Irish Centre for Human Rights Blog

PhD researchers at the Irish Centre for Human Rights stand in solidarity with all those protesting, in the United States and around the world, against police brutality, excessive use of force, and institutionalised racism. The murders of George Floyd, Riah Milton, Dominique Rem’mie Fells, and Breonna Taylor, among countless others, by US police forces in recent months are not isolated incidents. These attacks form part of a pattern of systemic discrimination, racism, and structural violence that disproportionately affects Black people and indigenous peoples, and other people of colour, within the US and worldwide.

Racism, exclusion and marginalisation affects the environment that enables the exercise of human rights. We acknowledge that systemic racism operates differently in each country and recognise that its deep-rooted effects threaten the dignity of people across borders, including in Ireland. Black people, people of colour, and the Irish Traveller community in Ireland experience violence and discrimination that compromises their ability to live with dignity and safety. They face obstacles in accessing adequate housing and employment and are subjected to racial profiling by police authorities. Black people and people of colour also make up the majority of individuals living in Direct Provision, a system that has been repeatedly criticised as State-supported and State-designed racism.

As PhD students at the Irish Centre for Human Rights we are an international community, but also the sum of individuals with different backgrounds and unique life experiences. We acknowledge, value, and celebrate our diversity and differences as a strength and a constant source of collective learning. Nevertheless, some of us have not been immune to racism and systemic discrimination here in Ireland and beyond. Those experiences reflect a reality that must be made visible, vocalised and challenged. We are all united by the belief that remaining silent represents, in fact, a form of complicity. We also believe, as Angela Davis explains, that “in a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.”

In view of this call to take an anti-racist position within our institutions, we acknowledge such a responsibility rests with ourselves as academics to educate ourselves on our own privileges and prejudices. The privileges we are afforded as members of the University community provide us with the opportunity to inform the academic and public sphere with our research. We enjoy the freedom to express our opinions, yet this freedom and privilege does not come without responsibility. We endeavour to ensure that the research we publish and the information we disseminate not only does not reproduce damaging rhetorics of racism, xenophobia, and discrimination, but actively challenges such narratives as inconsistent with the theory and practice of human rights. We also work to unlearn our own biases, to encourage anti-racist education and to combat racism not only in action, but also in thought and in knowledge.

We put forth this declaration of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, and with all those engaged in anti-racist work in the US and across the world. This movement has highlighted how structural racism remains the dominant source of inequality in our societies and that racism is detrimental to the well-being of all human beings. We also put forth this declaration for our members to build solidarity from our community, so that it not only represents human rights at its core, but also creates an inclusive and safe space where the values of solidarity, equality, inclusion, respect, anti-colonialism, and anti-racism are upheld. From our perspective, solidarity begins with respect for and the celebration of each other’s differences, including cultural, gender, orientation, racial, political and religious. Given our role in our institutions as gatekeepers in the production of knowledge, we strive to work as agents of institutional and structural transformation within the University and the wider community. Such work requires that we engage in discussions within and beyond our community to better understand the factors that contribute to the persistence of institutionalised racism and structural inequality. We are open to listening, learning and developing. We are committed to becoming better allies, expressing solidarity, and creating alliances across our differences.

A list of resources on anti-racism and of organisations involved in anti-racism work is available here.

PhD researchers at the Irish Centre for Human Rights stand in solidarity with all those protesting, in the United States and around the world, against police brutality, excessive use of force, and institutionalised racism. The murders of George Floyd, Riah Milton, Dominique Rem’mie Fells, and Breonna Taylor, among countless others, by US police forces in recent months are not isolated incidents. These attacks form part of a pattern of systemic discrimination, racism, and structural violence that disproportionately affects Black people and indigenous peoples, and other people of colour, within the US and worldwide.

Racism, exclusion and marginalisation affects the environment that enables the exercise of human rights. We acknowledge that systemic racism operates differently in each country and recognise that its deep-rooted effects threaten the dignity of people across borders, including in Ireland. Black people, people of colour, and the Irish Traveller community in Ireland experience violence and discrimination that compromises their ability to live with dignity and safety. They face obstacles in accessing adequate housing and employment and are subjected to racial profiling by police authorities. Black people and people of colour also make up the majority of individuals living in Direct Provision, a system that has been repeatedly criticised as State-supported and State-designed racism.

As PhD students at the Irish Centre for Human Rights we are an international community, but also the sum of individuals with different backgrounds and unique life experiences. We acknowledge, value, and celebrate our diversity and differences as a strength and a constant source of collective learning. Nevertheless, some of us have not been immune to racism and systemic discrimination here in Ireland and beyond. Those experiences reflect a reality that must be made visible, vocalised and challenged. We are all united by the belief that remaining silent represents, in fact, a form of complicity. We also believe, as Angela Davis explains, that “in a racist society, it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist.”

In view of this call to take an anti-racist position within our institutions, we acknowledge such a responsibility rests with ourselves as academics to educate ourselves on our own privileges and prejudices. The privileges we are afforded as members of the University community provide us with the opportunity to inform the academic and public sphere with our research. We enjoy the freedom to express our opinions, yet this freedom and privilege does not come without responsibility. We endeavour to ensure that the research we publish and the information we disseminate not only does not reproduce damaging rhetorics of racism, xenophobia, and discrimination, but actively challenges such narratives as inconsistent with the theory and practice of human rights. We also work to unlearn our own biases, to encourage anti-racist education and to combat racism not only in action, but also in thought and in knowledge.

We put forth this declaration of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, and with all those engaged in anti-racist work in the US and across the world. This movement has highlighted how structural racism remains the dominant source of inequality in our societies and that racism is detrimental to the well-being of all human beings. We also put forth this declaration for our members to build solidarity from our community, so that it not only represents human rights at its core, but also creates an inclusive and safe space where the values of solidarity, equality, inclusion, respect, anti-colonialism, and anti-racism are upheld. From our perspective, solidarity begins with respect for and the celebration of each other’s differences, including cultural, gender, orientation, racial, political and religious. Given our role in our institutions as gatekeepers in the production of knowledge, we strive to work as agents of institutional and structural transformation within the University and the wider community. Such work requires that we engage in discussions within and beyond our community to better understand the factors that contribute to the persistence of institutionalised racism and structural inequality. We are open to listening, learning and developing. We are committed to becoming better allies, expressing solidarity, and creating alliances across our differences.

A list of resources on anti-racism and of organisations involved in anti-racism work is available here.