Why are we constantly told from various groups that Ireland is racist?

exiztone wrote:

In a PC light, would it be racist of foreign labourers to say the Irish are rude? To say that would be a generalisation of a group of people in a (I assume) well meaning nation in a negative manner.

Hah, I'll never forget the day the day my boss said "Oh no no no! Bulgaria and Romania are joining the EU in 2007. We're going to be robbed by gypsies!" My boss is Pakistani and I've seen him get the odd racist remark, usually from tramps though. A person like him will never be caught in the limelight though, he's not an easy target.

Are we considered racist because we have some blue collar guys saying they can't get work because of the eastern Europeans? I'd consider that too passive to be racist, and lord knows, when you're hard on your luck, you point your finger and blame someone else.

Well, I think anyone on boards in Dublin aged 18-20 will agree that immigrant labour has made finding part time work a hard task.

The middle aged PC heads on here (well, mid aged as in 30-36) will throw up the previous report which says that immigration has had zero effect on job opportunities for Irish people. However, peoiple should note that these people are actually tossers with zero real life experience, even when they themselves were 18 they had none. They have their nice comfy jobs now, so its grand to roar racist at an 18 year old pissed off even Dunnes wont hire him.

As for your boss, well......hes right. The Roma gypsies are, from my personal experience with them, almost as shady as our native travellers (main difference being I worked with Polish Roma who, whilst extremely dodge, at least they worked, whereas Ive never seen an Irish traveller in taxable employment. The traveller thing is for another debate probably, however when 95% of those Ive met have been aggressive, crooked bastards I refuse to apologise for my opinion of their community. Im sorry, but please bear in mind in 20 years Ive only met one traveller who could be described as a decent person, and so you do form these opinons).

Racist my arse, the only people who dread Romas coming here en masse more than those in a "taxi driver state of mind" are the Slovak and Poles who are already here. You think old Irish drunks on about the "bleeeedddiin Rumaynayns" are bad, ask a Pole/Slovak, theyll keep you for hours with stories about them.

Remember, some stereotypes are wrong, but most are right. The Irish are generally drunkards, the Spaniards are generally loud and the roma are generally as bad as the Poles and Slovaks told us they were like. Its not racist, its a factual assumption based on observation of several different groups of these people.

constitutionus, great post. nice to see some people recognise whats going on.:)

I must confess to enjoying reading the Indo so if you're prejudiced against me just scroll on to the next post.

I think the Irish are a particularly vocal crowd. And we don't tend to pay too much attention to PC values (and I thank my lucky stars for this every day) so we can come across badly sometimes. But at least we talk about things and don't pussy foot about the issue. Better to risk insulting foreigners than to ignore them. And I think the Irish are doing a much better job of at least trying to interact with immigrants instead of isolating them. We're all nosy bastards and I think you'd be hard pressed to be lonely in this country.

As far as representation in the media I think it's largely negative. But hey, it's always ****ing negative. That's why I don't like watching news on the television. And just skip the parts of the newspaper that are pointless doom mongering.

That said, did anybody catch RTE's show about the Brazillians in Gort, Co. Galway? There are about 700 of them officially. Probably alot more. The village has been transformed in the last 5 years and the show had a very positive spin on the situation.

Probably shouldve phrased that better Flukey, it wasnt an attack on the 30 plus, it was just that most of the hard core bunch who spout the most bizarre, off the wall opinions on the matter are from this age group. And, regarding the 1980s, you get the impression from the posts most are from a social class/background that felt little or no impact of the recession. Sorry about that

I see where your coming from. Englands policies re their jobs market benefited us. However, this doesnt necessarily mean that they were right. Unemployed brickies from Newcastle Manchester etc etc found themselves in London competing for work with constantly arriving Irish. Now, its good that the English allowed this. However, it was at the expense of their own people. The result was good, the planning wasnt. And now you have god knows how much NHS money spent treating elderly Irish alcoholics. Its much the same as, for example the beef trade. While our agri sector had a rough 90s, it could have been worse. Appaling UK government regulation of meat safety meant Irish beef became renowned as some of the safest in Europe. Again, we benefitted from the Brits not doing their job. Likewise, several towns around London have huge social/crime problems with large encampments of Irish travellers. Because the English have failed to pull the finger out, the Irish taxpayer saves god knows how much in garda and benefit spending from these people no longer living here.

