What constitutes to someone being Irish?

[Cybercubed]

Born there? Parents from there? Grandparents from there?

I'm born and raised in England, my parents are both Irish (mum from Belfast Dad from the ROI). In England whilst growing up people routinely called me Irish and so that's how I saw myself. Then I moved to Northern Ireland as teenager and had a reality check, because then everyone started calling me English. I still have an English accent so everyone still refers me to as an English person here. I've always understandably have a bit of an identity crisis therefore, compounded by the fact that the "British vs Irish" issue is right of the forefront of Northern Ireland politics as well I don't feel I fit in with either community here.

We've all heard of the term 'plastic paddy' which usually gets thrown at anyone with a non Irish accent calling themselves Irish. I personally don't really identify as anything more and feel kinda stateless but do you think calling yourself Irish should be reserved for those who are born and/or raised there only?

Sorry, condemn is not the right word. Racism is something to be condemned, always.

Realise my post was badly written.
What I mean is that other countries, despite having had generations to overcome it, still have huge problems with racism.

I honestly have no idea. I don't know any of my own family members further back than my mum and dad. I had no grandparents and have no knowledge of my family tree. I've heard rumours that there is French and Irish in my background but who knows. All the talk lately about race and heritage and so on has left me feeling a bit lost.

@Shinygoldbauble

Realise my post was badly written. What I mean is that other countries, despite having had generations to overcome it, still have huge problems with racism.

I expect them to do better than they are doing currently. And I do condemn them.

Britain is dealing with the legacy of the 50s and 60s and how the early generations were treated. They had no reference point at the time. It’s come a long way here. It’s twenty years ahead of where Ireland is now.

All of Europe is multicultural now and yet Irish people are making all the same ‘first generation’ mistakes. The information is out there. But minimising, and ‘it’s racist but’, and claiming ignorance of the fact that casual racism is exactly that isn’t happening by accident or ignorance. People are choosing to be like that.

And that is why I am massively disappointed in my own country and it’s why I stay away. My partner isn’t white. I will never take them to Ireland. They will never meet many of my extended family. Because I won’t subject them to the pretence the people don’t know they are being racist.

The poem I linked to is very, very true. It’s a pity. I miss the country I once thought Ireland was. It was a lovely place. It’s a pity it wasn’t real.

I too have been absolutle disgusted at the racism I have witnessed in Ireland in the past year. People from poland, Pakistan, the Czech republic have told me horrific stories of how they have been treated in Ireland. There is no need for it to as cruel and vicious as it is

From what was a relatively innocent question (or at least I thought it was), this thread has exposed how much bigotry and hatred still exists between the two countries, sad to see.

There's a part of me that wishes my parents back in the 80s had chosen to move to the US/Canada/Australia instead rather than the UK. I've mentioned before in this thread I think the US and Canada although has its problems does multiracialism and integration better than parts of the UK and Europe does.

I know I would be much more readily accepted as an American/Canadian there than I would be obviously as a British/English person in the UK or an Irish person in Ireland. At least it would have left me with less of an identity crisis.

@Cybercubed
I’m sorry to hear how it’s impacting you. I have an Irish accent but consider myself more English than Irish at this stage. Life your best life and don’t worry how others label you. In the end it doesn’t matter. What matters is creating your own bubble of happiness in the world where you can just be you.

Live not life!

Some people wouldn't even consider my mum Irish because she's from NI. There are some in the south who don't consider northern catholics/nationalists as Irish, or look down on them as 'lesser' Irish, my mum has personally experienced resentment from those in the ROI when they've heard her accent.

Its a minority but it does show you the definition 'Irish' can get very narrow with some people.

@Cybercubed that is what drives me crazy about these two islands.
I have met:
Rep of Ireland people who hate N.Irish people,
N.Irish people who hate rep. of Ireland people,
Irish people who hate English people
English people who hate Irish people
Scottish people who hate English people
Welsh people who hate English people.

There is so much hate floating around the two islands, it causes so many problems for people.

