I find it hard to believe that there were no immigrants in Ireland until recently (I would buy the line that there were comparatively few, but not none), and that their experience is always that of anyone else in the country. The tricky thing about the type of racism that is buried in society is that it is often almost entirely invisible to those who don’t experience it, but it is very visible to those who do, leading to a mismatch of perceptions. I remember thinking racism mostly didn’t exist where I grew up until I personally experienced it as a teen simply for listening to hispanic radio with my car windows down and then getting cussed out (and worse) by a driver in the car next to me because they made assumptions based on that. It was eye-opening because I never would have experienced that had I not chosen that radio station on that day. What if I had an accent every day or spoke Spanish often? How much more would I have experienced? Just because we don’t see it doesn’t mean that those who say it exists are wrong. Now, in this specific event there seem to be some muddy details and I hope they can be clarified, but the overall point of the anecdote is that it’s often the minorities who know the true scope of racism, and not those in the majority.
