LIGHTNING BOLT

Okay, deep and topical question. Is stereotyping a group of people any more acceptable if the direction of the comment is from a people group of the same skin-colour as the object?

That was carefully worded. What I'm specifically asking is, is it racist for a white British person to make jokes about Irish people and then follow it up with 'I hope none of you on here are Irish'?

See, because I think it is. I think it's a kind of underlying subversive racism that gets away with the simple but pernicious assumption that it's okay to say these things about people who are the same colour as you. And that's not only racist on the surface, it's racist beneath it too.

What then, you might ask, of the subculture that permits itself to use the N-word, but not outsiders? Same principle? Well, yes. But the context is different: that word is so racially charged with pain and history, that its use by one skin-colour on another is now a lightning bolt of offence - it's been reclaimed by those it wounded in order to rob it of its power, but it still hurts from the outside. I disagree that that's a good idea actually, but it isn't really my place to comment.

In other circles, there's sometimes a little old-fashioned current of racism that gets a free pass by being 'casual' and therefore, 'not quite as bad'. And today, on a chat, that current swept uncomfortably in, with this dig at the Irish, and someone who was absolutely intimating that they (Irish people) couldn't be trusted to sell a you a monitor without 'some made-up tale about how if you go for 144Hz you'll never want to go back.'

Cheeky? Nope: essentially the view that Irish people can't be trusted with the truth and are making a fast buck out of some innate gift to spin you a story. Quickly followed up by the check that no-one in earshot is Irish, and therefore it's 'okay' to say such things. It isn't. In fact, that reveals that the problem is much much worse.

I think there are complex reasons for reverting to what we sometimes call 'casual racism' like this. The social dynamics of a group are fast-moving and hard to evaluate - it's just possible that we value fitting in to a perceived culture more highly than our moral principles. Peer-pressure is real for adults too. It might be that we naturally attempt humour to gain acceptance, and without realising (or perhaps with), we compromise our beliefs. It might just be of course that we simply repeat what we've heard in the past without knowing that what we're saying is actually offensive. It's rather a weak thing to do, but I'm certain it happens.

It strikes me as perverse then, that so often micro-racism happens because of the need to fit in by excluding others. My colleague actually had to check there were no Irish people on the chat, as though that made it okay to have said it. Were there? Perhaps, perhaps not - but how humiliating and how awkward to then puncture a friendly conversation with a shaking hand in the air and a tentative 'Um... me, actually'. And what in the world happens next?

I didn't say anything. If something is buried so deeply, so subversively, I'm not sure what good it would have done to illuminate someone's hidden prejudices. After all, it feels horrible when someone pulls you up in public on something you didn't realise was a problem.

You might disagree. You might say silence is complicity. That's okay, I get that. In any case, you've only got at most, a two-second window to deal with the lightning bolt there and then. I'm afraid I missed it today, while calculating the kindest option. But ever since, somewhere in me, it's felt like the thunder has been rumbling around the valley.