as small as a world and as large as alone

11:09am July 19, 2013

clatterbane:

mousesinger:

bastardlybrendan:

wtf-imi:

sj-circlejerk:

unregistard:

sj-circlejerk:

goddess—nike:

historicalbird:

j3fa:

lasiguanaba:

thirstrani:

no bro

you really don’t

not at fucking

all

stop

It appears absolutely no one realizes this character (assuming this story takes places during the time in which it was filmed) grew up during The Troubles of Northern Ireland.

You don’t if he’s Northern Irish. You don’t know if he’s Catholic. You don’t know if he grew up watching his people get murdered by Loyalist Protestants and British soldiers who carried heavy racial prejudice against Irish Catholics (hellooo, Bloody Sunday anyone?), who had for centuries been characterized as barbaric, racially inferior, lowly people who needed to be wiped out or converted. Attacks by the IRA, and therefore retaliation by the British, didn’t completely cease until 1998, I believe? This film came out in 2002.

You don’t know if he was an Irishman who grew up in England. Bomb attacks carried out by the IRA in England kindled misplaced aggression toward innocent Irish civilians living among the English population and Irish people were verbally and physically attacked and their businesses targeted. Perhaps similar to how ordinary Muslims bear the brunt of aggression after attacks by Muslim extremists…

You can still find yourself threatened and demeaned if you’re a Catholic in Northern Ireland or if you’re a Protestant in Ireland and some older dude in a pub in a smaller town straight up asks you if you’re Catholic or not and you’re afraid what’ll happen if you don’t lie about who you are.

You can still hear casual racism toward Irish people in everyday life and in publicly broadcast media in the UK.

You can still see and hear “Kill All Irish" and other pretty heavy anti-Irish sentiment among Loyalists in Northern Ireland who don’t consider themselves Irish at all.

Just because it now appears that the island of Ireland has been allowed to move on from war and their appearance and culture generally allows them to blend into and reap the benefits of the White European demographic doesn’t mean that this character does not have the background suitable to fully empathize with her. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t, we just don’t know his story.

But I guess you’ve never been demeaned as a Paddy or a Taig so you wouldn’t understand what it feels like, would you?

If you think any kind of white people understand the way that racism hurts POC maybe you should try googling “how the Irish became white" and FYI it was by stepping all over POC.

http://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/white13.htm

^^

There you go friends I even googled it for you, educate yourselves and stop with this bullshit ok bye.

Oh my fucking god. He is IRISH. From IRELAND. You literally know jack shit about the rest of the world, do you? Even AFTER someone provided all the information you needed to realize why he might understand, you still insist to ignore that other countries exist and still insist to press your American-centric world view on foreign topics. Why don’t YOU stop YOUR bullshit.

Nice to see that Social Justice Bigots are just as ignorant of history as they are, everything else. Google Irish slaves in America for fucks sake.

http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-hercules/the-irish-slave-trade-forgotten-white-slaves/

http://www.raceandhistory.com/cgi-bin/forum/webbbs_config.pl/noframes/read/1638

http://www.scoilgaeilge.org/academics/slaves.htm

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-irish-slave-trade-the-forgotten-white-slaves/31076

But none of that matters because some of the Irish diaspora was racist! Didn’t you know any bad actions of a group immediately discounts the rest of the shit their population went through?

It seems weird that the argument “They used to be oppressed but they’re not anymore, so get over it" is somehow acceptable to use against the Irish, but no one else. 

Social Justice Bloggers in: Ignoring historical facts - Shocker

Read more on pages 11&12.

This is one of those things that makes sense to the context of the film and its intended audience (people in the UK), but will be totally lost on a majority of American viewers, I imagine.

Yes.

I would add that while there is a very long history of anti-Irish sentiment, things apparently heated up when the IRA was very active. I wasn’t living in the UK then, but we’ve only within the past five-ten years or so gotten more trash cans back along the streets in London, thanks to the earlier bombings. It was that recent, in the scheme of things. So, not surprisingly, some bigots decided to blame all Irish people for the terrorist jerks. Sound familiar? Yeah.

Now most of the same bigots are more interested in Muslims and Polish/other Eastern European immigrants. The pushing of Islamophobia is no doubt part of the reason that the anti-Irish crap has decreased in the meantime. But, Irish people in Britain still have worse health and lower life expectancies, attributed to racism and discrimination.

Also, from earlier this year: The EDL is stoking anti-Irish racism in the UK. It seems the far right shitepokes haven’t totally forgotten about them, either.

Even though the group tends to be associated with opposition to immigration and people with varying degrees of melanin, it also has a core of anti-Irish sentiment.

In Liverpool, a city with many second and third-generation Irish immigrants, the EDL staged an anti-Irish protest last July.

As you can see on the poster below, an EDL splinter group known as the North West Infidels descibed the Irish as “much like the Islamics" and “abuse their host nation" by supporting the IRA…

“In February we launched a report called ‘Under Pressure’. It detailed three attacks on Irish marches in 2012. Those marches caused very little controversy since the 1990s,” said Cairde Liverpool member Neil Doolin who has lived in Liverpool for 20 years.

“But in 2012 things got worse because we became targets for right wing groups. It is happening because the BNP vote has dropped and far-right groups have moved from electioneering to the street. Also there is no large Asian community in Liverpool so the Irish are an easy target. They try to label our march as an IRA march. It brings up the past and winds up people[…]“

(Report link added.) So, yeah, I would say that the comparison is totally appropriate.

The situation is very different from that in the US. (Where I grew up.) From historicalbird above: "You can still hear casual racism toward Irish people in everyday life and in publicly broadcast media in the UK.” Yep. And I’ve heard some of it IRL—my jaw was probably hanging open the first few times—and I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten treated differently on a few occasions once people saw/heard a Gaelic last name. Things have apparently improved a lot, but there’s just too long a history there for things to suddenly become magically fine overnight. Or within a few decades.

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