Ireland is a hard place to live

[Mooshamoo]

Just watching the video of the black child being not given a medal by Irish gymnastics.

I was wondering if there is anyone else on here on craicnet, who is not Irish, living in Ireland. What your experiences are.

I think that Ireland can be a very hard place to live if you are not fully white and fully irish.

I'm half Irish. I was bullied all the way through school for not having an Irish surname. Then when I grew up and lived in the same small town, all of the same girls from my school were living in that town. And as adults they refused to talk to me.

I see the women who are fully Irish, being popular , having great lives.

To be totally acceptable and popular in ireland, you have to have a rich family, brothers/father who play gaa etc.

All the rich girls in my school hung around together. And again as adults all the rich Irish women hung around together in small town Ireland.

If you were foreign, from a single parent family, seen as poor, you were not accepted at all.

And it's who you know

I think this makes Ireland a very difficult place to live

I think it is important to raise this topic at this moment, as Ireland is currently in the news, for giving racist abuse to a black child in Ireland.

The topic is current and important. You shouldn't just brush it under the carpet

To everyone who's responded in good faith on this thread, the OP is a poster who has some odd, entrenched views about English and Irish people (English people are all 'cold and cruel', for instance) because of her own, evidently unhappy upbringing, and continually posts similar threads.

I sympathise with her evident unhappiness, but I don't recognise either the England or the Ireland she describes (and I'm someone who grew up very poor in Ireland, then lived in various parts of England for over 20 years, then returned). None of my family have ever played GAA in living memory, or indeed had an interest in any type of sport, and we were dirt poor growing up, my parents were only semi-literate, and my dad was unemployed for much of the late 70s and early 80s.

I brought my English-born and -raised son home with me, and despite joining school midyear and just before Covid, with an English RP accent, he was welcomed and made friends immediately and unproblematically. His school is way more ethnically diverse than his English village school -- in his class there are children from Croat, Nigerian, Canadian, Rwandan, Polish, English, Spanish, and Ukrainian backgrounds. DS remains very proud of his Englishness, and has worn an English football shirt to school with no repercussions.

Various English friends moved to Ireland around the same time we did, and have settled well, other than occasional hostile encounters. I, on the other hand, experienced a lot of anti-Irishness from a minority during my years in England, including professional discrimination, but it certainly didn't lead me to generalise about an entire country based on the xenophobia of a minority.

I grew up in small village Ireland during the 80s. My mother was American, both parents atheist, and blow-ins in the province. I was the only child in the primary school who was opted out of religion. Parents not sporty so no GAA etc, not rich, no connections. I always felt alienated growing up, few friends, no nepotism to help me into a "good" career etc.
I can't imagine how hard it must be when you add being visibly "different" into the equation.

The healthiest thing would be to move away for a few years at least, find your confidence and self assurance and not be trapped in the small town everyone knows everyone their whole lives horror - which keeps the small small and the powerful powerful. I suspect that is a human trait that happens in every small town worldwide rather than being specifically Irish though...

What is your opinion on the black child not receiving a medal in the ceremony in Ireland?

Thanks for sharing that. Where are you living now?

I'm English. I've lived in Ireland over 20 years, moved here as an adult. I'm in a small town. I've never experienced any negativity, ever. People have always taken me as they find me, which is open and friendly. It helps I'm sure that my DH is Irish but even with people who don't know that I have never had a problem. Somehow I just fit in.

Ireland

Why do you ask that, @Mooshamoo? Do you think it's some kind of 'gotcha' moment?

This post is about something that is currently in the news. So I was wondering what your opinion is on what happened.

I'm not sure why it is relevant but as a child, I still have my accent though so as soon as I speak it is evident that I am not Irish. I am also not living anywhere near where I grew up in Ireland(have lived in various different places in Ireland before moving here 3 years ago) so as far as anyone who speaks to me knows I could be fresh off the boat. I get the 'where are you from' comment all of the time.

you should have made this clearer then because this is what you asked I was wondering if there is anyone else on here on craicnet, who is not Irish, living in Ireland. What your experiences are. That is why you are getting the replies that you are getting.

No I said both things in my opening post.

I wrote about the black child not receiving a medal - making racism in Ireland a current topic.

And I also wanted to hear about people's experiences of living in ireland

But it bears no relationship whatsoever to what you asked in your original post.

If what you want is posters to agree with you that Ireland is a dreadful, materialistic, racist country in which it is impossible to flourish unless you're white, 'fully Irish', rich and from a GAA-playing background, then just say that. I feel sure you're not the only one who feels this way, and it would be more honest then asking for other people's responses and then only engaging with the ones that manifest appropriate levels of alienation and unhappiness.

How exactly does a a black child receiving racism in Ireland, bear no relation to me asking other people:

have they experienced racism in Ireland.

