Scotland and Ireland: we need to acknowledge our roles as oppressors - both past and present.

I believe in calling out evil wherever I see it - and I see evil in our shadow that we have left unaddressed for far too long. This needs to change; our silence is, and has been, hindering social progress.

Ephesians 5:11 ESV - Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.

Gaels: some of us may be thinking “what has all this got to do with us?". And there was a time where I regrettably held the same mindset:

“My ancestors clearly stayed on their croft and minded their own business, so it’s really nothing to do with me or my family. We were not involved in racial injustices then and I am not racist now. What other white people do and have done does not reflect on me. Gaels were oppressed too, you know.”

But, over the years, I have become more educated. Obviously the whole world should be very concerned, but Scotland especially has played a huge role in shaping the way America operates today - a THIRD of the signatories of The Declaration of Independence were Scots/of Scottish descent (most of whom were also slaveowners).

Nowadays, there is a certain cognitive dissonance amongst the Gaels. We like to think ourselves progressive and welcoming - a friend to all. In fact, we pride ourselves on it. Our rejection of the Union and the Tories is basically part of our branding at this point - we are nothing like England and never have been, we claim. We're different.

But I would argue that we are simply living in denial, so let me lay it all out for you: 

We were never “just complicit” in the slave trade - we were active and willing participants. We were not just doing England’s dirty work. Just because we weren’t doing it first does not excuse or justify our involvement. From the highlands to the lowlands and from Derry to Cork - we profited as much as anyone else. Glasgow’s grand buildings were built by money earned from slavery. There is a reason that there are so many Irish and Scottish surnames in the Caribbean and American South - slaves were given their masters names. Scottish and Irish slave masters were said to be some of the most brutal and feared. 

The confederate flag was based on St Andrew’s cross. 

The “Klan” in KKK, although spelt with a K, is a reference to the Gàidhlig word clann meaning children/kinship - a nod to the original founders’ shared Scotch-Irish identity.

The cross burning, a symbol of hatred and a practice meant to strike fear into the hearts of black people, is also a homage to Scotland. Crann Tara was a declaration of war, a battle cry - a herald of following bloodshed:

The crimes committed under our flag, by those with our accents, in the name of our nation and our self-declared false-supremacy has absolutely everything to do with us. We must never forget that it was money earned from mass exploitation and racism that built Scotland and Ireland into the “first world”. Deep down we understand how our actions were absolutely horrific and deplorable; perhaps that’s why we have spent so long avoiding the discomfort of the topic, eh? I think all Scots need to watch this BBC documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kOvGdmcypE

It hopefully terrifies us that we were once capable of such inhumanity. Perhaps we are scared that the same evil and hatred could still be somewhere within us. So we ignore, deny and conveniently sweep it all under the rug.

In one article about the ignorance of white Australians towards the not-so-distant massacres committed against Aboriginal people, I read this attitude referred to as a “cult of forgetfulness” and a “conspiracy of silence” founded primarily out of deep shame. In order to progress social change, we must first change the way we interact with this aspect of our history.

We don’t want to accept our past brutality and inhumanity; so, collectively, we have decided to forget. It is not something to be admitted or discussed - it's probably better for our own cause to remain exclusively the victim, anyway. But through our chosen silence what we are really doing is lying through our teeth - mainly to ourselves. 

Through self-education our ability to deny must be dismantled.

A hypocrisy dwells in our world-view: when the Stone of Destiny was reclaimed from Westminster Abbey and returned to Scotland, it was more than heroic - we called it was justice. Yet, we have countless stolen artefacts of other colonised nations sitting in our own museums, that we fail to return? We don’t even properly acknowledge how they came into our possession, via theft and bloodshed - things we know to be deeply unjust, things we claim to hate...mostly when they happen to us.

Our own colonial struggles do not justify our role in perpetuating a racist system - both then and now, at home and abroad. We have been, and continue to be, the oppressors. We benefit from the system - and from white privilege every. single. day. 

Being a Gael or republican doesn’t automatically make you anti-fascist. It does not automatically make you “woke” or more educated about colonialism as a whole - we seem to only want to talk about when we were the colonised as opposed to to the colonisers. 

We only seem to be concerned about remembering and righting past wrongs when they were committed against us and not by us. That proves that our intentions are self-serving: if you claim to oppose something, but only for yourself, then your opposition probably comes from a place of self-preservation rather than genuine moral concern. And in our case that would probably be because we still benefit from those wrongs to this day - in the form of white privilege and our inherited prosperity. 

“History” is very much alive. It breathes through our actions and thoughts, it haunts the present through the words that we allow to pass our lips. It speaks through its consequences: although slavery was outlawed in 1801, to this day black people continue to be socially and economically disadvantaged. Although the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, inherited prejudice still goes unchecked. The mass incarceration and persecution of young black men by the predominantly white authorities is, as we have seen, still widely practiced and the white community has neglected to bother to bat an eyelid, let alone open their mouths and speak up.

The fight for racial equality is so far from over; it did not end with the civil rights movement and America is not the only battleground. We cannot make things right if we continue to refuse to own up to our own past wrongs. Gaels, if we are truly a people who stand for freedom and virtue, as we claim, this fight is surely ours as well. It’s time to stand with the black community - here and across the Atlantic. 

Cuimhnich air na daoine às an tàinig u.

Translation: Remember the people from whom you came.

This entails both the good and the bad - celebrating what we got right while owning up to past wrongs and learning from them.

Broken bones to the oppressors still holds true and applies when we, the Gaels, are the oppressors. 

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~Rose

*This blog is meant to be a digital catalyst of dachaigh. I hope that transcends from here, and reaches you through your screen wherever and however you may be - at home or not*