Interesting article about Travellers by a Traveller

28-06-2017 06:53PM

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

According to her opinion piece, there was no evidence. So it's down to those who are prejudiced to change. Hmmm. Do you think that prejudice based on personal experience is bias or wisdom?

As an aside, do you know any teachers who teach travellers?

Again, it's not an opinion piece, she is recounting her experience.

You suggest she may have omitted important detail. And that's possible. But you have not offered one shred of evidence to support that. It just remains conjecture. And your conjecture may be the prejudiced angle.

Professor Moriarty · 28-06-2017 06:59PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Again, it's not an opinion piece, she is recounting her experience.

You suggest she may have omitted important detail. And that's possible. But you have not offered one shred of evidence to support that. It just remains conjecture. And your conjecture may be the prejudiced angle.

I suggested the possibility that she omitted important detail. I don't know if she did and neither do you. Does it not occur to you they she may also be prejudiced?

You forgot to answer these two questions:

Do you think that prejudice based on personal experience is bias or wisdom?
As an aside, do you know any teachers who teach travellers?

28-06-2017 07:03PM

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Do you think that prejudice based on personal experience is bias or wisdom?
As an aside, do you know any teachers who teach travellers?

I think her recounting her experience holds a lot more validity than people who have never met her and are in no position to challenge the veracity of her statements, and who themselves may be prejudiced, guessing there might be more to it.

I know a teacher, a family member, who teaches travellers.

Professor Moriarty · 28-06-2017 07:09PM

Deleted User wrote: »

I think her recounting her experience holds a lot more validity than people who have never met her and are in no position to challenge the veracity of her statements, and who themselves may be prejudiced, guessing there might be more to it.

I know a teacher, a family member, who teaches travellers.

Probably. Though her account is necessarily highly subjective.

Do you think that prejudice based on personal experience is bias or wisdom?

Does this family member have an opinion on the behaviour of the children they teach by comparison to other children?

28-06-2017 07:23PM

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Probably. Though her account is necessarily highly subjective.

Do you think that prejudice based on personal experience is bias or wisdom?

Does this family member have an opinion on the behaviour of the children they teach by comparison to other children?

Yes, but again her account is an account. Your scepticism is based on guesswork, and is not an account at all.

Is it possible her experiences are based on bigotry and intolerance? Would you accept that you cannot offer one shred of evidence to question the veracity of one thing she has said?

The teacher has recounted some fairly eye raising incidents in her school, serious assaults and the like. It would be fair to say it's a school in a disadvantaged area, and the are some troubled children. She certainly has not singled out travellers as being more violent.

Professor Moriarty · 28-06-2017 07:39PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Yes, but again her account is an account. Your scepticism is based on guesswork, and is not an account at all.

Is it possible her experiences are based on bigotry and intolerance? Would you accept that you cannot offer one shred of evidence to question the veracity of one thing she has said?

The teacher has recounted some fairly eye raising incidents in her school, serious assaults and the like. It would be fair to say it's a school in a disadvantaged area, and the are some troubled children. She certainly has not singled out travellers as being more violent.

You are not responding to what I am saying, you are responding to your own interpretation. In fact, if you review your responses, you'll note some bias and presumptions being made by you. You'll also see that I never said I was sceptical. My 'scepticism' is based on logic. Of course, some of her experience as a young child was possibly, in fact probably, rooted in bigotry and intolerance. Which leads me to again ask:

Do you think that prejudice based on personal experience is bias or wisdom?

And in that context, I am surprised that the teacher you know said that traveller children were less violent. That is not the experience of teachers that I know who say that their behaviour is very disruptive and the parents very difficult to deal with. Exceptionally so, in fact. In particular, one teacher who teaches in a deprived area that contains a halting site has, for many years, stated that of all the children they teach, travellers are the most disruptive children and their parents are the most difficult parents.

Permabear · 28-06-2017 08:32PM

This post has been deleted.

Mardy Bum · 28-06-2017 08:42PM

judeboy101 wrote: »

I'm calling bs on 12 A's. I don't know any school capable of offering 6 junior cert non core options on the timetable. 4 maybe but not 6.

Some schools do.

28-06-2017 08:54PM

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Do you think that prejudice based on personal experience is bias or wisdom?

Recounting an experience is, again, nothing to do with bias or wisdom.

A child who says they are bullied is neither wise nor not wise, or biased. They are simply not appropriate words to use in connection with them recounting their experience.

You said you had 10 encounters with travellers, all negative. Would you say any prejudice you may have when commenting on a situation, about which we know nothing beyond what the protagonist says happened, is based on bias or wisdom?

Professor Moriarty · 28-06-2017 09:08PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Recounting an experience is, again, nothing to do with bias or wisdom.

