Racism and prejudice must always be called out after 'famine song' row

When I was a kid, my mother scolded me for repeating Irish jokes – those three-men-in-a-pub gags where Paddy and Mick were always thick and the Englishman and the Scot were whipsmart.

My father was equally horrified when he heard my friends and I playing tag and chanting, “Eeny, meeny, miny, mo. Catch a n***** by the toe”.

From the mouths of babes comes echoes of prejudices in our culture so endemic we barely even notice them.

If parents don’t correct them, they grow up to become bigots like those who marched through Glasgow city centre before Sunday’s Old Firm game.

Sectarianism was no doubt learned on the knee in their households.

The motley crew dressed in black, sang anti-Irish, anti-Catholic songs mocking the victims of the famine.

They sang: “From Ireland they came, brought us nothing but trouble and shame. Well, the famine is over, why don’t they go home?”

You can’t swing a cat in Scotland without whacking someone of Irish descent and the ferries to Larne would run out of bacon rolls if we were all to return.

God bless my granny for being born in Ireland, making me eligible for a shiny European passport.
At least a quarter of Scots have Irish blood so most of those on the march would have personal connections to the economic migrants who came to Scotland during the famine.

But unfortunately bigots aren’t big on matters of fact.

They didn’t stop to think that dressing in black has connotations of the fascist black shirts of Italy led by Mussolini, the son of a devout Catholic.

The crew on Sunday lacked the sartorial finesse of the black shirts, if not the poisonous intent, and were more Primark than Moda Prima with a grey pallor which couldn’t carry the look.

When I saw some heading into town, I assumed they were gamers on a wee break from the console in their bedroom at their mammys’.

The marchers didn’t consider there were many Protestants among those Her Majesty’s
government allowed to starve to death in Ireland.

There is something lacking in those who would dress up on a Sunday to have a day out exercising their right to hate when, if they cared about religion, they should be in church.

Perhaps most frustrating of all is how well it plays into the hands of the Old Etonians in charge for the working classes to be distracted by internecine strife.

Of course, racism and sectarianism flows in all directions. as was pointed out recently by Health Secretary Humza Yousaf.

He dared to suggest that there is sectarianism between many religions other than Catholic and Protestant and that Asians can be racist, too.

Speaking on BBC radio, he said: “I am from Scottish-Asian descent and can tell you now, Asian people can be racist.

“Throughout my life, I’ve heard from people in the Asian community being racist towards black people, for example.”

The last time I heard the word “d***ie” being used about black people, it came from the mouth of an Asian.

Yousaf was brave to admit it, that Hindus could be discriminatory to Muslims and vice versa, which is simply a fact.

He was accused by Neil Lal, president of the Indian Council of Scotland, of stoking animosity but we can never tackle all discrimination if we don’t acknowledge it in all its forms.

Overwhelmingly the majority of racism and discrimination is suffered by BME communities on a daily basis across this country.

All interracial discrimination should be taken seriously but first we have to have the courage to challenge it, in all its guises.