There was an eye-catching appointment made by the Government this morning, at the hands of Green Party Minister of State Joe O’Brien. Here’s the press release:
The Minister of State for Community Development, Integration and Charities, Joe O’Brien, has today announced the appointment of Dr Ebun Joseph as the National Action Plan Against Racism Special Rapporteur. Dr Ebun Joseph is a Diversity and Race relations consultant, CEO and Founder of the Institute of Antiracism and Black Studies (IABS), Module Coordinator and Lecturer, Black Studies at University College Dublin (UCD), and founder & Chairperson, African Scholars Association Ireland, AFSAI (2018-2022)
In her role as Special Rapporteur, Dr Joseph will monitor progress towards the objectives of the NAPAR. The Special Rapporteur may also consider matters pertaining to racial equality more broadly, and will have the authority to request information and data from public bodies to support them in carrying out the role. The Special Rapporteur will make an annual report to the Minister; this report will also be submitted to the relevant Oireachtas Committee.
Minister Joe O’Brien said:
“I am pleased to today announce another key milestone in the implementation of the National Action Plan Against Racism. The appointment of Dr Ebun Joseph as Special Rapporteur and the establishment of an independent Advisory Committee on Racism and Racial Equality is are hugely important steps in the government’s commitment to tackling racism throughout society. These appointments are integral to the support systems established under the NAPAR and will be critical to the successful implementation of the plan”
Long time Gript readers will be familiar with Dr. Joseph, though newer visitors to these pages may not have been around when back at Christmastime in 2019 she made perhaps her most important contribution to the fight against racism, by revealing a truly shocking incident in a Galway restaurant wherein she and her family were victims of what she described at the time as a “racist” incident.
1)I was on a break from posting on race but I took my 2 lads to dinner in a 4 star hotel on Salthill’s promenade in Galway. I picked a glass of house red from the wine list, guess what I got served? Yep! blackcurrant juice in a wine glass, same measure as wine. Racism or mistake?
— Dr Ebun Joseph (@EbunJoseph1) December 30, 2019
Dr Joseph went on to declare that the hotel had apologised – and indeed served up a full bottle of red wine on the house by way of apology. This was not enough, she declared, and instead she issued a tweet denouncing the hotel and said that the “damage had been done”.
I don’t want the ‘sick joker’ or racist at @GalwayBayHotel who served me blackcurrant instead of the house red (wine) to win! So please, more Blacks go there. They can’t discourage us from going where we want! Your manager apologised, but the damage’s done. 2 days paying guests!
— Dr Ebun Joseph (@EbunJoseph1) December 30, 2019
Now, as I wrote at the time, one cannot entirely exclude the possibility that the act of bringing a glass of Ribena to a table instead of a glass of red wine was in fact a fiendish act of racism. However, a fair minded person would likely be more inclined to imagine all the circumstances in which it might have been an honest mistake: Irish hotels quite regularly serve glasses of cordial, and it is entirely possible if not likely that the glass in question was in fact intended for a child or a non-drinker at a different table, and was simply picked up in error by the innocent table server.
In truth though, the issue here is not really about whether the incident was truly racist, or whether it was an innocent mistake: The issue is about which possibility the rationally thinking person first considers likely. Do you give the table server the benefit of any doubt in a situation like this, or do you assume mens rea – the guilty mind – before you consider any other possibility. Here we have a real-life example of how Dr. Joseph’s mind works: Before she considered any other possibility, she took to the internet to condemn a racist act.
This person is now in charge of monitoring the levels of racism in Irish society. There are, I think, reasonable questions to ask about whether she can accurately categorise acts as racist, or whether she is a person who might actively go seeking to interpret even the non-racist things in Irish society as a source of racial oppression.
Regular readers will know that a point I often make is about how taxpayer funded searches for problems often become self-sustaining: When there are sixteen taxpayer funded homelessness charities, for example, a whole lot of jobs are suddenly on the line if homelessness ceases to be a problem. If your entire career is built on being paid by the Government to solve a problem, the problem becomes that your own success is likely to make you redundant. Thus, over time, problems must always grow and develop offshoots which justify even more funding. Violence against women might decline, for example, but even then we will be told that we need more funding to tackle persistent misogynistic attitudes in Irish society which are “the root” of the problem. The one thing that has never happened in Irish society, when it comes to NGOs and taxpayer funded campaigners, is success: Not one of these agencies has ever declared victory and shut up shop. Nor will any ever do so, of their own accord.
Now, in the case of Dr. Joseph, her appointment has been accompanied by the announcement of a €1m “Ireland against racism” fund: Over the next month, a million euro will be disbursed in chunks of up to €50,000 at a time to organisations for national and regional projects which will combat racism in Irish society. Meanwhile, Dr. Joseph will make an annual report to the Minister on the progress that this money has helped make in terms of tackling racism. I think it relatively safe to assume that the first report will, amongst other recommendations, call for said funding to be increased. That is, after all, how the whole system (or industry, if you’re a cynic) works.
Most of this won’t be mentioned, of course, in the media. But it’s important for people to remember that when they see Dr. Joseph on television declaring, in her role as the Government’s new racism Czar, that the problem of racism is growing, that they are hearing from a woman who once had a very public meltdown over the racism inherent in being served the wrong drink.
Whatever her qualifications might be in academic terms, her record in practical terms does not point to a person who approaches these issues with a particularly open mind.