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Poster Presentation, 2015 Sociological Association of Ireland, Trinity College Dublin, Arts Annex Building

Getting Away with Murder:

Meaning of Ireland's No Hate Crime Laws in People's Lives

Pierce C. Parker Department of Applied Social Science,

University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 6,

Republic of Ireland <<pierce.parker@ucdconnect.ie>>

+353 86 667 6145

ABSTRACT

The Republic of Ireland (ROI) has no hate crime laws, and any white person is free to attack

any person of colour with fully impunity, but that is not the end of injustice: Any white

person is free to retaliate against any person of colour for simply reporting racist attacks or

filing racial discrimination complaints.

The ROI treats acts of racial discrimination and racist attacks as 'small claims' private

matters, and not as serious life-destroying events. This is manifested by the fact that legal

damage award is limited at €6,349 for racial discrimination cases, and Equality Tribunal

cases cannot advance to the Supreme Court. Due to these limits, moreover, there is no

vibrant legal community that specialises in human rights cases.

Furthermore, many Equality Tribunal Officers used to be asylum seeker case

adjudicators, and they would begin case hearing proceedings with racist assumptions that all

applications are frivolous, and they could no longer perceive people of colour as human

beings with fundamental human rights. Currently almost all Equality Tribunal's Equality

Officers are White Irish who have never themselves experienced racial discrimination or

been the target of racist attacks, and they tend to take up in-group favouritism and ethnic

nepotism positions in racial discrimination case hearings. This article further cites three real-

life experiences of racist attack victims. This article moreover presents the latest statistics

from iReport, and it calls for a creation of an Office of Human Rights with a far-reaching

mandate at the national level and an affirmative action programme to ensure equality for all

people in the ROI. Racialism ruins people’s lives, yet there is nothing currently in Ireland to

remedy this.

Key Words: Racialism in Ireland, Racist Hate Crimes in Ireland, iReport, Racist Attacks in

Ireland, Equality Tribunal, Victimisation, Retaliation.

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1. Introduction

‘The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line’.

― W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

(Good Reads, 2015)

This famous quote was meant for the last century; thus, if there ever was a retro-theme park

dedicated to what it must have been like to live in the 1950s Deep South Jim Crow society,

we really do not have to go far. We are living in one in 2015 in the Republic of Ireland (ROI).

It is often cited that the ROI is the only country in the Western democracies that does not

‘recognise’ hate crimes in its statute books. According to Dr Jennifer Schweppe at the

University of Limerick, ‘Ireland is outstanding as being the only western democracy without

hate crime legislation. We are very far behind. Even if you take our nearest neighbours — we

are 16 years behind Britain and in Northern Ireland it was introduced in 2004, so there's a

huge gap’ (Independent, 2014). Likewise, according to Prof Barbara Perry of the University

of Ontario, ‘the absence of hate crime legislation in Ireland is a glaring anomaly in the

European context, and indeed across the West’ (Minihan, 2014). How did Ireland1 become

like this, and what is the meaning of the absence of any hate crimes legislation in individual

lives? This article explores this question.

The meaning of no hate crimes legislation in Ireland would mean that any white

person is free to attack any person of colour with fully impunity, but that is not the end of

injustice. As this absence of hate crime legislation reverberates through the thick fabrics of

Irish society, any white person is free to victimise or retaliate against any person of colour

for merely reporting a racist attack or filing a complaint of racial discrimination or

harassment. In other words, since no hate crimes existed in Ireland, reporting an act of hate

crime is a ‘crime’. If anyone ever raised the issue of racialism, the following replies are the

standardised excuses:

1) The racist attacks occur because it is Halloween (even if the attacks occur

not on the 31st of October);

2) The victims of hate crimes do not understand the normal Irish way of life or

the Irish culture;

3) ‘Reasonable’ racism is no racism;

4) The majority of Irish people are not racists; therefore, there is no need to

act;

5) The victims are the ones that are being ‘bullies’ for standing up for the

human rights and trying to fight racism;

1 - ‘Ireland’ and ‘Irish’ in this article refer to the ‘Republic of Ireland’ exclusively.

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6) The White Irish would also get attacked in the streets; therefore, only

reporting people of colour being attacked is unfair for the White Irish; and

7) Be brave. Speak up for the Irish – do not try to be politically correct.

