Why I don't like "You Don't Get to be Racist and Irish"
It's a bad poem that distorts Irish history in significant ways
As a fan of the “emotion recollected in tranquillity” idea of poetry I was never going to like Imelda May’s “You Don’t Get to be Racist and Irish”. Instead of being a doubtful exploration of experiences and emotions not easily considered in prose, the whole thing never rises above the level of rhetoric to warm the hearts of the like-minded. But moving away from such questions of poetic technique, the items identified by May are little more than the greatest hits of one strain of an already highly visible version of Irish identity. Although it’s nice to think of this version of Irishness as being perfectly in line with contemporary notions of virtue (as the poem suggests), it’s worth asking if this version is truly reflective of the realities of Irish history? Is Irish nationalism really uniquely virtuous among the nations?
It begins:
You don’t get to be racist and Irish/
You don’t get to be proud of your heritage,/
plights and fights for freedom/
while kneeling on the neck of another.
Immediately, we’re presented with a question: what does racism actually mean for May? Despite this seeming self evident for many, others might feel slightly uneasy that the object of scorn isn’t more fully explored before the excoriation actually begins: if May is going to talk about her profound abhorrence of certain types of behaviour, should we not be given more details about this behaviour?
May then evokes one of the hoariest clichés in the stock of Oirish imagery, the singer of songs about Irish victim-hood:
You’re not entitled to sing songs/
of heroes and martyrs/
mothers and fathers who cried/
as they starved in a famine/
Or of brave hearted/
soft spoken/
poets and artists/
lined up in a yard/
blindfolded and bound.
Again, another question presents itself, is the singing of such songs really representative of “the nation”? The patron saint of contemporary liberal Ireland, Sean Lemass, appears not to have thought so, being hostile to all forms of what his biographer John Horgan called “stage Irishry”, and reacting coldly to the singing of a traditional song about emigration (he called it a “dirge”) in 1966. Indeed, complicated issues about Irish nationalism and solidarity are also raised by the subject matter of these songs. It was the Irishman William Gregory who introduced the notorious quarter acre clause during the famine, limiting relief to those holding a quarter acre of land or less, while “The Liberator” Daniel O’Connell’s son Morgan O’Connell also spoke in favour of it. Contrary to what the poem implies, cruelty during the famine was not an imported quality. The more recent past is no less complicated: would Irish unionists accept that the leaders of the rising fully represented their sense of nationhood? And is it not distorting the historical record somewhat to describe the IRB members and Volunteers who took part in the Rising as being just “soft spoken/poets and artists”? On May’s account militarism appears to be completely absent in Irish history.
The next section, following a brief reference to Godot (Beckett was a nationalist, it seems), explores the ideas of immigration and emigration in Irish history. Obviously, Irish people have a long and distinctive history of travelling abroad to escape poverty and many Irish people suffered from racism abroad but, again, this history is quite complicated when you think a bit more deeply about it. For one thing, Irish people tended to move to countries where massive “displacements” of indigenous populations had occurred or were then occurring. As such, it seems reasonable to concede that the narrative of pure Irish victimhood is somewhat complicated by the fact that Irish suffering was diminished somewhat by the presence of even more unfortunate ethnic groups. By all means, we’re entitled to assert that we’ve been oppressed, but perhaps the full complexity of this story is not best explored through a few lines in a lyric poem. In particular, would it not be more accurate to say that we were generally victims of anti-Catholic discrimination, rather than being victims of racism in the same way that, for example, blacks in the slave states of the US were? This worrying tendency to simplify complexity is evident in subsequent lines where it’s stated that this history of immigration means we “cannot refuse/ to return the favour”. Without wishing to get into weeds of immigration policy with a poem, May might be troubled to learn that very few Irish political parties (if any) support a total open borders policy for Ireland.
After a brief, confusing reference to Irish skin tone (were the Irish really discriminated against en masse because of our “pasty” colour?), May then references class (“Our accents thick/hands like shovels/from mortar and bricklaying/”) before ending with an extended pat on the back for us all (“Our music is for the righteous/Our joys have been earned”) for being so progressive, despite the continued discrimination that we still apparently experience as Irish people (“Still labelled leprechauns, Micks, Paddy’s, louts”). Once again, we encounter the same issue of representation (were all Irish people abroad labourers?) and accuracy (do we still regard ourselves as an ethnic underclass even though we’re now of the most well educated and richest societies on Earth?), but the concluding sentiment of self-congratulation seems particularly jarring in the way that it suggests that current Irish liberalism has emerged from Irish history. How to square this progressive version of history with the remarkable levels of religious adherence that was a feature of both Northern Ireland and Ireland as late as the 1990s? Is it not more likely that the current version of Irish liberalism owes more to rising prosperity (inspired by increased foreign direct investment), and the opening up of the Irish media landscape to foreign influences?
Overall, it’s hard to know how seriously to take poetry in contemporary society. For all the prominence in the Irish media of Joe Biden’s enthusiasm for the work of Seamus Heaney, it’s difficult to disagree with the view articulated by Auden in In Praise of WB Yeats that “poetry makes nothing happen”. The interesting thing about May’s poem however is the relatively high level of exposure it has gained. Not only was it the subject of a nationwide billboard campaign, but RTE called it “stunning” and noted that it was one of the most popular pieces published on its culture website, while then justice minister Charlie Flanagan said he was “profoundly moved” by it as he argued for a strengthening of anti-hate speech legislation. Are such responses significant though? In my opinion they are, in the way that this vision of Irish history seems to resonate with many here, not least with journalists and politicians. In other words, they really do seem to buy into the idea that Ireland is, in fact, uniquely virtuous among the nations: contrary to the historical record, they seem taken with the ideas that Irish people never harmed other Irish people, that our nationalists were in no way militaristic, and that the Irish experience of racism means we’ve resolved all those questions regarding immigration that seem to trouble other countries.
In Imagined Communities Benedict Anderson, the great theorist of national identity, suggests that nationality is best understood as resembling a family identity in the sense that both are given unconditionally. In making his argument Anderson points out that racist abuse invariably seeks to de-legitimise valid senses of community belonging: the redundancy in an insult like “you Irish leprechaun/paddy/Mick” would sound comically absurd if it was genuinely meant as abuse (the same effects tend to result when using different ethnic labels and more vicious racist epithets). National identities, in other words, really matter in the sense that they legitimise our membership of broader society. This points to the broader problem with May’s poem: by depriving someone of their belonging to a national community you are effectively using exclusion to shame them in a profound way. The problem with such a punishment though is that the nature of the crime is not clearly outlined by the prosecutor (May), and it’s unclear how many of us could be found guilty (remember, this potentially includes many political party members). Indeed, given the historic prevalence of racist views it seems likely that few Irish people in the past would be acquitted, which is a troubling implication for any proud nationalist when you consider the extent to which nationalism is historically grounded. Genuine benefits flow from being Irish, so it’s reasonable to hope for a nuanced debate on the rights and responsibilities of such an identity. This poem, with its absurdly simplistic view of Irish history, isn’t the place to begin such a debate.