Racism in U.L.

Average Mike

I find that everytime this is brought up people are very dismissive. People ridicule the person brave enough to stand up for their culture and tell them to stop whinging online and go to student services.

Myself and my brother are both black students in UL. In the library my brother had monkey nuts hurled at him and monkey noises shouted in his direction by some bunch of jocks..

On the sunday of the all ireland final myself and my brother and a few more friends were told to we want to take off our Kilkenny jerseys fairly lively before we got a hidin' off some Tipp fans. one of them laughed and said "BLACK cats is right."

completely unacceptable in my opinion.

Agent_99

I feel for you Average Mike, Racism has no right to be anywhere in a modern society let alone a University were you would expect the students would have a level of education to be a bit more advanced than yob culture. I consider that because Ireland has until recently been a "white" culture there are a lot of country fellas that are diversity challenged and first time away from home for the first time, they do not know how to behave, just ask anyone in the student villages.

If you are over weight, wear glasses or have a limp, these same bullies will cause hassle. Report it to the college authorities!
Good Luck

Leroy Lita

hakuna matata

TheTownie

I'm completely supportive of the fact that such events are completely unacceptable but after reading your post I was left thinking what are you hoping to achieve from your post in this particular forum? Is it purely you venting your frustrations?

One thing you must factor in is that getting the qualifications to enter university is a very very limited measure of intelligence, mainly memory capacity so to assume that by attending university all attendees would be sensible, respectful and treat everyone as equals is being plain naive.

Unfortunately there is no way of filtering bullies or racists out of UL before they get there so really the only effective solution is to report the offenders straight away to security and point them out. Obviously thats easier said than done as that could just escalate the problem between you and the offenders. The only thing that is for sure is that it won't be solved by posting on a forum about it but your fully entitled to give your opinion here and vent your frustrations buddy.

Sid_Justice

That **** is unacceptable

decembersun77

Average Mike wrote: »

I find that everytime this is brought up people are very dismissive. People ridicule the person brave enough to stand up for their culture and tell them to stop whinging online and go to student services.

Myself and my brother are both black students in UL. In the library my brother had monkey nuts hurled at him and monkey noises shouted in his direction by some bunch of jocks..

On the sunday of the all ireland final myself and my brother and a few more friends were told to we want to take off our Kilkenny jerseys fairly lively before we got a hidin' off some Tipp fans. one of them laughed and said "BLACK cats is right."

completely unacceptable in my opinion.

Im very sorry about that. That is unacceptable. The best thing you can do is ignore them, don't give in to it and be happy in yourself, don't let them bring you down because that is what they want. Show them they don't matter and be happy and do your own thing.

There is racism here in dublin in the universities some of the people i know who are foreign students here one of them in particular is from india and he gets racism in his college. The people who are racist are scared of differance and maybe they see it as a threat its better to feel sorry for people like that because they are abit ignorant or/and insecure. It might be the way they were raised or other factors also.

skeleton_boy

Agent_99 wrote: »

I feel for you Average Mike, Racism has no right to be anywhere in a modern society let alone a University were you would expect the students would have a level of education to be a bit more advanced than yob culture. I consider that because Ireland has until recently been a "white" culture there are a lot of country fellas that are diversity challenged and first time away from home for the first time, they do not know how to behave, just ask anyone in the student villages.

If you are over weight, wear glasses or have a limp, these same bullies will cause hassle. Report it to the college authorities!
Good Luck

Way to stereotype :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

@ O.P , sorry to hear this dude, it's totally unacceptable.

Mrmoe

Average Mike wrote: »

I find that everytime this is brought up people are very dismissive. People ridicule the person brave enough to stand up for their culture and tell them to stop whinging online and go to student services.

Myself and my brother are both black students in UL. In the library my brother had monkey nuts hurled at him and monkey noises shouted in his direction by some bunch of jocks..

On the sunday of the all ireland final myself and my brother and a few more friends were told to we want to take off our Kilkenny jerseys fairly lively before we got a hidin' off some Tipp fans. one of them laughed and said "BLACK cats is right."

completely unacceptable in my opinion.

On what day/time did this happen in the Library?

CiaranMT

That sounds ridiculous and you should have reported it straight away. There's plenty of security lads around doing nothing much else. Never heard of such blatant racism on campus, worst I've heard are your typical casual racism jokes :pac:

dellas1979

Im sorry you and your brother had to endure that - personally I think it is all our responsibility to ensure things like this dont happen.

If I had been there and heard someone say those things, I would have gone beserk at them. Absolutely beserk. I would have said something. It is ALL our problems and responsibilities to react if someone is saying these things.

cson

I'm tempted to make the call that this may be first post shenanigans but I will give the benefit of the doubt for now.

