Ethnicity in Northern Ireland

In my previous post, I argued that the terms “Protestant community” and “Catholic community”, as used for fair employment monitoring in Northern Ireland, are merely proxies – it is not your personal faith (or even your personal political beliefs) that are being monitored, but your ethnicity. And the only words we have that accurately describe these ethnicities are the pejoratives “Hun” and “Taig”.

But what is an ethnicity, and how does this apply to Northern Ireland? From Wikipedia:

An ethnic group (or ethnicity) is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture (often including a shared religion) and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy.

The “two communities” in NI obviously qualify in terms of self-identification, religion and endogamy. Common ancestry was also a key component of the Gaelic revival, as was the restoration of a dying common language.

But here we see a key difference between Taigs and Huns – while the former have a clear sense of their own ancestry, the latter sometimes appear to struggle. This may be due to the eclectic origins of Huns amongst English and Scots planters, Huguenot refugees and Penal Law converts – groups who have historically shared little in common except the Reformed faith. Contrast this with the older roots of Taigs in the Gaelic population, whose origins are shrouded in mist, spiced only by the Anglo-Norman aristocracy and the occasional Viking, both well-integrated come the time of plantation. Thus Taig identity draws heavily upon language, legend and location, while Hun identity focuses more on religion and politics, with King Billy being the closest approximation to a founding mythology.

But there is another native people who pass the ethnicity test, and that is Irish Travellers or (since I am decrying euphemisms) Pavee. Long neglected, there is an increased awareness of their distinct identity, with the census in NI now counting them as a separate ethnic group. Although Pavee are mainly Catholic and probably descend from Gaelic ancestry, they are strongly endogamous and maintain a nomadic culture equally alien to both Huns and Taigs.

So with this in mind, perhaps the next NI census form should read:

□ Hun
□ Taig
□ Pavee
□ English
□ Scottish
□ Welsh
□ Polish
□ Chinese
□ Indian
□ Black
□ Mixed
□ Other

And maybe instead of “Mixed” we should be allowed to tick more than one box? But that’s an argument for another time.

Are you a Protestant Jew or a Catholic Jew?

If you have ever been employed in Northern Ireland, you will have come across the following question:

Regardless of whether we practice religion, most of us in Northern Ireland are seen as either Catholic or Protestant. We are therefore asking you to indicate your community background by ticking the appropriate box below.

□ I am a member of the Protestant Community
□ I am a member of the Roman Catholic Community
□ I am a member of neither the Protestant nor Roman Catholic Community

If you do not complete this questionnaire we are encouraged to use the “residuary” method which means we can make a determination on the basis of information on file/application form.

Translation: we know this question is inaccurate and potentially offensive, but we are required by law to ask it anyway. If you refuse to answer, we will make something up.

It is inaccurate is because religion is being used as a proxy for something else, something it is afraid to name. That is why it does not ask if you personally are a Protestant or a Catholic, but whether you come from that-community-which-is-mostly-Protestant or that-community-which-is-mostly-Catholic. These are not names, they are circumlocutions. Replacing “Protestant” and “Catholic” with “Unionist” and “Nationalist” is not an improvement – they do not really want to know what your personal political beliefs are. They want to know which tribe you are from. It would be more straightforward – and honest – to ask the following instead:

What is your ethnic background?

□ Hun
□ Taig
□ Other

The words may be shocking, but they cut to the chase. We are not potential victims of discrimination because of our religion, but because of the ethnic origin that membership of a particular denomination implies. Our personal politics are no defence either – a Hun who professes to be a Republican merely invites increased suspicion from both sides.

The old story of the Belfast rabbi being asked “are you a Protestant Jew or a Catholic Jew?” is well worn, precisely because it contains an important truth. “Protestant” and “Catholic” in this context don’t actually mean Protestant and Catholic. What the questioners are really asking, in an inarticulate way, is “we don’t care what religion you are, are you a Hun or a Taig?” When expressed using blunt language, the absurdities are cast aside and the truth exposed.

