA, and I referenced this earlier by mentioning the institutional reforms which, in theory, should make it relatively easy for African American children to go on to achieve a college education, all else being equal.

But as with traveller children, all else is not equal, the problem appears to arise most particularly at the individual and community level. We need to drill down into that aspect of social relations, and inquire as to why this is.

Of course, you seem to have already done this and have evidently concluded that it's all the travellers' fault.

You and others correctly condemn how travellers are routinely removed from school at a young age. Other posters excoriate the conditions that traveller children are forced to live in, and how this risks destroying their lives, their prospects, even their minds.

And yet, and yet, and yet... as soon as these children reach the age of majority, or begin to have their own children, BANG, a transformation! A new person, a new life, is handed an armful of tomes on social responsibilities. He emerges from the fog of childhood, enters the world of the adult, and stands before the firing squad of moral cuplability. We call these people losers, knackers, criminals, wife-beaters, illiterates, they are fools.

We think they have come from nowhere. They have always been the same.