So about this racism thing....
I am, like most of my f-list, very lucky in that I am a white, educated person in a predominantly white country...albeit a country rife with racism against white travellers and, more recently, asylum seekers and immigrants of varying skin tone, not to mention rife secterianism. I am also very lucky in that I was brought up in such a way that I don't *get* discrimination. My mother is a very liberal 68-er who struggled for years and years with her parents' behaviour during the Third Reich, so Naziism and anti-semitism were topics of conversation from an early age on. My great-grand uncle, with whom I spent many summers, was denounced by his own family for being a homosexual, so I was aware of homophobia from an early age on. My father is disabled, so I was confronted with the unthinking discrimination against him from an early age on. I went to a mostly white, German primary school - but I still remember flying into a rage at the way both the two Turkish kids and the kids from the council estates got treated by my classmates. As a kid, I couldn't understand why we couldn't all get along! I was at the top of the pile, so I didn't understand that it's harder further down. And that it's easier to blame someone else for your troubles (The bloody foreigners are taking our jobs!) or to put someone else below you in the pecking order. It doesn't make it right, but if you're the bin man everybody else is looking down on, having the Turkish bin man to look down on yourself must make you feel better. This is the way my mum explained racism to me when I came home crying because one of the big boys had beaten up Michi because he was wearing hand-me downs and I hadn't had the guts to do something. The explanation didn't help, because to me that meant that he probably would've stopped if I had done something...I was further up the pecking order!
The amount of unthinking racism in Germany back then was (and still is) scary. I've stood speechless as my own father cheerfully referred to kaffers when telling friends about his African trips. When I moved to Ireland, there was no racism. Unless you happened to be a Traveller. But mostly, there was no racism because everybody was white. I spent my school days here being called Hitler and Nazi, but I was so used to the German guilt thing that I didn't think anything of it. And when a new German kid showed up in the school, I teased him about his funny accent and blond hair as much as everyone else.
Ireland has changed, though. Preliminary results from the census show that about 9-10% of the population are non-nationals. What's scary is that even the most liberal, well-educated people are racist. You can't have the local girls going out with black men, not because they're black but because we all know that they're all HIV positive. You can't hire any Latvians, because they'll steal from you when you're not looking - they're great workers, but you've got to watch them like a hawk. That Nigerian woman with the baby? Didn't come to Ireland to escape genital mutilation, but to have an Irish-born baby that will guarantee her EU residency. The Kurdish chap? Sure, can't he head back home now Saddam Hussein is gone? The Department of Justice seem to automatically assume that asylum seekers are lying when they state that they're running from war, to the point where the support groups actually have to submit reports from Amnesty International to prove the conflict exists. This government has passed legislation after pushing through a referendum on thinly disguised racist grounds. A friend of mine, who was a polling clerk, was asked by one voter "what do I tick to get the niggers out?". It scares me. The looks I get when I'm with black friends scare me. Not for me, but for them. The way we treat travellers scares me too...especially since I'm not immune to it. Seeing travellers get treated badly doesn't send me flying into rage, although a milder version of my childhood anger still resurfaces when I'm faced with other forms of racism. But I don't cry anymore. I try to have as many facts at my disposal as possible and pull people up about it. Yeah, isn't it terrible how all these blacks show up and live off the state....did you know that they get €19 a week pocket money and aren't allowed to work while they are still in the asylum process? And that the process can take up to 4 years? No? Let me introduce you to my friend Moba. He's a pastor and is currently doing a Phd in Theology, now that he's been granted asylum. In his spare time, he does voluntary work with homeless kids in Dublin. Yeah, thought you might like him!
[Edit] The ranting took over, so I neglected to mention the most galling thing about Irish attitudes to immigrants: the Irish have, for centuries, used emigration as a survival strategy and have often been at the receiving end of discrimination. There is still an expectation that an Irish person looking for work in the UK, the US and Australia is going to be treated well and welcomed with open arms. Be they there legally or not. It's hypocrisy at its best. Makes me want to puke.