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• 2010 pessimism

  January 4, 2010 @ 9:00 pm | by Bryan

  Regular readers of this blog may find the next statement hard to believe. I am, by nature, an optimist. Really, I am. But over the course of 2009, a cloud of pessimism settled over me. And to be honest, I don’t see it lifting over the course of the coming 12 months.

  Here’s an example of where my negativity stems from. Based on conversations with a mix of people in Belfast, it seems as though one of the largest determinants to peace and stability is economic well-being. Money, or more precisely, the process of pursing ‘the good life’ with a reasonable expectation of one day attaining it, can be positively distracting – in a “an idle mind is the devil’s playground” sense. Granted, an argument could be made for the role of things like intrusive body scanners and remote controlled planes that can bomb whole villages to smithereens. But does anyone really think that airport security, a hypertrophied ‘intelligence community’, or wars in far off places will rid the world of people like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, let alone the people who armed and trained him?

  Once upon a time, before that great IMF idea that was economic structural adjustment, Zimbabwe was a relatively prosperous little country. We were wealthier than most of our neighbours, so we did our bit to keep out the poorer Malawians and Mozambicans. Those who got into the country were tolerated, but I’m pretty sure we tried to keep them to a minimum. And then the IMF came along and in a relatively brief period of time, income inequality within the country soared. People who were relatively well off built large walls to keep out their poor fellow citizens. For the most part, the walls served their purpose, but with increasing regularity, some found ways over them. They would then help themselves to things they couldn’t otherwise afford while the owners of the big houses were asleep. There came a point where we wrecked the country. Things got so bad that even those living in big houses behind bigger walls began to struggle. So a lot of Zimbabweans, rich and poor alike, made their way to neighbouring and distant countries, sometimes illegally scaling real and metaphorical walls and fences.

  So why am I pessimistic? Because, it’s easier to build, buy and install body scanners and to blow stuff up than to try to understand the world on the other side of our walls. The world seems destined to imitate the likes of Johannesburg and Rio de Janeiro, who have found it easier to live with their fear than address the structures that give birth to their underworld. I’m pessimistic because I get the feeling that we’re a year closer to the day parts of the world are relegated to rubbish heap status, while others become fortified cities.

  But I could be wrong.

  Happy 2010.

  Comments (16)

• The role of the mainstream in curbing the extreme

  October 22, 2009 @ 10:29 am | by Bryan

  According to David Adams, the focus on whether the BBC should host the far right British National Party’s (BNP) Nick Griffin, is neither here nor there. Leaders of mainstream political parties need to confront the BNP head on and tackle issues from which they have previously shied away. Issues like immigration reform.

  Gary Younge takes this line of thinking even further. He claims that we have New Labour to thank for Griffin’s scheduled appearance this evening. As far as Younge is concerned:

  Economically, its neoliberal policies have resulted in growing insecurity, rising unemployment, child poverty and inequality that have alienated the poor and made the middle class feel vulnerable. Politically, its lies over the war, stewardship of the expenses scandal and internal bickering have produced widespread cynicism with our political culture. The ramifications of its role in the war on terror in general, and Iraq in particular, were to elevate fear of a racialised “other” to a matter of life and death at home … Meanwhile New Labour’s race-baiting rhetoric gave the state’s imprimatur to the notion that Britain’s racial problems were not caused by racism but the existence of non-white, non-Christian and non-British people … Having inflated racism’s political currency, New Labour vacated the electoral market so that others with a more ostentatious style might more freely spend it. Once they had made these ideas respectable it was only a matter of time before a party reached a position where it too would earn sufficient respectability to appear on prime time. (More…)

  The problems highlighted by Adams also apply to Ireland. Presumably in order to avoid any slip ups that could see one labelled a racist, Ireland’s mainstream political establishment has kept as far as possible from meaningful debate on immigration and race. What Ireland has had, to its credit, is a variety of non-racist social and political groups which represent the interests of the indigenous poor and middle classes. Maybe that is why there isn’t an Irish BNP.

  Then again, it could also have to do with the fact that the non-white segment of the Irish population does not yet feel entirely secure. Once properly ‘integrated’ and with a sense of entitlement to a just slice of the national pie, who knows? A sufficiently large segment of the indigenous population might feel sufficiently threatened by some of their fellow citizens to give rise to a BNP-like entity.

  In any case, how Britain responds to Griffin and those like him will be instructive.

  Comments (23)

• Let’s all join the BNP?

  October 16, 2009 @ 12:57 pm | by Bryan

  

  British National Party leader Nick Griffin.