Legally, the ROI treats acts of racial discrimination and racist attacks as a ‘small claims’

private matter that must be litigated individually by the victims themselves, and not as

serious life-destroying events. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that legal damage

award is limited to €6,349 for a racial discrimination case, and no racial discrimination case

can advance to the Irish Supreme Court. Here is the exact legal statute that checks hate

crime or discrimination case from advancing to the Irish Supreme Court in the Equal Status

Acts (Office of the Attorney General, 2000):

‘Section 28.—(1) Not later than 42 days from the date of a decision of the

Director under section 25 , the complainant or respondent involved in the claim

may appeal against the decision to the Circuit Court by notice in writing specifying

the grounds of the appeal. (2) In its determination of the appeal, the Circuit Court

may provide for any redress for which provision could have been made by the

decision appealed against (substituting the discretion of the Circuit Court for the

discretion of the Director). (3) No further appeal lies, other than an appeal to the

High Court on a point of law’.

Due to this relatively minuscule €6,349 limit in terms of legal damage awards, moreover,

there is no vibrant barrister or solicitor community whose speciality it is to champion the

cause of fundamental human rights cases. This old British dual legal system

(barrister/solicitor) means, furthermore, that judges automatically assume that a racial

discrimination case is frivolous if it is litigated by the victim representing himself. This Catch-

22 legal reality almost assures that no racial discrimination, harassment or racist attack case

would ever reach even the High Court. Furthermore, the European Court of Human Rights

(ECHR) can refuse to hear racial discrimination cases without having to give any reasons.

Nonetheless, the Equal Status Acts did create a government body to combat racism in

Ireland – the Equality Tribunal.

2. Equality Tribunal

The Equality Tribunal functions as a perfunctory agency imposed by the supra-

national European Union, for the ROI would have had no will or intention of its own to

legislate against discrimination. At Equality Tribunal hearings, the Equality Officers are

unprofessional, often late, not impartial and decide the outcomes of the cases even before

the hearings begin. The Equality Officers are overwhelmingly White, Irish-born,

heterosexual, settled, Catholic who prefer not to see a person of colour empowered who, in

their eyes, are too uppity to actually bring a racial discrimination case against a fellow

White, Irish-born, heterosexual, settled, Catholic. As far as these Equality Officers are

concerned, the concept of ‘equality’ is none of their business. Unbelievable though this

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might sound, this type of ridiculous attitude is very common and frequent. Many Equality

Officers used to be asylum seeker case adjudicators, and they would begin hearings with a

racist assumption that all applicants are liars, and they could no longer perceive people of

colour as human beings with fundamental human rights (Loyal, 2011). Indeed, many

Equality Officers’ career paths would include being asylum seeker case adjudicators

previously. Currently, almost all Equality Tribunal's Equality Officers are white Irish who

have never themselves experienced racial discrimination or been a target of racist attacks in

public, so they would rather take an in-group favouritism and ethnic nepotism position in

racial discrimination case Equality Tribunal hearings. Thus, having this ‘Equality’ Tribunal in

the ROI is in fact tantamount to placing a fox in charge of a hen house. These Equality

Officers already have vested emotional investment in seeing that there is no discrimination

in the ROI, and they have a repertoire of trick questions that would justify instant dismissal

of any discrimination complaints, which would lighten up their workload. One is whether

the racial discrimination or harassment complaint is filed against the individual who

perpetrated the racist act or discrimination, or whether it is filed against the organisation to

which this alleged racist individual belongs. If the victim answers that it is against the

former, the case is dismissed because the Equal Status Acts do not recognise violation of its

statutes by an individual. If the victim responds that it is against the latter, then the Equality

complaint can be again dismissed because the discriminatory act was committed by the

individual, and therefore no shop, organisation, university, company, etc. could possibly be

vicariously responsible for such ‘individual’ act of racism. The prestidigitation here, of

course, is that however the victim responds to this trick question, the Equality Officer would

have the ‘right’ excuse to dismiss the complaint at the hearing. The aim of the Equality

Tribunal ought to be the complete elimination of racialism in Ireland, yet with the absence

of any accountability and its clumsy hearing process, it actually acts to promote inequality

and perpetuate racialism. Meanwhile, hate crime attacks continue all over Ireland.

A case in point is what happened to Labeta Debela. On Thursday, 5th of August, 2010,

he was in hospital after two men attacked him while he was running on the Knockalisheen

Road in Limerick (Clare.fm, 2010), near where he lived. The 22 year-old has been living in

Ireland since April 2009 and has won a number of races in the summer of 2010, including the

half-marathon held as part of the inaugural Great Limerick Run in May 2010 (Haynes, 2010).

