“Racism” towards the Irish on here

[Giantbanger]

Can we please talk about it and can you please get your mods some training.

There was a thread that stood from yesterday. The op was goady and people were reporting the fuck out of it from yesterday.

It went this morning because the op was previously banned for being goady. No surprises there then.

But it contained a post from a member of MNHQ that really bothered me and I would like to discuss.

Add message | Report | Message poster EstherMumsnet (MNHQ) Mon 29-Oct-18 19:43:38
Hello!
Thanks for all the reports on this one. We'd like to leave this up as it's a pretty interesting discussion - one for the colonial/post colonial literature experts perhaps (yes - we know there's an argument over whether Irish literature counts as such!) - so please keep to the spirit of the site when discussing this and make your points politely. Thanks

So if there’s a “racist” thread about the Irish, it is an interesting discussion and the Irish need to be polite when telling racists they are racists.

(And Yes. I know in the dictionary definition Irish isn’t a race. It’s a subset ethnicity of Caucasian but the term is used more broadly in general use than the dictionary definition.)

Spot on Somerville, and they're allowed to do it because it's "part of their Unionist culture". Same goes for the horribly provocative orange marches that deliberately go into Nationalist areas to goad people.
This is only going to get worse thanks to Brexit.

Somerville I agree. it was the fact that HQ were already being told it was a racist goady OP BEFORE they posted on the thread, and they made sure to tell us to play nice and spirit of the site - what the hell has a racist goady thread got to do with the spirit of the site?

It's the ignorance (in the true sense of the word) that's shown by mods towards the nuances of cleverly constructed faux innocent OPs that are all wide eyed and didn't know - that other thread being a prime example. AND I reported it, and instead of going and looking and reading the thread, and actioning appropriately based on that, the mod TOLD ME to go through the thread and report each and every offensive post. Not that that would be hard for me to do because it was ME the racism was aimed at or anything. No consideration for my feelings at all. It was a thread of three or four hundred posts. He could have skimmed read the posts by the OP and if he had a modicum of awareness the penny should have dropped. And that's what concerns me. That the mods get the reports, see the posts and somehow miss the racism. How? Why?

@ Andshewas85 That's so funny, never heard it before. My 90 year old dad was a real dev man, and then a Charlie man more recently ;) The only one he had no truck with is Bertie. And from my mother's side, they fought on the anti treaty side in the civil war. Funny story - my mam is from a small Munster town. We needed an estate agent to value some land for us. I was telling this to my elderly neighbour and he said 'Well you'll want to steer clear of the xxxxxs. Their people put your great uncle in the hospital in the troubles.' That was 1922! And the old divisions in the town are still there. History doesn't go away!

*SnipSnipMrBurgess

Shebangsit

Calm your shit will ya.

No one on Mumsnet assassinated any one who signed the proclamation.

So relax your ass.*

Didn’t know I had a username twin on Mumsnet!!

My mums Irish. I grew up in the uk to undertones of the Irish being a bit thick and a bit rough. My mum told me when she arrived no Irish signs were out in force. People would ridicule her accent. Despite the fact she has been in the uk 70 years she doesn't feel accepted here.

Racism toward the Irish is rife and ongoing. I'm frequently shocked by stuff i read on here

There is a ton of anti Irish feeling on MN, the other day I was struck by the way that racist incident on Ryan air was harder to deal with because awkwardly “the plane was registered in Dublin”. And somehow it was the fault of the Irish that the racist ( English) man ‘ got away with it’.
I nearly posted, but what’s the point?

When I’ve said I’ve experienced racism I was told “that’s not racism it’s xenophobia... According to the Dictionary these are synonymous.

I’ve said this before. The English just don’t want to engage with the hideous events that went on in Ireland because it doesn’t match their comfortable inner narrative where they are ‘fair’ and ‘civilised’.

LadyGregorysToothbrush
Did you live through the troubles? Just asking.
I bet mnhq will zapp the thread because it relates to another thread 🙄🙄
Or whatever their standing orders are
Irish people are white, purportedly or supposed to stay uneducated see?
As it always was. As it always will be reading the total nonsense bigotry on here

Been following this with interest. FWIW as a MC English person (albeit living in Europe, which perhaps has sensitised me) I have noticed this too. Am actually rather troubled at the small-mindedness and bigotry shown by people my age and younger. The casual anti-Americanism (see any 'what words/phrases can't you stand?' thread) bothers me as well.

I honestly believe it's a very strong hangover of colonial hubris in British (perhaps above all English) culture. You see it in the Brexit discussions all the time. The sheer inability to believe that anyone will have the temerity to make things difficult for 'us'.

