I’ve been in Ireland for a year and for the most part, I’ve kept my experiences of racism to myself. Initially, I did this because I struggled to recognise what counted as racism, while later on, I had my experiences invalidated by both white and non-white people. Add to that the desire not to come across as an ungrateful guest in a country where racism, apparently, rarely happens, I had always wondered if I was reading too much into things.
How was I to tell myself, let alone others, that I feel invisible in groups of white people because it seems like no one really listens when I speak? And that I’m talked over because they don’t expect me to understand the conversation, even though my English is perfect? Or ask why South Asians are compelled to emphasise their hygiene and moral character when applying for housing to landlords, while Europeans casually describe their quirky personalities and travel bucket lists and still get 10 times the number of viewings?
The first obstacle to speaking up, I learned, was the human need to feel equal to everyone else. To assume otherwise would be to question the basis of every interaction, every friendship, one’s reasons for coming here, and potentially drive oneself crazy. Let me be clear: I didn’t come here wanting to feel this way. In fact, I came to Ireland seeking tolerance and to be understood.
The recent attacks on Indians in Ireland were so clearly motivated by hate that they confirmed my experiences weren’t unique and went deeper than I imagined. Seeing it out in the open, feeling afraid for the first time while walking on the street, prompted me to seek out other people of colour and hear their experiences. In some cases, the violent nature of what they were facing was beyond doubt. It was so normalised that it was spoken of as simply a fact of life.
RM Block
Sandeep*, a master’s student, described being regularly confronted by young men on the Luas in Dublin after finishing night shifts at a fast-food restaurant. Carrying leftovers from the restaurant, he explained, often drew their attention. The smell from the food formed the basis of calling him slurs like “curry man”, accompanied by threats of violence. To protect himself, he would hand over his food so they would leave him alone. “Nowadays, I sit behind the tram driver for safety,” he said.
Similarly, master’s students Madhan* and Kumaran*, who live in Saggart, have had teenagers follow and take videos of them without consent around their area of residence. One time, they were recorded walking home, and when they turned back, found the offenders making monkey noises and gestures at them. Asking Kumaran how he felt about being recorded, he said, “I don’t know, it just makes you feel different.”
Besides the self-censoring shame that comes with the idea that one is perhaps not equal to others, systemic and historical factors are behind why hate crimes are underreported in Ireland. Migrants who are people of colour fear they will be racially profiled, their complaints not taken seriously, or worse, that they’ll be penalised for complaining, and risk affecting their status in the country.
Varsha*, a PhD candidate, whom I met at a solidarity against racism meeting, spoke of a colleague who had wrappers and small objects thrown at him by a group of teenagers on a bus. This went on until an Irish woman yelled at them and forced them to stop. When the woman scolded the Indian man as well for not speaking up for himself, he explained that he was afraid of an altercation with the group, whose juvenile status made him doubt the legality of retaliating, and that his main priority was avoiding getting involved with the Garda.
“There is a fear of being deported,” said Varsha. “Some are working towards their Permanent Residence and will be put through a full police verification. They don’t want anything to harm their chances.”
For many of us, living in Ireland is a precarious existence. As students, migrants pay four times the tuition fees at universities in devalued currencies, often putting themselves at significant financial risk. Choosing to study here is often a do-or-die decision, as their passports leave them with nowhere else to go if things don’t pan out, except home, empty handed. A strategy of survival involves being very compliant or “good”, even if it means silently enduring racist bullying to survive the larger bureaucratic and economic barriers that are stacked against them.
[ ‘Alarming escalation’ in racist incidents in Ireland, conference hearsOpens in new window ]
The costs of immigration, both time and money, also make racism an uneasy discussion with other people of colour, since they’ve made choices too, sometimes permanent ones like marriage or taking on a home loan, and would rather not broach the subject for their own peace of mind. The joke in all this is that we can’t tell people back home either, because we are pressured to look like “successes” who’ve escaped the rut of our respective countries.
Trauma carried by colonised people also influences why victims don’t speak up. White privilege is exploited by perpetrators of racism to that end, who usually know which migrant will take abuse and remain silent about it. I was told this by Ashwin*, a 29-year-old Indian IT professional, who has endured multiple instances of assault by groups of men on the Dart at night. “They come around back and kick me,” he says, “I’ve learnt to keep quiet and keep my eyes down. They know Indians will take it, that’s why they target us.”
