Danielle McLaughlin
Ah, St Patrick’s Day. When the Irish and the wannabe Irish around the world variously dress in green, parade through cities and towns, and drink too much, all in secular memory of the man who brought Christianity to Ireland in the 5th century.
Fifth Ave in Manhattan, New York, will be incandescent in green. But in the aftermath of the Christchurch Mosque shootings, New Zealanders’ St Paddy’s Day celebrations will be small and low-key; overshadowed by the heinous attack on Muslims who, like the Irish before them, are the new century’s targets of fear and loathing.
The Irish diaspora, including those who left by choice or force, along with their descendants, numbers in the tens of millions across the world. My mother is part of this diaspora, having grown up in Ireland’s County Offaly. She, along with her five siblings and parents, were economic migrants to London when she was a child. She left London in the late 60s to join my father, an Australian.
She left for New Zealand.
She didn’t spend six months in a leaky boat, a la Split Enz’s 1982 pop homage to Godzone. It was six weeks. The boat didn’t leak, by her account. But she did feel out of place on arrival. Small-town New Zealand was 20 years behind the swinging London of Mary Quant and The Beatles that she left behind.
She was lucky.
In the late 18th century, as America’s Protestant hackles were raised by Irish-Catholic immigration, the US Congress passed three ‘‘alien’’ laws designed to make Irish (and French) immigration more difficult, and to limit the rights of the immigrants already stateside. As waves of Irish settled in the US in the mid19th century, escaping devastating famine, they were shunned as drunks and trash.
Mobs of Anti-Irish, Anti-Catholic protesters in Philadelphia torched churches in the Bible Riots of 1844. Those strong enough to work were greeted with ‘‘No Irish need apply’’ in job listings. It didn’t matter whether they were aspiring housekeepers, cooks or chambermaids. They were the Micks and the Biddies and the Paddies. The slaves and the dogs.
By virtue of my mother’s birth, I am part of the Irish diaspora with its roots reaching back to centuries-old otherness. By virtue of my birth, I am part of the New Zealand diaspora. And in these bleak days after the Christchurch murders, a searing demonstration of fear of ‘‘the other’’, that membership brings a specific kind of pain. Not the violent shock carried by you, my countrymen. But heaviness, and isolation. The tyranny of distance.
Here in the US this week, the conversation around the terrorist attack has predictably devolved into a blame game, which is what the shooter wanted, of course. The Muslim ban. The ‘‘both sides’’ rhetoric after Nazis chanted ‘‘Jews will not replace us’’ in Charlottesville.
Our job, collectively, is to not let the shooter – a coward – get the last word. Our job is to remember the treatment of immigrants and refugees in decades and centuries past, and to learn from those mistakes. Our job is to not confuse jihad with Islam. After all, nobody’s shunning good white Christian folks because of white supremacist violence.
This week ended on an unseasonably warm note in New York City. On Friday morning, as I walked through my neighbourhood, the air was salty. The sky, overcast, was a white cloud both wide and long. The universe was reminding me of home as my brain tried to make sense of the words ‘‘New Zealand’’ and ‘‘terrorist attack’’ in the same sentence.
I will not dress in green today, though I’ll probably have a few drinks as the Irish and the Kiwis are generally keen to do. I’ll find something black to wear, and I will raise a glass.
To unity, to tolerance, to learning the lessons of past exclusion.
And to you all. Glistening like a pearl, at the bottom of the world.
Danielle McLaughlin is the Sunday Star-Times’ US correspondent. She is a lawyer, author, and political and legal commentator, appearing frequently on US and New Zealand TV and radio. She is also an ambassador for #ChampionWomen, which aims to encourage respectful, diverse, and thoughtful conversations. Follow Danielle on Twitter at @MsDMcLaughlin.