So the DUP is going to report Patrick Yu, of the Council for Ethnic Minorities, because he said that sending ethnic minority children into a loyalist area could result in a second Holy Cross situation. The DUP MLA Jimmy Spratt is said to be “appalled”. He’s spoken to the people of Sandy Row and they are appalled too. “It is a potential hate crime and I will speak to police later with regards to it”.
So Mr Spratt believes that Mr Yu is potentially guilty of a hate crime by expressing concern for the welfare of ethnic minority children. Mmm. Maybe need a little time to work that one out. The usual case is that people here engage in hate crimes against minorities, not vice versa. There are people here who hate Catholics (check the Eleventh night bonfires), people who hate Romanians, people who hate Travellers, people who hate blacks, gays – in fact, anyone who doesn’t conform to their twisted notion of what a good citizen should be. But I can’t recall a gay expressing hatred of straight people, or a black expressing hatred of white people, or a Traveller expressing hatred of settled people. I’m sure you’d find Catholics who hated Protestants, but mercifully they’re relatively infrequent.
Knowing past experience as he does, Mr Yu is entitled to express his views and concerns. In fact, he wouldn’t be doing his job as chair of the Council for Ethnic Minorities if he didn’t. He may of course be wrong: maybe the children from ethnic minorities will be received with open arms by the loyalist people in their new school. But there is certainly no doubt that the children of people from a Catholic background attending Holy Cross were not made welcome by loyalists. Is Jimmy Spratt saying the loyalists in that part of Belfast proved themselves sectarian bigots but there’s none of that down his way?
If that’s the case, who’s been doing the daubing of houses with warnings that they are for locals only, who has been making the lives of Polish people a misery, who are those who greet immigrant newcomers with all the affection holy water might expect in an Orange lodge?
Is it possible that what we have here is a classic case of projection? That is, attributing to others the faults that are most prominent in one’s own world-view? Certainly Mr Yu must be scratching his head and wondering what kind of people live in this tormented little corner of ours.
As one who travels daily by bus down the Donegall Road I see many people from ethnic minorities living in the streets off the Road, walking or getting the bus to work or school and doing so without too much concern.
If they live on the Donegall Road why would they fear going to school on the very same road.
There are bigoted and racist people everywhere but you cannot tar an entire community with the one brush, or is it just possible that some people from certain ethnic backgrounds themselves do not wish to integrate?,
Orangefest
Paul McCauley, ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam
Your comments on racism and sectarianism are particularly relevant and appropriate today, given the death of Paul McCauley in Derry. Paul McCauley never recovered after he suffered severe brain injuries as a direct result of a vicious attack by a group of up to 15 disloyalists in July 2006.
“…What kind of people live in this tormented little corner of ours?”
Just one man was convicted for the attack. The rest of gang…?
Patrick Yu mustn’t know today whether to laugh or cry!
He has just been accused of ‘possibly’ committing a hate crime – by Jimmy Spratt of all people.
Spratt belongs to the DUP who have been discriminating against their neighbours for over 40 years.
He belonged to the 90% Protestant RUC for something like 30 years, a body which had a shameful record in acting against hate crimes, normally just standing watching, or sometimes walking away while hate crimes were being committed.
To be accused of ‘possible’ bigotry by an arch-bigot must be the ultimate insult for any normal person – but then in NI maybe it will be worn as a badge of courage!
At first glance, Esteemed Blogmeister, the parallel between what you are are writing about today and that which the Most Revered Highwayman of the Great Information Highway down here in the Free Southern Stateen is doing this Saturday, may not be obvious.
But, in truth, the central theme is the same: the consolidation of the dominant ‘culture’ in a position of unassailable supremacy. The difference, of course, is that you both approach the issue from a different angle. Whereas you are opposed, and then some; he, on the other hand, is the acknowledged champion of said dominance.
