Irish racism in England

[angell84]

I am shocked. I am half English, half Irish. My Irish mum lived in England for a long time, gave birth to us children there with her English husband, and then moved back to Ireland.

The reason that she always gave me for returning to Ireland, was that, "she could not take the nastiness to her anymore". She described one incident of many to me: she went to my brother's primary teacher in England, and said that he had lost something, he must have been six at the time, and the teacher said to her , "sure what do you expect - he is half Irish".

I always thought of it in an abstract way, I never really understood what she meant. Until I spent quite a long time in the U.K this year.

I was absolutely shocked at the hatred and nastiness, and calling Irish people stupid.

How can it be possible? The U.K stole alot of Ireland's land, committed mass genocide during the famine, eradicated the Irish language,

And yet instead of apologising, many people are going around calling Irish people stupid.

Isn't it nearly unbelievable? It would be like a German going up to a Jew and calling them stupid. That it was their fault , thhat everything happened the way it did.

I am really shocked

People will call them gyppos and pikeys just because they are rowdy in the pub and have the accent

Why are they being rowdy in the pub? Most normal people want to go out without having to endure arseholes being rowdy and then getting offended when people call them out on it.

@TellmeWhoTheVillainsAre

call them out fair enough but do you really think using the words 'gyppos' and 'pikeys' is acceptable and deserved?

Dohop sounds like the troll that started this goady thread then disappeared.

Stop feeding the trolls.

There are a lot of travellers living in the UK, I'd assume if I heard the word ''pikey'' that it was being used about a traveller. That doesn't make it ok.

@LexMitior I disagree that things will stay the same. I think Scotland will leave the UK to be a part of Europe.

There'll be another referendum within two years and within 5 years I'd predict Scotland has left the UK to be a part of the EU

I think I recognize dohops posting style from other threads. If she is who I think she is, she has an irrational virulent hatred of nordies arising from a short time she spent living there (hmmm, I wonder why they didn’t take to her), and a very limited vision of what being Irish means.

@HamAndPineapple

I just don’t think Boris Johnson is stupid enough to give into Nicola Sturgeons demands. All he has to do is say no for the next five years.

Given Scotland has marginal constituencies, he would be wise to. There’s nothing she can do about it.

Why get offended. Anybody who looks down on the Irish is out of touch and deluded. I feel we are doing ok. I look at the Uk and I feel sorry for you guys.

This totally. The UK is a state these days, I feel sorry for the UK and what it has become. Reading threads here is like , as a person who doesn't live there watching their spiral from being a country that was mostly respected worldwide to what it is today is quite something. They are in no place to cast stones at anyone.

Nobody is casting stones. How hysterical are you?

Oh yes Phuquocdreams, now that you say it, I think you're right.

I'm not responding to the individual who says they're "disguisted" by my previous post querying the Irish/Jews comparison. This post, like many others I see about Ireland, seems to be little more than an attempt to troll and cause maximum upset.There needs to be more sensitivity, we still have families and individuals living with the aftermath and trauma of the troubles. Referring to the horrors of the famine doesn't make that suffering any easier or balance it in any way. As an Ulster Protestant I'm often told to go back to where I came from because it's my fault that I'm from a planter family, it even justifies a campaign of terror.
Respect is all that's needed, if I disrespect someone for being Irish I'll do the same to anyone else of a different background.
Remember we regularly have people at sports grounds who think it's ok to make monkey noises at those of a different colour.There's so much basic work to be done.

@LexMitior do the Scots need permission to hold another referendum?

Yes they do!

Westminster has to agree. That will not happen. The SNP are powerless since Boris has a huge majority and will do for the next decade. He can just wait it out, Britain will leave the E.U. and then even if there was a referendum and the SNP won they would have to negotiate back into the E.U. unlikely, isn’t it?

Because it shows it goes both ways. It is a comparison if it is experienced both ways. Why should an English person experience the same if the opposite is also unacceptable? We chose to ignore it.

Wow the Scots must be very frustrated by that. They need Westminster's permission to have a referendum!

I don't know if the EU would hold the decision to leave against scotland if they wanted to come back in. I think they'd be allowed back in.

Yes I’m sure that’s right but it might be ten years down the line and by that point Scotland might have diverged a lot from the E.U. as part of Britain.

@59mrsglowglow,

What would they prefer to be called? I've never used either of those words in my life, but can't control other people's language. In Ireland they'd be called scumbags, or knackers, or good old fashioned dickheads!

Is that more acceptable/appropriate?!

Whos casting stones?

We get one of these threads every week designed to paint british people as uneducated (with wide eyed 'didnt they teach you this at school' shit endlessly) and revel in victim status, im sick of hearing it. 50% of us wanted no part of brexit. We arnt going to campaign for our kids to be taught the minute details of Irish history- its no more important than any other small european country to learn about. Nor am i going to take any personal responsibility for history in other nations.

Perhaps others should take their own offense reflex about their country off a hair trigger before they start this rubbish. And most of all keep nationalist rubbish out of History.

I think each country in the UK has it's own wonderful traditions and histories. I see it as something to be celebrate.

Ireland is not in the UK.

Sigh

And most of all keep nationalist rubbish out of History.
By which you mean don't bother teaching the facts because it's too upsetting to think what our forebears were like.

@patroclus how ignorant

same goes for @TellMeWhoTheVilliansAre

I won't waste my breath

@mrsglowglow, I am honestly not trying to be ignorant or goading. But someone posted that their friends get called names because they're rowdy in pubs. As if it was a regular (and acceptable) occurrence. And you are upset by the names they are called?

Why don't these people just behave like normal humans rather than making life uncomfortable for others around them? We all know the types. "Untouchable". And now we have bleeding hearts highlighting how these people might have their sensibilities upset by people calling them names. (Rarely these types of people are challenged to their faces because it never ends well, so the name calling is most likely done by exasperated people minding their own business trying to ignore the dickheads. It's unlikely to be done to their faces at the risk of being turned on.

Let me give you a very simple example, @TellMe. Serena Williams, while aggressively querying umpire decisions in much the same way a white male tennis player like John McEnroe did, gets castigated far more viciously for it, in ways that are gendered and racialised, because of the pejorative stereotype of the angry black woman which portrays African-American women as 'naturally' crude, aggressive, mannerless and 'uppity'. Used to put black women querying injustices back in their place for fairly obvious reasons.

The actual actions are perceived through a frame of an essentialising stereotype which the perceiver sees as natural.

It's not all that long ago that Irish people seeking Home Rule were portrayed in the pages of English newspapers as angry, brutish apes.

That stereotype hasn't entirely gone away either, as I'm aware from my own personal experience in England.