The Opportunity of Now

Image by Esther Ann, published with thanks.

When Barack Obama spoke earlier this week about the unrest seen in the US since the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, he managed, as few others can, to carve out a clearing in the midst of all the grief. “As tragic as these few weeks have been,” he said, “it's an incredible opportunity to awaken.” And while we continue to look on from afar at police brutality in the US, where a thinly veiled racist (never mind full-blown narcissist) currently holds power, so much has seemed so hopeless. But if there are any valuables to be dragged out of the burning husk of recent times, it is that this moment, as Obama said, presents a once in a lifetime chance for real change.

To be honest, at first, I felt a little uncomfortable about how exercised many of the white Irish people in my circle had become over the death of George Floyd. I had never heard those same people, to the best of my knowledge, rant and rave, let alone protest, about Direct Provision, or systematic racism at home against multiple minorities in any way. There were some extremely odd Op-Eds too by white Irish establishment voices about Black Lives Matter. Every time I opened Twitter another brand seemed to be co-opting the movement.

But what was really importantly breaking through was the various experiences of racism here. Each personal story peeling back layers upon layers of our inherent prejudice. It has quickly become a conversation beyond colour too, but of difference, of our treatment of all minorities, of that notion of their being ‘Irish’ and ‘non-Irish’.

And while the brutality in the US has lit the touchpaper; it is the 200-watt bulb turned on all our own bigotry that affords us the real opportunity to make this a pivotal moment.

White Irish people have never wanted to think of ourselves as racist, we were the downtrodden-turned-prolific-emigrants-turned-cuddly-globe-trotters who’ve been every nation’s friend. Until you scratch the surface. When our homogeneous background and ignorance gets quickly found out. What we have received in the last week is a massive awakening to our own issues, to the casual xenophobia that has been largely vaguely tolerated, and more often than not, just roundly ignored.

But things are just not as they were anymore. We find ourselves at possibly one of the most positive junctures we have ever been at as a relatively young nation. And if we want to channel some of that “opportunity” message, we have a chance now to listen, to learn, and to decide what we want to do about it. To school our children about our multi-ethnic makeup, yes ideally in a systematic way, but we don’t need to wait for the Board of Education to do it. We have the chance to finally make dismantling of a discriminatory refugee system a central political issue, and to really, truthfully, look at our reluctance to fully embrace a multiracial society, including keeping more asylum seekers out than we welcome in.

In some ways, I think we have spent so much time trying to reconcile our past history, and perhaps our own shame at our poverty, subversion and oppression, that we have forgotten to pay attention to what we want to become. And this extraordinary crossroads, of a pandemic just suddenly retracting all our normality like a giant tide going out, has laid bare so much that we got distracted from. It has partly brought us to this place, and we just can’t go back.

“There is a change in mindset that’s taking place, a greater recognition, that we can do better.”

This is true of all we have been through over these past months. We can, we must strive for better. For people of colour, for those who come here in need of refuge, for our travelling communities, for women who are in danger at home and who in many ways are a whole sex still striving for equality too. It is not just one conversation anymore, or about whose injustices are greater. We need to imagine what we want to become as a collective. And make a personal promise to not let go of the clarity this historic moment has afforded us before the tide comes in and carries us all away again.

Jessie Collins, June 2020.