“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.)

Thanks IStand. What counts as an ‘English’ school I wonder - you could make an argument that all schools in Ireland prior to 1922 were English or at least British. Half sorry I missed that fred now! (Not really)

There was discussion of writers who went to "English" schools when the school in question was Portora.

Was it in reference to Anna Burns? Or the likes of Yeats et al?

Yes Oscar Wilde, is apparently not Irish.

Oh Yeats was OK. He was proper Irish and a great writer it was those other Paddy's like Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett with their English names. And Jonathan Swift. Never mind that the OP was spanning what? 300 years? Sure they were all just Anglo Irish writers at best and really English underneath it all because accents and universities, and schools. Or something.

lady
You put it better than me.
Acknowledging the debate isn't racist and I dont think that makes the mod's comment racist.

I do think the OP on that thread was repeatedly goady and there were some racist elements to what they were suggesting.

Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett aren't Irish was just a stand out notion from the thread, it has to be said. Oscar Wilde wouldn't have said he was Irish, apparently.

But if we discuss that, this will be a TAAT and deleted.

I'd prefer to keep to discussing the general attitude, and in particular that mod statement.

Yeats was apparently different in some unspecified way from writers such as Wilde and Beckett, who were actually English. Presumably the difference the OP meant was that she had heard Yeats was a nationalist.

Interesting! And highly sectarian. Can’t help but think that dear old Willie would have hated to have been excluded from such august company. He was v proud of his Anglo-Irish credentials in his later work, of course. No petty people and all that.

Wonder where my namesake would fall?

It's not that the overall discussion is racist - it's a fascinating discussion and as a Scottish English lit geek it's one I've thought about often from a Scottish perspective.

It's the way the op and some others phrase their 'thoughts'.

Whoops sorry OP.

But being told to be nice to trolls is out of order. And the thing is that the anti-Irish posts here don't consist of people writing "Irish people are a load of stupid, drunken uncultured backwards peasants and criminals". It's always phrased quite politely, in tones on faux- (and sometime even genuine) naïvity. "I would never use the name Conor. I'm a teacher and I've never met a Conor who wasn't a menace". "I've been offered a job in Dublin, but my sister's a lesbian - what would she have to deal with if she visits me?" "Why would people from Eire care about a border with the UK - had one for ages without a problem" "Halloween is a tacky American import and I want nothing to do with it' etc.

I have no problem with the discussion as a discussion - it was the racist tone of the OP and some of what the OP and others said.

And I have a really big problem with what the mod said and I have c&p here.

What is it that you specifically object to about the mod’s statement? Being told to be nice? Or the reference to the existence of a debate re the categorisation of Irish literature?

It's more the staggering ignorance of how Ireland was treated under colonialism that got to me tbh.

the discussion can be had, in a culturally sensitive way with a decent op that isn't goady - I dont object to that at all.

but the statements on that thread were awful. And the fact that the mod was telling us to be polite when challenging those statements (Irish people were too busy picking spuds to write great literature, the only decent Irish writers were the Anglo-Irish ones, whether they identified as Irish or not, if they were good they were British) was just shocking.

It wouldn't have stood for the hours and hours it did if it was towards any other ethnicity. (and yes, we were corrected on the thread for stating it was racist, because Irish isn't a race it's an ethnicity and black people have it worse so white privilege means we shouldn't complain)

This comes up so often on here. Broomstick's post above is spot on.

I saw the mod's post, and although it wasn't in unexpected (how often have we been here?!), my jaw did literally drop reading it.

Personally, I would prefer the approach of locking rather than deleting goady threads, but if MNHQ's policy is to delete racist, goady posts, then that one should've gone instantly.

I mean - "these people were educated and well spoken, so surely they weren't REALLY Irish". How is it not blatantly obvious that this was a racist thread?

Liv apparently, according to the thread, because Irish isn't a race

Bless you for trying OP. I’ve given up a long time ago. We Irish are fair game on mumsnet, for dismissal of our culture, our names, our language, our history. It’s never a problem and we are to play nicely and bow down to our betters. After all they used to “own” us.

It has gotten worse lately (oh, yeah, I forgot, we are not allowed to use that particular word, common in Hiberno-English, people who use “gotten” are thick). I blame it on the recent spoor of veiled anti-Irishness in the media because of the problems “we” are causing with the glorious progress of Brexit.

MNHQ do absolutely NOTHING to stop it.

Even if you want to split hairs and call it xenophobic (although personally I subscribe to the definition of racism that includes ethnicity), it still should've instantly gone.

Agree 100% Liv

I completely agree that unfortunately disingenuous or faux-naive anti-Irish threads are allowed in a way that others aren’t. It is a fairly subtle but persistent problem on MN, which has worsened during the course of Brexit negotiations as more anti-Irish sentiment is expressed.

There was a thread a few months ago where a poster was deleted 4 times over the course of a few days for anti-Irish racism (potato famine related, IIRC) and yet allowed to continue posting on the thread without even a warning (so they claimed) let alone suspension. Yet on FWR we’re lost a lot of regular Mners to “3 strikes you you’re out”. Some of us complained at the time, but nothing much came of it.

I’ve reported the OP asking HQ to address this issue.

I was quite interested in the thread.

The thread title could perhaps have been worded in a slightly less inflammatory way , however it's actually a really interesting subject.

Coincidentally, the Book of the Week on Radio 4 this week is 'Mad. Bad, Dangerous to know', written and read by Colm Toibin, 'illuminating new book on literary fathers. (Today), Tóibín is in Oscar Wilde's cell at Reading gaol where he is reflecting on the life and influence of William Wilde, the great writer's father.

During the course of the reading, Toibin himself describes Wilde's father as Victorian, and says that the Irish ruling classes at the time were not accepted as fully Irish.

I'd agree with this. Many of the Irish ruling class in the 19th century were described as Anglo Irish, were educated in the UK, followed the customs of the English landed gentry (foxhunting anyone!), but 20th century Irish writers have a very distinctive and Irish voice.

I don't think that's anti Irish at all. Don't think anyone could claim Colm Tobin as anything other than a proud Irishman and one of Ireland's greatest writers.

This would probably be an interesting listen, too The Wireless Past

OP: Wildly offensive post.
Many Responses: This is wildly offensive. I am offended by what you have said. You have made some wildly inaccurate assumptions and statements and clearly, have no knowledge or appreciation of Irish history.
OP: Nothing that I have said is offensive.
MNHQ: The op means no harm, it's a legitimate discussion.
OP: I have been given the green light by MNHQ, I will now go on to make even more statements that are now incredibly ignorant as well as being offensive.

I am with you OP. I might not have used the word racist but I wonder what was in the MNHQ's mind when she wrote her response.