Alison O'Connor: Is it enough simply not to be racist? Should we offer more support?

Harry and Meghan holding their son, Archie. Their recent interview has presented an opportunity for us all to take stock of our attitudes.

Amid all the controversy in the wake of the interview with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle there was one comment which really stood out. It was indeed remarkable in this context, but it was also one that you could easily imagine being made in so many Irish households.

In the interview Meghan said that when she was pregnant with her son, Archie, there were “conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born”. Prince Harry also said that racism “played a large part” of why the couple left the UK, especially the British press which he believes are bigoted.

It is all too easy to imagine similar behind the scenes speculation in a typical white Irish family where a son or a daughter has a partner who is black or brown and expecting a baby. A typical Irish family is not the royal family, where the Queen is the head of the Commonwealth, with its many former colonies.

However, what the interview has done is given an opportunity for us all to take stock of our attitudes and to look around at what happens in our daily lives. Is it enough simply not to be racist? Do we recognise our own white privilege? Should we be making more of an effort to offer allyship to black people, rather than passive support?

In the case of Meghan Markle’s pregnancy the sense is that the unnamed royal was framing the question negatively — that if the child was not born white it might be some sort of stain on the House of Windsor. This is not to say that if a child is born into a white family, who would be a different colour from the rest of the family members, including one parent, that it is not worthy of constructive discussion.

Protesters take a knee on Flatbush Avenue in front of New York City police officers during a solidarity rally for George Floyd in Brooklyn.

The Oprah Winfrey interview was aired in the same week as the trial began of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the death of George Floyd in May of last year. As we know that resulted in widespread protests, not just in the US. The Black Lives Matter Movement now has a strong global presence.

Slow changes

There have been changes, but there is a long way to go. On a very simple level, it is difficult not to be struck while doing something as simple as flicking through a fashion magazine, or a magazine that comes with your newspaper at the weekend, that black and brown people are almost always now featured. As a white person I certainly, I’m ashamed to say, would not have been really aware of that previous glaring absence.

How much do we reflect on what it is like to be the only person, or one of a handful, in a place of employment, that is not white? Do we talk to our children about what it might be like to be a child with black or brown skin, in a predominantly white school?

Look at our national parliament, at our Seanad. There is nothing other than white faces. Look at the media — whether it is the people who bring you the news, the presenters, or those who are invited on to give an expert opinion, all those faces are almost exclusively white, bar the very odd exception.

One of the memories that remains with me from that wonderful Late Late Toy Show before Christmas was the little black girl who told Ryan Tubridy one of the reasons she loved a particular doll, which had a black skin tone, was because it had hair like hers. White children grow up with the acceptance that toys and games, and characters in TV programmes, will almost exclusively reflect their own likeness.

Hazel Chu has experienced horrific racism.

Look at the experiences of Dublin Lord Mayor Hazel Chu, born in Ireland to parents from Hong Kong. She repeatedly finds herself on the sharp end of horrible racism. It is called out by others, but the public support could certainly go further. The recent far right anti-lockdown protests have shown the growth and volume of these groups and how stirring up racism is one of their key targets.

In the most recent edition of The Sunday Times Magazine the English footballer Ian Wright talks about the Kerry teenager who sent him racially abusive private messages on Instagram. He pleaded guilty last month to harassing the TV star. The boy had called Wright a N***** and threatened to kill him by coughing the Covid virus in his face. The piece points out that the judge described the teenager as merely “naïve” and cited Wright’s earlier public statement of forgiveness to justify not handing out a prison sentence.

Former footballer Ian Wright.

Wright graphically outlined the toll the episode took on him. “I had to forgive the kid for myself. It is like when you listen to people whose families have been killed by police, and they’ve forgiven them for their own peace of mind ... But the judge didn’t think about how I felt in my own house, being abused like that. It affected me for days. The judge had an opportunity to say ‘This is not going to be tolerated.’ Instead he let him off scot free. That’s white privilege.” 

A family that is grappling with a son and brother being shot dead by police is that of George Nkencho. That family say he was suffering from mental health issues. He was shot outside his home in a Dublin suburb in December. His sister, Gloria, said recently that only a small minority of people were trying to create division on race grounds arising from her brother’s death, trying to cause a war “involving black against white”.

The incident took place in the aftermath of an alleged assault by Mr Nkencho at a local shop. Over a period of time gardaí tried to interact with Mr Nkencho. Shots were fired a number of times by the Garda Armed Support Unit after he appeared to lunge at gardaí with a knife. This incident could surely not be considered fully investigated without the element of race being examined, key to what might be examined is the issue of unconscious bias.

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While we’ve been influenced by the Black Lives Matter movement we’ve also lived beside the significant churning up of horrible racism in the UK brought about by Brexit, not to mention Donald Trump’s clarion calls to white supremacists in the US. But even without these malevolent impacts black people who were born here, or have lived here, will tell you that Irish people can fancy themselves being very welcoming to all, but it doesn’t take much to scratch beneath the surface for what can often be thinly obscured racism.

A book that is a challenging read, but well worth it if you are interested in this subject, is Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. Author Reni Eddo-Lodge writes scathingly about how white people live a life oblivious to the fact that their skin colour is the norm and all others deviate from it.

“They’ve never had to think about what it means, in power terms, to be white, so any time they’re vaguely reminded of this fact, they interpret it as an affront. Their eyes glaze over in boredom or widen in indignation. Their mouths start twitching as they get defensive. Their throats open up as they try to interrupt, itching to talk over you but not really listen, because they need to let you know that you’ve got it wrong.”