Colleague said something was a bit Irish

[0scon]

Something that hadn't been planned properly, she said it was a bit Irish and laughed.
Is that not quite racist? Or am I being too woke?

Oiy English people, leave the Scots and Welsh out of it. 😏

Race and ethnicity cover such a huge (grey!) area. But - colloquially - the term 'racism' is usually used when discussing the colour of people's skin. So I think that the waters are muddied when asking if derogatory comments towards the Irish should be considered "racist". Because Irish people no longer face the same systemic stigmatism black people do. The term 'No Irish, no Blacks, no dogs" comes to mind.

So, whilst potentially offensive, I'm not sure that the word "racist" is accurate.

As lovely as your Irish husband is, that sounds like a sketch from the seventies. It doesn’t speak well of your village.

Paddy doesn't mean stupid and I don't say the other one that got mentioned

True, it is generally English but there is an occasional Scot.or Welsh person.

Many sayings are ingrained to us from the community we grow up in and we don't really think about what the saying means.
But some communities/ cultures were oppressed and treated very badly by others.
England was responsible for a lot of oppression including that done to Ireland and Irish communities
Saying like 'having a Paddy' originate from part of.the degrading and oppression Irish people faced. The making them seem less than English. Less educated, less clean, less capable etc.

Most people use sayings without thought and without intent to offend, but once you are made aware you should adapt and think differently.

It is not acceptable to use the phases knowingly. Imagine a phase for those who rob others being 'having an England' based on England.invading and and taking from so many countries. Only this isn't as bad as England wasn't the oppressed culture. But imagine how you would feel with your culture always being linked to something bad

Very much so! Does anyone remember the uproar over Adele and her Bantu Knots hairstyle? White people were going fricking MENTAL over her perceived cultural appropriation, but the people who had ancestoral/cultural links to the hairstyle basically told all the white people to STFU.

If it does mean stupid I didn't know. Only ever known it as throwing a tantrum 🤷‍♀️

I just meant that I won't use it myself, not that I will henceforth personally be offended by hearing others use it. Of course I wouldn't have any way of knowing if someone had used it intentionally to be derogatory or just from not knowing the connection, just as I have no way of knowing whether someone using the term "Karen" to describe a middle aged woman complaining about something is ignorant of what the word means or is simply misogynistic. But still. there is a sense in which a sentence "is offensive" if used to be derogatory towards others, irrespective of whether I am personally offended by it.

I remember that! 😆 Pathetic isn't it? People getting offended on behalf of others. Happens a lot these days. Social justice warriors, clutching their pearls, and finger-wagging. SO tedious! I just laugh at them now.

You can see them getting angrier and ANGRIER when you are saying things they don't agree with!

I'm not referring to Paddy (although that is also frequently used offensively e.g. the phrase having a paddy). I'm refering to the use of "a bit Irish"

You're the one who said you wouldn't be offended by the use of the phrase. It doesn't matter if you use it or not.

And we've our own eejits too

I'm not convinced that 'having a paddie' is derogatory about the Irish'

Unfortunately, there seems to be no expectation that those taking offense research the matter. Seemingly, just saying that two things are obviously related makes it so.
Interestingly (for me), this afternoon, someone on X/Twitter was talking about what some seem to mean by the term 'a bit Irish' - someone we feel an affinity to acting in an apparently self-defeating way. They described a woman who despite having limitless options, has only left her home twice in a decade and resists contact with the outside world.
The person they were talking about, who lives in her own castle, is apparently worth $150 million and doesn't want her own music tainted by outside influences is Enya. Perfectly happy, not upsetting or inconveniencing anyone, but confounding the limited expectations of those fantasising about having that level of wealth.

I didn't think about where it came from - just an expression I heard usually about kids. I think that is the problem that we don't know the origins and the negative connotations to things. I was the same with sold me out/ sold me down the river (which is kind of obvious when I did think about it) and nitty gritty which has dubious origins whichever version is accurate.

Throwing a paddy is negative stereotyping too as it is based on the stereotype that Irish people are obstinate and unable to control their tempers.

Nothing to do with this generation. It’s a rude comment to make, especially in the workplace. Implying something is Irish because it’s poorly planned and Irish people must be thick. She doesn’t know what heritage someone has and should think before she speaks. Banter between two colleagues who have that relationship is one thing. But making a comment like this to people you aren’t close to, is just plain rude. Always would have been.

I recently had a meal with family, and my Mam said, "You're like a bunch of bloody Gannets". She has used this phrase all my life, but up until then I'd never considered what it actually meant. Imagine being almost 40 and only now finding out that a 'Gannet' is a type of (greedy) bird! 🤯

It's like when you, as an adult, realise that lots of the nursery rhymes are really quite dark. 😂

Goes off to Google your examples.

Ah the Kilkenny cat 😸

I didn't think about it, in the same way I never thought about where tantrum, strop, mard etc came from.

I grew up hearing "he / she's having a paddy" or "don't have a paddy" as well as the words above. To me, it was just another word for a tantrum. There was no need to think about it. No-one explained it, no-one in my family was derogatory about the Irish either as far as I recall, so I presume they didn't know the origins of it and they were using it just to mean strop.

I was into my thirties when I read about the connection.

Are you for real? How on earth do you think it's "quite a leap", to connect Paddy to Irish??

Have you never heard of the patron saint of Ireland? Saint PATRICK.

Paddy is an extremely well known diminutive form of Patrick.

Have you seriously never heard anyone refer to St. Patrick's Day as St. Paddy's Day?

It's a pretty fucking obvious connection.

By that logic it's easier to connect it with a rice paddy field than the Irish.

The English language has words that can mean more than one thing, as I'm sure most languages do.

Woke

🤐 GIVE ME STRENGTH.

Words fail me.! #facepalm

100% this. ^