Racism: In a hugely ambitious thesis involving fragments of history, sociological commentary and statistical analysis, Steve Garner, a former lecturer in applied sociology at UCC - and an Englishman no doubt sensitised to the experience of "otherness" in Cork - writes daringly on how the Irish, themselves long "racialised" by other cultures, have a "Janus-faced" proclivity for racialising others, writes Mic Moroney
Garner starts by challenging the widespread belief in discrete "races" of humanity, which has no scientific, genetic basis. After briefly revisiting the powerful genetic fallacies of the past (which gave us Social Darwinism, the Holocaust, and indeed mass-sterilisations up to the 1970s), Garner turns to the enduring, quasi-official notion of an "Irish race" of native Gaels absorbing waves of early invaders - until "the clock stops" in the 12th century.
Here, hostile descriptions of the "inferior" Irish begin: from Giraldus Cambrensis to the 17th-century Protestant New English colonists. Because the Irish had the same skin colour - "Clear men they are of skin and hue, but of themselves careless and bestial," wrote Edmund Campion in 1633 - the colonists emphasised cultural barbarity, comparing the Irish to Native Americans, Connaught cabins to African "negro huts".
Garner then considers Irish Catholics who, from the 1630s, were transported to the Caribbean as indentured labourers. At first, they laboured alongside Africans, but soon owned black slaves, became plantation managers and militiamen, policing the colour line. By the late 17th century, they had, in Garner's words, "melted into the 'white' category".
Garner also contrasts the Irish experiences in America and Britain in the 19th century from a racial and sectarian perspective. In Britain, anti-Catholic violence had flared around Irish political events, long before the Irish surged into British cities after the Famine. It continued to do so after the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in 1850, the Fenian outrages of 1867-8, Land League activity, even Home Rule debates.
Peaking at 3.5 per cent of the population in 1861, the Irish in Britain were regarded as naturally depraved, and blamed for poverty, disease, slums and disorder. Tracts such as Robert Knox's Races of Man (1850) characterised Celts as rash, childish and rebellious, while Victorian illustrators depicted an ape-faced, bestial Paddy stereotype - a controversial phenomenon Garner does not pursue.
In WASP America, Garner examines New York, where, between 1847 and 1860, more than one million Irish landed, soon dominating the unskilled and domestic jobs once reserved for blacks. With the Catholic Church officially "neutral" on slavery, the Irish were largely anti- abolitionist, and violently usurped freed blacks, most murderously during the 1863 Draft Riots. The resulting exodus reduced New York's black population by 20 per cent.
Garner claims that, with WASP commentators placing Celts closer to Africans than Anglo-Saxons, such white supremacy was a survival strategy. In California, the Irish formed the anti- Chinese Order of Caucasians and, untroubled by memories of home, many Irish-born soldiers made careers of persecuting Native Americans. A Cavan man, Gen Philip Sheridan, is credited with quipping "the only good Indian is a dead Indian".
By the 1890s, the Irish dominated New York police and political appointments, becoming, in Davitt's words, Irish nationalism's "avenging wolfhound"; and projecting themselves as Celts, anti-British, martialistic (the "fighting Irish"), Catholic, Gaelic, white and racially pure. Garner traces such rhetoric from John Mitchel to Arthur Griffith's anti-Semitism - the old colonial anti-nomadic prejudices now redirected towards "wandering" Jews and Irish "itinerants", who were first "racialised" in the 1890s.
This made for reactionary Free State ideology, whilst the GAA was well in tune with the 1930s: "The grip of the native ash fortifies [the players\] against national submission and racial perversion". Regrettably, Garner only gingerly mentions Ireland's "Emergency" years.
Garner sees an "alluvial build-up of stereotypical vilifications" beneath the "new racism" born of Ireland's rising immigration since 1996. As the only EU state to have been colonised, Ireland's "national question" has long eclipsed the classic left-right political spectrum. Despite the near-absence of far-right groups, Garner sees racism in the mainstream of Irish politics, with government ministers and Fianna Fáil TDs volubly opposing immigrants and Travellers. Meanwhile, the Immigration Control Platform's call for compulsory HIV testing for asylum-seekers popped up in Fine Gael's 2002 election manifesto.
Garner lists incidents of institutional racism: immigration officials removing non-whites from the Belfast-Dublin train; the arrest of a British-based Nigerian woman for making an inquiry at a Cork social welfare office; Judge Harvey Kenny's remark that a woman should be put in jail for driving uninsured to send a message to all Nigerians; or Judge John Neilan's comment that Longford shops would ban coloured people if they didn't stop shoplifting - remarks for which both judges subsequently apologised.
Surveys show that racist attitudes have hardened and intensified, with a wide variety of ethnic and religious targets. One survey of ethnic minorities themselves revealed that 79 per cent experienced verbal or physical abuse "frequently" or "daily", while gardaí rarely intervened. In 2002, a Chinese student died after a violent attack following racist abuse.
The greatest hostility, across all social classes, is reserved for Travellers, while the State's neglect of its own Traveller accommodation and health targets has resulted in more Traveller families on the side of the road, with mortality rates remaining high - a tolerance of which, Garner remarks, verges on the genocidal.
It's all provocative material, if rather unfortunately embedded in an academic, often highly theorised and selective argument. However, Garner's general thesis is extremely well-constructed. At a time when the issue of racism has faded somewhat from the media, this is a timely reminder for anyone concerned with the directions Irish civic society is taking.
Mic Moroney is a writer and critic
Racism in the Irish Experience. By Steve Garner, Pluto Press, 308pp. £16.99