“Racism” towards the Irish on here

No it was “are Irish writers really Irish when they wrote in English and went to English schools?”

I'm actually laughed at how outrageous that is!!! Bloody hell. British are often very ignorant in my experience. Usually there's no malice in it, just a result of poor education and an education that's been completely whitewashed.

Mumsnet response seems very ignorant.

For context, I've one Irish parent, one English, raised Irish but have worked and lived in the UK.

The baby names forum is always a shit show.
I'm not sure some English believe is when we say Irish is it's own language.

Not on the subject of literature but I have been shocked at the attitudes towards the Irish border following the Brexit vote. So dismissive. The fact it wasn't even mentioned by either side during the campaign says it all.

because Irish isn’t a race

Did a mod say that? Or another poster?

Equality act definition of race is: an individual, or a group of people, who are identified by their nationality, citizenship, colour, national or ethnic origins. As such, anti-Irish prejudice and discrimination is definitely racism in a legal context, in the UK.

MNHQ gets to set the rules, and I have no problem with that. But I do have a problem if they are not being applied consistently and fairly as much as is possible, and there have been several long, very visible, threads recently where racism towards us Irish has been excused by a mod as interesting debate.

I saw the thread yesterday but didn't post on it as I was too tired to articulate what I wanted to say but I too was astounded at the MN response to it being reported.

OP: Wildly offensive post.
Many Responses: This is wildly offensive. I am offended by what you have said. You have made some wildly inaccurate assumptions and statements and clearly, have no knowledge or appreciation of Irish history.
OP: Nothing that I have said is offensive.
MNHQ: The op means no harm, it's a legitimate discussion.
OP: I have been given the green light by MNHQ, I will now go on to make even more statements that are now incredibly ignorant as well as being offensive.

I am with you OP. I might not have used the word racist but I wonder what was in the MNHQ's mind when she wrote her response.

I was quite interested in the thread.

The thread title could perhaps have been worded in a slightly less inflammatory way , however it's actually a really interesting subject.

Coincidentally, the Book of the Week on Radio 4 this week is 'Mad. Bad, Dangerous to know', written and read by Colm Toibin, 'illuminating new book on literary fathers. (Today), Tóibín is in Oscar Wilde's cell at Reading gaol where he is reflecting on the life and influence of William Wilde, the great writer's father.

During the course of the reading, Toibin himself describes Wilde's father as Victorian, and says that the Irish ruling classes at the time were not accepted as fully Irish.

I'd agree with this. Many of the Irish ruling class in the 19th century were described as Anglo Irish, were educated in the UK, followed the customs of the English landed gentry (foxhunting anyone!), but 20th century Irish writers have a very distinctive and Irish voice.

I don't think that's anti Irish at all. Don't think anyone could claim Colm Tobin as anything other than a proud Irishman and one of Ireland's greatest writers.

This would probably be an interesting listen, too The Wireless Past

I’ve reported the OP asking HQ to address this issue.

I completely agree that unfortunately disingenuous or faux-naive anti-Irish threads are allowed in a way that others aren’t. It is a fairly subtle but persistent problem on MN, which has worsened during the course of Brexit negotiations as more anti-Irish sentiment is expressed.

There was a thread a few months ago where a poster was deleted 4 times over the course of a few days for anti-Irish racism (potato famine related, IIRC) and yet allowed to continue posting on the thread without even a warning (so they claimed) let alone suspension. Yet on FWR we’re lost a lot of regular Mners to “3 strikes you you’re out”. Some of us complained at the time, but nothing much came of it.

Even if you want to split hairs and call it xenophobic (although personally I subscribe to the definition of racism that includes ethnicity), it still should've instantly gone.

Bless you for trying OP. I’ve given up a long time ago. We Irish are fair game on mumsnet, for dismissal of our culture, our names, our language, our history. It’s never a problem and we are to play nicely and bow down to our betters. After all they used to “own” us.

It has gotten worse lately (oh, yeah, I forgot, we are not allowed to use that particular word, common in Hiberno-English, people who use “gotten” are thick). I blame it on the recent spoor of veiled anti-Irishness in the media because of the problems “we” are causing with the glorious progress of Brexit.

MNHQ do absolutely NOTHING to stop it.

This comes up so often on here. Broomstick's post above is spot on.

I saw the mod's post, and although it wasn't in unexpected (how often have we been here?!), my jaw did literally drop reading it.

Personally, I would prefer the approach of locking rather than deleting goady threads, but if MNHQ's policy is to delete racist, goady posts, then that one should've gone instantly.

I mean - "these people were educated and well spoken, so surely they weren't REALLY Irish". How is it not blatantly obvious that this was a racist thread?

It's more the staggering ignorance of how Ireland was treated under colonialism that got to me tbh.

What is it that you specifically object to about the mod’s statement? Being told to be nice? Or the reference to the existence of a debate re the categorisation of Irish literature?

But being told to be nice to trolls is out of order. And the thing is that the anti-Irish posts here don't consist of people writing "Irish people are a load of stupid, drunken uncultured backwards peasants and criminals". It's always phrased quite politely, in tones on faux- (and sometime even genuine) naïvity. "I would never use the name Conor. I'm a teacher and I've never met a Conor who wasn't a menace". "I've been offered a job in Dublin, but my sister's a lesbian - what would she have to deal with if she visits me?" "Why would people from Eire care about a border with the UK - had one for ages without a problem" "Halloween is a tacky American import and I want nothing to do with it' etc.

Whoops sorry OP.

It's not that the overall discussion is racist - it's a fascinating discussion and as a Scottish English lit geek it's one I've thought about often from a Scottish perspective.

It's the way the op and some others phrase their 'thoughts'.

Interesting! And highly sectarian. Can’t help but think that dear old Willie would have hated to have been excluded from such august company. He was v proud of his Anglo-Irish credentials in his later work, of course. No petty people and all that.

Wonder where my namesake would fall?

Yeats was apparently different in some unspecified way from writers such as Wilde and Beckett, who were actually English. Presumably the difference the OP meant was that she had heard Yeats was a nationalist.