There’s a reflexive submissiveness that comes from being colonised. Somewhere, we feel as if we must accept the occasional slur and beating as a part of integrating into western society, as this is how we’ve been treated in the past, and must simply be grateful for the privilege of being here. Being picked on for one’s race and feeling that one does not have the right to protest or defend oneself is also an emasculating experience, one that many South Asian men contend with. I often hear them say, “one day we’re not going to keep quiet”, or “back home, I would’ve hit back”, revealing the frustration of being seen as easy targets.
Perhaps the most frustrating barrier to speaking up is Ireland’s propensity to avoid unpleasant truths. Admitting that anything is less than ‘grand’ is likely to get you branded as a ‘complainer’
On the flip side, the brutal incident in Tallaght in July, where an Indian man was stripped and beaten on baseless accusations of being inappropriate with children, echoed dynamics seen with migrants in the United States, where racialised men are viewed as threats to women and children.
For South Asians, this demonisation takes on a colonial-saviourist spin where men are reduced to symbols of regressive practices such as child marriage in their home countries, and thus assumed to harbour deviant tendencies abroad, to the point where even the expression of desire in normal life is heavily scrutinised. This kind of stereotyping is particularly difficult to counter, since the very association with perversion, true or false, is enough cause for shame in men, who’d rather say nothing than draw attention.
Understandably, Ireland, given its centuries-long history of being under foreign rule, would prefer to distance itself from the label of “coloniser”. However, notions that the Irish were colonised and therefore incapable of racism ignore their historic participation in expanding colonial empires around the world. The British Raj, for example, was a big employer of the working classes in Ireland, while Irish officials held high ranks in the Indian civil service, putting down rebellions like the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar. Colonial histories are not straightforward, but intermeshed, and underpin our interactions, whether we choose to acknowledge them or not. No one, however, wants to dig up the past, migrants of colour especially, whose outsider status forces them to pretend these racial and ethnic power differences do not exist.
[ India’s Amritsar massacre bore the ‘made in Ireland’ markOpens in new window ]
Perhaps the most frustrating barrier to speaking up is Ireland’s propensity to avoid unpleasant truths. Admitting that anything is less than “grand” is likely to get you branded as a “complainer”. The aftermath of the recent wave of attacks was a case in point of how racism is cast to the margins in favour of a more tranquil outlook on things.
Politicians and the media had isolated the incidents as violent acts of “teenagers”, calling them misguided and influenced by social media. This was deliberately evasive, given that adults had been involved in the attacks and previous anti-immigrant riots. I suspect teenagers are often blamed for racial violence because they have no agency themselves, allowing these incidents to be cast as harmless and not a systemic problem. Teenagers do not grow up in isolation, either, but in an environment of values. Madhan*, from Saggart, was astonished when a 10-year-old child approached him and told him to “stop taking their jobs”. Clearly, the child wasn’t speaking on his own behalf, but an environment that sees migrants as threats to their livelihoods.
Solely blaming social media also evades the need to hold anyone accountable by externalising racism to an elusive nonentity. Of course, hateful content must be regulated, but regulation does not question why today’s environment is conducive for young people to be receptive to messages of hate in the first place. Neither does it address the discriminatory thinking that singles out individuals based on their skin colour, food, accents and beliefs when expressing outrage over jobs or the affordability crisis, even when they are Irish-born citizens.
Despite the attacks being condemned globally, the Irish media soon put the matter to bed without any deeper examination. Instead of opening the discourse to what makes minorities vulnerable to racial violence, news outlets ran with stories in which minorities apologised on behalf of the Irish people, assuring the rest of us they didn’t share the views of a violent few and who they knew “can do better”. This “playing small” only served to echo minorities’ fears of non-integration by placing the responsibility of voicing out against racism on themselves, while abdicating everyone else from it.
Peripheralising the issue of racism may preserve the country’s image of fairness and equality, but it harms migrants in the long run if it comes at the cost of sacrificing their safety and self-esteem. By downplaying their very real experiences of discrimination, a culture of silence is perpetuated, wherein migrants feel that speaking out is burdensome and disturbs the peace.
Likewise, Ireland’s admirable and unequivocal support for Palestine does not excuse ignoring racism at home. Condemnation of the West’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza must be backed with a willingness to address the prejudice its own migrants are treated with.
Lastly, the conversation needs to go beyond overt acts of racism. It’s understandable that the immigration influx to Ireland is fairly recent, and therefore, awareness of their challenges is limited. But why does someone need to get beaten or stabbed before the topic is revisited? The fact that racism is a complex, embodied, everyday, structurally pervasive and, at times, self-reinforcing experience that affects life decisions and how one sees oneself, should be enough reason why critical discourses should be opened up everywhere and voices heard.
Joshua Lobo is a writer and journalist
*Names have been changed
