A 15-year-old schoolboy was stabbed to death in Dublin recently.
A 15-year-old boy.
The brave fellow Irishmen who did this to him did it for one reason only. They did it because this Irish schoolboy was black.
Toyosi Shitta Bey played schoolboy football for Shelbourne and was a highly-rated player. In a recent community games he won Player-of theTournament.
His dream, all of his friends said, was to play for his country. He wanted to make it as a footballer and he wanted to represent his country.
He wanted to pull on the green shirt. He wanted to play for Ireland.
He won’t do that now. He won’t do a lot of things he might have been dreaming of now. He won’t do them because this Irish boy had black skin.
Two proud Irishmen didn’t like that. Two proud Irishmen stabbed and killed him.
What made those two Irishmen?
What forces created such citizens in our society? Perhaps we can comfort ourselves with the fact that most people here are decent and fair minded.
Some may at times be a little ignorant, a little prejudiced as a result of that but most people aren’t overtly racist.
Yet, those of Toyosi Shitta Bey’s friends who were also black recounted in the days after his death that they did not feel safe in certain areas, on certain streets.
They recounted a childhood in Ireland where racial abuse was a pretty regular occurrence.
So what made those two Irishmen?
Perhaps it was the abject lack of political leadership that has characterised this country for so long.
When a country so unused to any inward immigration was suddenly the place of hope for immigrants during the boom years, how did our politicians master this?
By doing nothing. By silence.
By leaving the effects of social change open to be exploited by the forces of bigotry and ignorance and hate. By even (step forward high-flying member of the legal establishment and ex-Justice Minister Michael McDowell) exploiting that ignorance and racism for political ends.
So did that make those two Irishmen?
Or did the general, lowrent patriotism that, even without the opportunism of a McDowell, distorts so much of Irish political discourse in this young Republic make them?
In the very same week that this 15year-old Dublin schoolboy was stabbed to death a Fianna Fáil TD spoke out in a case involving the Financial Regulator.
Now, seeing as even an economics ignoramus such as me is finally understanding that the financial mess this country is in is due to the fact that there was no regulation with regards to what our developers and bankers did, you would surely expect an elected representative of the Dáil to be stepping in in support of the Regulator. Not so.
Ned O’Keeffe TD roundly condemned the Financial Regulator’s actions with regards to Quinn Insurance.
Did he do this out of some finer financial understanding of the situation?
No, he did this because Sean Quinn is ‘one of us’ and the Regulator is not.
The Regulator is in fact an Englishman. So this is what our TD and Fianna Fáil stalwart Ned O’Keeffe said.
In the same week, remember, as a 15-year-old schoolboy was stabbed to death in Dublin purely for having black skin. “We don’t want foreigners in here. Michael Collins, Liam Lynch, Padraig Pearse and James Connolly wouldn’t have those foreigners running our business.”
Now unlike Ned O’Keeffe, I don’t for one minute think the likes of James Connolly and Michael Collins were bigots and I think their reaction to the actions of Ned’s government and its developer cronies might well have involved a court martial.
But we have to take note of Ned O’Keeffe all the same.
And we have to ask Ned O’Keeffe and all the other Ned O’Keeffes of this country, do you think your words, do you think the way you speak, do you think you might have helped make those two Irishmen?
We should remember in years to come this schoolboy, Toyosi Shitta Bey.We should remember that in Dublin in 2010 an Irish boy was killed because of the colour of his skin.
And we should hope that in years to come, in 2020, in 2030, in 2040, that such a thing will be unthinkable and that Irish people of all backgrounds, of every different heritage, whether black or white, will live here and will not die for doing so.