Gene Kerrigan
We sympathise with horrified Americans, but there are things done in our name that do us no credit, writes
There are racist acts done in our name
LIKE the rest of the world, we watched the American horror show unfold last week — sickened, enraged and, at times, finding it hard to believe.
In response, the Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, went into the Dail and said something bizarre.
The Tanaiste, Simon Coveney, spoke of rejecting racism in all its forms and said: “We need to focus on ourselves as well as looking critically at others.”
That was an appropriate thing to say, and we’ll be taking Simon’s advice in a moment.
We watched when 75-year-old Martin Gugino walked up to the Buffalo police and we saw two officers violently push him. He staggered backwards, he cracked his skull on the ground, the blood poured from his ear.
And the official police report said Mr Gugino, “tripped and fell”.
Like their president, the American police seem to find it impossible not to lie, even if that required us to disbelieve what we’ve seen with our own eyes.
Had George Floyd been shot dead out of sight of witnesses, the police could have said he resisted arrest and the officers felt their lives were in danger, so they reluctantly shot him.
Instead, George Floyd died slowly, in front of a camera.
This killing enraged the world, while others didn’t, because it was not an unseen and impersonal shooting.
It was a prolonged death, out in the open, inflicted intimately by a calm cop, while his colleagues stood by. Then, the police made their big mistake. Day after day, in front of the cameras, in their rage at their critics they put aside their racism and proceeded to beat up people regardless of colour.
They very efficiently gassed, stun-gunned and beat the c**p out of dissenting white people, having practised for years on black people.
Watching this, it seems to have dawned on increasing numbers of Americans that they’ve got a violent, bullying, ruthless and heavily armed occupation force lording it over them. A few token suspensions and a change of management personnel won’t fix this one.
Meanwhile, senior military officers began sending memos reminding one another that they swore loyalty to the constitution, not to the increasingly bizarre policies of the current occupant of the White House.
Last Friday, a smiling, upbeat, totally unhinged Trump was assuring the
American people that
George Floyd is happy in heaven, smiling down on the president’s economic policies. “It’s a great day for him, it’s a great day for everybody — this is a great, great day.”
Now, I’ve seen gardai roughly pushing each other out of the way, each seeking more room to swing his baton at the victim of choice. But, to the LAPD and their comrades, that would be a little light exercise.
Racism, however, as Simon Coveney reminded us, comes in various forms.
It stems from the familiar human urge to define our own status by measuring ourselves against some other part of humanity that we deem to be inferior.
We use many markers to do this measuring — race is one of them; nationality is another. Class, wealth, gender, family line, job title, education, culture, accent — you name it, if it gives us a feeling of superiority we’ll use it.
It seems we’re not content to be human, in all its varieties, with all its pleasures and happiness and failures, fear and despair. In addition to all that, we seem to still need some measure that assures us that at least we’re not (fill in your own notion of an inferior humanity, if you’ve got one).
Which is why some poor, ragged American yokel who’s working two jobs for button money, living in a shack where the roof leaks and the walls lean alarmingly, will tell you that he lives in “the greatest country in the world” — though he’s never seen any other country.
And it’s why some Irish people proclaim that only being born on this patch of land can determine who lives here — rather than chance and circumstance.
Somehow, chance and circumstance cannot be allowed to favour others, even though that’s what led countless Irish people to patches of land across many a sea, where they rightly were welcomed and allowed to live.
Last week, Leo Varadkar conceded that some Direct Provision accommodation is substandard, which was very perceptive of him. How did he come by this knowledge?
Was it the dreadful reports of terrified people, packed into rooms with others, sleeping in circumstances that threatened them with a deadly virus?
Was it that strange moment when one wing of the State was telling us how to wash our hands properly, how to keep a distance from those infected, how to protect ourselves from random particles of death?
While another wing of the State was packing people into precisely the circumstances that we were simultaneously being warned against.
This, mind you, was just the most blatant instance of subjecting people to treatment that made their lives miserable — an instance that went beyond ill-treatment, to endangerment.
But, the horrors of Direct Provision had nothing to do with racism, the Taoiseach explained. Because, he said, direct provision is about “free accommodation, food, heat, lighting, education, and some spending money”.
He made it sound like it’s a grand old time — he wouldn’t mind a bit of it himself, but he’s far too busy with affairs of State to take advantage of such delights.
No, the Taoiseach assured us, direct provision doesn’t involve racism, because “it’s not the same thing as a man being killed by the police”.
And that, it appears, is the Irish definition of racism. You’re okay, even if we stuff you into circumstances where your health and your life are put at risk. That’s fine.
Even though it involves circumstances where black people are exposed to an illness that’s particularly dangerous for black people — that’s still tickety-boo, as long as we don’t actually point a gun at you and squeeze the trigger.
Back in 1963, the black writer James Baldwin spoke of “the moral apathy, the death of the heart” that allows people to accept terrible things.
“They really don’t think I’m human,” he said. “I’d base this on their conduct, not on what they say.”
The Dail had a moment of silence last week.
And our democratic body, representing the
Irish people, marked its abhorrence of racism by shutting up for no fewer than 60 seconds.
There were people there who have said and done things that belied their gesture, but they were probably sincerely opposed to kneeling on the skulls of others.
Having established its moral rectitude, the Dail could continue presiding over a system that belittles, that punishes, that does negative things for no positive reason.
Mind you, we’ve had practice.
Long before people in dire need came to these shores in substantial numbers, we honed our racist skills on the Travellers.
Back when Gay Byrne was young, he filled a studio with Travellers. They discussed problems and opportunities, skills and talents, they talked through the positives of that culture, not just the negative.
Two cultures in the one space — unequal in resources and power. Give and take — from each side — could lead to the adjustments necessary to ensure all could enjoy our joint citizenship of the one patch of land.
One side had the determining say — and always, always — over the 60 years since that TV show, always, the more powerful culture said no.
If we were to conclude anything about ourselves from our conduct, not from what our leaders say — we might conclude we’re not in as much trouble as the Yanks, but we’ve got things to fix.
‘Before people came in need, we honed our racist skills on the Travellers’