Integrate Ireland

Media Release

The recent government announcement 5 million euro for the integration programme in 2006. This is not enough, and in any event the funding should be coming through all government departments and should include an educational element to educate people to the genetic facts. It is necessary that the government put a cultural integration scheme in place immediately, to do otherwise is to invite ghettoisation and promote the conditions which strengthen racist ideas.

eople make judgements about each other in many ways. Unfortunately it has for millenia been considered acceptable to see skin pigmentation as a defining factor in terms of humans. This discriminatory practice has come to be described as racism. It is not merely a case of whites, blacks and asians. Racism is not that simple. Among whites racism can be witnessed between Celts and Slavs for example. They percieve themselves to be different races as opposed to different cultures. This phenomenon is experienced worldwide both historically and contemporarily.

Genetically, there is no such thing as “race”and essentially humans can not be differentiated on such a basis. However, the fact that race is a social construct does not mean that racism does not exist. It merely proves that the adoption of such attitudes as superiority on the basis of skin pigmentation are based on an ignorance of the facts.

Racism continues, worldwide, on a daily basis. It is the belief that one culture/skin colour is of itself superior to another and that consequently it is acceptable to discriminate against people from cultures/skin colours other than ones own. In Ireland today to believe that as a white person I am superior to a black person , or indeed vice versa, not only shows an ignorance of science but also an emotional unwillingness to accept that other person into “my” culture.

It is for these reasons that Integrate Ireland believes that it is a necessary that cultural integration programmes be put in place immediately. We do not see it merely as responsibility of government. It is the responsibility of social, sporting and other organisations from all cultures to reach out to each other, just as it is the responsibility of each of us as individuals to do the same.