Short plays about (racist) ireland, 1

dublin-busNo 16 bus, Dublin city centre, 20 April. Bus stationary. Man sits at back of bus and shouts obcsenities.

Bus driver (probably of Indian sub continent origin) speaks on his radio:
I want him to get off the bus…

Man continues to shout. Man gets up and goes to front of bus, shouting:

You want me to get off the bus, you f… black bastard… You f… black bastard.

I: Stop it, stop being racist!!

No passenger comments.

Man gets off the bus.

Elderly woman: Poor man, he was doing nothing, why did he have to get off the bus?

Young woman: Yeah, poor man, what did he do?

Man: He was stinking of drink.

Young woman: Ah.

I: why didn’t you say anything?

On getting off the bus I say to the driver: Sorry about what happened earlier.

Driver: It’s not the first time. It happened many times before. Thanks.

Racist videos and Irish immigration policies

shatterLast week two racist and antisemitic extreme right YouTube videos appeared on the airwaves. Though mostly directed at the Minister for Justice Alan Shatter, I also co-starred in one of them, both of us described as ‘Jews destroying Ireland’. While the Minister was attacked for ‘shattering the nation with policy designed to deconstruct our ethnic and cultural identity’, for ‘fast-tracking bogus asylum applications’ and running ‘anti-Irish’ schemes, including one which aims to turn the country into a ‘Balkanised multiracial dystopia’, I was castigated for supporting immigration and calling for the destruction of the ‘Irish race’. One of the comments posted on the clip refereed to me as ‘rat-faced vermin’ and another congratulated the video-maker: ‘Top vid. Another eye-opener.’ (see http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/66081/irish-justice-minister-targeted-youtube ). Continue reading “Racist videos and Irish immigration policies”

Headless hookers and suitcase bodies

In July 2004 a badly decomposed body, described by the media as that of ‘a black non-national woman’ was discovered in a black plastic bag on a river bank in Co Kilkenny. Because she arrived as an asylum seeker in 2000, and, like all asylum seekers, had been fingerprinted, Gardai identified her through the finger printing data base at the Garda National Immigration Bureau as that of the 25 year old married mother of two Paiche Onyemaechi. She turned out to be the daughter of the Malawian chief justice and a lap dancer and prostitute. Because her body was found without a head by a local Kilkenny woman walking her dog, it did not take long for media representations to describe Paiche Onyemaechi as a ‘headless hooker’. Continue reading “Headless hookers and suitcase bodies”