Those People With Their Fancy Cars: A small case study in how we normalise the exclusion of the Other.

CN: anti-Traveller racism, discussion of processes of dehumanisation and marginalisation of the Other.

You know Lewis’s Law? It’s the one that says that comments on any article about feminism justify feminism. I was reminded of it- in a very different context, of course- when I woke up this morning to the following set of Tweets responding to my last post.

The tl;dr for my last post, to get you up to date:

Irish settled people’s bigotry toward our Irish Travellers is all-pervasive, considered socially acceptable, and utterly vile. We act as though treating Travellers as if they were subhuman is perfectly okay. In a housefire last week, ten people from two Traveller families died in a housefire, and their neighbours’ homes were destroyed too. The next day, relatives of the deceased were refused entry to a bar where they went to get lunch. And residents around the area picked for emergency accommodation for the survivors have been blockading the site to prevent their temporary homes being built.

Back to those tweets.

This set of replies is a perfect example of Lewis’s Law. It’s long, but I think that it’s useful to read through it because what we’ve got here is textbook. And by ‘textbook’, I mean that if I were teaching this stuff I’d have already set my students analysing these. This is how prejudice and marginalisation are normalised. This is how we do it. Take a look at the entire sequence:

Continue reading “Those People With Their Fancy Cars: A small case study in how we normalise the exclusion of the Other.”

Those People With Their Fancy Cars: A small case study in how we normalise the exclusion of the Other.
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We’re Sorry For Your Loss, But You Can’t Come In: Irish people’s hatred of Travellers is shameful.

It’s easy to be sympathetic when you don’t have to sacrifice or change. It’s also easy to be sympathetic when you know it won’t ever mean admitting you’re wrong.

Ten people died last week in a fire in Dublin. Five adults, five children- two families. As far as I know, two people survived- a boy of 14 and his four year old brother. Their home destroyed, as well as their neighbours’.

And on one level, the way the country reacted was appropriate: with shock and condolences to the families. Our Taoiseach (that’s a Prime Minister) has asked that flags be flown at half mast during the days of their funerals- which, in a small country, feels appropriate. Sympathy has poured out from everywhere. In all the media- the papers, the radio, the TV news- we’ve heard the story of the families destroyed overnight. Of course we have. And I do believe that it’s mostly genuine. Our hearts do go out to those children, their parents, and all the people left behind.

Okay. You see, here’s where things get difficult. More difficult. Continue reading “We’re Sorry For Your Loss, But You Can’t Come In: Irish people’s hatred of Travellers is shameful.”

We’re Sorry For Your Loss, But You Can’t Come In: Irish people’s hatred of Travellers is shameful.