Being Irish:
17th March 2022
Happy St. Paddy's Day, ladies and gentle-ladies! Though this holiday has definitely become a bit too commercialised nowadays, I suppose it can also function as a decent opportunity to look back on the family histories of people like myself. Now, whilst I was born and raised in Britain, as were my parents, all of my grandparents hail from the Emerald Isle (though since one is from Northern Ireland, that could be classed as a bit more ambiguous, depending on who you ask). Despite this though, many of my links with "the old country" are quite limited compared to that of many Indian, Pakistani and Afro-Caribbean Brits that I'm aware of. I suppose I'm basically assimilated into British society, and only really bring up my Irish-ness on rare occasions like now, kinda like how I imagine many Italian, German or even Irish-Americans connect with their pasts (I might be over-generalising about such large groups of people, so your understanding might be much better than mine). I guess the main reason behind this would probably be that many of my familial ties to Ireland, with the exception of my paternal grandmother, have passed on, with my great uncle (on my mother's side) dying last November in his 90s, which I suppose would immediately create much more of a disconnect from people who were second-generation immigrants, like my parents, and grew up with both their local culture, as well as the culture of their parents. I've also rarely visited the country to connect with this side of my family, especially compared to my parents (though bear in mind those trips to Ireland were probably all they could afford for foreign holidays back then), with the most recent time being for the 50th birthday of one of my uncles, almost seven years ago.

I suppose another, more contentious reason would be that I may be more similar to the majority of people in Britain, in terms of how I look, and by extension I've been much less susceptible to prejudice and discrimination to need my old culture and community as a group to find solace in. This wasn't always the case, the phrase "No dogs, no blacks, no Irish" comes to mind with my grandmother's generation, and my Dad, growing up as an Irish-descended Catholic during The Troubles, would occasionally be subjected to people harassing him and calling him a "terrorist", which I suppose could reflect the discrimination felt nowadays by many Arab and South Asian individuals, particularly Muslims, in the age of the so-called "War on Terror" (if we can even count this age as the War on Terror, because much of its mention on the news has long subsided). Since then though, this discrimination has largely diminished, and the closest I've really felt to it came in the form of harmless jokes by juvenile classmates, and that was only really because I made my heritage known to them. I could walk down the street and there would be very little chance of anyone coming up to me and calling me a "mick", a "taig" or a "potato [gamer word]", which unfortunately can't be said for other groups of people. I also feel grateful that, from this age of discrimination, in three generations, my family went from some rural Irish farmers who weren't used to having electricity in their homes, to people who I'd say have firmly placed themselves in a comfortable middle-class lifestyle, and I've certainly gotta thank my grandparents and my parents for helping me get to where I am now.