He was viciously beaten, was knocked unconscious and admitted to the Mid-Western

Regional hospital in Limerick (Clare.fm, 2010). No criminal or civil action was ever brought

against the two racist attackers. The Limerick Garda was not even aware of the incident

until the next Tuesday, 10th of August, 2010, five days later. Even more perverted, the

online forums are filled with sentiments that Labeta Debela was actually being ‘treated’

preferentially by having the luxury of his attack being reported in the media. For example,

one blogger commented (Boards.ie, 2010):

‘That’s not a Limerick thing, that’s an Irish thing. Plenty of people get

beaten up by scumbags every day of week. Black or white. It’s made headlines

cause he's black. Hope he gets better soon.’ (MunsterGirl)

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Yet another blogger says, it has ‘nothing’ to do with the race:

‘Coach thinks it’s the first athlete that’s ever been attacked? Doubtful. I

don’t think it’s a Limerick thing, and I don’t think it’s a racist thing. Some people

are just thugs. If he was black, they would call him racist names. If he was

overweight they would have called him fatty if he was thin they would have

called him beanpole Goes on and on, people like that just fixate on anything at

all, then attack. Of course, I regret it happened, but don’t think the fact that he

was foreign or an athlete was the reason he was attacked, merely the reason it

was reported in the papers.’ (Phil106)

Thus, in this Deep South Jim Crow retro-theme park that is the Republic of Ireland, the bar

of civic decency is so low that being attacked completely unprovoked while jogging is the

‘norm’ and having this attack reported in the media because of the race of the victim would

constitute receiving a ‘preferential’ treatment. There were some encouraging signs, though,

with the creation of an online-based racism reporting system called, ‘iReport’, only two

years ago on the 11th of July, 2013. Nevertheless, a closer examination of what exactly this

iReport is reveals that it actually encourage continuation of racist attacks because it merely

‘reports’ and does absolutely nothing to catch and prosecute the racist perpetrators.

iReport.ie and the iReport are managed by the European Network Against Racism (ENAR)

Ireland, which coordinates a network of over 40 civil society organisations in Ireland working

in anti-racism (ENAR Ireland, 2015a).

3. iReport According to the ENAR Ireland, iReport.ie is a fully confidential and independent,

civil-society based racist incident reporting system (ENAR Ireland, 2015a), yet in reality it

does a great disservice to the fight against racialism because it stops at reporting and

gathering data about racist acts – nothing more. It is used for human rights monitoring, in

line with best practise as set out by the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human

Rights (ODIHR), and the recommendations from the Council of Europe’s European

Commission on Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) 2013 report on Ireland (ENAR Ireland, 2015a).

The report generates data that is compatible with the monitoring requirements of UN CERD,

the EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), the ODIHR, and other international Human Rights

bodies (ENAR Ireland, 2015a), but it does absolutely nothing to catch and prosecute the

perpetrators of racism. It admits as much on its own website link that iReport should be seen

as neither an alternative to, nor an extension of, the Irish criminal justice system’s own

recording mechanisms. Nevertheless, some are quick to ‘praise’ this spineless system. For

example, Anastasia Crickley, the former Ireland Rapporteur and current vice-president of the

UN Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (UN CERD) states, ‘I would like to

commend all involved in the production of this robust and comprehensive report. The ENAR

Ireland’s work on iReport.ie is of value not only for documenting racism in Ireland, but also

for pointing the way to policy and legislative gaps and issues. It can be a useful tool for

others globally struggling with similar issues’ (ENAR Ireland, 2015a). So who exactly does the

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dirty work of catching and prosecuting the racist attackers? Still nobody. This iReport shows

the following raw descriptive statistics from July to December of 2014 (ENAR Ireland,

2015a):

Table 1. Types of Racist Incidents Type of Racist Incident Frequency

Shouting / Strong Language 70 In the Media 55 On the Internet or Social Media 39 Harassment 37 Being Treated Unfairly or Differently in Public 30 Threats 27 Offensive ‘Joke’ 26 Being Unfairly or Differently Treated Looking for Service 20 Other 16 Physical Assault 14 Ignored, Isolated or Excluded 14 Refused to Let Someone into a Place 9 Refused Service 9 Something Was Damaged 8 Offensive Graffiti 6 Unfair Workplace Conditions 6 By Phone or Text 5 Finding Somewhere to Live 4 Spitting 3 They Targeted Someone’s Headscarf or Veil 3 Sexual Harassment 1

