A MAN goes to visit his mother-in-law with his two children. He steps out into the garden. The window of a first-floor flat opens and a banana flies towards him, accompanied by shouts of, “There you go, monkey”.
The police are called. The person who threw the banana is identified and a file is duly sent to the Public Prosecution Service. Time passes. A lot of time. Then he is informed that there has been a decision for 'no prosecution’.
Already distressed, now outraged, he and his family query how this came to be. A PSNI officer visits and informs them that the investigating officer was of the view it was “a prank gone wrong”. The case is closed.
That was three years ago.
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AN event is held to raise awareness of hate crime and highlight initiatives to "promote inclusivity and support victims" to mark National Hate Crime Awareness Week.
The PSNI has joined forces with several other agencies to examine the projects being used to tackle hate crime.
There is a dramatic re-enactment of hate crimes by school children, a panel discussion with police officers, Rainbow Project, Victim Support, Leonard Cheshire and Migrant Centre representatives among others.
Those assembled are told: "There is no place for hate in Northern Ireland.”
That was on Monday morning.
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A FAMILY open their front door to take their two young children to primary school and find it and the bay window of their house splattered with red liquid. They are first confused and then distressed. It is tomato ketchup. It is not the first time their home has been defaced with food. And worse.
No other house in the street has been vandalised overnight.
A neighbour sees their upset and hurries over. The parents don’t speak much English, even after three years living in the street. She helps them to phone the police and explain what has happened.
The police release a statement describing it as a `hate crime’ and appealing for help to catch those responsible.
That was on Tuesday morning.
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DO you need to know that the man in the first story is black and that the person who threw the banana was a third level student and that it happened in the leafy university area of south Belfast?
Do you need to know that the family in the third story are refugees who were housed in that street after fleeing their war-torn homeland?
Do you need to know that it’s the same street?
I think you probably do.
Too often we write off active racism as something so alien it couldn’t be perpetrated by anyone we know. By anyone like us. In any street that we could live on, or have lived on, or know someone that lived there.
That it’s confined to the football stadia of eastern or middle Europe. Or sink estates where generations after forgotten generation are trapped, uneducated and defensive.
I have seen this fallacy often. It is implicit in the shock of friends and acquaintances who cannot fathom that I may have suffered racism.
Because I move in their circles, and there can’t be racism in those circles. Because there are people like them in those circles and people like them can’t be racist.
I have fallen victim to that sort of thinking myself. Excusing the inexcusable, refusing to acknowledge the possibility that my ears heard what they did, or my eyes saw it.
It is conditioning, but it is also self-preservation. It is easier to live with it at an arm’s length, for it to be carried out by someone else, for it to be 'not us’.
But that also makes it easier for us to do nothing.
So I’m going to say, yes, in 12 years it could be my child doing that. Of course it could be. And if it could be my child, then it may also be yours, this week. On Monday night to be exact.
Look that fact in the face and do something today to make sure it’s not your child tomorrow night.
Otherwise we are all creating the environment where police can dismiss throwing a banana at a black man as a 'prank gone wrong’.