The level of hate is ridiculous seeing as many people from these islands marry each other and inter mingle, and then their children feel like they don't belong anywhere because they get hate.

My mum is Irish and my Dad is English, and I too have felt the feeling of not fitting in in either country. And of being totally afraid of mentioning the English side of the family in Ireland.

And the feeling of being so, so terribly hurt when numerous people have said to me in Ireland "I hate all the English, they are all fucking bastards", and I think "my dad is such a lovely man".

Nobody could possibly think you had an axe to grind, Sarahpaula
Your family sound completely obnoxious (God love you), but in no way representative of the Irish nation as a whole. You can argue against that all you like.

@Thisismytimetoshine

Nobody could possibly think you had an axe to grind, Sarahpaula Your family sound completely obnoxious (God love you), but in no way representative of the Irish nation as a whole. You can argue against that all you like.

More minimising.

Why the determination not to believe us?

I wouldn’t raise children in Ireland today for all the tea in China.

Plus Sarahpaula is recounting her memories of her own family. Why do you conclude she has an axe to grind? And with whom?

@Thisismytimetoshine you read my post totally wrong.

My Irish side of the family never said anything bad about my English side of the family.

I said that I was totally afraid to say in ireland that I was half English or that I had an English father, because any time that I did mention that my Dad was English, I would get severe nastiness and hate about it.

Again, not from my Irish family. I got the nastiness and abuse from other people in Ireland!!!

It just shows how stupid the hate is,

Because many families are mixed Irish/English like the OP.

I agree that hate between Irish and English normal people (as opposed to frustrstion with governments) is a daft and sad considering how many people have both as their heritage.

OP I don't know anyone who wouldn't consider you British and I am sorry you had the experience you did growing up and that you feel you belong to neither country. Identity is an odd thing. I don't feel I belong in the county I currently live in because it's not my 'home'. But then where I did grow up I was always told I was 'posh' for having a normal accent.

Oops sorry, normal a bad way to describe it . I mean nondescript, belonging nowhere.

@Wolfgirrl
Please dont credit Ireland with the bravery that thousands of Irish individuals showed by joining the British forces.
What is 'Ireland' unless you take into account 'Irish individuals'? The people voted for deValera and his party and rejected the party of the Blueshirts, and also went to war against the Nazis, in droves. It's possible for voters to feel pride in a government's assertion of neutrality (this policy was overwhelmingly popular) and also to fully support the Allies and the defeat of the Nazis. It is fully possible for a neutral state's government to support one side or the other. See Sweden for example.

As for Churchill 🤷‍♀️ I guess in the aftermath of the war, with millions dead and whole cities levelled, he didnt think to mention a relatively minor contribution from another country. Ireland certainly didnt 'defend' the UK, that is absurd.
Whole cities leveled - Dresden for instance?
Churchill was an anti-Irish incompetent whose name would have gone down in infamy were it not for WW2. He presided over Gallipoli, and followed that with the loss of Ireland to the Empire (with the introduction of warfare against a civilian population under his belt), then the Mandate Palestine debacle (more of the same tactic following years of mendacity to both sides in Palestine), then the redirection of Marshall funds to shore up the Empire - the granddaddy of all vanity projects - instead of rebuilding flattened Britain as the governments and administrators of the flattened continent of Europe did.
Plus, as mentioned, that civil aviation treaty between the US and Ireland, and the knowledge that FDR hated the British Empire and saw to it that it would be dismantled as soon as possible after the war. Another great victory Churchill presided over...
And he was a notoriously heavy drinker too, so maybe his regrettable and grossly undiplomatic remarks can be attributed to that, on top of sullen soreness about 'winning'.

You seem to rely solely on Churchill's remarks of May 1945 for your 'facts' on Ireland in WW2, and that is a huge pity. As I remarked earlier, there are lots of more reliable sources.