Total 402 Source: 5

th & 6

th Quarterly Reports of iReports.ie, ENAR Ireland, 2015a

Table 2. Age of Victims Age Number of Victims

Under 14 10 Between 14 and 17 3 Between 18 and 25 21 Between 26 and 35 44 Between 36 and 55 25 55 or Over 5 Mixed Age Group 49 No Answer 25

Total 182 Sources for Table 2 and Table 3:

5th

& 6th

Quarterly Reports of iReports.ie, ENAR Ireland, 2015a

Table 3. Ethnicity of Victims Ethnicity Number of Victims

Roma 16 Asian – Chinese 7 Asian – Other 22 Black – African 43 Black – Other 16 Muslim 19 Traveller 14 White – Irish 14 White – Other 10 EU National 11 Non-EU National 17 Immigrant 23 Jewish 16 Don’t Know 2 Mixed Background 14 Other 7 No Answer 13

Total 264

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The ethnicity profile of the victims is almost predictable according to the findings from the

1988 – 1989 National Survey of intergroup attitudes in which fifty-nine stimulus categories

were tested for brisk responses to elicit dispositions on 1,005 randomly-selected

respondents (Mac Gréil, 1996, p. xi). It was tested for brisk responses deliberately since

attitudes are essentially pre-reflection (Mac Gréil, 1996, p. 64), and most prejudices are

implicit and are not seen as prejudices even by those who hold them (Mac Gréil, 1996, p.

463). Just as almost all of our dispositions and values, prejudices are always pre-reflectional

(Mac Gréil, 1996, p. 463). Those with visible phenotypical racial differences had scored

among the highest on the Mean Social Distance (‘MSD’) based on a slightly-modified version

of the Bogardus Social Distance Scale (Bogardus, 1925) to meet the changes in modern Irish

society (Mac Gréil, 1996, p. 64) as shown in Table 4:

Table 4. Selected Social Distance Scores of 59 Overall Stimulus Categories (N = 1,005) Rank and Stimulus Category MSD Welcome to Kinship Deny Citizenship n

59. Provisional IRA (Highest) 5.049 9.3% 50.3% 991 54. Gay People 3.793 12.5 25.8 999 52. Travellers 3.681 13.5 10.0 1000 50. Muslims 3.420 20.6 24.0 1000 49. Pakistanis 3.404 24.2 25.9 998 47. Black Americans 3.212 26.2 20.7 998 45. Nigerians 3.131 29.1 21.3 1000 43. Indians (Non-American) 3.108 31.0 21.3 1000 39. Blacks 3.019 29.7 18.4 1004 38. Chinese 3.009 30.9 18.8 1002 37. Africans 2.916 30.1 16.0 1003 35. Coloureds 2.715 34.3 14.9 1003 1. Roman Catholics (Lowest) 1.057 96.8 0.2 1001 Note: 1. The correlation coefficient between MSD and the ‘Welcome to Kinship’ score is 0.98. 2. The higher the MSD, the more despised the stimulus category is. Source: Pages 66, 67 and 71, Mac Gréil, M. (1996). Prejudice in Ireland Revisited. Table 5. Selected Social Distance Scores and Reasons for Not Welcoming to Kinship in

Percentage of 59 Overall Stimulus Categories (N = 1,005) Rank and Stimulus Category MSD Reasons: Racial Cultural / Ethnic n

59. Provisional IRA (Highest) 5.049 0.0% 1.0% 884 52. Travellers 3.681 0.0 2.3 844 50. Muslims 3.420 3.3 20.3 777 49. Pakistanis 3.404 24.8 51.6 737 47. Black Americans 3.212 39.4 38.6 715 45. Nigerians 3.131 32.5 47.3 692 43. Indians (Non-American) 3.108 19.3 54.4 673 39. Blacks 3.019 46.2 37.5 691 38. Chinese 3.009 17.0 57.4 672 37. Africans 2.916 35.5 39.7 688 35. Coloureds 2.715 49.6 35.1 641 1. Roman Catholics (Lowest) 1.057 0.0 3.3 30 Note: The higher the MSD, the more despised the stimulus category is. Source: Pages 66, 67, 71 and 75, Mac Gréil, M. (1996). Prejudice in Ireland Revisited.