  Great news! Progress, tolerance and all of that. It looks like the British National Party (BNP) will finally start accepting non-whites! It makes perfect sense. What could be more convincing than a black guy or Asian woman telling other racial minorities that they are wrecking the lives of decent, hard working Anglo-Saxons and Celts, and that said minorities should leave Britain? Nick Griffin must be kicking himself for not coming up with the idea.

  Seriously though, that the BNP have been forced to remove their racial restrictions to party membership is good for progress. Granted, the first non-whites who join may have to tolerate all manner of verbal abuse. Personally, rational or not, I would be worried about a party zealot following me home and leaving me a welcome to the club gift, like a burning cross. But despite those challenges, I can only imagine that there will be no shortage of people previously excluded from the BNP, who will choose to join the group and ‘change it from the inside’.

  A multicultural BNP can only be less venomous than today’s version of the party. The worst elements of the group will leave when faced with prospect of sitting down with those they perceive to be the source of their troubles. And who knows, in time, the party may change beyond recognition, if it doesn’t shrivel up and die.

  Welcome to the mainstream BNP.

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• Puzzled

  October 15, 2009 @ 11:44 am | by Bryan

  I think I first heard about the plight of the ‘undocumented Irish’ in the United States about six months into stay in Ireland, and I was puzzled. In fact, I still am.

  I was puzzled because within a few weeks of my arrival here, I had learnt a new vocabulary that revolved around immigration. The words ‘illegal’, ‘problem’ and ‘asylum seekers’ were the most prominent and frequently used, but there were others. By my sixth month, I thought I had understood all there was to understand about Ireland’s take on immigration. Simply, where absolutely necessary, the skilled, and a chosen few among those who fled life threatening situations (and had the presence of mind to carry sufficient supporting documentation) could stay. Everyone else was essentially a problem.

  That line was, in my opinion, tough, unkind, verging on immoral even, but ultimately, just about justifiable. Enter Bertie’s pleas to the former US administration on behalf of the ‘undocumented Irish’ with the full backing of the Irish public. Following on in that tradition, Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin, who is currently in the US, was quoted yesterday as saying, “For us it is an important issue, given the fact that a number of Irish people have been undocumented for a very long time and it’s causing real trauma and hardship on families.”

  On this issue, I lean towards the side of St Augustine who said that an unjust law is no law at all. If a person cannot earn a decent living in Zimbabwe, I don’t think they should be criminalised for jumping over a fence and looking for work in South Africa. The same goes for the person who overstays their holiday in the United States because it offers them opportunities to make a living that they feel are absent in Ireland. I cannot condemn people who take these extreme measures, especially because I have never been in a situation in which I felt my options were so narrow that ‘criminality’ was the only way out.

  Having said that, I understand and appreciate the arguments of those who believe that a nation’s territorial integrity and laws should not be broken under any circumstance. Fine. What I don’t get is how they are ‘undocumented’ when they are your lot, and ‘illegal’ when someone else’s.

  I’m trying to picture the Irish response to a Nigerian delegation’s suggestion that not only should any ‘undocumented Nigerians’ in Ireland be given a path to citizenship, but that some bilateral temporary worker program should be implemented. I’m sure undocumented Nigerian, Indian and Iranian workers in Ireland are a source of as much ‘real trauma and hardship’ on their families as Irish ones are on theirs.

  Back to what puzzles me, how does the nation’s collective conscience square this issue up? How can there be simultaneous calls to intercede on behalf of the ‘undocumented’ Irish and calls to get rid of ‘illegal’ immigrants at home? How can those two terms even live side-by-side, ‘undocumented’ and ‘illegal’? And how can there be support in Ireland for US immigration reform that lets people in, while at home legislation is being advanced to keep people out?

  I’m puzzled.

  Comments (56)

• Hooray for the G20?

  September 25, 2009 @ 1:50 pm | by Bryan

  

  “The fact that 20 or so individuals right now are determining economic trade policies for four to five billion people just isn’t right,” Mr. Griffith said. “That’s why we’re here.”

  Most news organisations are making a big deal over the fact that the G8 is being replaced by the G20. The fact that a handful of the most powerful ‘developing nations’ are being added to the elite club that gets to set the economic rules for the rest is supposed to represent the dawn of a new inclusive era or something. It does no such thing.

