Black Africans ‘most likely to suffer racism in Ireland’(Media Monitor)

As reported in the Irish Times on March 13,2005 by prof Maureen Reddy (Professor of race relations from Northeastern University in Boston).Prof Reddy Concludes:

1. A hierarchy of attitudes exists to different ethnic groups
2. Racism is expressed largely in terms of a willingness to work, with those excluded from Irish society characterised as lazy
3. In a survey of Irish attitudes, 63% of those polled felt travellers were not like the rest of the Irish population, with 23% admitting to being “unfavourably disposed” to them. Black Africans were the only other community found to provoke similarly negative responses, with those questioned citing a culture of laziness and fraud.
4. The research found that negative attitudes to work were applied to both the Traveller and the black community. At the other end of the scale, Chinese immigrants were generally portrayed in a favourable way, having a stereotypical “hard-working” character
5. Although immigration is a new phenomenon in Ireland, a hierarchy of attitudes is already solidifying. According to Reddy: “The Irish are at the top and recent African immigrants at the bottom.” In between, in roughly descending order are white European immigrants, the established Asian community, travellers and Roma people
6. Refers to a 1997 episode of Father Ted to illustrate the differing degrees of acceptance immigrant groups have found in Ireland. “Satire can easily deal with comic representations of the Chinese-Irish community whereas there is no similar treatment of the African community. It would not be possible to portray such a comical representation of the black community without straying into conscious racism.”