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Here, the ‘principle of propinquity’ applies (Mac Gréil, 1996, p. 68). The stimulus category

groups that are deemed the furthermost from the respondent in respect to religion, colour,

ethnic similarity, political ideology and social acceptance score the highest on the MSD (Mac

Gréil, 1996, p. 68). Moreover, these nine most despised ethno-racial stimulus categories in

Ireland are targeted because they tend to carry ‘double identity’ that would compel the

respondent to distance him- or herself from them based on at least two of the eight possible

reasons for not welcoming them into their kinship: Religion, racial, political, cultural/ethnic,

economic, socially not acceptable, way of life or other. They almost always chose the ‘racial’

and ‘cultural/ethnic’ combination as the highest or the second highest reason in percentage

for the rejection (Mac Gréil, 1996, pp. 73-77):

Table 6. Stimulus Categories Classified by Number of Perceived Double Identity Differences Rank and Stimulus Category MSD First and Second Reasons for Refusing into Kinship

50. Muslims 3.420 ‘Religion’ and ‘Cultural / Ethnic’ 49. Pakistanis 3.404 ‘Cultural / Ethnic’ and ‘Racial’ 47. Black Americans 3.212 ‘Cultural / Ethnic’ and ‘Racial’ 45. Nigerians 3.131 ‘Cultural / Ethnic’ and ‘Racial’ 43. Indians (Non-American) 3.108 ‘Cultural / Ethnic’ and ‘Racial’ 39. Blacks 3.019 ‘Racial’ and ‘Cultural / Ethnic’ 38. Chinese 3.009 ‘Cultural / Ethnic’ and ‘Racial’ 37. Africans 2.916 ‘Cultural / Ethnic’ and ‘Racial’ 35. Coloureds 2.715 ‘Racial’ and ‘Cultural / Ethnic’ Note: The higher the MSD, the more despised the stimulus category is. Source: Page 77, Mac Gréil, 1996. 4. Are the White Irish Really Victims in This Narrative - Again?

No, hardly. In fact, they are the perpetrators. Of the 182 reports from the iReport

website, the recorded ethnicity of perpetrators is predominantly ‘White Irish’ (74 per cent),

and White Irish also appear in groups of perpetrators with at least one person or people of

other White or unspecified ‘Other’ background (ENAR Ireland, 2015a). Asian perpetrators

are identified in two reports while Black perpetrators are also found in two reports (ENAR

Ireland, 2015a). For once, the White Irish are not the victims because the percentage of

‘White Irish’ perpetrators goes up to 84 per cent if the media cases are excluded from the

overall calculation (ENAR Ireland, 2015a). Single perpetrators were involved in 59 per cent of

reports (ENAR Ireland, 2015a). Groups of two to four racist perpetrators are cited in 30

reports, excluding media, while groups of five to ten racist perpetrators are cited in ten

reports (European Network Against Racism Ireland, 2015a). Racist perpetrators aged under

18 are recorded in 6 per cent of reports who are predominantly male and also acting alone

or in small groups of up to four racist perpetrators (ENAR Ireland, 2015a). Perpetrators aged

between 18 and 25 are involved in eight per cent of reports while perpetrators in the ’36 to

55’ age category make up 23 per cent followed by those in the 26 to 35 years’ age and the

‘Mixed Ages’ categories at 14 per cent, respectively (ENAR Ireland, 2015a).

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Table 7. Age Categories of Racist Perpetrators Age Category Per Cent

Under 18 6 18 to 25 8 26 to 35 14 36 to 55 23

Mixed Ages 14 Other / No Answer 35

Total 100 Source: 5

th & 6

th Quarterly Reports of iReports.ie, ENAR Ireland, 2015a

While the White Irish are automatically reactionary in portraying themselves always as being

the victims of perpetual injustice in this world, these descriptive numbers clearly indicate

that it is the opposite in this particular narrative. How did it become like this?

It is no secret that people would become insecure if their values and identity are

perceived to be ‘attacked’ by ‘offensive ethnocentrism’ (Mac Gréil, 1996, p. 95) from

without. Ethnocentrism in Ireland has mostly been ‘defensive ethnocentrism’ and a

reactionary response to the long history of the British colonial ‘offensive ethnocentrism’

(Mac Gréil, 1996, p. 96). As the 1916 Centennial celebrations approach in 2016, it must be

noted that this ‘defensive ethnocentrism’, disguised as nationalism, is a doubled-edged

sword. Lack of national respect and patriotism would, of course, result in a sense of national

denigration, but the other side of the blade on this double-edged sword is the sense of

xenophobic white supremacy over other races, cultures and ethnicities (Mac Gréil, 1996, p.