A child who says they are bullied is neither wise nor not wise, or biased. They are simply not appropriate words to use in connection with them recounting their experience.

You said you had 10 encounters with travellers, all negative. Would you say any prejudice you may have when commenting on a situation, about which we know nothing beyond what the protagonist says happened, is based on bias or wisdom?

Do you not think it odd that the teacher you know did not find travellers to be more disruptive than other children whereas all the teachers who taught travellers that I know found them to be exceptionally disruptive?

Of course the adult's written recollection of their experience as a child is going to be subjective i.e. biased. That's just a fact.

Where did I say that I had 10 encounters with travellers?

In the context of attitudes towards travellers, do you think that prejudice based on personal experience is bias or wisdom?

28-06-2017 09:25PM

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Do you not think it odd that the teacher you know did not find travellers to be more disruptive than other children whereas all the teachers who taught travellers that I know found them to be exceptionally disruptive?

Of course the adult's written recollection of their experience as a child is going to be subjective i.e. biased. That's just a fact.

Where did I say that I had 10 encounters with travellers?

In the context of attitudes towards travellers, do you think that prejudice based on personal experience is bias or wisdom?

She did not say travellers were any more or less disruptive. As I said, she has described a few very violent incidents with teenagers. They were not travellers.

Here is where you said you had 10 encounters and that they were all negative.

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

I have had about ten interactions with travellers in my life. On three occasions, my brother and I had to confront criminal gangs of travellers. We got rid of one gang and a year later another gang appeared. None of my other interactions with travellers were ever anything other than negative. I am now very wary of travellers based on personal experience and the experiences of friends of mine.

Would you say your attitude was coloured by this and this may have led you to challenge an account of which you know nothing by a person you don't know?

Professor Moriarty · 28-06-2017 09:37PM

Deleted User wrote: »

She did not say travellers were any more or less disruptive. As I said, she has described a few very violent incidents with teenagers. They were not travellers.

Here is where you said you had 10 encounters and that they were all negative.

Would you say your attitude was coloured by this and this may have led you to challenge an account of which you know nothing by a person you don't know?

Ah. I wasn't sure if I had posted that on this thread. My experiences of travellers has made me wiser and very wary of travellers. I now prejudge travellers because all of my experiences to date have been negative. My prejudice is based on wariness. With very good reason.

I wish I could be as open and trusting as I am with other people but my experience has taught otherwise. However, I remain open to having my wariness dissipated by positive experiences in the future. Until then I will remain very wary.

Now, this is where your argument falls down. I challenged the account from a logical position. If it had been written by, for instance, a Syrian refugee, I would have applied the same rationale regarding bias and subjectivity.

28-06-2017 09:45PM

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Ah. I wasn't sure if I had posted that on this thread. My experiences of travellers has made me wiser and very wary of travellers. I now prejudge travellers because all of my experiences to date have been negative. My prejudice is based on wariness. With very good reason.

But your account of your experiences is surely subject to all the challenges and issues you raised about hers. Anyone could describe them all as your "subjective opinion" rather than recounting your experiences, speculate that your accounts are based on bias rather than wisdom, note that you may be omitting certain salient facts, that maybe it was your fault or the fault of your family, and so on. But it would be unfair and invalid, because such challenges would be specious speculation, and unless anyone knows specific facts about your experiences, those challenges should be dismissed and your account would stand.

Professor Moriarty · 28-06-2017 09:57PM

Deleted User wrote: »

But your account of your experiences is surely subject to all the challenges and issues you raised about hers. Anyone could describe them all as your "subjective opinion" rather than recounting your experiences, speculate that your accounts are based on bias rather than wisdom, note that you may be omitting certain salient facts, that maybe it was your fault or the fault of your family, and so on. But it would be unfair and invalid, because such challenges would be specious speculation, and unless anyone knows specific facts about your experiences, those challenges should be dismissed and your account would stand.

Absolutely. However, I have no interest in being believed or not. For me, it is a statement of fact. For you, it is some randomer on the internet who may or may not be telling the truth.

Everything is subjective. However, when, as you say, a hundred people post the same perspective, then I begin to give that perspective credence. Especially when it is in alignment with my own personal experience.

28-06-2017 10:10PM

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Absolutely. However, I have no interest in being believed or not. For me, it is a statement of fact. For you, it is some randomer on the internet who may or may not be telling the truth.

Everything is subjective. However, when, as you say, a hundred people post the same perspective, then I begin to give that perspective credence. Especially when it is in alignment with my own personal experience.

But you've had no personal experience akin to hers. Unless you were, say, accosted by her when she was 4. There is no connection between your experiences and hers, save that both were of "settled" people interacting with travellers. If I said I met a traveller and nothing happened at all, it would neither validate nor invalidate either your experience or hers.