One is referring, of course, to (gasp) Fintan O’Toole and today he is looking back 60 years to an issue of The Bell magazine: what he describes as ‘Ireland’s main intellectual monthly’. It is the latest instalment in his, erm, iconic ‘Ireland in a 100 works of art’ thingy.
The Bell, is right. Only last week the same scribe, aka, The Man who makes up the Minds of the Mindless, was bellyaching about the threat to the Freedom of the Press from the Denis ‘Cruise Ship’ O’Brien dominance of the DOBlin media.
So, whose gentleman-farmer’s-type physog (the sort of ruddy face one imagines one could sew spring potatoes in) is chosen to decorate the article today? Read on, read on, a leitheoir dil/ oh, loyal reader..
Why, it is that of Donat O’Donnell himself. Or, rather ‘Donat O’Donnell’ for that was the then pseudonym of – well, blow me down ! – none other that the namesake and predecessor of DOB (gulp) Conor Cruise O’Brien.
‘Donat O’Donnell’ was new out of TCD at the time and was just beginning to cut his fangs, oops, teeth as a polemicist in the mid-Forties. He had yet to found his formidable franchise, known on a global stage as, erm, Dunkin’ Donats.
Oblivious to irony (not unlike his Fotman) little wonder he grew to look upon himself as, erm, King Dunkin.
The modest boast of that franchise. – then and now – went as follows: ‘It’s nice to know that even as the world changes, Dunkin’ Donats remains the same. Always great , always there, when and where you need it. Here’s to the greatness of sameness’.
According to FOT, his forever loyal Footman, ‘Donat O’Donnell’ who morphed into Cruise O’Brien, ‘later one of the the leading essayist of the late 20th Century’.
Nice one, FOT, nice one. Nary a hint of a whiff of a mench of that bench mark of muzzledom, and prolonger of armed conflict, Section 31. But then, that is one of those incconvenient little factoids which have a habit of getting in the way of The Great Big Theory.
The theory in this case being that The Bell was the death knell of censorship in that Long Kesh of Gaelic-Catholic Imperialism, Ireland of the Mid-Forties. Here’s a sentence quoted with the imprimatur,oops, approval of FOT: a gloomy piece by Arland Ussher on the future of the Irish Language;
‘with the improved and cheaper means of travel and radio-transmission which we may expect after the War, nothing is more certain that that the vernacular will very quickly be swept out of its last hiding-hole’.
In a word: ‘ here’s to the greatness of sameness’.
Don’t you just love the faux-sympathetic choice of g-word there: g for gloomy. Ah, irony. Arland Ushher is right: another bench mark for the contemporary Bell-hops of British Timperialism.
Fact is, the Goliath-brained Fintan O’Toole never had much time or tongue for leprechaun. Rather than decry this supreme show of self-loathing , however, a little l. and understanding might not be out of place.
Consider the following: O’Toole is originally O’Tuathail, meaning in the leprechaun (gulp) blunder. Hence, his sobriquet as the Most Revered Highwayman of the Great Information Highway.
For he sees himself as the modern day re-incarnation of Brennan on the Moor: As the Clancy Brother once shantily sang:
‘They see him with his blunderbuss, all in the midnight chill
Alone, along the King’s highway, rides ‘Willie Brennan’ still.
For ‘Willie Brennan’ read Fintan O’Blunder, boss.
The blunderbuss, of course, is a (gulp) muzzle-loading firearm with a short, large-calibre barrel which is flared at the muzzle and frequently throughout the entire bore’.
But, enough ! Part of this bore is quite enough without straining the patience of Esteemed Blogmeister with, erm, ‘the entire bore’.
Except to conclude / chun crioch a chur le seo: ‘Card membership of Dunkin’ Donats can earn a customer, erm, perks’.
GRMA, but no thanks.
“How to win friends and influence people” by the DUP.
As BelfastDan says, I have no doubt that the majority of people in the Donegall Rd area are happy to live in peace with their neighbours.
