Until receently I would have said that harassment was virtually exclusively on the unionist/loyalist side. I have been told that this is no longer the case. That said, I do not know to what extent. The penchant of loyalists for knocking about with British neo-fascists is well known and racism is de rigeur in loyalist circles. The same cannot be said of the republicans, though there are a few lone wing-nut nativists such as Gerry McGeough. Perhaps his supporters, all thirty two of them, take a dim view of immigrants.
A Filipino hospital worker was attacked on the Falls Road a few years ago and the community came out and held a vigil in their support. Meanwhile, the Chinese community - who can scarcely be described as immigrants having lived in the North for decades - have been getting their houses burnt out all by loyalists. Immigrants are still much more welcome on the Falls Road than the Shankill. Two Poles live beside my father in west Belfast and there is absolutely no harassment going on. I was there at the weekend.
Casual racism might be an issue but it's very hard to say.
The North of Ireland is particularly well-equipped to deal with these problems. Identity politics and crying long ago took the place of meaningful political action and so if racism is rising, either in reality or in perception, there will be plenty of pointless new jobs created to re-education the ignorant masses. No doubt any instances of racism discovered on the republican side will be used to further the mind-crunchingly stupid view of the conflict in the North being a 'tribal' issue. I can see official anti-racism becoming a very handy weapon for the establishment.
One peculiarity is that the police are now recruiting in Poland in order to fiddle the numbers - Poles will constitute Catholics thus allowing it to present itself as having more and more Catholic officers. There has been much talk of how this may fuel an anti-Polish sentiment among nationalists/republicans. I have yet to see any evidence of it, though.
The situation in the South is very different.
Jason.
On 2007-03-26 16:47:15 +0100 Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Please do!
>
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