So Ireland did take a side really, but stopped short of admitting it, which would mean joining the war effort and making an enemy of the Nazis.
A few posts upthread you seemed to take an unseemly amount of comfort from the idea that Hitler considered the British to have superior blood, in contrast to how he felt about the Irish. Now you seem to be saying that the Nazis weren't enemies of the Irish. But at the same time you insist that the Irish can't admit that Britain saved their arses during WW2.
What a pity you seem to be unable to keep track of your own nonsense here.

It was Churchill who introduced control of recalcitrant civilian populations by means of aerial policing, in Iraq in the 1920s. And you wonder why the Irish government held their noses...

I live in Northern Ireland, and although I was raised and still live in a loyalist area, I identify more as Irish than British these days, culturally, although I'm really "Norn irish" and I think we're different again, more loquacious, irreverent and tempermental. Our politicians and leaders in general are more hypocritically puritanical. But people outside the island often just class us all as "Irish".

It baffles me that I was born on the island of ireland, but having been raised unionist, there are loads of people here (in N.I) who would argue I'm not Irish. Yet there are people in other countries, who consider themselves Irish because their great, great grandad came from Ireland (which they've never even been to).

They moved, and still move, when they believe prices in the area are taking a downturn. Irish people and black people moving to an area correlated with a reduction in property values and triggered a cascade of people moving, driving prices down further. It still happens. An Irish traveller community was settled near friends of mine in the UK and house prices locally plummeted. It hasn’t changed. It’s just illegal to put it in the paper now. Same with homophobia. It hasn’t gone away.
@MMN123

So a shrug then?
You are confusing cause with effect when you state that fear of falling prices triggers the phenomenon of white flight. It's a moral choice to sell up for whatever you can get in order to avoid whoever it is you have been taught to fear or loathe next door.

@Ihaventgottimeforthis

we did manage to trace birth records of both my DFs parents, it appears neither of them returned home & both died in the UK.
The requirement for you to be considered an Irish citizen by dint of grandparents is that they were born there. After that, where they ended up isn't relevant for the purposes of determining citizenship. It's a technical requirement that acknowledges that the cultural or familial link might be very slight but by the same token, acknowledges that it is there regardless.

...I don't consider myself to be remotely Irish & I would never seriously consider applying for citizenship, unless Brexit continues to go tits up maybe!
Applying for citizenship might be a smart move on your part, so that your children could benefit.
I have relatives in England in a similar boat - children who are culturally English who now have Irish passports. By a quirk of fate some of them also hold US passports (premature birth of twins while on holiday in the US). So they can hold three passports. You never know when a passport will come in handy.
However I can't speak for my DCs who when they are older may want to delve deeper. Could they ever call themselves Irish & be taken seriously?
Who cares what others might think as long as the state agrees they are Irish? There is no arguing with that passport. It confers the right to live and work in the EU, including in Ireland. My DCs have all claimed their Irish citizenship with a view to doing that, and happily studied and traveled in Europe with their Irish passports. They are dual US/Irish citizens who speak with American accents, understand the rules of baseball, mispronounce the names of Irish counties and towns, etc.

I have a legal entitlement to an Irish passport in my
own right, having been born in N.I, thanks to the GFA, afaik. DS too. Have always had a British one, but thinking about applying for an Irish one, with Brexit changes looming.

@mathanxiety

They moved, and still move, when they believe prices in the area are taking a downturn. Irish people and black people moving to an area correlated with a reduction in property values and triggered a cascade of people moving, driving prices down further. It still happens. An Irish traveller community was settled near friends of mine in the UK and house prices locally plummeted. It hasn’t changed. It’s just illegal to put it in the paper now. Same with homophobia. It hasn’t gone away. *@MMN123*

So a shrug then?
You are confusing cause with effect when you state that fear of falling prices triggers the phenomenon of white flight. It's a moral choice to sell up for whatever you can get in order to avoid whoever it is you have been taught to fear or loathe next door.

What shrug? Stop attributing thoughts in your head to me.

Yes it’s a moral choice. One Ireland has not yet faced, never mind overcome. So folk sneering at the UK in 50s is laughable - as if Ireland is better - when they have barely begun and are already falling at the first very, very low hurdles.