  Let’s take a look at some of these ‘developing nations’. China. India. South Africa. Turkey. Brazil. These aren’t exactly the nations that I would pick were I trying to get a good understanding of the concerns of the typical state in the South. China is China. India, while being home to some of the world’s poorest people, is also incredibly wealthy. So much so, the Indians not only sent a rocket to the moon, they were also the ones who recently discovered water there. They’re not exactly Malawi or Haiti – nations trying to come up with a formula for growing enough food to meet domestic needs. As for Brazil, the OECD has been trying to woo them for a while. The OECD, you may have noticed, have not expressed much interest in Cuba or Paraguayi. The G20 is so inclusive that neither Nigeria nor Egypt, Africa’s second and third wealthiest nations, were deemed worthy. And yet, just about all of Europe is represented there by the EU. But just to make sure, France, Germany, Italy and Britain get their own special seats. The same is true of North America – the US, Canada and Mexico are all members.

  So just to re-cap, the G20 is made up of Europe, North America, and everyone else with too much economic clout to ignore. And what happens when only the powerful get to make the rules? Let’s look at the response to the recent financial crisis, shall we? As was recently demonstrated on the excellent three part BBC television series, The Love of Money, the politically powerful got together with the economically powerful to craft a solution to the crisis. Unsurprisingly, it was decided that to avoid catastrophe, the economically powerful could not be allowed to fail. Equally unsurprisingly, the chosen mechanism of their rescue was a transfer of wealth from the rest, to those deemed to large to fail. Could it be that the proposal to transfer wealth to struggling mortgage holders instead of, or in tandem with the banks bailout, would have got more of a hearing were struggling mortgage holders part of the deliberations? Hoping that China, Brazil or even South Africa will represent Malawi’s economic interests is like expecting AIB or Bank of Ireland to ask the Finance Minister to consider my local credit union’s needs, and give some of the taxpayer money allocated to the banks to St. Anthony’s Credit Union instead. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

  Like Trevor Griffith, I have serious problems with a small group from the most powerful nations making potentially life and death decisions for the rest of the planet. If however, that’s the direction the world is going to take, then at least let’s be completely honest about it and get rid of the charade that is the United Nations General Assembly. Maybe let’s get rid of the UN altogether? It can’t be that important if the real decision makers use it as a pit stop en-route to G20 meetings.

  Comments (19)

• Apologies

  August 13, 2009 @ 1:11 pm | by Bryan

  My apologies for this week’s unexplained silence from this blog. Things are back to normal.

  Below is an interesting video from the most racially polarised country that I am aware of – South Africa. It reminded me of the 1995 film, White Man’s Burden, with John Travolta, Harry Belafonte and others.

  Some of the comments on Youtube in response to the video got me thinking the fears around immigration that have been articulated in both the US and Europe. At heart is the fear that one day people will wake up to find that they are minorities in their countries. Implicit in that is the fear that they will be treated like minorities.

  I wonder what an Irish version of this film would look like.

  

  Comments (8)

• Race and Class

  July 24, 2009 @ 5:13 pm | by Bryan

  A sociologist, for whom I have the greatest respect, is convinced the colonialism had very little to do with race. As far as she is concerned, it had much more to do with class and power, and race was almost incidental. I agree. An interesting case study into the interaction between race and class is currently unfolding in the United States.

  To set the scene, Dave Chappelle…

  

  And now, Professor Gates…

  

  And if the fancy audience, and the fact that he is a famous Harvard professor isn’t impressive enough, here is one of Gates’ friends sticking up for him.

  

  Here’s the thing. I think what happened to Gates is shameful. To arrest a disabled older man because he ‘mouthed off’ after having been incensed about being accused of criminality, is just wrong. That said, I agree with those who have pointed out the fact that there are plenty of people of colour who are subjected to far worse who aren’t chummy with the president or equally famous attorneys. But this story is far more complicated than race.

  It has made headlines because the victim is a Harvard law professor. Let’s face it, that makes him a member of the country’s ruling elite. The truth is that the police officer’s real mistake wasn’t harassing an old black man, it was harassing the wrong old black man. He treated someone of a higher social class badly, and for that, he has become a household villan … sort of.

  Fox News’ Juan Williams thinks Gates was at fault. He says that he has learnt not to mouth off to the police. Not to be ‘uppity’ because, in his opinion, police in America are prone to treating people of colour with less grace than they do white America. Williams seems to be more bothered by Gates’ classism than any potential racism that led to the arrest.

  It’s a fascinating insight into race and class relations. In the age of Obama, it seems as if anything that could be construed as racism towards people of the upper classes is intolerable. The structural inequalities that make minorities less likely to receive a decent education, housing, employment and more likely to be stopped by police or go to jail don’t get nearly as much attention.

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• Belfast

  June 17, 2009 @ 6:22 pm | by Bryan

  Belfast has been a bit of a dodgy place in mind since the 1990s when I read a story about racially motivated attacks on a Chinese family and a Zimbabwean woman. My first thought at the time was something like, “How did they caught up in a Catholic-Protestant fight?”

