A whopping 85pc of voters questioned for the RTÉ exit poll after last week’s elections professed themselves to be “delighted” at their perception that Ireland has become more liberal in recent years.
The same exit poll, of course, dramatically over-estimated support for the Green Party and when the votes were counted, just about five out of every 100 people who bothered to vote opted to give a Green candidate their first preference. Early talk of a ‘Green wave’ didn’t quite materialise and the more tired and emotional commentators who took to social media to proclaim a ‘Green tsunami’ will be hoping they found the delete button before someone else managed a screen-grab.
Exit polls always come with a health warning, but the data is unlikely to be that far off when it comes to how self-consciously liberal we perceive our brave new Ireland to be.
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Confirming that the dog-whistle racism that is a feature of elections in other EU states has gained very little ground in Ireland, 72pc of those polled agreed that, on the whole, immigration has benefited Irish society.
That result is unsurprising since liberal attitudes often go hand-in-hand with openness to immigration.
But what, I wonder, would test the limits of that openness? What would push tolerance of immigrants? Are certain types of immigrants more welcome than others? When might self-described progressives not be open to what is clearly progressive?
Well, Irish Twitter provided an interesting test case this week reacting to the election of the first black woman in Ireland to a local authority.
Let me say at the outset, social media is not the real world. It does, however, offer a glimpse into the sort of things people think but would be too shy or embarrassed to say to their friends in the pub on a Friday night. People – sometimes reassured by the cloak of anonymity – are happy to use platforms like Twitter to express their less acceptable opinions.
Yemi Adenuga, a first-time candidate originally from Nigeria, first came to fame in Ireland along with her family as stars of the TV3 hit ‘Gogglebox’. Having now secured election in Navan (yes, not leafy Dublin 4) she is set to make her mark on local politics and took to Twitter to express delight at the result.
Many of the reactions were positive, but there were many notable exceptions to this. More than a few middle-aged men in particular (many of whom, to judge by their profiles, work in the tech sector) took it upon themselves to scold Ms Adenuga for her tweet.
Her perceived crime? Well, Ms Adenuga is religious and decided to include God in her ‘thank you’ tweet.
While journalists tend to clam up and awkwardly change the subject every time Katie Taylor mentions God, social media users instead go straight for the jugular.
One irked tweeter replied to Ms Adenuga to warn her brusquely: “Lay off the religious stuff.” Another was equally curt, telling the new councillor to “leave the religion out of politics”. Still someone else – with more than a hint of racism – replied with the simple message “please leave the God stuff back in Nigeria”.
I could go on with variations of much of the same, which all amounts to white (mostly male) self-perceived liberals scolding a black woman – who has just made history – for wearing her heart on her sleeve.
If these men weren’t so busy monitoring politicians’ religious beliefs, they might look in the mirror long enough to hear their inner liberal shout ‘check your privilege!’.
What, I wonder, would the reaction be if, instead of God, Ms Adenuga said it was yoga, or mindfulness or reiki that played a part in her victory?
What people need to understand is that it’s a feature of immigration to Ireland that many of the ‘new Irish’ come from deeply religious backgrounds.
Devotion to St Ann – the mother of the Virgin Mary – which had been a feature of Dublin Catholicism since the Middle Ages, had virtually died out by the end of the 20th Century. Along came Polish immigrants and revived the tradition and Catholic families from Poland and Lithuania are now the backbone of parishes up and down the country. In the caring professions, many nurses and care assistants come from the deeply Catholic Philippines and Catholic parts of India like Kerala.
Equally, African immigrants have brought their religion with them. As well as swelling congregations at mainstream denominations, virtually every reasonably-sized town in Ireland now has at least one African church.
In 2006, there were 20,798 Orthodox Christians in Ireland. By 2016, that had trebled to 62,200.
And it’s not just more Christians that immigration is bringing to Ireland. Other religious groups have seen dramatic rises too. In 2006, for example, there were 32,539 Muslims living in the Republic. Fast forward to 2016 and that figure had risen to 63,400. The same is true for Hindus, who more than doubled from 6,082 in 2006 to 14,300 in the 2016 statistics.
The trend is the same across the board: in 2006 the number of people recorded as having ‘other stated religion’ as their faith was 8,576 – by 2016 this had risen dramatically to 97,700.
The fact is that immigration makes Ireland more religious, not less religious. While one in 10 Irish people now describes themselves as having ‘no religion’, the great majority of immigrants come from religious backgrounds.
If we’re to be a truly progressive society and half as liberal as we think we are, we’re going to have to get used to more public displays of religious faith from immigrant communities coming of age.
Unbowed by the scandals that have engulfed the Church here, religious immigrants are proud to profess their faith. Anyone who is really progressive will welcome this rather than cringe.
Michael Kelly is editor of ‘The Irish Catholic’ newspaper
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Home » Analysis & Comment » Michael Kelly: 'These are new 'liberals', scolding a history-making black woman, for wearing her heart on her sleeve'
Michael Kelly: 'These are new 'liberals', scolding a history-making black woman, for wearing her heart on her sleeve'
A whopping 85pc of voters questioned for the RTÉ exit poll after last week’s elections professed themselves to be “delighted” at their perception that Ireland has become more liberal in recent years.