I agree with Zillah, most people seem to have a sort of discrimination that causes them to comment on or notice racial and ethnic differences more easily, but isnt actually hateful. I have honestly never actually known a racist Irish person. Well, like anyone Ive heard comments from busdrivers and some others which would reflect that they are racists, but I certainly dont know any racists.

In fact, one of the most comforting things that you see (only with young people in my experience) is a jeer being made of racial stereotypes and tendancies, e.g. a Chinese roomate at my friends apartment is contiuously the butt of Chinese jokes, and he reciprocates in kind. Such things are proof of a society really comfortable with its multisulturalism.

However, it sometimes only takes one or two dumbass threads on AH to make one reconsider whether ireland is actually more racist than it might appear. But anyway, I doubt it.

Judt wrote:

The "They took our jibs" argument doesn't wash, really. The majority of those looking for work in Dunnes, Tesco etc are teenagers who will turnover within a few months anyways - it's not like you're being deprived of some great human right without that €8.15 an hour to pay for the Friday night pissup. Nowadays Irish 18 - 20 year olds are in college, from which they graduate to a job paying better money than what mom and dad were earning combined when you were born. Johnny Polak ain't nicking those jobs in great numbers.

Still, as I said earlier I wouldn't take the teenagers and early 20somethings acting racist at much value - maturity and higher paying jobs after the Dunnes years temper those views.

You are not for real. You cant be. You think that people who dont have "proper jobs" dont need jobs full stop? If you read my earlier post, I did say that those on the pro side are usually 30 odd, who seem to come from the silver spoon side of town. Seeing as it sounds as if your parents provided you with money for food, drinking, clothes, possibly rent, until the age of 24 it proves the point. So young people dont deserve money to have a social life? Im sure you must have been the life and soul of any party back in the day. Believe it or not back in the days before I had a job (15 or whatever) Id have thought the same as you. Id read the paper seeing that there are so many thousand unfilled job positions and think, bring them in. Its only when you get a bit older and go out looking for work you realise its not all as easy as some article in the Indo told you. Myself, I never disliked "them" for taking "my" job. If i as from a new EU state Id probably be here as well. However, I disliked Bertie Ahern for his ridicilous failure to stop the free movement like nearly all the rest of the EU that allowed it to happen mind. It seems that someone cant highlight a genuine concern about an issue without being labelled racist. I recall one thread asking whether it was wise to be allowing people to come in from countries with huge HIV rates and allowing them free movement. OP called a racist for it (Id be of the opinion that anyone who said that deserves to die from AIDS themselves but anyway). Another thread mentioning how East Europeans seem to disproportionately involved in drink driving cases. Again, OP= racist. Again, those who said it would be best off being run over by one for the sake of irony. There was a case where two oddly dressed muslim men were ordered off a plane from Ibiza iirc because the passengers refused to fly with them. On the thread regarding it on boards, I was labelled racist for simply saying that I wouldnt particularly want to fly with two men who were wearing bulky jackets in the Spanish sunshine (the irony being, of course, that the two men in question admitted that on reflection their behaviour may have come off as odd, and that they bore no ill will to those who threw them off. Racist against themselves were they?). Someone earlier mentioned an Irishman in the UK suing because he was refused a job because the employer assumed he might come to work drunk from the night before. Whilst I wouldnt particularly like to be refused on these grounds, its a fact that any employer hiring the likes of the Irish/Poles should be aware that its likely they will come in with heavy heads on occasion, compared to, say, Chinese and Spanish staff.

foyc wrote:

To be honest, from thousands of Irish people over the years that have come out with the stereotypical rants about the travellers and their ways, I have only met possibly one or two, out of thousands that are totally cool with travellers.

Although travellers are 100% Irish, the general Irish population actually are more welcoming of the new eastern block settlers and don't discriminate as much as they would do with the travellers.

Same with me, Ive only ever met two with the view that they can be grand. Both of those people are from Finglas, where the inhabitants of one halt are apparently generally fine (not Dunsink obviously, I think its the one situated near the back road to Blanch theyre referring to).

As for the Poles etc people dont discriminate against the new settlers as much because they dont have a long history of crime and benefit dependancy in this country, simple as. IIRC the prison population of foreign nationals is roughly the same as their proportion of the Irish population who are young males (the main group that ends up inside). Travellers on the other hand make up between 3% and 10% of the jail population (the lower being one I read online, the upper one quoted by a journo who wrote s book on the matter recently). Racism is one thing, holding a negative view because of real world experience is quite another.

Given what Ive seen of Dublin gangland killings recently, I infer that I dont want any white irish people living here anymore.