101), which often also manifests itself as national respect and patriotism and which often

serves as the justification for systematic ethnic prejudice and persecution (Mac Gréil, 1996,

p. 101). The numbers from iReport clearly bespeak the latter.

5. Meaning of Absence of Hate Crime Legislations and Subsequent Victimisation

The iReport.ie reports tell the impact of hate crimes on the victims and their

behaviour, but also, through the ripple effects of secondary victimisation (i. e., retaliation for

merely reporting the racist events) on community relations which can deteriorate as a result

(ENAR Ireland, 2015b). No other human factor, but racism, would bring about such human

behaviour as unprovoked attacks on a fellow human being in the streets. Furthermore, in

the minds of a racist, merely reporting a racist attack incident is the ‘crime’, not the attack

itself. Thus, the victims of racist attacks are guaranteed to lose out no matter what, and

there is nothing in Ireland that can be done against these self-righteous, passive moral

entrepreneurs who are anti-anti-racialists. This is exactly what it means when the Irish say

that the majority of them are decent; therefore, there is no need to act against racialism.

These insidious events of secondary victimisation and retaliations could never be properly

categorised and reported in any tables that show the impact of racialism on victims, and

Table 8 only attempts to list the emotional adjectives that the victims expressed at the time

of these racist events.

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Table 8. Emotional Impacts of Racism on Victims

Numbers Reported Emotional Impacts 30 Ashamed/Shamed/Humiliated/Embarrassed/Disappointed 30 Angry/Enraged/Fuming/Furious/Infuriated 28 Depressed/Upset/Deflated/Demoralised/Sad/Low 25 Shocked/Appalled/Horrified 20 Disgusted/Disturbed 15 Awful/Horrible/Bad 14 Annoyed/Frustrated 13 Afraid/Scared/Fearful/Terrified 12 Hurt/Damaged/Traumatised/Abused 11 Physically Sick/Nauseous 10 Belittled/Worthless/Undermined/Unimportant 9 Unprotected/Unsafe/Vulnerable/Defenceless 9 Isolated/Disconnected/Lost 8 Helpless/Powerless 7 Uncertain/Unsure/Uneasy/Uncomfortable/Nervous 6 Insulted/Offended 6 Anxious/Worried/Confused/Agitated 5 Gutted/Heartbroken/Hopeless/Despairing 4 Intimidated/Bullied/Cheated 3 Threatened/Compromised

265 Total Source: 5

th & 6

th Quarterly Reports of iReports.ie, ENAR Ireland, 2015a

Here is a real-life example of how an experience of racism and victimisation could

never be neatly categorised: An American student at a national university in Limerick

witnessed eggs being pelted against Pengxiang Zuo, Cao Xu and two other Chinese students

and racially abused on its campus on the 21st of October, 2011. This student was an Irish

Research Council Postgraduate Scholar, conducting a research on new EU10 Eastern

European and Baltic State migrant workers in the ROI at the time. This American student is

not a white student, and he himself had been a victim of an egg-pelting attack on the

campus previously. This national university in Limerick has no standardised procedure to

report hate crimes or racial discrimination on its campus. Nor does it have any one person or

an office of civil rights whose job it is to ensure racial equality, to accept, investigate, catch

and discipline those that are perpetrating racial discrimination or these racist attacks on its

campus. So the American student reported this racist attack incident on the university’s

intranet system, and it was picked up and reported by the university’s campus newspaper,

An Focal. Instead of catching and disciplining the racist attackers, the university advocate

then disenables the email account of the American student in retaliation without any due

process. Furthermore, in the late January of 2012, this American student discovers by

accident that his name had been mysteriously removed from the list of potential tutors from

the university’s student union website and naturally suspected victimisation and retaliation.

When the American student quizzed the administrator of this student union website and

made enquiries as to why his name had been removed without any due process, notification

or reasons, the website administrator would not and could not give a plausible response for

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the delisting of his name, which was a clear violation of the university’s employee and

student codes of conduct. Nevertheless, such violation meant nothing to the website

administrator. To her, this uppity non-white student would have to be punished for making

the campus newspaper report on the social reality of the racist attack incident on the 21st of

October, 2011. After all, White Irish are also attacked on campus; why should the Chinese

receive any ‘preferential’ treatment by having their victimhood reported by An Focal? In her

diabolical racialist mind, this was not ‘fair’ for the White Irish, thus this non-white American

student must be punished by being excluded from the potential tutor list on her website.

