A very worrying stream of racism running through social media these days

by Dr. Richard Martin

I went for a walk around St. Mary’s track in Castlebar recently on a bright May Monday evening.

Walking, thinking and listening to the soundtrack of the O.C., I got lost in the past.

I started thinking about when I sat the Leaving Cert in 2005. I went to medical school that September.

I thought about the summer of 2007 when I spent some time in Aarhus. I had a few weeks to kill at the end of that summer. I just looked up the Ryanair website and booked the cheapest flight I could find to mainland Europe. I got a €10 flight to Billund in Denmark on the Jutland. It turns out there’s nothing there. It’s just an industrial estate where Lego is made.

After goofing around the terminal for a while trying to size the place up I asked the woman at the desk where’s the best place to go in Denmark? She took one look at me, grinned and said you should try Aarhus.

I knew the place. Well. Not the place. I knew the name. The Seamus Heaney poem – The Tollund Man…. I will go to Aarhus to see the Tollund Man. It felt like the best move, so I took the train to Aarhus. After two hours or so I landed in Aarhus and I did what every Irish person does on their travels. I went to the nearest Irish bar. I found it on the Frederiksgade.

I settled in and had a few drinks. It was a lively enough spot. Danes and Irish. No strangers to the booze.

A few drinks in, an Irish lad invited me over to his table. A few Irish lads were drinking in a snug. A nice lad. He had a good heart.

It turned out he was managing a pub. We got talking and he said why don’t you stick around? Work here for a while. Yeah, why not.

I didn’t know it then but he was a heroin addict. He told me shortly before I went home.

It was like a thunderbolt when he told me. We were in the pub on our own opening up one morning and he suddenly confided in me. I still remember it. He didn’t even know why he told me. He had to get out of Limerick to try and break the cycle.

He moved to Denmark and swapped heroin with alcohol. The problem with changing countries and running from your problems is the first person you meet on your travels is yourself. He’s dead now.

That night I found a room over the pub and stayed there for the remainder of my time in Aarhus.

Ireland played a friendly game against Denmark that August in Aarhus. Of course the base of operations for the Irish fans was the Tír na nÓg. The craic was ninety. And I mean ninety.

I spent the few hours before the game with pensioners from Donegal dressed as St. Patrick. We all walked to the stadium as one large group. A few hundred or so. One big family.

Funny enough, it was the one night of Steve Staunton’s reign as manager that things worked out for him. Ireland won 4-nil. That night he was the gaffer. The gaffer indeed.

Towards the end of the game, there was a bit of hassle amongst the Irish fans. I sat back and took it in. One fan had a flag with the tricolour and a Chelsea crest.

Another fan saw it and took umbrage and confronted him over it and words were exchanged. The fracas was quickly squashed by a Dublin lad who jumped in and pulled them apart. And that was that.

Later in the pub, I bumped into the Ireland/Chelsea supporter. We got talking. He was London Irish and had attended Ireland games since the Charlton era of the mid ‘80s. He was upset as I recall. It was the first time he’d been singled out like that at an Ireland game.

At one stage I went to the jacks and I came across another confrontation. The Dublin lad was remonstrating with the man who started the quarrel in the stand.

Remonstrating is a nice way of putting it. He was told in no uncertain terms to never do that again.

We’re Irish fans, not a bunch of mindless hooligans on tour. He put the fear of god into him. The buck just took it in and nodded and prayed to the almighty that he might return to the bar in one piece.

Of course, I jumped in and tried to separate them and told them to calm down. Mind your own business he told me. He put the fear of god into me as well. I have to say that encounter always stayed with me. The northsider had the final say.

He was a veteran of Ireland away games and he showed leadership that night. There’s an unwritten code amongst Irish supporters. We carry ourselves a certain way when we travel.

Walking around St. Mary's track, I asked myself a hypothetical question. Today, right now, if there was an Ireland away game on the continent and a young Irish black lad was amongst the supporters, would he get grief from his own?

Would someone be stupid enough and ignorant enough to kick something off? In times past I would’ve seen it as a total impossibility. No way. Now? I’m not sure.

Lately, on Facebook, all I see is racism. The general theme is Ireland for the Irish and so on, ignoring the fact that if non-nationals left our hospitals our health care system would collapse.

Just over the weekend I saw Suad Mooge receive a tirade of abuse on Facebook. She is the current Dublin Rose. She was born in Sligo and raised in Dublin and is a medical scientist. And an extraordinarily beautiful woman. And Irish.

Some Irish people seem to have great difficulty in accepting her as an Irish person because of her Somali background but their reasoning is completely illogical and racist. I really fervently hope Suad Mooge wins the Rose of Tralee.

Who are the icons of Dublin? Paul McGrath, Phil Lynott and Jason Sherlock.

No one has a monopoly on Irishness. They just don’t.

For hundreds of years we were scattered to the four corners of the globe in search of food, shelter and work. It was OK for us – the Irish - to seek refuge but not others. Some have short memories.

I don’t know what it’s like for other people, but I have more than a few regrets. I can say this though. Being a racist isn’t one of them.