BLACK Africans are more likely to be subjected to racism than any other immigrants in Ireland, a new study has found.

Research by Mureen Reddy, a professor of race relations from Northeastern University in Boston, concludes that a hierarchy of attitudes exists to different ethnic groups.

Racism is expressed largely in terms of a willingness to work, with those excluded from Irish society characterised as lazy. Reddy’s research is based on surveys and analysis of portrayals of racial groups in television programmes, national newspapers and fiction.

In a survey of Irish attitudes, 63% of those polled felt travellers were not like the rest of the Irish population, with 23% admitting to being “unfavourably disposed” to them. Black Africans were the only other community found to provoke similarly negative responses, with those questioned citing a culture of laziness and fraud.

“I’ve come at this study as an American and with experience in studying the role of race in that society. First, what is evident is the very different way race relations are developing in Ireland,” said Reddy.

“Whereas in America our view of new immigrant communities centres on an existing racial divide based on black and white racial stereotyping, in Ireland it draws upon popular prejudice against the travellers. New immigrant groups are defined in relation to the existing traveller/settler divide as American society identifies immigrants along an existing black/white social divide.”

The research found that negative attitudes to work were applied to both the Traveller and the black community. At the other end of the scale, Chinese immigrants were generally portrayed in a favourable way, having a stereotypical “hard-working” character.

Although immigration is a new phenomenon in Ireland, a hierarchy of attitudes is already solidifying. According to Reddy: “The Irish are at the top and recent African immigrants at the bottom.” In between, in roughly descending order are white European immigrants, the established Asian community, travellers and Roma people.

The academic refers to a 1997 episode of Father Ted to illustrate the differing degrees of acceptance immigrant groups have found in Ireland. “Satire can easily deal with comic representations of the Chinese-Irish community whereas there is no similar treatment of the African community. It would not be possible to portray such a comical representation of the black community without straying into conscious racism.”

Reddy is a member of a mixed-race family. “The study of changing attitudes to race in Ireland occurred to me when I saw the attitude of some people change towards my coloured son. You sense a greater degree of suspicion until they hear his American accent.”

The research is among 60 papers to be presented at a conference on minority relations at UCD in Dublin next weekend.

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