Re: Article: Johnny Marr banned from drivingngbetid the
The Irish are not a "race".
No, but that didn't bother those racists who wanted to see them as such.
As Lynda Boose has explained: ‘If “race” originates as a category that hierarchically privileges a ruling status and makes the Other(s) inferior, then for the English the group that was first to be shunted into this discursive derogation and thereafter invoked as almost a paradigm of inferiority was not the black 'race’ – but the Irish ‘race’.
The historian L.P. Curtis explains that anti-Irish prejudice was 'one of the largest secular trends in English cultural history'.
This prejudice continued into the late twentieth century, as detailed by Liz Curtis (see the title of John Lydon's autobiography, No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs).
Marr's brief reference to this prejudice was described in one post as 'whining'. This downplays such prejudice, and equates it with, say, having a sore knee.
Another post implied that Marr could not (a) claim to be a vegan of Irish descent if he then (b) got rich and drove fast. The idea that (b) invalidates (a) makes no sense.
Another post claimed it was 'galling' that Marr, having made a success of himself, could even mention this prejudice. Perhaps it is more 'galling' that a young man of such talent (and such affection for England) had to deal with such prejudice in the first place.