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Hazel Chu Elected Lord Mayor of Dublin

Zosimus

Zosimus

PI Member
May 25, 2020
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DrPat2 said:
Seems others use it differently. A playwright on Arena on Pravda Radio 1 now talking about balance: Peter Daly says he has written a play about horrific racial violence perpetrated on black people by Irish emigrants to the US in July 1863 who he says are 'our forebearers' ( news to me - I didn't know they were my ancestors ) and decided to have 4 black actors, 3 white actors and 1 actor of colour in his play ! So for Daly at least it seems more specific.


Pravda reports that Daly says "I feel on safe ground to say that we have all said the wrong thing at one stage or another. Or used language that was once considered acceptable, but through education and understanding, we now know is not. I’ll go so far as to say we have all, at one stage, thought the wrong thing, until we learned it was wrong - by unlearning what we had been told previously."

www.rte.ie

Four Days In July: Playwright Peter Daly on his Druid Debut

Playwright Peter Daly writes for Culture about Four Days In July, his contribution to the Druid Debuts series, which takes place online throughout July via Zoom.
www.rte.ie www.rte.ie

Is white the absence of colour, in the style of a Pollock painting, I wonder? Are 'whites' basically colourless?
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Irish people have a great need for validation from other oppressed peoples for a suite of psychological reasons. Being seen as another colonial oppressor hurts us on a deep level that wouldn't hurt a Swede or Czech, and the shame of being seen as such leads some Irishmen to dredge up our 'dark past' for the sake of making a pre-emptive confession to clear our name in the eyes of the coloured world. I believe that people like Daly don't so much want to denigrate the image of Ireland as to receive absolution for the nation's sins by confessing them. The sad fact is that when you tell another tribe that you are an evil race with an evil history their goodwill for you diminishes rather than increases. Pale-skinned liberals who who denounce their own race to dark folk increase the resentment of the blacks rather than impress them with their own magnanimity.

I find this eagerness to ransack the sins of our diaspora creepy and ignoble. Do people in Britain weep over the fact that John Wilkes Booth was an English immigrant? Are the good Protestant people of Ulster riven with shame over Andrew Jackson's role in the Trail of Tears? Do the Welsh soul-search over Jefferson Davis's pride in his Cymric ancestry?
 
D

DrPat2

PI Member
Aug 29, 2018
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7,558
Zosimus said:
Irish people have a great need for validation from other oppressed peoples for a suite of psychological reasons. Being seen as another colonial oppressor hurts us on a deep level that wouldn't hurt a Swede or Czech, and the shame of being seen as such leads some Irishmen to dredge up our 'dark past' for the sake of making a pre-emptive confession to clear our name in the eyes of the coloured world. I believe that people like Daly don't so much want to denigrate the image of Ireland as to receive absolution for the nation's sins by confessing them. The sad fact is that when you tell another tribe that you are an evil race with an evil history their goodwill for you diminishes rather than increases. Pale-skinned liberals who who denounce their own race to dark folk increase the resentment of the blacks rather than impress them with their own magnanimity.

I find this eagerness to ransack the sins of our diaspora creepy and ignoble. Do people in Britain weep over the fact that John Wilkes Booth was an English immigrant? Are the good Protestant people of Ulster riven with shame over Andrew Jackson's role in the Trail of Tears? Do the Welsh soul-search over Jefferson Davis's pride in his Cymric ancestry?
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Freudian slip there - you need to unlearn that...
 
C

Charlottesweb

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Apr 23, 2020
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Irish citizen born in ireland , raised and educated in ireland, gets a largely ceremonial role in the council, of which she is already an elected member of. Much ado about nothing really.
 
Zosimus

Zosimus

PI Member
May 25, 2020
797
1,619
Charlottesweb said:
Irish citizen born in ireland , raised and educated in ireland, gets a largely ceremonial role in the council, of which she is already an elected member of. Much ado about nothing really.
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She saw herself as 'Irish-born Chinese' and lamented the assimilation of Chinese immigrants into Irish culture until all of a sudden it became racist to question whether she was as Irish as you or me.

If you acknowledge that someone from a foreign culture who refuses to assimilate into your own culture is as Irish as yourself you've admitted that Irish culture is no more Irish than Chinese. The logic is clear: to say that Hazel Chu is as Irish as yourself is to say that there is no such thing as Irish culture. In telling us to regard immigrants as equally Irish as ourselves they're telling us to make void the historic nation.

In some ways it is worse that the role is largely ceremonial. It makes plain that this is a symbolic act of domination.
 
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