JyellowL,
rapper and songwriter

I came here when I was fourteen, so I was basically thrown into the Junior Cert cycle. Coming into a place where everything was new to me, there was so much cultural nuance that I couldn’t have been aware of. A lot of friendship groups had already been formed by the time I entered school, so I found myself gravitating more towards other people who looked like me.

What I learnt here is that, when you’re a teenager, a lot of your communication is rooted in banter. There would be a lot of jokes that had racial undertones. At the time, it was just seen as, “It is what it is.” When someone made a racist remark, you’d just shrug it off as banter. You have to develop thick skin at a young age.

Even though you’re aware it’s wrong, you just get on with it. It wasn’t really a thing that bothered me too much, until I started getting a bit older. Then I was like, “Hold on. Some of this stuff isn’t actually okay to say.” And then I started getting more aware of myself. And more confident in myself as well, to be like, “No, actually...”

It’s an identity crisis, because, on one hand, you feel like, “This is my home.” But then, in those moments when someone says something racist to you, maliciously, you’re made to feel like you’re an outsider, in the place that you call home.

There’s a difference between ignorance-based racism and malicious racism. Ignorance-based racism is definitely more curable. But there are also malicious people in the world, and they’re always going to be there.

But what’s more in our control, is being able to have conversations like this, and reaching understandings. For some people, these experiences may be so foreign to them, they might not even think that they’re being ignorant. So you have conversations, enlighten people, and then you reach a stage of compassion. It’s from the compassion that we can actually have positive growth and progression.

Read Part 1 of 100 Voices: #AllAgainstRacism, in the current issue of Hot Press. Available to pick up in shops now, or to order online below:

Special thanks to the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission for their support in this project.