The American student then submitted a formal racial discrimination and retaliation

complaint against this website administrator. Instead of investigating and disciplining this

website administrator, the university advocate then promptly expels the American student

from the university without any due process or reasoned findings in April 2012. This

complicit anti-anti-racialist university advocate could only see that this American male

student was not a white person, so he must be ‘bullying’ the White Irish female website

administrator, no matter what the facts were. In this particular case, moreover, the

university advocate could trump on the ‘gender inequality’ while completely white-washing

the blatant racial inequality on the account of racist perpetrator’s female gender. The

American student then filed a complaint against the university with the Equality Tribunal.

At the Equality Tribunal hearing in September 2012, the Equality Officer was one

hour late, and as soon as the hearing began, he immediately ganged up against the

American student with the two solicitors from the Holmes O'Malley Sexton Solicitors who

were hired by the university and began arguing with the student. The American student

sensed that the Equality Officer had already decided the outcome of the case even before

the hearing had begun. This Equality Officer knew that the university discriminated against

the American student and victimised him when it expelled him from the university without

any due process or reasoned findings for simply reporting a racist attack incident on its

campus, but the Equality Office just did not wish to favour this uppity non-white person by

letting him win the case, who was blatantly haughty enough to actually bring a racial

discrimination case against this national university. Thus, it took this Equality Officer nine

months to write his decision letter. His deliberate strategy, of course, was that by delaying

his decision letter as long as he could, the American student would give up on the case and

return to America. On the decision letter, the Equality Officer states that this American

student was a pathological ‘bully’ who liked to mis-treat (white) women, thus was fully

deserving of the expulsion from the university without due process or any reasoned findings.

Desperate for a reason to gang up with the university side, moreover, this Equality Officer

recites a delusion that so long as this American student was allowed to graduate from the

university, there was no racial discrimination or victimisation when the fact was that the

student was specifically never allowed to graduate. Needless to say, the Equality Officer

conducted absolutely no investigation any type during those nine months. The Equality

Officer dismissed all submissions and testimonies from the American student – who

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represented himself at the hearing due to the high cost of hiring a solicitor – as ‘lies’ and

stated that it was none of his business to look into the details of the expulsion. The Office of

the Ombudsman cannot accept or investigates this case because the expulsion occurred 30

days before this national university in Limerick came under the remit of its jurisdiction. A

local newspaper then fabricates a report about this event in a delusional way by citing that

this American student was rightfully expelled from the university as a ‘bully’ because he

maliciously posted a white female student to be a ‘sex slave’ on Facebook when no such

even had ever taken place. This Limerick newspaper did not report the facts, but simply re-

printed a script instructed from the university verbatim, and thus, the result was this

delusional reporting.

A racism experience such as this could never be reported on the iReport website

because the events had occurred before the creation of the iReport website, due to the

retaliatory nature of the events, and iReport cannot recognise these subtle but conspiracy-

based anti-anti-racism acts on its reporting system. In the current climate of no hate crime

legislation or a concrete affirmative action programme in Ireland, there is nothing this

American student could do to remedy this injustice legally against these acts of human rights

violations. This is the social reality in Ireland that we live in today.

Finally, here is yet another racist attack experience of Úna Kavanagh, a Kerry woman,

who has Vietnamese heritage, and who was racially abused and spat on in Dublin city centre

completely unprovoked in the evening of the 30th of May, 2013 (The Journal, 2013). On

Parnell Street in Dublin, Úna Kavanagh was waiting for a friend outside a hotel when she

noticed a group of about seven teenagers walking towards her (The Journal, 2013). As this

groups of teenagers came upon her, one of them shouted, ‘And you’re a fucking chink’,

another grabbed her face, shook it and spat on her (The Journal, 2013). The whole racist

attack lasted only a few seconds, and her story only came to light because she decided to

write about this experience on her blog (The Journal, 2013). Note here that she is not

Chinese, she has no Chinese ancestry, she probably has never been to China, and never

spoke a word of Chinese in her life, but this is of no concern to the racist attackers, to whom

she was just another chink polluting Ireland. In other words, because of the racialism, she

became Chinese (‘Chink’) in Ireland. Of course, this was not her first racist attack experience:

This 21 year-old gaeilgeoir is subjected to racist verbal attacks ‘pretty much on a weekly

basis’ (The Journal, 2013). She confirmed she has spoken to Gardaí at Store Street in Dublin

in relation to the racist incident (The Journal, 2013), but no one has been caught or

prosecuted in relation to this racist attack. Experiences of racism by Labeta Debela, the

American student in Limerick and Úna Kavanagh destroyed their lives completely, yet the

current Irish judicial system has no mechanism set in place to rectify these.

