Honestly, I’m not racist, I just don’t really like Jews

Naas councillor Darren Scully has claimed his remarks about black Africans were open to misinterpretation, but Shaun Connolly believes they weren’t misinterpreted, but racist and Fine Gael should have got shot of him immediately

JEWS are banned from reading this column. Jewish people, in my experience, are aggressive and bad mannered, and God, don’t they just love to play the “Jew Card” at every opportunity?

Obviously, this does not make me an anti-semite — I have no problem with Jews reading one of the other columnists — like that nice Mick Clifford for instance — just don’t expect me to pander to those awful Jews any longer.

Now, if I was actually dumb enough to think like that and said it publicly, you would quite rightly expect me to be sacked, and in any normal organisation I would be — but not, it seems, if I was a member of the dysfunctional disgrace that Fine Gael clearly is.

Naas councillor Darren Scully is still a card-carrying party member, who may or may not face some form of disciplinary measures, maybe in a month or so — if Enda Kenny and his mates can actually be bothered to do anything at all about their colleague’s outrageously racist remarks attacking “Black Africans” and refusing to represent them. Presumably, “White Africans” — like those nice people who invented Apartheid, are just dandy in Mr Scully’s eyes and worthy of their full democratic rights.

If Scully had, for instance, refused to represent Jews rather than people with an African background because they were in his opinion “aggressive, bad mannered” and prone to play the “race card” his future in Fine Gael would have been counted in minutes not months or years.

It seems Fine Gael, and in reality a section of Irish society in general, has a sliding scale system when it comes to discrimination — no, you can’t say those slurs against Jews, that would be totally unacceptable, but black Africans? Well, it’s not really so serious is it — we all know what they’re like really, don’t we?

This ugly double standard is particularly repugnant given the level of constant and institutional demonisation Irish people have experienced in Britain and the US for much of the past two centuries.

This quote from a Victorian edition of Punch magazine was typical of attitudes rife at the time, and which lingered to some degree right up to recent decades: “A creature manifestly between the Gorilla and the Negro is to be met with in some of the lowest districts of London and Liverpool by adventurous explorers. It comes from Ireland, whence it has contrived to migrate; it belongs in fact to a tribe of Irish savages: the lowest species of Irish Yahoo. When conversing with its kind it talks a sort of gibberish. It is, moreover, a climbing animal, and may sometimes be seen ascending a ladder laden with a hod of bricks.”

Though not quite as spectacularly offensive, sloppy stereotyping still abounds in Ireland today as was proved by bookmakers Paddy Power who tried to make a quick buck out of the Scully controversy by sending out a press release with odds on whether Ireland’s only black mayor Rotimi Adebari would take over with the heading: “Is The Brother Going To Work It Out....In Naas?”.

Now, I’m presuming this clunky little brain-wave was not conceived as a tribute to the largely forgotten Chemical Brothers track from the mid-90’s rave scene, but rather because Mr Adebari is originally from Nigeria and, hey, all blacks are brothers, right?

Hopefully such casual ignorance will recede with time as Ireland embraces its new diversity after remaining a drab, white mono-culture until about 15 years ago. Where as British society, though still racist in many attitudes, is relatively speaking now the least racist country in Europe after surviving and adjusting to the growing pains that came with mass immigration from the early 1950 when the infamous “No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs” signs polluted English lodging houses.

Britain, though hardly perfect, is now in many ways more of a rainbow nation than even the US, as American neighbourhoods still tend to be heavily racially segregated due to economics rather than out and out racism.

Not so in London, where social housing means even the poshest neighbourhoods are usually only a few blocks away from council estates, and one-in-four residents were born outside Britain.

This has prompted the increasingly grumpy and unfunny comedian John Cleese to complain that London is no longer an English city — yes it is John, it’s just no longer a white city, and all the more energetic, vibrant and successful because of that.

Those kind of “I’m not a racist, but....” comments are redolent of the Scully case, as he claims he is not a racist, yet, presumably he also encountered “aggressiveness and bad manners” from white Irish people, but did not see fit to tar an entire race with those characteristics and refuse to represent them as he did with black Africans.

The Taoiseach’s refusal to act rapidly and forcefully by expelling Scully from Fine Gael is disgraceful and highlights his lack of political emotional intelligence.

It was left to a Labour TD and a Naas resident to report Scully to the gardaí for investigation under the Incitement to Hatred Act while the story went global.

Fianna Fáil made world wide headlines for putting up with a clown of a Taoiseach forced to deny he was drunk on the radio, while Fine Gael garner international attention for keeping in their ranks a mayor who refuses to represent people if they happen to have an African background — no wonder this country looks like such a basket case to the rest of the world.

Scully insists he does not mind talking to Africans if they happen to be driving him in a taxi — how wonderfully liberal of him! But he draws the line at doing what he was elected to do and represent all the people in his constituency, which is as illogical as his complaint that Africans “played the race card”, telling him: “Oh yeah, you will help white people, but you don’t help black people” — which is precisely what he boasted about doing.

After the furore Scully, who also has form for trying to demonise young lone parents, quit as Mayor and offered an apology in which he claimed his remarks were open to “misinterpretation”. They weren’t “misinterpreted” — they were RACIST, and any decent and truly democratic political party would have got shot of him immediately.