The number of black faces in Dublin increases by the day, and my heart sinks; not because of the people themselves, but because society here is probably incapable of making the mental and social adjustments to accommodate our new immigrants. We can't even use honest words about them. Immigrants are not immigrants but "economic refugees" or "asylum seekers", which are merely terminological denials of the truth that these people are simply migrants seeking better lives for themselves, just as millions of Irish people once did.
They will bring with them different skills, different religions, different diets; they could enhance Irish life enormously, as did the Huguenots, the Jews, the Chinese. But they are not like the previous generations of black immigrants, who were, archetypally, intellectually and often socially superior to most of the host community.
Our latest newcomers are different. Many will be entering at the very bottom of the economic ladder; and from the way we seem unable to assimilate, or even come to terms with, the humanity of Catholic, Irish stock already milling helplessly at the bottom of that ladder, we might fairly wonder how we shall cope with the rising numbers of poor Bangladeshis or Jamaicans - or whatever - who will sooner or later be assembling there as well.
Anne Power's recent report on the truly abominable estates which Irish society has manufactured has, to judge from newspaper accounts, apparently laid blame for these "white ghettoes" on the economy, with the media also being used as scapegoat for creating stigmas about their residents (a standard and rather tiresome canard: which media, please, where and when?).
Cultural priorities
But it is not the "economy", or newspapers, or television, which generated the attitudes behind the creation of such estates, and which sustain a prejudice against their residents. You can lay blame for that fairly and squarely on the cultural and political priorities within Irish society, which pre-date the Lemass economic boom, and which seem to be surviving, with a virulent vitality, into our tigerishly bright new future.
Irish life is riven with a thousand snobberies and shibboleths. Irish people seem profoundly insecure away from their own type, or even subtype. Estates like Jobstown and Neilstown are merely a socially marginalised form of the estateconstruction which characterises Dublin generally. Journalists and barristers like to live in an estate called Ranelagh; sad, middle-aged trendies in one called Phibsboro; architects in one called Sandymount; fitters in Finglas; factory workers in Coolock, and so on.
Working-class conformity
The social structures within such local communities are largely self-enforced. It is not the wish of Irish universities that working-class students attending them are just about as rare as Bushmen in the Broderbond. The communal pressure in working-class estates is towards conformity. Be what your parents were; and if you are working-class, do not rise above yourself. Do not get notions. What was good enough for your parents should be good enough for you. Snobs, not real people, go to university.
We have the worst record of educating working-class people to university level in Europe. It is not the Irish economy, which increasingly resembles economies found elsewhere, which is responsible for that, but an extraordinarily powerful social conservatism which seeks internal continuity, which seeks to exclude outsiders, especially of lower rank, which seeks to discourage insiders from achieving upward mobility, which seeks a geographical reassurance that families are not departing the economic and social consensus. It is not coincidental that "losing the run of yourself" is one of the most powerful terms of social opprobrium in Irish life.
And we are not even aware of this. Quite the reverse. Our selfimage contrasts starkly with the reality. We think we are broadminded and tolerant, but we are not. We think we are not snobbish, but we are profoundly so. And this snobbery is not merely the worker-as-victim stereotype, as any brickie's labourer who tries to eat his "piece" with brickies on a building site will tell you.
Equally, we probably declare that we are not racist - a laughable belief considering the conduct of Irish emigrants in the US and Britain. Certain forms of racism are already quite socially acceptable here - such as abusive epithets about "Brits" or "unionists". Those so free with such language today will probably within a decade be talking about niggers, Pakis, coons.
Sports centres
We face huge problems in the coming decade, as immigrants - who legally and morally have every right to come here - compete for jobs with the professionally unskilled people from the estates which we have so scandalously neglected and where life anyway does not dispose one to tolerance. The recent decision to cut Government spending on sports and recreation centres in such estates - of which, I confess, I was unaware until I read Kathryn Holmquist's article on this subject last Monday - from £20 million to just over £1 million, with the same hand that was giving £20 million to the GAA, the paradigm of monoculturalism, is beyond parody.
A multi-racial Irish society is a certainty, and one we must get used to. We might take a lesson or two from our neighbours on how to pre-empt problems; but the chances are, we will do no such thing and will opt instead to repeat their mistakes; and then we could have another jolly little tribunal of enquiry to help out the residents of Ranelagh with their mortgages.