It doesn’t take much looking in the news nowadays to hear of another anti-immigrant protest outside of a hotel or a person being racially abused in a city center in this country. Even less effort is needed to find reams of racially charged and anti-immigrant conspiracies in comment sections online. This has sadly become an everyday occurrence in this country. With the ever increasing hold of the far-right over Irish society; one would be forgiven for forgetting we also share a common struggle of anti-immigrant sentiment and oppression. But where has our sympathy gone?
We are a nation as synonymous as the land of saints and scholars as we are with immigration. Generation after generation have left in droves from a country lacking the resources it needed to sustain its people. Some returned, many didn’t. Walk down any street in any village abroad and there will be an Irish pub lurking somewhere. We have found new homes in places far from our own as well as found community. But still the question remains. How have we gotten to a stage where we are blaming people who want a better life? Why are we blaming the common man for longstanding structural issues in our country? We have gone from being blamed and marginalised, to the ones pointing the fingers. People are making assumptions and stereotypes based on five-second video clips, condemning migrants for the shortage of houses and burning up hotels. All while asserting pride in their Irish identity and culture. You couldn’t make this up.
I think to the masses of Irish people who have left this country. Many have journeyed to far-flung countries like Australia or to just across the Irish sea. Their reasons for leaving were numerous: economic deprivation, famine, war. But their hopes remained the same: the hope for a better life. I think to my grandparents, who left this country in the ‘50s at the height of economic deprivation. Neither had been outside Ireland or could imagine a world outside its borders. They left this country with nothing, for the hope they would find something. But they were very often meet with slogans like ‘No Blacks, no dogs, no Irish’ in the house vacancies they looked at. They were eyed with suspicion every time they spoke their mother tongue, until they stopped speaking Irish at all. My grandparents were not welcome in a country they desperately wanted to be a part of. So they assimilated and cast off every piece of culture belonging to them. No more Irish, no Irish dancing. Trying anything to not be noticed, to not stick out like a sore thumb. But sure, let’s forget our shared history and blame the underdogs.
But this isn’t new. Irish immigrants have bared the brunt of anti-immigrant sentiment for decades. It wasn’t that long ago that we were getting turned away from job vacancies as well as houses due to the simple fact of being Irish and an immigrant. Irish immigrants in the States were treated abhorrently when they initially immigrated in the 1840s, with most living in dire conditions and working low-paying jobs. With all this knowledge, how can we look the other way? We know what it is like to be the underdog, yet some of us still choose to be selective in our memory.
I think of what my grandparents would think of all this hatred that has bubbled to the surface. Would they flinch hearing the words they were called said again? They’d be shocked at the riots, the protests, the buildings turned to ashes. They’d be shocked at their people inflicting the same pain they and many Irish immigrants once faced. Maybe they wouldn’t be surprised at all. I can only hope that these protests and riots stop and calm is restored. But maybe that is wishful thinking. But still, one can hope.
