Will racism ever end?

Tribalism/Racism/Xenophobia has been going on for around 100,000 years.

A lot of lads on here will tell you there is no racism at all.

Well, we might meet an alien species and be species-ist to them instead.

Or maybe all races will disappear and merge into one melange...

It ends in the spilt second that something alien comes out of space and arrives here

until that happens no

My friend recently described to me how her lockdown experience from March 2020 was hell on earth because of the racist abuse she got.

These are her exact words. I removed some of what she said and replaced it with XXXX as it was potentially identifying.

As a mixed race woman who was born in Ireland, growing up in the 80’s and 90’s and living for most of my life in one community as a child, student and mother, my experience of racism have taught me how to live in this country. I choose my battles, but few who decide to impose their racism on me walk away without understanding how their behaviour has affected me. There is a constant pressure on me to justify for my  reason for living here (where are you really from?), racial profiling (airports, shops,  check points) suggest that I am a threat and potential thief, social evenings inevitably are an invitation for at least one stranger a night verbally abuse me, I have been physically assaulted a number of times, once when heavily pregnant. I have been refused admission to pubs, hotels and followed around shops. I have been asked to pay at the point of service while others pay their bill at the end of a night. These are only some of my experiences of growing up in Ireland as a mixed race Irish person. These experiences have taught me how to live and navigate my environment and to assess levels of threat posed to me.

XXXXX

Where most found lockdowns a novel and frustrating experience, for me it became a prison. My 5km walk became increasingly dangerous. If there was a day that I escaped being verbally abused or the threat of being physically assaulted, there was always the reminder through xxxxxx and misinformation across social media platforms that people who looked like me were to be taken out of the community. We were being dehumanised through the tactics used on social media, shared by friends, colleagues and people I had grown up in an attempt to rid the community of people who look like me. We were considered rapists, paedophiles, prostitutes and careful consideration should be applied with people of colour on the basis that we were a threat to children, wives, husbands, the elderly and in general to the wider community. Fear was induced and there was an increased level of threat experienced by most who did not look Irish.

XXXXX

Exposing these incidents as they arise can reduce the tolerance that the community I grew up in have towards this behaviour. Without challenging it, it grows and becomes more pronounce, acceptable and normal. 

Would you say the same thing to Jesse Owens? What are people supposed to do to bring attention to suffering and injustice?

The black man has been lynched and fcuked up and banged up and stitched up. Are they all supposed to set themselves on fire like the monk in Saigon?

That NFL player Colin Kaperniak [sp] is a paragon of strength and fortitude. The man's integrity is INTACT.

You want to fly bombers over a football match then have the balls to accept those who don't wish to participate.

Otherwise just kick the ball around and enjoy the day.

Can you tell me, what do you think politics is about if it isn't about things experienced by significant groups in society.

To suggest that behavior that has its foundation in viewing people in a specific way because of how they look or the wider group of which they are seen to be members of and treating them negatively as a consequence of this is either borne out of complete ignorance, or wanting to give a pass to people who commit such acts.

Any person out on their own is subject to abuse/attack from strangers, and the person doesn't haven't to be black/Asian etc. having personally encountered this myself as a white bloke. Basically some people are just **** assholes, thankfully though, most people are decent.

I’m so sorry for your wife, these racist pigs don’t realise the negative impact they have on people’s lives. It would be nice if we could obliterate it but sadly some people will never change. Hopefully karma will one day visit them!

The chance to travel, experience, observe and mix with other races today bears no relation to the vast majority of time that humans have walked the planet and if there was an ability to score the average persons awareness of or opportunity for integration (for however long) of other cultures throughout that time there would have been a massive jump in such a metric within the last 50 odd years as TV, the internet and access to low cost travel changed these things.

These opportunities are unlikely to change (although low cost travel probably should) and so it is simply wrong to suggest people didn't mix so much throughout history and as a consequence are unlikely to do so in future. It is clear some people wish that this would be the case but the trends suggest otherwise.

In the US, the rate of new marriages that are interracial grew nearly 6 fold between 1967 and 2015 to nearly 1 in 5 being such. As generations go by and kids from these marriages look for partners, you would think the concept of race matching won't even enter most of their minds.