In any case;

"People ridicule the person brave enough to stand up for their culture and tell them to stop whinging online and go to student services."

You have answered your own question there. Whilst highlighting the problem online here will create awareness, a more substantial step in the right direction is to (a) confront the perpetrators - you'd be surprised how quickly some of these tough men will go back into their box when challenged on something like this and/or (b) inform Library/University/Students Union staff as to the issue.

PeakOutput

Average Mike wrote: »

Myself and my brother are both black students in UL. In the library my brother had monkey nuts hurled at him and monkey noises shouted in his direction by some bunch of jocks..

were in teh library and when and who did you report it to?

On the sunday of the all ireland final myself and my brother and a few more friends were told to we want to take off our Kilkenny jerseys fairly lively before we got a hidin' off some Tipp fans. one of them laughed and said "BLACK cats is right."

were did this happen?

of course its unacceptable but i honestly dont believe it happened, if it did report it to someone in authority instead of posting anonymously on teh interwebz

dellas1979

Its posts like the one above, that lets racism run rampant in this country.
It is alive and kicking.

I walked past a man once (a blackman was walking ahead of me) and he looked right at me and said "see those ni**ers? Id string them up by their bootlaces". That was about 3 years ago. Is my story more real because Im Irish?

Its a ****ing disgrace.

munsterdevil

PeakOutput wrote: »

were in teh library and when and who did you report it to?



were did this happen?

of course its unacceptable but i honestly dont believe it happened, if it did report it to someone in authority instead of posting anonymously on teh interwebz

+1

TheTownie

dellas1979 wrote: »

Its posts like the one above, that lets racism run rampant in this country.

Man a minority of morons does not mean racism is running rampant. You show me a country without any form of racism and I'll show you a lier. Its not exactly far fetched to presume Ireland would be closer to the bottom of a list of countries with racism problems than the top. Ireland has never been more multi-cultural. Foreigners wouldn't stay here for long if we had a rampant racism problem. If I got a euro for every time I've been told how welcoming Irish people are I wouldn't be attending UL !

PeakOutput

dellas1979 wrote: »

Its posts like the one above, that lets racism run rampant in this country.

:rolleyes:

im well aware that there is racism in ireland and i have the stitches to prove it, that dosnt mean i believe that people were throwing nuts at people and making monkey noises in the library but even if it did happen, what use is this thread?

fcussen

TheTownie wrote: »

I'm completely supportive of the fact that such events are completely unacceptable but after reading your post I was left thinking what are you hoping to achieve from your post in this particular forum? Is it purely you venting your frustrations?

One thing you must factor in is that getting the qualifications to enter university is a very very limited measure of intelligence, mainly memory capacity so to assume that by attending university all attendees would be sensible, respectful and treat everyone as equals is being plain naive.

Unfortunately there is no way of filtering bullies or racists out of UL before they get there so really the only effective solution is to report the offenders straight away to security and point them out. Obviously thats easier said than done as that could just escalate the problem between you and the offenders. The only thing that is for sure is that it won't be solved by posting on a forum about it but your fully entitled to give your opinion here and vent your frustrations buddy.

You're placing a lot of faith in the general level of enlightenment in this country if you think the security guards are actually going treat incidents like this with the seriousness that they should.

PeakOutput

fcussen wrote: »

You're placing a lot of faith in the general level of enlightenment in this country if you think the security guards are actually going treat incidents like this with the seriousness that they should.

whats the alternative? moan on the internet? personally i wouldnt report it to security unless there was more then verbal abuse but i would be onto the head of my course fairly lively and i know i would not be ignored

padma

Tell them they to go f themselves, and play with their bumbuddies. If they persist say that your well connected in Limerick and any problems Padma will come sort them out.

TheTownie

fcussen wrote: »

You're placing a lot of faith in the general level of enlightenment in this country if you think the security guards are actually going treat incidents like this with the seriousness that they should.

Personally fcussen, I would deal with it myself but clearly the person in question isn't the sort of person to do that or else he wouldn't be posting on a forum about it. Also I couldn't reply by encouraging potentially violent behaviour even though that would have been how I would have solved it. Anyway the security guards would have thrown them out if that happen, for god's sake I nearly get thrown out all the time just for talking never mind throwing nuts! If you've ever been in the library you would know that instead of questioning my original post.

fcussen

TheTownie wrote: »

Man a minority of morons does not mean racism is running rampant. You show me a country without any form of racism and I'll show you a lier. Its not exactly far fetched to presume Ireland would be closer to the bottom of a list of countries with racism problems than the top. Ireland has never been more multi-cultural. Foreigners wouldn't stay here for long if we had a rampant racism problem. If I got a euro for every time I've been told how welcoming Irish people are I wouldn't be attending UL !

