Cork GAA officials last week issued an extraordinary condemnation of their own fans for flying the confederate flag at Croke Park during the All-Ireland hurling semi-final against Waterford.
The flag made its appearance — naturally — in the act of defeat as the Cork hurlers went down 4–19 to 0–20 to their Waterford counterparts.
While it was a game of high intensity augmented by the performance of the outstanding Austin Gleeson, the flag issue has become an unwelcome sideshow in the aftermath.
“People bringing flags into the ground, maybe some do it in ignorance, maybe some do it not in ignorance,” said Cork chairman Ger Lane.
“The Cork County Board would advise anybody with any knowledge of people with these flags not to bring them in, education is needed.
“The board and the executive condemn outright the use of the confederate flag and ask people to refrain to bring it to any ground in the future.
“The only flag is the red and the white one with the Cork emblem on it.”
It came just 48 hours after Charlottesville, Virginia when a white supremacist rally — ostensibly in protest at the removal of a statue to confederate general Robert E Lee — ended with bloodshed.
Heather Hayer was killed and dozens injured when a 20-year-old white supremacist named James Field drove a car into a crowded street of peaceful counter-protestors.
It’s not the first time Cork fans’ use of the confederate flag has been criticised. Munster GAA chairman Jerry O’Sullivan dismissed opposition as ‘political correctness’ to the Irish Examiner in 2016.
“I don’t think they are carried with any political message. I think we can go too far with political correctness as well. The only reason they’re being held is because they are red and white.”
While there’s been no response by anybody claiming to have brought the flag or any supporters’ group willing to defend the practice, it’s generally agreed there is no malice involved.
More likely it’s ignorance that has led some fans over time to use a flag rightly associated with slavery and racial oppression.
The story behind its appearance at Cork games, apart from it broadly matching Cork colours, a childish play on the ‘Rebel County’ moniker and the rebel flag.
And it’s this ignorance that suggests that, in all likelihood, this won’t be the last we’ve seen of the rebel flag at Cork GAA events.
The flag has long been a cause of controversy in the American South where many see it not as a symbol of racial oppression but of southern pride and nostalgia for the old south.
The depth of the difference in understanding is shown by a 2015 poll that found 72% of African-Americans see it as a symbol of racism compared to just 25% of whites.
If such radical different interpretations can be found in the United States, where it remains a living and visible symbol, there’s hardly going to be a more nuanced understanding in Ireland.
Those who brough the confederate flag to Croke Park presumably did so with some awareness of what the flag represents and the reasons others have for opposing its presence.
The top-rated post on Twitter relating to the issue comes from the day before the match, when a Corkman appealed to his fellow supporters to leave the flag behind.
That this advice wasn’t heeded (indeed, it may not have been seen) isn’t particularly surprising as Irish sports fans have long shown an ignorance of racial politics in other countries.
When Conor McGregor was accused of racism by commentators on both sides of the Atlantic in the run-up to his fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr, the reaction was telling.
During the endless promotional events for the fight, McGregor ordered Mayweather to ‘dance for me boy’ — an epithet that has a deep and sinister meaning for black people in America.
McGregor, who has a long history of deliberately invoking race to upset opponents, fell back on a well-worn and tired defence — that he can’t possibly be racist because he’s Irish.
“Floyd Mayweather, don’t ever bring race into my success again,” McGregor said.
“I am an Irishman. My people have been oppressed our entire existence. And still very much are.
“I understand the feeling of prejudice. It is a feeling that is deep in my blood.
“In my family’s long history of warfare there was a time where just having the name ‘McGregor’ was punishable by death.
“Do not ever put me in a bracket like this again.”
And there you have it — his people were oppressed and he understands prejudice, so the lived and learned experience of people who experience daily prejudice is invalid.
It would be laughable if it wasn’t eaten up by so many in Ireland, who are eager to defend their man and, possibly, just as eager for the oppression of the Irish to be seen as equal to that of black people.
It’s sadly reminiscent of the worrying trend in the United States (and to some degree in Ireland) to paint Irish indentured servitude in the Americas as being the same as the African slave trade.
This trend has been well-documented by Liam Hogan, a research librarian at Limerick City Library who specialises in Irish involvement on both sides of the slave/servant trade in North America.
These memes have taken hold within racist circles in the US, the implication being that if Irish people can ‘get over’ slavery then what is black peoples’ problem?
There’s no suggestion this type of thinking has taken a hold either within Irish sporting circles or society at large, but it underlines the dangers of dismissing uncomfortable viewpoints.
Sunday may well be the last we see of the rebel flag at Cork GAA — and I hope it is — but my nagging suspicion is that we’re no closer to empathising with the truly oppressed.
