Is racism on the way back?

The game was in Finglas. The lads involved in running the team we were playing were decent fellas, the way they usually tend to be. The match started in a suitably friendly spirit, but it wasn’t long before controversy erupted. Things first got a little bit heated when the referee started barking at our goalkeeper. Being Brazilian he didn’t immediately follow what was being said and the official took umbrage. He wasn’t prepared to listen when we tried to explain the problem to him: he doesn’t understand. For a horrible minute it looked as if was going to send the perplexed net-minder off.

It was only later that we realised that maybe the match official had a problem with what he probably thought of as rather exotic looking players. Ten minutes into the second half, the game turned a bit rough and tackles started to fly in. Our playmaker Badr – a deep lying striker – is Moroccan. He’s one of those players who enjoys running with the ball and he has the skill to carry it off, going through gaps that no one has a right to, jinking and spinning and generally teasing the opposition into errors. He tends to get kicked a lot in the process and it’s often on the fourth or fifth bite that he goes down.
He went on one of those runs: having had lumps taken out of him, another tackle went in and he eventually hit the turf. And the referee did one of those ridiculous ‘diving’ signals that have become common in the Premier League. We were speechless. Could this guy be for real? He should have dished out a yellow card or two for persistent fouling. Instead he handed a front-foot position to the opposition and let them at it with our player licking his wounds on the ground.
Upfront, we have a Brazilian striker – a big, tough, robust fellow who is good at taking the ball in and holding it up, he’s no wuss. He’s happy to run at people too. Three times he battled. Three times he was hacked down. Three times the referee did the same idiotic ‘diving’ motion. It was as if he had a tic. And he did it again when another of our non-Irish players was felled by a heavy boot. I didn’t want to believe it, but there was no other conclusion you could come to: this was racism.
It was in the air. As we argued the toss on an especially dumb decision, one of the opposition midfielders offered his forthright opinion on our No.9. “Fucking foreign cunt,” he said. I don’t think the referee heard him. But if he had, I suspect he might have agreed.
It’s not new, any of this, but there was some kind of hope, in an Ireland of next-to-full employment that these knee jerk resentments might wither for lack of use and die. But the times have changed. So, among a certain coterie, has the public mood.
Thankfully, we have moved on sufficiently that there’s no prospect of going back to the old mono-cultural days. People from all over Africa have put down roots here. Chinese and Brazilians too. And citizens from different parts of Europe, who come in all sorts of diverse shades and hues from ghostly pale through sallow to dark brown and black. But with unemployment on the rise and dole queues lengthening, some of the unreconstructed natives have become openly hostile again. We saw a microcosm of it on Saturday afternoon.
The chilling thing is that the referee and the eloquent No.6 on the opposing team were merely articulating a view that has been evident in official circles for a long time. I have observed in deep embarrassment, as black people have been singled out by the Gardai at Dublin airport, in the streets, at road traffic check points. Are you, as a black person in Ireland, more likely on a per capita basis, to be stopped, questioned and searched by Gardai than a white person? Without a doubt. But there is nothing an independent bystander can usefully achieve by butting in and asking a cop what he – or she – is up to.
It runs deeper. The University of Limerick’s Centre for Peace and Development Studies published a report last week on the State-run Knockalisheen Centre, which accommodates 233 asylum seekers under the PD-inspired Direct Provision arrangements – which essentially dictate that those seeking asylum are given food rather than money to buy food and are effectively incarcerated at the pleasure of the state in conditions that, in many respects, are little better than a prison.
The independent report described the centre as an “inhumane environment”. And it went on to criticise the use of the facility to house people on a long term basis. “The facilities at Knockalisheen are suitable only for short term accommodation,” the report stated. “Compelling people to live with their children in such a facility for years on end undermines their long-term capacity to manage their own lives and to become wider participants in wider society.”
Why are asylum seekers treated this way? I think the referee captured the attitude of the State just about perfectly.
But what, we will be asked, about the case of Pamela Izevbekhai? Does she not prove how untrustworthy these foreigners are? Eh? Well, the long drawn out battle which she has fought to prevent herself and her two daughters being deported to Nigeria looks doomed, following the revelation that forged documents were used to support her case. Her husband says that he arranged for the documents to be forged because it was impossible to get the legitimate documents without making a substantial payment.
In desperation, people do desperate things. That is understandable.
From a legal perspective, it is hard to see how she can avoid deportation. But that this is the case underlines the hopeless limitations of the Asylum process. It should be down to this: is there a genuine danger that Pamela’s daughters Naomi and Jemima might be subject to female circumcision – or, more properly described, genital mutilation – if they are returned to Nigeria? If the answer is yes, then they and their mother should be granted asylum.
But the barriers which have been set are so high, and the official attitude is so hostile that the burden of proof is unreasonable. That, too, I’m afraid, is a form of racism.
(Now about the return of poodle rock...)