This has to be one of the most naive and ignorant things I've ever heard.

There is no major racism problem in Ireland because there are foreigners living here? Is that why the Jim Crow laws and Ku Klux Klan managed to force all the black people out of the southern states of America? Do you remember when all the non-white South Africans emigrated during the apartheid era? Irish people are "welcoming" towards wealthy tourists who preferably have the same skin pigment as us. The way we behave towards people who move here because they want to live and work is another story.

TheTownie

fcussen wrote: »

This has to be one of the most naive and ignorant things I've ever heard.

There is no major racism problem in Ireland because there are foreigners living here? Is that why the Jim Crow laws and Ku Klux Klan managed to force all the black people out of the southern states of America? Do you remember when all the non-white South Africans emigrated during the apartheid era? Irish people are "welcoming" towards wealthy tourists who preferably have the same skin pigment as us. The way we behave towards people who move here because they want to live and work is another story.

So you're trying to say on a worldwide scale, Ireland has a terrible racism problem... I was referring to Ireland in the grand scheme of things but clearly you can't look at the situation beyond the end of your nose. Buddy your way out your dept to start talking about the KKK, those blacks you refer to were natives of the south and forced out it. How could you ever compare that to people emigrating to Ireland. People deciding I WANT to LIVE in Ireland, their not being forced to live here, their not natives being forced out. Again I repeat in no other point in history has Ireland been more multi-cultural and AGAIN everywhere has a certain level of racism which is inevitable when you live amongst millions of people! Just the shear probability of it makes it a fact.

fcussen

I think you might have missed the sarcasm: black people continued to live in Southern USA despite being actively discriminated against, black South Africans did not leave South Africa despite being treated like ****. You seem to believe if racism was really bad in Ireland, then people wouldn't immigrate here, I'm arguing otherwise.

TheTownie

Its as simple as this, I want a yes or no answer, Is Ireland rampant with racism??

fcussen

Yes. The mayor of Limerick recently called for unemployed EU-nationals to be deported from the country. The taxi drivers union in Cork refused to allow non-nationals to join it last year.

I hear racist comments and see dirty looks being given towards Eastern European and non-white people every day; I'd like to know what kind of enlightened modern-thinking social circle that you move in where you don't.

TheTownie

So Limerick Mayor comes out and makes a statement like you just said without giving any reasons?? or did you just read the headline and make a premature judgement? I haven't seen that article but I know there would be uproar if he actually said something that was unjustifiable like that. Yet your the only one condemning him... If a non-Irish person abuses the system they deserved to be punished as much as an Irish person does. They don't get off the hook because of being afraid of being called a racist. Unions, Mayors etc say these things because they have valid reasons. As for what you see everyday, if you look hard enough for anything you'll find it. Why don't you focused on bigger problems like Ireland's drugs problem rather than trying to inflame a problem that ISN'T rampant in Ireland. Its a pity people like Malcolm X are not around to experience Ireland today. He would think Ireland is a utopia compared to what he had to put up with.

fcussen

http://www.limerickleader.ie/news/Mayor-of-Limerick-Send-home.5814604.jp

There was uproar regarding it and he had to backtrack. http://www.limerickleader.ie/news/Mayor-Kiely-clarifies-position.5821108.jp

TheTownie

Thank you for coming back with the full details on that issue. He was the master of his own downfall there as he didn't put his views across in the right way but that doesn't make his actual point wrong nor a discriminator. There are abusers of the social welfare system both Irish and non-Irish so it is a constant battle to try to prevent those from doing so. He was ask a question, he gave an answer... just not a very well thought out one. We are all guilty of choosing the wrong words from time to time that doesn't make him a racist. In a nutshell he had a valid reason.

antidark777

Integration with other cultures and nationalities with native Irish was never gonna go smoothly in this generation, and has even being recieved with outright bitterness or hostility cos some think its being forced upon them or its happening too fast.

TheTownie

Thats all well and true but thats not racism. In the majority we do not think we are a superior culture. The majority of Irish people do not walk around thinking other cultures should worship the ground they walk on. I just think over the years the definition of racism has been diluted to the stage where a dirty look is considered racism which is just ridiculous. You could be just looking at a person who is a p***k, of which there are many around tbh.

neil_

fcussen wrote: »

Yes. The mayor of Limerick recently called for unemployed EU-nationals to be deported from the country. The taxi drivers union in Cork refused to allow non-nationals to join it last year.

Neither of those things are at all related to race.