‘I couldn’t walk down the street without the fear of being called a ‘paki’ or being told to go home’

ALTHOUGH HOPEFUL FOR CHANGE, GOREY WOMAN HOLLY HAYES STILL FEELS SCARS LEFT BY RACISM

GOREY WOMAN Holly Hayes has brought the global issue of racism into a local context after she took to social media to tell her own story about experiencing racist threats and insults at the hands of her peers growing up as a teenager in Gorey.

Born and raised in Dublin until she moved to Gorey at age 11, Holly said that she first remembers experiencing racial abuse when she was just six years old, although at the time she didn’t know what it was and why she was being treated differently to other children.

Holly explained that writing the post and putting it out there for the world to see was an emotional thing for her to do, and something she would have been too scared to do as a teenager when she experienced the most difficulty, where she still lives now.

The post online read: ‘In the Ireland I grew up in, it was pretty much a white Ireland and people with darker skin stuck out. We were treated differently in our schools, in our towns, in restaurants and in shops.

‘At a young age my first encounter of racism was not being allowed to play in a public park in Dublin with my sister. We were spat at, called ‘monkeys’ and to go back to our own ‘home’. My home was Dublin, I didn’t understand.

‘I moved to Gorey at the age of 11 and I couldn’t walk down the street without the fear of being called a ‘paki’ by people my age or told to go home. Again Gorey was my home. I didn’t understand. I was chased out of the Town Park in Gorey, standers by never said a word. I was stopped by teens when going to the shop and told to turn around. Again standers by did nothing’.

Speaking to this newspaper, Holly explained that racism is something she has had to experience her whole life.

‘Growing up in the 1990s in south Dublin, it was other children who would treat me and my sister differently but growing up I would have always noticed that people were looking at my mum. My grandfather was Nigerian, and my mum was adopted to Ireland. She would have much darker skin than me, it would be nearly black. It wasn’t until I was about ten that I realised it was racism, and I started to grasp what was actually happening.

‘In school and in the playground was my first experience of it, but when I started questioning it with my Mum she would always say that other people didn’t have as big of a heart as me. My parents would never use the word ‘racism’ so that’s the only way she could describe why I was treated differently. She would never have told us to use hatred and discriminate back, she would always tell us to hold our head up high as we’ve the bigger heart’.

Holly described attending a protest in Dublin as a child, as her family were involved with SARI (Sport Against Racism Ireland), and being interviewed by a journalist for a South African-based newspaper.

‘With SARI, there would have been quarterly fundraisers and we would have took part in barbecues or soccer matches. I was constantly listening to these conversations about racism but I still didn’t understand it. During the first protest, I was asked by a journalist what did the word racism mean to me in Ireland and I remember saying that the only thing it meant to me was that I was treated differently and that I wish it wasn’t true’.

Although Holly didn’t experience any physical abuse from others while she was in Dublin, members of her family did, along with name-calling and other forms of racial bullying.

Having stood up for herself a lot in Dublin, Holly said that she felt the racism was closer to home when she moved to Gorey.

‘In 2001 when I got to Gorey, the first person I made friends with was a guy called Josh Hughes, he had tanned skin and he would have stood up for me a lot. As a teenager, it was mostly boys who would verbally racially abuse me on the street in Gorey. In Dublin, it wasn’t as personal, it was still there but no one would have known my name or where I lived, but with Gorey being so small, it was the same people that would do it over and over again.

‘I was the same age of those people, so I never had a proper friend group growing up as a teenager, I just had probably about three friends and I felt like an outsider from the different groups.

‘It got to a stage where if my friend Josh wasn’t going to be out with me, I wouldn’t have left the house without my mum because I was too afraid. I started to think that maybe one day I would be assaulted.

‘Halloween I hated in Gorey because some of those people threw fireworks at me when I left the bottom of my estate. One time I got a sliothar hurled at me, it hit me whilst I was told to go home by a group of teenage boys’.

Although things are better here for Holly now that she has put down her own roots here and has many friends, she still thinks about those difficult times.

Holly recalled that the most recent time she experienced anything similar here was in 2014.

‘I worked in a restaurant in Gorey for six years, until 2014, but there still would have been some issues. For example I’d go to take an order from people and they’d say they didn’t understand what I was saying, and asked whether I spoke English. I could be serving a table and people might go to whoever was supervising and put in some form of complaint and the reason wouldn’t be valid. Sometimes customers would look to engage with another female waitresses rather than myself, the owner would notice it too,’ she said.

Holly said that she believes there change will come on the issue of racism in her lifetime.

‘I was very emotional writing that post and naming Gorey, I would have never written that post in 2001 because I would have had the fear of what I would have gotten back from people my own age but now I don’t have that fear at all, that’s a huge contrast definitely.

‘I’ve had private messages from people all over the world since I put it up and all I’ve gotten is support. So many people that I’m close with didn’t even realise that was my experience where they live, they found it hard to believe. That was a huge eye opener for people who may have been in denial that racism was an issue in Ireland, let alone Gorey.

‘I wanted to highlight that racism is still here, but it has changed from what I experienced back then. From the comments I’ve gotten I’ve noticed that people are saying it’s not just people of colour, as if racism is just white towards people’s skin colour, but I’ve friends who are travellers, Chinese and my best friend is Polish and they still have to overcome different obstacles because of their racial backgrounds,’ she said.

Holly said that she does not want to promote mass gatherings, and is protesting in her own home using social media.

‘I think the Black Lives Matter protests have served a purpose for getting justice for George Floyd, but the only thing in Ireland that people can do is to constantly have the conversations at home, and educate themselves about racism.

‘I do not want my story to cover the backlash of large gatherings, that was not it’s purpose. I believe when there is wrong in the world, people should speak out for change and do so safely’.