The same exit poll, of course, dramatically over-estimated support for the Green Party and when the votes were counted, just about five out of every 100 people who bothered to vote opted to give a Green candidate their first preference. Early talk of a ‘Green wave’ didn’t quite materialise and the more tired and emotional commentators who took to social media to proclaim a ‘Green tsunami’ will be hoping they found the delete button before someone else managed a screen-grab.
Exit polls always come with a health warning, but the data is unlikely to be that far off when it comes to how self-consciously liberal we perceive our brave new Ireland to be.
Please log in or register with Independent.ie for free access to this article.
Log In
New to Independent.ie? Create an account
Confirming that the dog-whistle racism that is a feature of elections in other EU states has gained very little ground in Ireland, 72pc of those polled agreed that, on the whole, immigration has benefited Irish society.
That result is unsurprising since liberal attitudes often go hand-in-hand with openness to immigration.
But what, I wonder, would test the limits of that openness? What would push tolerance of immigrants? Are certain types of immigrants more welcome than others? When might self-described progressives not be open to what is clearly progressive?
Well, Irish Twitter provided an interesting test case this week reacting to the election of the first black woman in Ireland to a local authority.
Let me say at the outset, social media is not the real world. It does, however, offer a glimpse into the sort of things people think but would be too shy or embarrassed to say to their friends in the pub on a Friday night. People – sometimes reassured by the cloak of anonymity – are happy to use platforms like Twitter to express their less acceptable opinions.
Yemi Adenuga, a first-time candidate originally from Nigeria, first came to fame in Ireland along with her family as stars of the TV3 hit ‘Gogglebox’. Having now secured election in Navan (yes, not leafy Dublin 4) she is set to make her mark on local politics and took to Twitter to express delight at the result.
Many of the reactions were positive, but there were many notable exceptions to this. More than a few middle-aged men in particular (many of whom, to judge by their profiles, work in the tech sector) took it upon themselves to scold Ms Adenuga for her tweet.
Her perceived crime? Well, Ms Adenuga is religious and decided to include God in her ‘thank you’ tweet.
While journalists tend to clam up and awkwardly change the subject every time Katie Taylor mentions God, social media users instead go straight for the jugular.
One irked tweeter replied to Ms Adenuga to warn her brusquely: “Lay off the religious stuff.” Another was equally curt, telling the new councillor to “leave the religion out of politics”. Still someone else – with more than a hint of racism – replied with the simple message “please leave the God stuff back in Nigeria”.
I could go on with variations of much of the same, which all amounts to white (mostly male) self-perceived liberals scolding a black woman – who has just made history – for wearing her heart on her sleeve.
If these men weren’t so busy monitoring politicians’ religious beliefs, they might look in the mirror long enough to hear their inner liberal shout ‘check your privilege!’.
What, I wonder, would the reaction be if, instead of God, Ms Adenuga said it was yoga, or mindfulness or reiki that played a part in her victory?
What people need to understand is that it’s a feature of immigration to Ireland that many of the ‘new Irish’ come from deeply religious backgrounds.
Devotion to St Ann – the mother of the Virgin Mary – which had been a feature of Dublin Catholicism since the Middle Ages, had virtually died out by the end of the 20th Century. Along came Polish immigrants and revived the tradition and Catholic families from Poland and Lithuania are now the backbone of parishes up and down the country. In the caring professions, many nurses and care assistants come from the deeply Catholic Philippines and Catholic parts of India like Kerala.
Equally, African immigrants have brought their religion with them. As well as swelling congregations at mainstream denominations, virtually every reasonably-sized town in Ireland now has at least one African church.
In 2006, there were 20,798 Orthodox Christians in Ireland. By 2016, that had trebled to 62,200.
And it’s not just more Christians that immigration is bringing to Ireland. Other religious groups have seen dramatic rises too. In 2006, for example, there were 32,539 Muslims living in the Republic. Fast forward to 2016 and that figure had risen to 63,400. The same is true for Hindus, who more than doubled from 6,082 in 2006 to 14,300 in the 2016 statistics.
The trend is the same across the board: in 2006 the number of people recorded as having ‘other stated religion’ as their faith was 8,576 – by 2016 this had risen dramatically to 97,700.
The fact is that immigration makes Ireland more religious, not less religious. While one in 10 Irish people now describes themselves as having ‘no religion’, the great majority of immigrants come from religious backgrounds.
If we’re to be a truly progressive society and half as liberal as we think we are, we’re going to have to get used to more public displays of religious faith from immigrant communities coming of age.
Unbowed by the scandals that have engulfed the Church here, religious immigrants are proud to profess their faith. Anyone who is really progressive will welcome this rather than cringe.
Michael Kelly is editor of ‘The Irish Catholic’ newspaper
Source: Read Full Article