Professor Moriarty · 28-06-2017 10:19PM

Deleted User wrote: »

But you've had no personal experience akin to hers. Unless you were, say, accosted by her when she was 4. There is no connection between your experiences and hers, save that both were of "settled" people interacting with travellers. If I said I met a traveller and nothing happened at all, it would neither validate nor invalidate either your experience or hers.

No indeed. However, her bias towards settled people is understandable and based on lived experience. Ditto for me.

My parents had serious trouble with three groups of travellers. Not least because they were innocent and relatively non-judgemental. If a fourth group of traveller men had arrived at their door, should they be wary and suspicious? Or would that be prejudice?

28-06-2017 10:26PM

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

No indeed. However, her bias towards settled people is understandable and based on lived experience. Ditto for me.

My parents had serious trouble with three groups of travellers. Not least because they were innocent and relatively non-judgemental. If a fourth group of traveller men had arrived at their door, should they be wary and suspicious? Or would that be prejudice?

Oh I think it would be only natural that they would be wary.

And similarly if a young child repeatedly faces discrimination and prejudice at the hands of a group, I wouldn't blame her if it coloured her future dealings with that group. Instead of reading into it that it may be made up, I would wonder why anyone would expect her, or others who faced that, to grow up to respect that group.

Roger Hassenforder · 28-06-2017 10:43PM

Deleted User wrote: »

But you've had no personal experience akin to hers. Unless you were, say, accosted by her when she was 4. There is no connection between your experiences and hers, save that both were of "settled" people interacting with travellers. If I said I met a traveller and nothing happened at all, it would neither validate nor invalidate either your experience or hers.

there's an acceptance as unbiased fact, a negative experience recounted by a third party in an opinion piece (not saying its untrue), yet a rejection of first hand experiences (albeit by random strangers to each other on an internet forum) of negative experiences at the hands of travellers as being somehow less valid, and shouldnt be allowed colour their future dealings with that group...

AllForIt · 28-06-2017 10:44PM

5starpool wrote: »

In a graveyard in small town West of Ireland recently I was struck by the number of massive headstones (or small marble palaces really) which were almost exclusively on traveller graves. I know many other graveyards are like that also. Where does all this money come from when most of them seem to be poverty stricken who need everything provided for them by the state?

Well, at least they experience in death something they never had in life.
Permanently settled.

Professor Moriarty · 28-06-2017 11:22PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Oh I think it would be only natural that they would be wary.

And similarly if a young child repeatedly faces discrimination and prejudice at the hands of a group, I wouldn't blame her if it coloured her future dealings with that group. Instead of reading into it that it may be made up, I would wonder why anyone would expect her, or others who faced that, to grow up to respect that group.

Agreed. I doubt if anyone thought it was made up. And on the other 'side' if there is such a prevalence of negative experience then it's only natural that people are wary and suspicious.

Do you think that if people were to be open and trusting towards travellers that they would find that all of their negative experiences were just situations exacerbated by prejudice or do you think that their experiences are valid and thus their wariness is valid? If it is valid then it surely falls to travellers to disprove the stereotype?

29-06-2017 04:27AM

Roger Hassenforder wrote: »

there's an acceptance as unbiased fact, a negative experience recounted by a third party in an opinion piece (not saying its untrue), yet a rejection of first hand experiences (albeit by random strangers to each other on an internet forum) of negative experiences at the hands of travellers as being somehow less valid, and shouldnt be allowed colour their future dealings with that group...

Read the posts again.

I said neither has any more weight. Where was the rejection of first hand experiences.

Let's not make up points, it reduces arguments to the silly.

29-06-2017 04:29AM

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

Agreed. I doubt if anyone thought it was made up. And on the other 'side' if there is such a prevalence of negative experience then it's only natural that people are wary and suspicious.

Do you think that if people were to be open and trusting towards travellers that they would find that all of their negative experiences were just situations exacerbated by prejudice or do you think that their experiences are valid and thus their wariness is valid? If it is valid then it surely falls to travellers to disprove the stereotype?

Not to 4 year olds. When an adult is prejudiced against a 4 year old child, which one of them has started the cycle of wariness and distrust?

The Bishop Basher · 29-06-2017 08:11AM

Deleted User wrote: »

Not to 4 year olds. When an adult is prejudiced against a 4 year old child, which one of them has started the cycle of wariness and distrust?

I remember seeing a traveler beating a woman (I assume his wife) with a stick in the middle of the road near where we live when I was about 4.

I still remember it like it was yesterday.. It had some effect on my young mind at the time and i recall being extremely upset.