5. Conclusions In conclusion, one can see that living in the Republic of Ireland is exactly like living in

the pre-Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s Deep South Jim Crow society. This is because

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ROI has never grown out of its reactionary victimhood mentality of the 19th century, even as

it has metamorphosed into the perpetrator a long time ago. Racism is now confirmed as a

consistent fact of daily life for all racialised groups in Ireland (ENAR Ireland, 2015a). As such,

what is the wisdom of having the iReport system when it actually acts to encourage the

continuation of racist attacks? If people of colour are attacked, humiliated, or discriminated,

they are on their own to stand up for human rights. If they file a legitimate racial

discrimination or harassment complaint, it is a ground for summary expulsion from

universities, companies and any organisations without any due process or reasoned findings.

This being the social reality, reporting acts of racism understandably will incur a reluctance

to risk exposing oneself to further victimisation (retaliation) by sharing identifying details,

which are almost certain to be used against the reporting person in later stage. It has been

well researched that those who are deeply prejudiced or racialist tend to deny that they are

prejudiced or racialist (Allport, 1954, p. 502). In almost all communities where the subject of

racism is brought up, the first response is denial (Allport, 1954, p. 334). This may be that

they are so habituated to the class, caste and race lines that they perceive them as perfectly

‘normal’ (Allport, 1954, p. 334). In fact, they might mis-perceive that so long as there were

no riots, there is no racial problem (Allport, 1954, p. 334).

Needless to say, the descriptive statistics from iReport, and the additional data on

the repercussions of hate crimes, support the urgent need for the Dáil Éireann to introduce

hate crime legislations. For such legislation to be truly effective, it must be accompanied by

an array of other measures, such as penalties for victimisation (retaliation), conspiracy to

cover up, fabrication of facts, etc. to combat racial segregation, discrimination, retaliation

and institutional racism across a range of organisations such as universities, hospitals,

corporations, etc. In so doing, Ireland would be barely meeting many of its international

obligations and recommendations, including those of the 2013 European Commission

against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) report on Ireland (ENAR Ireland, 2015b). The first step

is abolishment of the Equality Tribunal and the creation of the Office of Human Rights,

modelled after the office of civil rights in the United States. The Office of Human Rights will

ensure the apprehension and successful prosecution of racist attackers and discriminators,

both individual and collective. The second step is to enact affirmative action programmes

modelled after those practiced in India and the United States. This positive discrimination

programme would ensue that ROI would be a colour-blind and an equal society, and it is

committed to rectify the wrong that it has deliberately perpetuated in the past against the

people of colour and other racialised groups and restore justice.

In closing, it must be noted that paradoxically, the sentiment that received the

highest support in Mac Gréil’s 1988-1989 national survey was Item 6 that asserts that ‘the

Black person deserves exactly the same social privileges as the White person’, and it had no

significant difference from the 1972-1973 scores (Mac Gréil, 1996, p. 135). It practically

received a lofty, unanimous support (Mac Gréil, 1996, p. 135), yet on the everyday ground-

level, the social reality in Ireland today is the exact opposite. Therefore, it is high time now

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that the ROI reconcile its lofty ideals with the daily ground-level social reality with a dose of

potent legal remedies. There is nothing extraordinary about such a legal remedy. As the

triumph of the ‘Yes’ votes in the recent 2015 gay marriage equality referendum signals,

when properly prompted, the ROI is fully capable of displaying its progressive undercurrents

to the world. The constitution of the USSR had once promised all sorts of lofty entitlements:

Freedom of speech, free worship, free association, etc., but as Soviet citizens learned, these

lofty ideals are worthless at the ground-level in the absence of mechanisms to enforce them.

The ROI now must live up to its lofty ideals in its 1916 Proclamation by properly putting in

place concrete enforcement mechanisms.

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Loyal, Steven. (2011) Understanding immigration in Irealand: State, capital and labour in a

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