Irish Examiner View: Cure cannot exacerbate the disease

Martin Hong was allegedly attacked in Ballyphehane on Saturday night.

It is deeply reassuring that it is all but impossible to imagine that any person could suffer the fate of murdered George Floyd at the hands and knees of a member of An Garda Síochána. 

That appalling death, and the power of social media, renewed protests about America’s cancer — deep-rooted racism. That President Trump is happy to stoke those embers in the expectation of a November dividend shows how deeply ingrained racism still is in the land of opportunity.

Myriad expressions of that can be seen in tens of thousands of clips posted on various platforms. 

Those clips, the lingua franca of our time, range from petty confrontations to bullying, to serious, violent conflict. Many show how very stupid people can be. Many involve heavy-handed police officers and uncooperative citizens in conflict but may not, hopefully, tell the full story. They do, however, add momentum to racial conflict; they embolden some but intimidate others.

That dynamic was, tragically, seen in this country this weekend when Xuedan (Shelly) Xiong was racially abused and pushed into Dublin’s Royal Canal by teenage louts, some of whom were happy to record and publish their attack on a lone, middle-aged woman. 

Gardaí in Cork are investigating an incident in which two Chinese men were allegedly racially abused and assaulted. 

NUI Galway requested Garda assistance over the racial abuse of an Irishwoman on its campus. Amnesty International Ireland’s executive director Colm O’Gorman said: “It is not enough to be anti-racist but that there is a need to be actively anti-racist...” He also said the Garda definition of abuse was “very, very good”.

Nevertheless, the number of hate crimes recorded fell significantly last year after increasing for five years. Garda figures show there were 250 recorded in 2019, a fall of 26% on 2018. 

Those figures do not refer to hate speech, such as racial or homophobic verbal abuse or name-calling, as those attacks are not a criminal offence. 

The figures for 2020 show an even steeper decline, with 90 recorded to mid-June. Last December, a public consultation on hate-speech laws concluded and Government indicated it intends to strengthen and expand the scope of existing legislation. An early update on that process seems appropriate after recent events.

Legislating against hate-speech is necessary but it is also fraught with risk, the cure may exacerbate the disease. 

Those risks should be weighed before legislation is enacted, especially as there are so many free-for-all platforms in today’s mediascape. After all, those happy to express hatred are unlikely to change those views because they cannot express them publicly. 

Dangerously, they and their fellows may go underground where irrational hostility will fester.

As ever, education is the best shield. After all, how else was the bile and bigotry of an early-career Ian Paisley Sr finally seen for what it was? 

Demographers tell us we are on the cusp of unprecedented population growth and migration, social evolutions that will bring huge challenges. 

If we are to meet them successfully we need to ensure that the canal-attack teenagers remain an unreflective minority and that, in time, they and their parents come to view their actions with no little shame — as the great majority of us do already.