Not before or since have I seen a man beating a woman and I hope I never do again.

I suppose that's just one more anecdote in a very very long line of anecdotes on this thread but I wonder what started the cycle of weariness for me ?

....... · 29-06-2017 08:27AM

This post has been deleted.

Professor Moriarty · 29-06-2017 08:36AM

Deleted User wrote: »

Not to 4 year olds. When an adult is prejudiced against a 4 year old child, which one of them has started the cycle of wariness and distrust?

All children are innocent. Her situation is a microcosm of the wider issue. Had her siblings caused trouble for other children in the school? Had there been years of disruption and threats by other traveller children?

Roger Hassenforder · 29-06-2017 08:40AM

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Not to 4 year olds. When an adult is prejudiced against a 4 year old child, which one of them has started the cycle of wariness and distrust?

In this instance, in isolation, the adult should have been big enough to see a 4 year old for what she was and just sucked it up. Id like to think I'd be big enough to do it.

However, one of them is in the cycle of wariness and distrust, with a lifetime of probably overwhelmingly negative experiences between their respective ethnic groups.

We know nothing of the circumstances that preceded the party, the invitation itself, if there was any history between them that might have led to the invitation being revoked in such a manner. Was there a cycle already in place of violence and threats between the 4/5 year olds? Based on my educational experience with other traveller kids, probably. Fights, threats and theft was a daily occurrence. Was the parent protecting their own 4 year old in her home? Possibly.

It's a completely one sided narrative. There's two sides to every story, the truth somewhere in between.

My 5 year old had their two euro robbed (a fortune to him) in a kiddy arcade thing last year by a traveller kid. "Why did that boy push me and take my money Daddy, I didn't do anything to him"?
Who perpetrated the cycle there? It was his first encounter with a traveller (That I know of) and it was a negative one. I tried to tell him that maybe he was just a bold boy, but most boys are good and to mind his money etc. But deep down I knew it was his first exposure to traveller "culture", and wouldn't be his last. Two kids from different upbringings, one with no experience of the other comes off second best. Now I just tell my kids stay away from them if they can, if they can't, be wary.

Violence, intimidation, crime is now their culture. They're not innocent naive victims of "settled" bigotry, they're the architects of their predicament. Traveller Advocates are exacerbating the problem by deflecting and diminishing proverbial elephants in the room. Providing more halting sites won't solve the problem, it will only expose heretofore unenriched areas to traveller culture. Declaring travellers an ethnic minority won't either. Pandering to culturally appropriate demands is enabling them.
Treating them as everyone else is treated will go some way.

I genuinely have sympathy for a traveller trying to break the cycle, of their "ethnic disease" , to educate themselves, get a job etc, and would offer any support I could, but I fear they are in a minority, and face as much if not more barriers from within their group, than from without.

....... · 29-06-2017 08:50AM

This post has been deleted.

OldNotWIse · 29-06-2017 11:03AM

5starpool wrote: »

In a graveyard in small town West of Ireland recently I was struck by the number of massive headstones (or small marble palaces really) which were almost exclusively on traveller graves. I know many other graveyards are like that also. Where does all this money come from when most of them seem to be poverty stricken who need everything provided for them by the state?

You're not allowed to ask them where they get their money, it makes you racist.

The rest of us plebs must be accountable and have our salaries raped, but not the travelers.

jimmycrackcorm · 29-06-2017 12:28PM

Swanner wrote:

I remember seeing a traveler beating a woman (I assume his wife) with a stick in the middle of the road near where we live when I was about 4.

How does a 4 year old distinguish between settled people and travelers?

02-07-2017 11:53AM

Was talking to an in law on Friday who is both a teacher and has horses, so was interesting to hear his take on travellers.

He said the travellers in his school are not trouble in the violent way, but just not bothered about school, their parents have made in clear that they only want their kids to acquire literacy and maths and have zero interest in subjects like history and science. He said their attendance record is awful, and they don't engage in classes, or with classmates, but beyond their disinterest they aren't any particular difficulty.

As for horses, he said they treat the good horses like royalty, put a lot of money into them, pay big money to acquire foals from the continent (trotting and harness racing is a big sport in France), and look after them because the betting around sulky racing is worth a lot of money. He said there is of course cruelty, but on the other hand he knew of plenty of cases of cruelty amongst non travellers in recent years where horses were not profitable, especially during the recession when micro chips would be hacked out of horses necks and they would be turned lose to starve by people and even stables when they became a huge money loser. He is from West Cork where there is a tradition of sulky racing that is not confined to travellers, though obviously that doesn't take place on open roads with traffic, so thought the idea of banning it ridiculous.

Interesting article about Travellers by a Traveller

Comments