Nationalist Cows

Here in Northern Ireland, citizens are able to identify as British, Irish or both. It's nice to know this right extends also to the animals of Northern Ireland! Now, if only people could choose which beef they'd prefer to eat when visiting McDonald's, rather than it being mixed... #foodforthought

#TaxiTales

Taxi man tells me a wee tale of the time he drove a Roma family down to Newry; nice couple, few kids and the pram. Instead of the fare, he offered this gold ring as payment. "Greed got the better of me," the driver explained in his own defense. Turns out, wasn't worth the hundreds of quid he had thought. "He pulled the wool over my eyes"... 

Racism: The Perpetrator and Hater in us all

I was in a taxi on Friday morning with one of my regular drivers. I was delighted when I saw him because I was having a bad week and I always enjoy his banter. On the way down the road we passed a Romanian man selling magazines on the island and he shouted abuse as we drove by, saying he wished all the Romanian bastards and other immigrants would fuck off. He noticed the look on my face and said something along the lines of no offense, love. I pointed out that I too am an immigrant. But of course he doesn't mean immigrants like me. As he said himself, sure you work here and your partner's from here (what he also means is you're white and your native language is English...). I explained how most immigrants have no recourse to public funds and greatly contribute to Northern Ireland culturally and economically. I explained Northern Ireland is 99% white to which he said, where are they (white people) all? As there was a recent anti-Romanian attack in East Belfast, I expressed that no one should feel unsafe in their homes, regardless of the way people feel about them. To this he agreed wholeheartedly. At the end of the day he said we wouldn't fall out over our difference of opinions. Of course that was true as I genuinely like this man. Before I got out of the car he said softly, one of them called me white trash, do you know how horrible that is to hear?

I could hardly speak because I had too many things I wanted to say and no right to preach at this man. I wanted to say, 'maybe that man spoke to you with such anger because he was hurt by racist abuse against him and his family'. I wanted to say, 'if you know how horrible it feels to be abused in that way, why would you do that to another person'? I wanted to say something about our capacity for empathy in the face of shared experience. But what right do I have to say these things? 

This encounter reminded me that racism is not only hate - it is this entrenched system of imbalance that we all live in and ascribe to in some way. It's too easy, not to mention wrong, for me to point fingers at those who don't regularly engage with diversity, at those who comprise the so-called underclass, at my taxi driver who says something inappropriate. How dare I think he's more part of the problem than me. I have been privileged by my whiteness my whole life. How dare I think I know more because I'm from a country with more diversity than Northern Ireland. The United States is equally, if not more so, perverted by the all-encompassing machine of racism. How dare I think the dialogue around race relations is available to everyone, because it's not. It's by and large for those with access to a certain type of education.  

Yesterday I read a quote from the poetry-slam genius, Scott Woods, who beautifully articulated and educated with his definition of racism:

"The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites know/like it or not. Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you. Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another. And so on. So while I agree with people who say no one is born racist, it remains a powerful system that we’re immediately born into. It’s like being born into air: you take it in as soon as you breathe. It’s not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class. It’s a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world. It is a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat of your life to keep from drowning in it. I know it’s hard work, but it’s the price you pay for owning everything." 

This message forced me to re-examine my taxi conversation. 

The continued racist attacks in East Belfast, that seem to have be increasing in recent weeks, is a manifestation of this conscious hate Woods is speaking about. It's easy to scapegoat the perpetrators of hate crimes as the main source of the problem, but to do so would be to feed the system of injustice that impacts every element of all of our lives. There is not a small group of hateful, ignorant people who are responsible for racism, but rather it is all of us who do not continuously question what is and work towards what could be.

This small reflection will not enable me to radically shift the way I live, the way I vote, the way I think, or the way I feel as the asymmetric world system is far too powerful a force. However, we can remain vigilant and critical of this imbalance and scoop out the boat as Woods would say. We can discuss racism more deeply to fully understand what it is and spread that across our messages for change. We can be aware that we are all perpetrators of racism in one form or another, and we must all act out against it in all of its dimensions.