Logan Raju has struggled to heal after a fall last year - but as he tells Eliza Foster, his fiery opinions remain unquenched
Metro Éireann columnist Logan Raju was injured in a fall in the spring of 2012, an incident he wrote about in these pages at the time. Since then, however, he has had a tough time getting back on his feet and continues to make a slow recovery.
“My progress has been not great,” he tells Metro Éireann recently. “It’s like me taking two steps forward and three steps back.”
Raju’s body may be injured, but that hasn’t prevented him from continuing to think and talk about many issues, including immigration and integration.
Originally from Malaysia, he has been living here for the last 30 years and over that time has seen Ireland go through many phases.
“I have been here for three different decades, and I am in my fourth decade, so I have seen the changes in Ireland,” he says.
When it comes to living in Ireland today, he thinks racism and discrimination are two issues that are both prevalent among the immigrant community, but that the terms need to be differentiated.
“We use the term ‘racism’ very loosely; it is more discrimination today,” he says. “Racism is ‘I see your colour and tell you’, that ‘you can’t afford it because you’re black’. That is racism. They judge you by your colour and isolate you, or whatever it is.
“In shops, if they don’t serve you and they serve another first, and they serve the black or the Asian last, that is racism. The benefits one gets and the services of which the other can or cannot avail, that is discrimination.”
Racism wasn’t an issue
When he first moved to Ireland, Raju says racism was something that occurred but wasn’t a big issue because immigration wasn’t significant in Ireland at the time, and the social climate was more receptive.
“My generation is very different. There were no asylum seekers as far as I know and 80 per cent [of immigrants] were students. The rest were business people, professionals and doctors and this and that.”
He recalls that in the 1980s, being a foreigner was more of a novelty, and he relates one incident when a Chinese friend was in hospital.
“He was the item of the week, every nurse was coming up to see him. In those days that’s what you did, and everyone was coming up to see someone who was a foreigner,” he says. “I don’t think that would happen now because there are so many foreign nurses. Back then most of the foreign people worked in the restaurants.”
Raju describes Ireland in 2013 as a more integrated place, but one that still has issues.
“I think Ireland can improve by being less politically correct about everything,” he says. “We have to be able to give and take we have to be able to tolerate. Acceptance is very different.
“You know the weather? I tolerate the weather, and that’s a lot of bull because you have to accept it, whether you like it or not, because the weather is not going to change for you. It’s the same with Ireland.”
He continues: “I’ve often told people ‘If you don’t like Ireland, go home’ and they catch up with me on that. I say, why are you coming here and getting out of another country? Please go home please, go home!”
Discrimination starts at home
As far as how to improve the social climate for immigrants here, Raju says it is important that children are brought up in a tolerant environment.
“Discriminatory issues start at home but Ireland has moved forward – we have to, really,” he says. “We have to accept that changes are taking place in Ireland. I mean many of the foreign students brought in millions and millions of euros to the country.
“Now is the time to open the doors because they are willing to spend money in the country, and if they look for a part time job and cannot get one then they just have to study.
“Many of the people today, many of them do not understand what’s happened before, whether it’s racism or discrimination problems,” he says. “You have to learn from the past.”