I am foreign, my children were born and raised here, we're white, but obvious non- Irish and never experienced any hardship in over 20 years. I have my nationality friends and Irish friends.
My children have lots of friends and went through primary, secondary and uni without any bullying, and totally accepted and integrated. We are invited to parties, celebrations, dinners, gatherings.
We work and we are treated the same as any other employee. We're not rich, we have no relatives here, and follow rugby, not gaa :), but we love our life here

Most likely, I'll die here, as I don't plan to go anywhere. :)
Ireland is our home and we truly love it
We're surrounded by a beautiful community and we have fantastic friends

Well that's good. I am happy for you

Sorry but no. You used the poor girl as a hook to go off again for possibly the 100th time about how unhappy you are. It's sad that you are so unhappy, I'm sure most posters feel for you but if you change nothing you will be writing the same posts in another 5 years time. I hope you take some of the suggestions on board and make some positive changes in your life.

I attempted to move back to Ireland and resettle with my English husband and half Irish children. It was in the early 2000s. It was not a good experience. We brazened it out for 2 years but gave in and came back to England.
The children not being brought up as catholic was isolating for them and me (non stop chat amongst parents of their school friends and the friends about what they were going to wear and the after parties, etc) One of my children actually requested to make their communion to get the money and party. He had zero understanding of the sacrament and I was reluctant to just go along with it just to fit it as was suggested by his teacher!
My husband encountered anti English comments almost on a daily basis.....going from insensitive to downright abusive. He found that every day he was dreading work due to these comments and when he spoke to HR they told him to have a sense of humour that it was only friendly banter!
I found that my old friend group who always made plans and insisted on seeing me when I lived in the UK and was there on a visit, had very little time for me when I moved back.
I could go on forever about how difficult we found the move but can happily say we've been much happier since we returned to live in the UK.

Im genuinely glad some people have good experiences in ireland.

I do genuinely feel broken from my childhood in Ireland.

The irish girls were unbelievably cruel to me.

I remember them standing around me laughing at my surname. I had a very English surname. I remember the girls shoving me into cupboards. I remember them locking me into the bathroom at school, calling me weird and English.

They used to play a game, where the person lost the game, had to sit beside me.

They used to play another game, and they would refuse to play if I played.

Right that's over when school is over. But when I grew up and lived in the same small town, the same girls grew up and lived there
And wouldn't speak to me as adults either. I had a horrible life.

It is very difficult being English in an Irish primary school in my experience. It is one of the reasons that I moved my family back to the UK. To be fair we lived in a West Cork gaeltacht that was pretty conservative and it was a real minority who were difficult, but a minority can have a bit impact. A lot of my UK friends in Ireland didn't seem to have problems, though, so it may have been us or that particular area.

Are the people being so dismissive and intolerant on this post Irish ? Because it seems the op isn't alone on her experience from other replies yet some posters are basically saying oh shut up about it and stop moaning.....interesting

Yes, exactly.

I've posted quite a bit about that gymnastics incident elsewhere, but I'm not doing it again on here just to give you ammunition for your own unhappiness.

As @SnowflakeCity said, I am sorry you're so unhappy, but I don't think that posting endlessly about it on an internet forum is going to help. It's not clear to me whether you still live in Ireland or not, but I hope you move to somewhere you feel will suit you better, though, from what I remember from your comments about your experience of England, I'm not sure it will be there either.

I'm assuming you're not still living in the same small town where you lived unhappily as a child?

I had particularly unhappy experiences living in one part of England for eight years just before I moved back to Ireland -- anti-Irish microaggressions and explicit comments, village clubs suddenly being 'closed to new members' when I enquired the week after they had been advertising in the local newsletter, and I ended up making a workplace harassment claim because of the behaviour of a senior member of my own department. But I recognised that this was a minority issue, however upsetting it was for me, and though it was, I suspect, augmented by the local atmosphere after Brexit, and we made the decision to leave the UK after more than 20 years.

In other words, I acted to change things. I didn't go on Mn asking other Irish people for their experiences of anti-Irish behaviour in the UK.

I suggest you do the same.

OP I'm sorry you had a horrible experience growing up. It's true that many people struggle being an outsider or a 'blow in' especially in small communities. But to be honest, I think you would find that in any small close knit community in many different countries, I'm not sure why you think Ireland should be different. People are generally tribal and can be suspicious of outsiders - if you think it doesn't happen elsewhere you are mistaken.

I do think Ireland for so long was about emigration, so we weren't used to people coming to Ireland to live. I live in Dublin with people from many different countries. It's not perfect but people seem to rub along fine for the most part.

I do remember being asked when I moved to the UK did I live in a caravan, and was I a gypsy and did I ride donkeys (not sure what that one was about) - however I was an adult, so those things didn't bother me. If I had been a child in school maybe it would have felt worse.

I'm English, but with a foreign name. My kids are English, they go to a school that's majority Irish, but with kids from other places in attendance, and beyond a couple of boys being mean about my eldest's accent a couple of times, there's been no issues. I've been here about 4 years

I made local mum-friends at the gate without issue.

My Aunt's been here 40 odd years and did have trouble at first - she actually made an effort to get an Irish accent, because back when she first arrived she found it quite hostile.

No one is 'dismissing' her. Some of us are pointing out that the same poster has for several years been posting the exact same kind of post, generalising from her own unhappy childhood into wild and inaccurate generalisations about Ireland (and England -- she has some frankly insane things to say about 'cold and cruel' English people too), while not acting to change her circumstances. Some non-Irish people will have had a difficult time while living in Ireland and/or left the country again, and no one is suggesting otherwise, or that Ireland is magically free of racism, unlike anywhere else in the world.