In praise of pejoratives

I have complained before about the giant hole in NI cultural terminology. There are things that exist that do not have names, and because they do not have names we cannot discuss them. Instead we use euphemisms that mean different things to different people, and waste our breath fruitlessly arguing over semantics. To demonstrate, consider a recent exchange on Slugger:

unionists are for the union, pretty straight forward, Im sure there are some in the Alliance as well.

Unionism is a tribal identity and by using the term you are identifying with it.

The core of this is a fundamental disagreement over what “Unionist” means. To some it is a political ideology; to others it is a tribal marker. The two meanings have become confused because in recent history they have referred to (approximately) the same subset of people, but this does not mean that the same must be true always. “Unionism” and “Nationalism” no longer have universally-understood meanings, and so have outlived their usefulness as descriptive terms.

The problem with names

The name we choose for a thing can either illuminate its true nature, or obscure it. In particular, if we use the same name for two different things we implicitly obscure their differences. If these differences are not important, this can be very useful. But if these differences are crucial, then we have just hamstrung ourselves.

If we use the words “Protestant” and “Catholic” we imply that the core of the dispute in NI is a matter of religious interpretation. While this may have been true in the 17th century, it is an archaic dispute to most people today. If we instead use the terms “Unionist” and “Nationalist” it is in one sense an improvement, as it captures the surface detail of the conflict, but in another sense it is a step backwards, as it implies the disagreement is a rarefied, intellectual disagreement of individual conscience, not the visceral and tribal one we know it to be.

“Unionism” and “nationalism” are fluid terms that referred to different people in different ages – around the time of the Act of Union many Catholics were Unionist and Protestants Nationalist, because of the promise that the Union would bring about Catholic emancipation. Political labels mask the underlying problem, which has roots in plantation and confession, but which has survived for hundreds of years wearing whatever political clothes befit the times.

It’s worse than you want to admit

Imagine a country whose most lasting division is into two groups who rarely intermarry, and in some parts of the inner city barely even meet. Everyone brought up in one of these groups knows instinctively where this divide lies and what its history contains. They all know what side of the line they (and others) come from, no matter how hard they try to ignore it. Previous governments have used it as an excuse for repression, and the effects are felt even today in both politics and wider society.

I’m talking about blacks and whites in the USA, of course. But when we see this description applied to ourselves we put our fingers in our ears and insist it’s not an ethnic conflict. Aren’t we all the same race, after all? We may look the same, and yet I challenge you to tell the difference between a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot if you passed them on the street. We speak the same language, but then so did Serbs and Croats. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

We already have a solution – but you won’t like it

Since we don’t have names for such an ethnic division in NI, we delude ourselves into thinking it isn’t real. If something doesn’t have a name, it doesn’t exist. But despite all I have said above, we do have such names. They are perfect names because they describe the ethnic divide succinctly and precisely. Everyone in NI knows exactly what they mean, and they are used every single day. They’re just not considered polite.

Huns and Taigs.

Wait, I hear you cry. We don’t need these ugly pejoratives. They’re just synonyms for more polite, more acceptable words; they don’t have a distinct meaning. This is understandable, but it is nonsense. To prove it to yourself, consider the following four questions carefully, and answer them honestly.

1. If a Hun joins the Hare Krishnas, is he still a Hun?
2. If a Taig converts to Buddhism, is he still a Taig?
3. If a Taig joins the UUP, is he still a Taig?
4. If a Hun joins the SDLP, is he still a Hun?

The ordinary folk who are suffering the most from this ethnic conflict know exactly what its nature is, and have come up with pithy, descriptive terms for their everyday experience. Polite society recoils from pithy, descriptive terms, but it does not have adequate “polite” alternatives – perhaps because polite society does not want to admit the truth, that the intellectual concerns of polite society are a polite fiction. It’s not about the Pope, or the structure of church governance. It’s not about the constitution, or the role of monarchy in a modern society. It’s about what tribe has the upper hand.

