In life, there is nothing like personal experience of prejudice to increase one’s empathy and support of other victims of bigotry – whether racist, ethnic, sectarian, religious or any other context. An article in the now-defunct Sunday Tribune in 1999 first highlighted this issue for me.
Diarmuid Doyle’s piece in the 23 May edition centred on American lawyer John Stemberger, who proposed to argue in court that the American car hire firm Dollar Rent-a-Car should not have rented to his Irish client because the Irish are “likely to get drunk” and drink-driving is not such a big issue in Ireland.
On a subsequent edition of Morning Ireland on RTÉ Radio, Áine Lawlor took Stemberger to task for the gall of his remarks. “Did you not realise the offence that you would cause?” she asked. And in what country, might one ask, would this offence be felt most acutely? In Ireland, of course, according to Lawlor. Should one even ask?
Yes, one should ask. Having lived many years in America, I know Lawlor is not quite correct about which country suffers the worst damage from Irish racist stereotypes. It is not in the area where that ethnic group has dominance, but where it is in a vulnerable, minor position that such abuses are felt most keenly.
It is the native Irish in America, those immigrants who are on an unequal footing within the power structure of their adopted country, who experience the sharpest edge of racial slurs. From my observation, most Irish residents couldn’t care less about what image they project abroad and what humiliating affect negative portrayals of them might have on their Irish immigrants.
But, in America, the quality of Irish immigrants’ lives, their chances of social and economic mobility, and of harmonious integration into this ‘melting pot’ are significantly affected by degrading stereotypes.
While resident there, I became well aware how ingrained in American consciousness such prejudices were. Like other Irish immigrants, I was placed often against this unattractive background woven of quaint demeaning images, and I counteracted its negative affect on the quality of my life, as best I could.
I did my little bit to try and modify these attitudes. I even spoke out strongly against humiliating Irish stereotypes on a nationally transmitted radio programme, and got into a great deal of trouble for doing so.
If more native Irish insisted, as I did, to our right to ethnic respect, these racial slurs could have been corrected in due course. They didn’t care then, and I was left battling alone in my denunciation of that scathing mockery.
Neither do most Irish residents care now. Recently, I shared my experiences of some negative American attitudes toward the Irish – and especially the perceived notion of us as drunkards – with a group of Irish women, and characteristically I followed it up with the question: “What should we do to change these stereotypes?”
I was close to run off the premises. “Did you say change? Why change?” they responded. "So we drink too much. That is the way we are. Change? Pooh!” And there was more: “All ethnic groups insult each other… It’s the way people are. We mock, we laugh at each other.” And more: “You must have one mighty boulder on your shoulder to have noticed these attitudes.”
With such attitudes, who can blame John Stemberger for reaching for that rarely challenged ‘fact’ that we are a nation of drunkards? Yet the surprising part is that the racial bias embedded in his statement was actually challenged by a few people here. And the result? The remarks were taken back – a small, but notable, victory.
Some of us in Ireland are now trying to promote attitudes toward racial tolerance. For these to take root, we must remove our ingrained prejudices toward minorities who come here.
As I’ve pointed out above, those of us who, as Irish immigrants, belonged to a minority ethnic group in a host country know how deeply prejudices can hurt and thwart one’s quality of life. And we know this hurt is not sourced by an “inability to take criticism from foreigners”, as Diarmuid Doyle puts it, but by an awareness that we are being despised for reasons outside our individual control.
Imelda O’Connor is a Metro Éireann reader from Carrigaline, Co Cork
