“Racism” towards the Irish on here

I feel like I have the opposite problem with Halloween - people here in SE England assuming I love it because I'm Irish. When actually, as I told a vaguely-known-to-me-teenager demanding sweets at my door last night yes I'm a moody cowwe're all indivduals with personalities, not walking sets of traditions and clichés. (Sorry, off topic!)

jane even my auto correct has bias, I'm doomed! But thinking about it a bit more I also agree with anelderly I think there is often a fair amount of snobbery and not just towards the Irish tied up in this.

It's the same with the Halloween stuff. Not knowing is one thing, but there are often posts which describe Halloween traditions as cheeky/tacky/begging/tough/etc. It mixed with the stuff in the baby names thread with the stereotype of Irish people in England as being uncouth, uneducated, possibly criminal, working class loudmouthed uncivilised louts. And that also applies to people who might not be Irish or have Irish heritage but who come from areas of the UK which have traditionally had a high population of Irish immigrants.

My dc were watching some German children's telly yesterday - factual/news show - and they had an item on Halloween - along the lines of 'you all think it's American, right? Well, actually...' and went on to explain the history of its origination from Ireland. Was fairly impressed.

I agree with plaidlife about the cultural ignorance of much of England, but tbh I don't think there's much of an excuse for it (and I also think disdain often comes in a cloak of purported ignorance which isn't really - the whole snobbery towards Santa ('he's Father Christmas in this house', which I always hear in pretty much the same tone as 'It's Wingardium Leviosaaaa') is a case in point).

plaid it's santy

Not sure name calling is helpful in all honesty.

The Halloween stuff comes out every year and seems to be based on the idea that all of the U.K.'s traditions are homegenous therefore if it didn't happen where the individual poster grew up and they are only aware of the US tradition,that is where it comes from. I don't think it is anti Celtic sentiment just that some people struggle to understand that there are different traditions both from within the UK and from our near neighbours that have impacted the US.
The thread about the Americanisation of calling our schools high schools was another such recent thread and we will have a Santa rather than St Nicholas soon I expect.
Southern England is the dominant cultural force in the UK and mumsnet is predominately if not exclusively a UK site so although frustrating it is not surprising that the cultural ideas of this area hold sway. I get frustrated but not offended by their ignorance about other areas, I'd don't think it is deliberate just the by product of being the majority.

Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light;
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
^
W. B. Yeats^

The irony that this work of brilliance, was voted in the top ten of most loved poems. By the British public seems to go unnoticed. Because it was written in English,🤔by a very proud Irishman who was awarded the Noble Prize for Literature.

I’m really upset at that. I reported the whole thread and I just don’t understand why MichaelMumsnet couldn’t have read the thread instead of expecting me as the upset person, to go through it again point by point and read and then explain every single racist comment

Have you asked that question of HQ? I've been on MN a LONG time and I've never had a mod tell me I had to report each individual post like that. It's generally 'we've gone through the thread, and will keep a close eye on it, but if we've missed anything please report it" or words to that effect. Did MichaelMumsnet mean that but not phrase it quite right, or is it new MN policy? (Or was he short of time and wanting you to do his job for him?!)

@JaneJeffers true, he didn't sign the treaty. You'd think i'd know that - I grew up near the towers in Ballymun
He was a Commandant and wasn't executed after the rising because he held an American passport.

please Dev had nothing to do with the Proclamation.

Awaits MN proclamation...

*from

As I said, xenophobia and racism are synonymous

"Oxford English Dictionary, xenophobia
SYNONYMS: racism, racialism, racial hatred, ethnocentrism, ethnocentricity

I didn't post at the time because I felt no one was listening, I will form now on.

Yes I did Monty27. Why?

I call the aggro that happens to me over here now and again (English and a bit Southern European/Turkish-looking (as Germans tell me), in rural Germany) xenophobia, rather than racism. But that's aimed at me as an individual with foreign (or perceptible-as-foreign) characteristics, iyswim. I have no problem with recognising anti-Irish sentiment as racist. Deciding racism is about skin colour or any other arbitrary characteristic that one defines oneself and therefore determining who it can apply to and who, by extension, has to STFU is, I agree, minimising at least.

Giantbanger, I'd say it's a mixture of lack of awareness and denial. What we (meant collectively) can get away with denying, we will.

Been following this with interest. FWIW as a MC English person (albeit living in Europe, which perhaps has sensitised me) I have noticed this too. Am actually rather troubled at the small-mindedness and bigotry shown by people my age and younger. The casual anti-Americanism (see any 'what words/phrases can't you stand?' thread) bothers me as well.

I honestly believe it's a very strong hangover of colonial hubris in British (perhaps above all English) culture. You see it in the Brexit discussions all the time. The sheer inability to believe that anyone will have the temerity to make things difficult for 'us'.

I'm in the citizenship process for the EU country I live in and it should be through before Brexit. I will have the right to keep my British passport if so, but I am strongly considering relinquishing it in protest. Am getting increasingly uncomfortable with the supposed values on which I too have built my attachment to my Britishness.

Again FWIW, I'm another who was taught no Irish history at school (and I am younger than my username might suggest). We did a book about the (then still active) 'Troubles' in English. That was the extent of it.

LadyGregorysToothbrush
Did you live through the troubles? Just asking.
I bet mnhq will zapp the thread because it relates to another thread 🙄🙄
Or whatever their standing orders are
Irish people are white, purportedly or supposed to stay uneducated see?
As it always was. As it always will be reading the total nonsense bigotry on here