No such thing as an acceptable prejudice
As a child growing up in Belfast in the 1980s and 90s, I was conscious that many of those in positions of authority were English. At the time Northern Ireland was run by a Secretary of State, a member of the British cabinet. These men tended to be plummy and somewhat useless Conservative MPs, marking time in one of Britsh politics least sought after positions. The soldiers who patrolled the streets and manned the checkpoints were also English, as were most of the people on T.V., who provided me with a window onto the wider world.
Long before I came to identify myself positively, I could identify myself negatively. Though I was not yet sure if I was Irish, I was certain that I was not English. Even as a very young child, I knew that the people I saw on T.V. did not speak the way that I spoke, and that I wasn't one of them.
It's very common for people in such a situation to develop an inferiority complex towards those who rule over them. Thankfully I never felt this way. It never occured to me, not even for a second, that the English ruled my part of the country becasue they were better than me. I put their dominance down, not to some innate superiority on their part, but simply to the fact that they out-numbered us by ten to one.
In fact, for too long, far from feeling inferior, I actually thought of myself as better than the English. Some in England like to joke about the thick Paddies but to me, it seemed as though they were the ones who were stupid. Many English people know very little about Ireland, some struggle, often hilariously, to pronounce our place names. For a long time I mistook this for stupidity rather than ignorance.
Like many of my compatriots, I disliked the English because of their centuries of rule in my country. The number of historical grievances is lengthy, with the Famine heading up a very long list. In contemporary terms, I bitterly resented the fact that the English media treated the death of a civilain in England at the hands of the IRA as front page news, while virtually ignoring the vastly larger number of cviilian deaths in Ireland. It was as though there was only "an acceptable level of violence" when it was Irish people who were being killed.
But as I grew older, I came to see the difference between a country's government, or army, or newspapers, and the people of that country themselves. There are fifty million English people, each different from the last, each a unique human being in their own right. To write off such a large swathe of humanity with a few derogatory adjectives was as stupid as it was dangerous.
In any case, any recitation of England's vices has to be balanced by a list of its virtues. For a relatively small place, England has produced an awful lot, both good and bad. The country which inflicted the Spice Girls on the world, also gave us The Smiths. The land from which butchers like Cromwell came, also produced great humanitarians like Florence Nightingale. Most of all, the country which invented concentration camps, is also the country which struggled so magnificently against the Nazis. Given all this, anyone who tries to portray England as entirely negative is being just as ludicrous as a jingoist who would have you believe that England can do no wrong.
What's more, no country can be hermetically sealed from its neighbours. England is home to a huge native born Irish population. Many native born English have Irish ancestors. There is no "pure" Englishman any more than there isa "pure" Irishman. By hating the English, in a way I was hating myself.
The world is too complicated a place to speak in sweeping terms about hating this or that group. In my case, Englnad's long and ignoble history in Ireland is no excuse for me to be bigoted. The fact of oppression, whether contemporary or just remembered, can never be carte blanche for prejudice. We can all rationalise our prejudices if we want. But it's much better to confront them head on. Any mindset which judges a person by what they are rather than who they are is immoral.
Prejudice of the ear is no more defensible than prejudice of the eye.