No Irish Need Apply

 

The racial discrimination in Canada—and the US and Britain too—has become more egregious now than it ever was in the days of the Civil Rights marches. Today I note this line in a communication from the League of Canadian Poets about an upcoming contest:

“Each submission much be accompanied by an entry fee of $20. Discounted entry fees ($5) are available to Black, Indigenous, racialized, and LGBTQI2S+ poets.”

Such statements are  common now. They are blatant violations of both the US Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Which shows the sad truth that such charters in the end only protect already-favoured groups. What is needed is a change in hearts. They are in open violation of the principles of Martin Luther King Jr., that we must judge one another not by the colour of our skins, but by the content of our character—the same moral Jesus gives us in the parable of the Good Samaritan.  They are open violations of the principle on which the US, and modern liberal democracy, was founded, that “all men are created equal,” and have the right to equal protection under the law. But that is another example of how such high-sounding principles end up protecting only already-favoured groups. Somehow the US, demanding equality for themselves vis a vis England’s ruling classes, saw no immediate need to free their slaves. 

We thought we had gotten beyond all this in the 1960s; it has all come raging back. It leads to the conclusion from such bitter experience that all people are inherently racist and xenophobic. This is a tendency we must all consciously fight against, as we must always fight against aspects of our animal nature. We are herd animals. Small children will often show a bad reaction to an unfamiliar skin colour; as a dog will. It is a survival instinct to be suspicious of the outsider, the stranger. Couple to that the universal need for scapegoats.

If we forget it, or, yet more stupidly, start claiming that only one particular racial group is subject to racist feelings, we end up doing horrible things to one another. We end up in Holocausts.