I'm in the citizenship process for the EU country I live in and it should be through before Brexit. I will have the right to keep my British passport if so, but I am strongly considering relinquishing it in protest. Am getting increasingly uncomfortable with the supposed values on which I too have built my attachment to my Britishness.

Again FWIW, I'm another who was taught no Irish history at school (and I am younger than my username might suggest). We did a book about the (then still active) 'Troubles' in English. That was the extent of it.

Am dosed with the cold and haven’t really slept well and have this running through my head.

I don’t understand why, for example, there is such a set of clear statements around the trans debate, and clear rules that will lead to deletion, and anything around racism towards BAME is dealt with much more robustly, and yet the Irish are fair game. Why are we lesser?

*BAME people

Giantbanger, I'd say it's a mixture of lack of awareness and denial. What we (meant collectively) can get away with denying, we will.

I mean, technically we are an ethnic minority.

And I’ll tell you something else. Having a poster on a thread jump all over your post when you say “that’s racist” and go “Irish isn’t a race” is spectacularly offensive and massively missing the point.

Posted too soon.

And should be instantly deleted for being minimising of racism, and quite probably racist in and of itself. .

I call the aggro that happens to me over here now and again (English and a bit Southern European/Turkish-looking (as Germans tell me), in rural Germany) xenophobia, rather than racism. But that's aimed at me as an individual with foreign (or perceptible-as-foreign) characteristics, iyswim. I have no problem with recognising anti-Irish sentiment as racist. Deciding racism is about skin colour or any other arbitrary characteristic that one defines oneself and therefore determining who it can apply to and who, by extension, has to STFU is, I agree, minimising at least.

Yes I did Monty27. Why?

I actually had to go through that other thread yesterday evening and read all the faux innocent subtle racist posts and report them and give the reason why.

I’m really upset at that. I reported the whole thread and I just don’t understand why MichaelMumsnet couldn’t have read the thread instead of expecting me as the upset person, to go through it again point by point and read and then explain every single racist comment

As I said, xenophobia and racism are synonymous

"Oxford English Dictionary, xenophobia
SYNONYMS: racism, racialism, racial hatred, ethnocentrism, ethnocentricity

I didn't post at the time because I felt no one was listening, I will form now on.

*from

I'm going to report everything I see from now on, even the innocuous looking stuff that's got an undertone.

I spent a bit of time last night writing reports explaining why it was so offensive to see all the "WTF Halloween is made up American shite" posts.

I just feel dispirited and discouraged that MNHQ are so spectacularly not getting it. And I fear that the issue is only going to get worse with Brexit. That deleted thread, as an example, I know I reported at the time and it was started on 22nd October. Yesterday was over a week later, and it had stood that length of time, and been reported (and I'm sure other people had reported it too) but was still there.

anyway, here's hoping we hear something today.

please Dev had nothing to do with the Proclamation.

Awaits MN proclamation...

@JaneJeffers true, he didn't sign the treaty. You'd think i'd know that - I grew up near the towers in Ballymun
He was a Commandant and wasn't executed after the rising because he held an American passport.

I’m really upset at that. I reported the whole thread and I just don’t understand why MichaelMumsnet couldn’t have read the thread instead of expecting me as the upset person, to go through it again point by point and read and then explain every single racist comment

Have you asked that question of HQ? I've been on MN a LONG time and I've never had a mod tell me I had to report each individual post like that. It's generally 'we've gone through the thread, and will keep a close eye on it, but if we've missed anything please report it" or words to that effect. Did MichaelMumsnet mean that but not phrase it quite right, or is it new MN policy? (Or was he short of time and wanting you to do his job for him?!)

Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light;
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
^
W. B. Yeats^

The irony that this work of brilliance, was voted in the top ten of most loved poems. By the British public seems to go unnoticed. Because it was written in English,🤔by a very proud Irishman who was awarded the Noble Prize for Literature.

The Halloween stuff comes out every year and seems to be based on the idea that all of the U.K.'s traditions are homegenous therefore if it didn't happen where the individual poster grew up and they are only aware of the US tradition,that is where it comes from. I don't think it is anti Celtic sentiment just that some people struggle to understand that there are different traditions both from within the UK and from our near neighbours that have impacted the US.
The thread about the Americanisation of calling our schools high schools was another such recent thread and we will have a Santa rather than St Nicholas soon I expect.
Southern England is the dominant cultural force in the UK and mumsnet is predominately if not exclusively a UK site so although frustrating it is not surprising that the cultural ideas of this area hold sway. I get frustrated but not offended by their ignorance about other areas, I'd don't think it is deliberate just the by product of being the majority.