It was with unreserved disgust that on Saturday the 17th October, I witnessed a doorman at a club in Belfast taunt an elderly woman by taking her belongings and giving them to other people. The incident would, under normal circumstances prompt a phone call to the police, but such is the nature of racism within our society, that the dispossession of plastic roses from an elderly Roma rose seller went largely unnoticed by the nearby crowd.

BY CORMAC DAWSON

When challenged, the doorman in question was joined by another doorman. Both were adamant in claiming that it had nothing to do with me and that the rose sellers operated illegally. These arguments were made in such a way as to justify what was happening but the incident left me with a very bad taste in my mouth.

Why is it that on a night out, people feel that it is acceptable to subject rose sellers to verbal and on occasion, physical abuse? Few students that go out in Belfast will be unaware of what I am referring to and some may even be guilty of what I am talking about. Many people might intuitively feel that racism is not the issue here and that they would behave in the same way no matter who was selling roses outside pubs and clubs, but when I refer to racism, I don’t mean the kind of explicit racism that holds one race genetically superior to another. What I am referring to is more subtle and perhaps more disturbing.

The Roma people have encountered racism no matter where they have settled within the European Union and the problem is frequently referred to in EU literature and by Human rights groups. This summer past saw Northern Ireland officially join the list of countries with a poor track record on accommodating for migrant workers when persistent attacks on the homes of the Roma in the Lisburn Road area, forced over one hundred people to leave the country. The attacks brought international attention to Northern Ireland once again and for negative reasons. Despite widespread attention, which came only when an attack on an anti-racism protest was caught on camera, the issue soon left the spotlight.

Since the attacks in June, there have been numerous racist attacks up and down Northern Ireland that have received little or no attention but the problem remains. Something that was unreported by most of the media was the motivation for the attacks. Politicians and public figures condemned the attacks but few addressed the myths that were the motivation for the attacks. The ideas that Roma people are entitled to benefits, public housing or that they are taking away jobs are all false. Racist ideas about Roma and other ethnic minorities often have horrible consequences and in most cases, the ideas come from ignorance. It is my hope that education can stop the emergence of a new era of prejudice in a country that has seen all too much of it.