“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.)

Not sure name calling is helpful in all honesty.

plaid it's santy

My dc were watching some German children's telly yesterday - factual/news show - and they had an item on Halloween - along the lines of 'you all think it's American, right? Well, actually...' and went on to explain the history of its origination from Ireland. Was fairly impressed.

I agree with plaidlife about the cultural ignorance of much of England, but tbh I don't think there's much of an excuse for it (and I also think disdain often comes in a cloak of purported ignorance which isn't really - the whole snobbery towards Santa ('he's Father Christmas in this house', which I always hear in pretty much the same tone as 'It's Wingardium Leviosaaaa') is a case in point).

It's the same with the Halloween stuff. Not knowing is one thing, but there are often posts which describe Halloween traditions as cheeky/tacky/begging/tough/etc. It mixed with the stuff in the baby names thread with the stereotype of Irish people in England as being uncouth, uneducated, possibly criminal, working class loudmouthed uncivilised louts. And that also applies to people who might not be Irish or have Irish heritage but who come from areas of the UK which have traditionally had a high population of Irish immigrants.

jane even my auto correct has bias, I'm doomed! But thinking about it a bit more I also agree with anelderly I think there is often a fair amount of snobbery and not just towards the Irish tied up in this.

I feel like I have the opposite problem with Halloween - people here in SE England assuming I love it because I'm Irish. When actually, as I told a vaguely-known-to-me-teenager demanding sweets at my door last night yes I'm a moody cowwe're all indivduals with personalities, not walking sets of traditions and clichés. (Sorry, off topic!)

My whole family is from the UK, England to be precise.

But they moved to Ireland when I was kid.
In our history class we where thought about everything about the ROYLE FAMILY and how they should always be respected despite Henry and his killing of al

That's it Broomstick..........
One or two examples of people just not being aware of traditions etc - that's just not knowing. But mix in the disdainful tone of "naughty" kids names, spellings of names, the ubiquitous Santa/ Father Christmas discussion, the dismissiveness of the nuances around politics especially in NI, the nose wrinkling of haitch vs h and it starts to feel a little more insidious.

('he's Father Christmas in this house', which I always hear in pretty much the same tone as 'It's Wingardium Leviosaaaa')

[Grin]

You know, I've been reading the Harry Potter series with my six year old, and watched the first two (godawful, despite brilliant adult cast) films, and Seamus Finnegan is just an ordinary Gryffindor in the novels -- or the first three, anyway. But in the first two films, he is depicted as thick, blows stuff up or sets something on fire on several occasions, and tries to turn pumpkin juice into rum at one of the feasts. And his Boggart turns into a banshee, for God's sake.

You couldn't play more Feckless, Stupid, Boozy, Superstitious Irish Stereotype Bingo if you tried.

Oh yes, the haitch thing! (Which again extends beyond Irish speech patterns - the disdain for 'accents'* that still persists in some sectors of English society actually shocks me. I'm very aware of the prestige of my RP accent because it is how people over here expect someone English to sound (and a lot of Germans assume I'll think their, American-influenced English is 'wrong'). But I would have hoped that attitudes in the actual UK had moved on. Clearly not, going by the threads on here.

*Telling that people think they 'don't have an accent' if they speak RP. Which sets RP as the neutral norm and anything else as divergent/other.

x post iris - I'm going to have to revisit that (been a while since I saw the films)

I think there is more that unites us that separates us. Obviously Ireland as well as NI, Scotland and Wales all want to emphasise their own uniqueness, culture and language after being anglicised and oppressed for so long. But we all have so much in common. Not many people are just English, just Welsh or just Irish if you go back a generation or two, that's without considering immigration from anywhere else.

☘️bump, come on @MNHQ!

@MNHQ how are you not responding to this? Not important enough?

Somerville WRT that thread I reported and said "the whole thread is full of racism by the OP and others"

And MichaelMumsnet replied

"Hi giantbanger, and thanks for the report. I can't see what breaks our guidelines in that reported post - please could you be more specific and we'll take another look."

I said specifically I was reporting the whole thread, and specifically the posts by the OP. But he didn't want to go and read or look, and he wanted me to be "more specific" so I went through the whole thread and reported each individual racist post.

I am still upset at that. I made it clear the whole thread was the issue, what more specific did he need me to be?

Anything HQ?

Not many people are just English, just Welsh or just Irish if you go back a generation or two, that's without considering immigration from anywhere else.

Actually, immigration from elsewhere into Ireland was so rare until very recently, so the overwhelming majority of Irish people living in Ireland are still 'just Irish' -- the gene pool hasn't been much mixed.

And absolutely, a lot unites us, but though I've lived chiefly in England since the late 1990s, sometimes I think that the longer I live here, the more foreign I find it.

Agree with IrisDolmato. Pretty much everyone I grew up with (I'm in my 40s) is Irish as far back as you can go. We sent out our spores all over the world but up.until our Celtic Tiger years, we were a pretty homogeneous lot.
There are lots of folk from far away places who have made their homes here now and so this profile will change eventually.

I've been following this for a while (and was reading the other one when it started). I'm astonished that mnhq haven't responded yet.

Is it weird that this thread is not making it onto "trending"?

I reckon it’s excluded from trending.

Is it weird that this thread is not making it onto "trending"?

It's certainly in active.

No proper response yet? This really is pretty piss poor.

I have been filling in my DH on Mumsnet, he is very English and the look on his face when I told him all the authors he could lay claim was one of astonishment. His reply was, "no wonder the Irish are pissed of"

I did a dna thing recently and noticed that they didn't separate the Celtic gene pool, so Irish and Scottish where put together in the pie chart you get.