The best response from Spratt would surely have been to acknowledge the concerns of the ethnic minority groups and engage in proper dialogue to resolve those concerns.
Instead we have more kneejerk nonsense.
Well said, gio (thinks: I’ll have to break this near-habit…)
First, Perkie, you drew your pistol, and then you drew your rapier…Maith thú!
The DUP is accusing Patrick Yu of a potential “Hate Crime”? This is, of course, the same DUP that is joined at the hip with the Orange Order who make a tradition (and so called “culture”) of committing hate crimes against Irish Catholics throughout the year and every year, by insisting that their parades go near or through areas (I’m sure its just a coincidence that the areas are Catholic…) their not welcome. Who could forget Drumcree or the current “Civil Rights Camp” at Twaddell? And that’s not factoring in the very ethos of the Orange Order is Anti-Catholic.
No one, and I mean no one, on this planet does hypocrisy like the Unionists in this corner of Ireland. They demand respect for their “culture” but yet burn the Irish flag and religious Catholic emblems on Bonfires every 11th July. They parade past Catholic churches (sometimes spitting or urinating on them) playing sectarian tunes. They hold banners to UVF/UDA terrorists but yet cry with outrage if republicans parade with their banners. The list goes on.
Immigrants who come to our society would obviously hold a neutral view when it comes to the history of the troubles here but as time goes on many are seeing what the problem is here with our failed little statelet and that is Unionists, not protestants I want to make that clear, its Unionists. Not all Unionists either. Its the brand of Unionism/Loyalism that are DUP voters and staunch Orange Order supporters, the “WATP” and “No surrender” types, the Gregory Campbell’s is a good description.
Fair play to Patrick Yu. His job is to protect and help ethnic minorities here who certainly need it. No beating about the bush, he is right that a Holy Cross 2 could occur. That’s not to say all the residents of Sandy Row are racists but I ask myself if this was a Catholic school opening in a loyalist area, what would be the reaction? I think we all know.
Patrick Yu did right in speaking about his concerns but when 11th July comes along he shouldn’t be surprised if he finds a picture of himself placed on a loyalist Bonfire along side that of pictures of James Galway, SF/SDLP/Alliance representatives, Catholic religious emblems and, of course, the Irish Flag.
Just when you think the DUP can’t possibly get any more ridiculous they come out with tripe like this. Jesus wept.
‘History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce’ as the bould Karl so famously said.
We are now well into the ‘farce’ period of Irish history. I think there’s been more than enough tragedy in this corner of Ireland, so at least now the DUP/OO are giving us something to laugh about. LOL
The hypocrisy bleeding out of Unionism at the minute is unbelievable (unbelievable being another debate). To cry outrage about Patrick Yu doing his job is blatant hypocrisy when our Unionist MLA’s are more interested in stirring up tensions about the Tri-colour being flown above Stormont than sorting out the austerity crisis which Westminster have laid upon us. Unionism’s priorities seems to have been mislaid lately…somewhere between 1690 and Stormont.
I heard the interview with Patrick Yu on “Talkback” on Friday and I must say his performance was pretty poor : incoherent, rambling and offering no concrete evidence to back up the allegation he had made. It has since been revealed that the existing schools in “The Village” are ethnically mixed, which would suggest that the ethnic minorities in the area have suffered no harassment going to and from school.
I don’t live in the area, but I have a nephew from the same rural Co. Antrim background, who has lived there for the last two years, sharing a house with a Co. Down guy of mixed religious parentage. My nephew frequently talks about the wide ethnic mix of people living in the area and that this trend is increasing, it being particularly handy for people working in the City Hospital.
So, I share Belfastdan’s view : don’t stigmatize an entire community unless you have some evidence to back it up. In this case the evidence seems to point in the other direction.
Willie – good posting. Enlightening and adds another dimension. Grma
Was the attack on a Turkish prisoner a hate crime or just revenge.