You can be of African or Indian descent and be Irish. Assume you had emigrated from Nigeria and qualified for Irish citizenship. You are then Irish – it says so on your passport. Your children will be born and raised Irish.

My reference to red hair and pale skin was probably a little unfair. Maybe I should just have said white skin.

I suppose it all leads to the questions, “what is a Celt?” or ,“what is Irish?” in the 21st century and beyond. Racial and national references are increasingly ephemeral as the worlds population emigrates and races inter-marry.

Maybe the Rose of Tralee festival is the wrong place to start such a discussion. Due to the booming economy and small population, the only sure thing is that Ireland’s racial profile will change more profoundly than any other European country.

No – because of the assumption that if they are African or Indian they can’t also be Irish. However, I used “nationality” deliberately, since descendants of non-Celtic Irish ancestors have probably entered in the past. How can you prove a “racial Celt”? I’ve just done a Google search for “Rose of Tralee” and this picture came up in the first page.

http://carnacon.mayo-ireland.ie/rose/aoibhinn.jpg

I’ll bet if you saw her in San Francisco or Edinburgh or anywhere else, you wouldn’t think “Oh, she must be a Celt!”

However, when it comes to the Rose of Tralee festival, this wouldn’t work. The red haired, pale skinned Celt is the racial ideal and nothing else will do it seems.

Can you Imagine an African or Indian girl (with the required Irish credentials) being a finalist?

There is no good reason why this shouldn’t happen as the Irish nation is no longer an exclusively white one.

Criticising the Catholic Church was quite popular in the Court of the King’s Bench in 1690s Dublin, I suspect.

“I’ve talked about the Irish language elsewhere, and I used to complain about calling it “Irish”- because it’s spoken in parts of Scotland too, called Gaelic…”

Well, sort of, but Gaeilge and Gàidhlig are slightly different, although similar – as the names illustrate.

I’ve talked about the Irish language elsewhere, and I used to complain about calling it “Irish”- because it’s spoken in parts of Scotland too, called Gaelic – but I’ve changed my mind: you’re welcome to it.

The Scottish bought into the British Empire along with all the behaviours towards indigenous peoples while the Irish resisted it.

English is spoken worldwide… what’s this about Ireland’s lack of imperialist history? They could be talking Irish in Venezuela, had ye built yerselfs a decent Navy… 8)

I guess you didn’t get my point about the Scottish Enlightenment, then. Yes, we accepted the Acts of Union in 1707, then we changed the system, from the inside. Some Irish philosophers – e.g. Hutcheson & Burke – were influential in the wider Enlightenment of the age, and Jonathan Swift was widely read in London – but your own John Toland had to flee to England, to escape hanging in Dublin, after he dared to criticise the Catholic Church in 1696. With him went the Irish Enlightenment, before it could get started.

As for being “politically correct”… with these remarks, in this country? Hmmm?

Having well-established immigrant communities doesn’t rule out strident patriotism – the USA is a perfect example. Immigrants or their descendants often have no trouble at all being intensely nationalistic both about the old country and the new. Perhaps it’s the binary attitude to nationality we need to rethink rather than attachment to nationality in general. Is there any reason why it’s a conflict to be proud of being Irish and of being Indian?

But after traveling around Europe, and more recently during a visit to Dublin, it struck me that the idea of a festival based on such principles does seem a little odd in the 21st century. In a country that has changed so much in the last decade and where close to 10% of the population is not Irish, the festival seems to be stuck somewhere in the past. Maybe it is time for a rethink.

Imagine a similar festival taking place in Germany or England, where one of the entry criteria was that you had to be of the approved race or origin. You can imagine the reaction. I don’t think the organizers are being racist though, just rather insular. This will change over time as other cultures are absorbed in to Irish culture. After all, we don’t even question the right of Irish culture to be appreciated all over the world.

As for the allegations of sexism, the famous episode of Father Ted with its ‘Lovely Girls Contest’ pretty much sums up the perceived attitude towards the contestants.

P.s.Dont’ really understand Brian’s point about being Scottish.

Wikipedia has those lists for nearly every nationality, it isn’t a reflection of the attitude of users to Irishness.

“By way of contrast, how many Americans know that the steel magnate & philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, whose generosity established Carnegie Hall and Carnegie-Mellon University, was Scottish by birth?”

At the bottom of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie is a link to a list of Scottish Americans and Scottish immigrants to the United States. Scottishness isn’t being treated any differently from what I can see.

“In my view it is representative of the Irish government’s institutional racism, which reflects a superiority complex that the Irish have exported to all corners of the globe. I simply don’t see what they are doing to justify it.”

To me, it seems you’ve mixed up cause and effect. In most of the countries the Irish emigrated to in large numbers, their nationality – ethnicity if you prefer – was constantly pointed out to them and often held against them. That they came to set a lot of store by it in the circumstances isn’t surprising. Of course, most of this emigration took place before the Irish government even existed, so I can’t in all fairness blame them for exporting racism.

There’s something in what you say about the superiority complex, but I’d suggest that it came to be largely in response to the parallel inferiority complex. Take the Irish language for instance: a lot of Irish people view it with a kind of apologetic embarrassed that would be impossible to imagine from a Spanish or English speaker.

The stereotypes aren’t all flattering, either. Aside from the fighting drunk or the grafting politician, even the positive ones are often redolent of the leprechaun.