A couple of weeks ago I was sitting on a bus watching a young black woman struggle to get her buggy and young child off the bus. I got up and helped her, and when returning to my seat I am ashamed to say I heard the words “nigger lover”.
I turned around but the coward, like the rest of the bus, looked out of the window. Later that day I couldn’t help but think how racist we have become as a culture.
Don’t people remember the signs in B&B’s in any major city in England: “No Dogs, No Packies (another racist term) and no Irish allowed”? Have we become that ignorant to the plight of the poor refugees who roam the world looking for somewhere to take them in? Where would the Irish be if America had closed Ellis Island all those years ago?
Then I got to thinking about closer to home and in particular the treatment of the traveling communities. At the moment, the horrible trait of race hate is aimed at refugees and muslims, before that it was the jewish, black people, the Irish, Catholics, Communists…on and on I could go.
All of it sickens my stomach to its core and these witch hunts should disgust everyone.
My thoughts, though, turned to the travelers – romanys, gypsies – whatever term is the order of the day. Why, especially in Europe, is this group of people subject to some of the worst race hatred? It has never let up through the centuries.
In the Second World War, the atrocities handed out to the jewish people were harrowing beyond belief, but we never talk of the thousands of Romany people who joined them in the gas chambers. Why is that? What is it that makes people despise them so much?
They have a tendency to lift things that don’t belong to them, they go around offering their services on various outside jobs and take your money for a shabby job done, they pay for everything in cash no matter the cost. Any trouble in the community is dealt with by their elders, they drink, they have barbaric bare knuckle fights, they have traditions and laws that we as outsiders can’t comprehend, and yet to be honest I have nothing but the utmost respect for the modern day traveler.
If we all kept our own cash, threw away the plastic, how long would it take for the power to shift from the banks of this world? They drink, they fight! Wake up people, take a walk round any major city in Britain or Ireland at closing time and show me the difference.
How often are homes or cars broken into, the contents sold for drugs etc, cars burned out by joyriders. I’m sorry, but if travellers steal or take anything they make money from it, they’re not that stupid.
I was once taken to a PoitÃn Still down in West Cork by two travellers who had given me a lift as I hitched round Ireland. Anyway, around 7am the next morning I was kicked awake by the Garda – I had been lying face down in a gravel car park in Bantry with the weight of the world kicking seven shades of shite out my fragile body.
The loose gravel had stuck to my face and when I rubbed it off I had more pock marks than a Dalmatian has spots. The Garda laughed. While he was laughing I suddenly realised that it had to be the travellers who had left me there.
I panicked, but there was no need. My cash, my ID, my walkman – it was all there, the only thing that had gone was my senses as I struggled to cope with the mother of all hangovers.
They may litter and leave a mess, but again take a walk round any major city suburbs and tell me the difference. We may not understand the travellers nor them us, but isn’t it about time we let them and any other race that wants to come to Ireland be free to live their lives?
Thoughts over.