The racism Mandela surmounted is alive and well in modern Ireland [white supremacy is worldwide, 24/7]
/One Dutch word in the English language is ‘apartheid’. It is one of the most socially evil systems ever devised. Mandela played a great role with countless, often nameless others, in destroying and supplanting apartheid. The greater achievement was not bringing down apartheid — it was in successfully replacing it.
South Africa of course is deeply flawed. It could hardly be other, so soon. Neither the role played by Mandela or the ANC can or should be free from criticism. History will slowly but surely winnow his lasting legacy from the Princess Diana-like lather of the past days. Mandela will emerge a somewhat chastened but far more credible figure because of it. What is in progress there and here this week is a great rush to take possession politically, and to profit by association, with an embryonic mythical Mandela.
Given his stature the excavation of any association could see an opportunist through for a generation. Look at Pearse, de Valera or Collins. People here successfully feasted from them reputationally, not for one generation but for two, and the leftovers were served as sandwiches to a third. Mandela the man is gone, now the myth-making is begun. In death he can be used, as he would never allow when alive, by people who if they followed him from a distance never imitated him very closely in life.
The Irish version of the Mandela myth is particularly cruel and corrosive. Racism is a deeply disturbing spectre. It leaves its victims living lives of fear, degradation and a greater likelihood of poverty. If like Nelson Mandela you are black and African, it is not only prevalent, it is pervasive in Ireland. Racism can also be part of your life if you are either ethnically Asian or indeed, Caucasian but foreign.
The myth-making around race in Ireland is pervasive and pernicious. It ranges from “they” get “everything” free to they get “more” than “they” are entitled to. Specifically, “they” are given houses by the local authority, “they” are given hand-outs, prams and even cars by the community welfare officer. “They” have it all for nothing. As we have learnt only too well this past week, charity begins at home.
In our Rainbow nation fully 12% of our people were born abroad. That doesn’t include those born here of non-Caucasian ethnicity and who are likely treated more as “them” than the us who are bathing ourselves in the suds rising off the lather of the Mandela allegory. To be black and Irish is to be a second-class citizen.
