Comedian: Racist abuse of husband no laughing matter

A trip home for comedian Tara Flynn and her American-born husband was a chance for both to enjoy the beauty of her hometown of Kinsale.

But neither of them reckoned on him coming face to face with the ugly side of one of the most scenic towns in Ireland.

Carl Austin, an African American from Los Angeles, was subjected to racist abuse one night recently while walking the family dog.

“I sat chatting with my mum but 20 minutes later, my husband returned,” explains Tara. “He looked angry. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I haven’t been called those names in a while’. A group of young people standing outside a bar in the centre of town had shouted racist epithets at him. He was visibly rattled.”

Shocked and mortified, Tara tempered her desire to crack heads and instead created a video of a ‘racist B&B’ which has already received 120,000 views on YouTube.

It is a seriously funny expose of unspoken racism found in the land of céad míle fáilte and reveals the paradox of how it lurks in the most welcoming of places. She even persuaded Carl to take part.

“The words those guys used were deliberately offensive. I cannot even repeat them, they were so vile. My husband is a tolerant person. He just stared the name callers down and they — like most cowards — shut up when faced with this silent challenge. He tried to laugh it off in the re-telling, saying it wasn’t his first time and that he’d heard worse. But that’s not the point. I was mortified. Stunned. Fuming.

“I was fuming and, on the night, I wanted to confront them but then I decided that what was needed was a different kind of response. I wanted to mock them and to show them up for what they are.”

Her friends and family were equally shocked that such behaviour could occur in Kinsale.

“For a small Irish town, it’s always been relatively progressive: even in my teens, when Ireland was deeply conservative, in Kinsale gay couples lived out and proud, religious people socialised with those who had no interest in church, and we had tourists rich and poor coming from all over the world.

“The people in the video and the people who helped us make it are all from Kinsale. They were disgusted at what happened, and it’s our way of saying that we’re not going to put up with it,” explains Tara.

“My Mum who lives in Kinsale, gave me great support. She said it was a bit like weeds: if you don’t tackle them they will get out of hand, so we tackled them.”

While the response to her online sketch and blog has been overwhelmingly positive, Tara has received some obnoxious comments. Yesterday, one blogger even issued her with a thinly veiled murderous threat. “White women who date black men are asking for trouble,” he wrote. “There is a good chance that these perverted women will end up in a shallow grave.”