  That 115 Romanian families could be in hiding because of what happened at a football match against Poland is almost laughable. Stranger things have happened, but there surely has to be an underlying reason.

  In South Africa, for example, xenophobia is the escape for people who are frustrated by their government’s inability to change their social circumstances. To attack the ruling party would be to attack their own liberation movement from less than twenty years ago. That would be like wounding yourself. It’s much easier to attack the foreigners who are scrounging for scraps with you. All it takes is a change in focus and aspiration. You just need to stop asking why you aren’t seated at the main table and start demanding that only people who look and sound like you be allowed to scrounge under it.

  Belfast is a completely alien entity to me. Are the occasional reports of racism just the result of a few maladjusted ‘bad apples’? Or do they represent something more systemic? Are there just some people who still need to fight an enemy, be it on religious or racial grounds?

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• The former Minister for Integration on ‘resentment’ towards foreign workers

  May 19, 2009 @ 11:30 pm | by Bryan

  Conor Lenihan, the former Minister for Integration, was just on Prime Time. He was insisting that the kind of blatant racism that foreign workers have experienced as the recession has worsened is no great departure from the past. Wow.

  I understand how the politics of the situation work. RTE shows a video clip that humanises a social problem – in tonight’s case, the new challenges faced by foreign workers as the economy has worsened. They then bring on a government representative as well as someone from an appropriate NGO, and encourage a fight. The job of the government representative is to defend the government at all cost. That of NGO representative, to promote their cause as effectively as possible.

  The minister stayed on script and made a claim that lay somewhere between the ‘it’s just a few bad apples’, ‘things have always been like that’, ‘you’re exaggerating the problem’ and ‘problem, what problem?’ arguments. Feigned ignorance with a little aggression and finger pointing is as good a way as any to defend the team from justified criticism. And that is, God willing, as close to a personal attack as I will go.

  In case the minister still follows this blog, having spoken to a couple of candidates for local office from the immigrant community recently, I can assure him that the kind of racist slurs on the program are not that uncommon. I can also assure him that there has been a definite turn for the worse in how immigrants are treated since the magnitude of the recession became apparent. My last bit of assurance for the minister, the signal that most immigrants received from the announced changes to the work permit scheme was that they are no-longer wanted. But I’m sure he knew that already.

  So as to avoid the criticism levelled against Prime Time’s filmmakers by the minister (that they were overly negative), I’ll repeat what I told a couple of friends recently. I love this country. I suspect most immigrants feel the same way, hence the desire to stay. And hence the frustration at the former Minister for Integration’s television performance.

  Comments (49)

• Caste

  May 7, 2009 @ 1:39 pm | by Bryan

  An ESRI study has found evidence supporting something that most foreign workers already know. People with an Irish sounding name are twice as likely to be called for a job interview as applicants with a comparable CV whose names sound Asian, African or German. Based on the fact that where the non-Irish person comes from didn’t affect the level of discrimination, it has been suggested that the findings point more to a desire to employ one’s own than a dislike of the ‘Other’.

  None of that surprises me. It’s helpful in that it shows up the ‘they’re taking our jobs’ argument. But what I’m really interested in is the public response to the findings as well as public views on their implications.

  African and Asian workers have no automatic legal entitlement to work in Ireland. I’m sure that most people will have no problem with the fact that if an African or Asian person is in a job in this country, their employer couldn’t find a similarly qualified Irish person to fill that vacancy. That makes sense. But what about a German, French or Polish worker? Because they are citizens of EU member states, they have as much right to work here as Irish people have to work in Germany, France and Poland. Do most people feel that even in the case of EU workers, Irish jobs should first and foremost go to Irish citizens (with Irish sounding names preferably)? And as Ireland’s demographics change, what of all those Irish citizens of African or Asian origin, whose surnames sound nothing like Murphy or O’Sullivan?

  Lately, it seems as though everywhere I turn I see the huge gaps between the noble aspirations that society claims to hold and reality. In this case, I wonder if deep down inside, we as a society really think there is anything wrong with the fact that your name plays a big role in determining whether or not you get a job interview? A friend was at a public event where, by accident, it was discovered that she is the granddaughter of an important Irish political figure. She is now being wooed by her grandfather’s party. Ireland, like many other countries, has a very real caste system in place – it’s just not as explicitly codified as India’s.

  As with India, while there may be some action aimed to moving beyond discrimination and caste, I’m not convinced that deep down many of us really mind their continued existence so long as we’re not on the wrong end of the stick.

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