"Let the f***ing door slam on the black bastards."

The hatred and contempt behind the piece of advice given to me as I held open a door for a young British-Asian couple in the Merrion Centre last month rendered me speechless. Thinking I might have misheard, I rather confusedly asked the (white) member of the cleaning staff in the Centre who had offered the advice to repeat what he had said. He did so, with obvious relish, and then moved on with his dustcart amidst the happy multicultural throng of shoppers. I tried to deal constructively with my growing anger by making a strongly worded complaint to the duty manager of the Centre, but despite his clear concern and firm promise to deal with the matter I remained in a state of agitation for some days.

My initial feelings of anger were primarily to do with the language that I had heard used about two fellow human beings and it was the force of those feelings that carried me straight to the duty manager's office. Later on in the day I became aware of anger beginning to flow from a different source: because I was white, the cleaner seemed to have made an assumption that I would somehow be willing to collude in the sentiments he was expressing. That assumption left me feeling not only angry but also deeply troubled that I might, unwittingly, have lifted a veil on racist attitudes that are largely hidden from view but that continue to be widely shared.
Racism is nourished by fear - fear of those whose skin colour is not the same as our own, fear of those whose dress is different, fear of those whose religious practices are not understood. The fruits of this fear are a bitter harvest: the hatred and contempt I witnessed at first hand last month. At the start of a New Year let us pray for grace to plant the seeds of a more godly harvest that will yield the fruits of the Holy Spirit: love, joy and peace; patience, goodness and kindness; faithfulness, humility and self-control.