Fighting racism from the bottom up

international | racism & migration related issues | opinion/analysis Monday March 21, 2005 12:59 by shoegirl shoegirl at eircom dot net

Discussion on handling general racism on a day to day basis.

I'd really appreciate your opinion on this.

I have some friends who I regularly socialise with and we all have good, except for one thing: they are all vocally and unequivocal racists. Up until recently this mainly consisted of them admitting that they didn't like it, but egged on by the particularly nasty remark that one of them makes "fucking foreigners" (and lots of abusive use of traditional derogatory terms for people of African and Asian descent) and noticed that finally the others among them are starting to use the same abusive language to describe non-white people in ireland, and utterly generalise about them.

Now the other day, I heard one "fucking foreigners" too many and I said I was extremely offended by the term as it was just plain offensive. This descended into an all out battle where I was shouted down (though accused of not letting anybody else get a word in) by all 3 and now I am accused of being "ignorant." Now it eventually cooled off with 2 of the friends who pretty much I think decided they are not going to use such abusive language again, but with the remaining friend (who unfortuantely is the one I have been closest to) has more or less said she is not going to stop her now daily spewing of hate about non-irish people and I can lump it if I wish to remain friends.

Now this is putting me in a dilemma. I do feel increasingly that misinformation is being spread by the local media, unchallenged and then repeated around from person to person as "fact." In fact as we all know too well, the data on the real story of immigration into Ireland is woefully incomplete and diffult to find. My favourite fairy tale at the moment is the fantasy that a bunch of Africans (cannot remember the country of origin) were dispersed to Listowel and the "deported" 2 weeks later. (Now who ever heard of somebody being moved to a town and then dispersed 2 weeks later - this takes years to happen). Apparently the fictional asylum-seekers got no less than 16 fictional teenagers pregnant! My friends believe this as FACT! And there is no telling them otherwise. They believe it because they want to believe, and they regard my strong respect for people of all nations and colour as equal as "my opinion" - something to be dismissed at will.

Now have any of you had similar problems with family or acquaintances and how have you dealt with it? I don't know if I can go on listening to the barrage of racial hate from friend number 3, and they don't listen at all to the fact that if we continue to entertain deliberate misinformation and racial hate about people coming to live in Ireland, we might eventually end up with parties like the UK Independence Party, the Austrian "Freedom Party" and the Dutch far right.

I'm very upset by all this and its a real dilemma to me. My gut feeling really tells me to drop my bigot associates,
because I feel that their racism is something ugly that says something about them. And that something is not very nice. All my life I'm glad to say, I've been surrounded by people who even when cynical, were not demeaning, insulting and fuelled by irrational hate. I am finding this very difficult to cope with, and particularly the accusations that somehow I am the "ignoramus." I would slit my wrists before I would feel an iota of guilt for making every effort to correct some of the dreadful scare-stories that have spewed around the country in recent years. My friends keep trying to tell me that "everybody" feels the same and I am just "wrong." Am I out of my mind or what? I am really in two minds whether or not to drop these xenophobic friends. Any suggestions?