Might as well get used to it

So we have established that there exist things for which the only accurate names are insults. This may not be so important, were it not for the fact that the Hun/Taig divide in NI is the single most destructive flaw in our society. If we want to fix it, we need to talk about it directly, not through shifty euphemisms such as “Protestant” or “Nationalist”. The first step to recovery is admitting the depth of our problem, and that means straight talking. Since there are no polite alternatives, we must reclaim the pejoratives and be unafraid to use them when no other word will do.

I plan a series of posts to demonstrate how pithy terminology can aid clarity of thought when discussing the conflict in NI. Please feel free to throw in your suggestions.

Blind spots in cultural terminology

One long-standing problem in Northern Ireland is the fact that many things have multiple names, the choice of which can be both revealing and controversial. Derry/Londonderry is the most well-known example, and the name of Northern Ireland itself (or the avoidance of it) can also cause friction. However, such problems can be glossed over by simply ignoring the speaker’s choice of terminology, as it does not introduce ambiguity into the discussion.

Less obvious are those things that do not have their own names and which, if discussed at all, tend to hide behind the names of related but distinct things. This is a more difficult problem than the above examples, because dealing with it is not as simple as mentally substituting “Derry” for “Londonderry” – one must often expend some effort to unpick what the speaker actually intended to say.

One such example is the ambiguity between the island of Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Careful speakers will make the effort to disambiguate them, but it becomes tricky when using derived terms such as “Irish”. Still, it is a well-known problem and that awareness prompts people to call for clarification when the speaker has been sloppy.

I have been reminded recently that there is a less-appreciated, even insidious, blind spot in our terminology, and that is for words describing the communal divide. It used to be common practice to use “protestant” and “catholic”, but in recent years it is more acceptable to use “unionist” and “nationalist”, despite the obvious limitations. This has prompted the emergence of the horrendous terms PUL/CNR¹, but even those fail to capture the essence of the concept.

To help explain, please indulge me in a personal reflection.

I am not a Protestant. I am not even a Christian. Whatever way I’m wired, I don’t have the capacity for religious belief. I understand the desire for certainty, hope and joy, but religion does not fill that void.

I am not a Loyalist. I’m not a paramilitary, but neither am I an Orangeman or a monarchist. Orangeism leaves me unmoved and its arguments ring hollow. I have no interest in royalty or its trappings, and although I can tolerate the monarchy as a purely symbolic institution, I am strongly against both inherited power and the establishment of any church.

Nor am I a Unionist. I am comfortable with the current constitutional arrangement, but I would not die to defend it, and I strongly believe in making the border as invisible as possible. But neither am I a nationalist – although national identity can sometimes be a useful basis for political organisation, in Ireland nationalism (of both flags) has failed us disastrously.

And yet, I still came from somewhere. I grew up in a PUL family, went to a state school, played in a marching band (for two weeks; I was lazy), watched the parades until the Tunnel riots (my dad didn’t quit, but he never walked with the Orange again). I don’t pronounce the “H” at the beginning of “H”. I’ve had to bite my tongue on at least one occasion to stop myself saying “that’s a bit more protestant looking”. It’s all still a part of me, no matter how far I’ve strayed from the true path.

Am I British then? Obviously, but it’s too broad a term that does not convey the particular Ulsterness of PUL culture. And I am equally (maybe more so) Irish – perhaps helped by the great age of my grandfather (born 1889) my family was steeped in Irish culture and history. The language was a step too far, mind (that caused at least one argument with my dad).

So (to return to the point) the question I am asking is: what are you left with when you take the P, the U and the L out of the PUL boy (or equally, the C, N, and R out of the CNR)? What do you call the tribe, the community, the ethnic group, when you are deprived of the usual shorthand? Don’t we need precise names for the things we are discussing, rather than easily-misunderstood euphemisms?

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^ 1. Protestant-Unionist-Loyalist or Catholic-Nationalist-Republican. A textbook case of increased complexity without increased usefulness.