{"id":41801,"date":"2015-07-19T16:56:12","date_gmt":"2015-07-19T16:56:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=41801"},"modified":"2019-04-18T00:00:10","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T00:00:10","slug":"mixed-race-irish-we-were-the-dust-to-be-swept-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=41801","title":{"rendered":"Mixed Race Irish: \u2018We were the dust to be swept away\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mixed Race Irish: \u2018We were the dust to be swept away\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The Irish Times<\/a>
\n2015-07-18<\/p>\n

Kitty Holland<\/strong><\/a>, Staff Reporter<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
\n\u2018I lived in a state of pure terror\u2019: Rosemary Adaser, co-founder of the group Mixed Race Irish. Photograph: Joanne O\u2019Brien<\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation<\/a> urged to confront the racism endured by children taken into care and abused because they had a non-white parent<\/em><\/p>\n

In October 1958, when Rosemary Adaser<\/a> was admitted, as an 18-month-old, to a mother-and-baby home in Dublin<\/a>, her admission notes described her as \u201cillegitimate and coloured\u201d. Fifteen years later, when she was pregnant and sent to a mother-and-baby home in Co Meath<\/a>, they described her as \u201crather mature for her age; accepts her colour well\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy file is peppered with references to my colour,\u201d she says. \u201cThe racism was relentless and brutalising. My formative years were devastated by it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adaser is one of about 70 mixed-race people who have come together in the past few years as Mixed Race Irish<\/a>, a campaign and support group. They believe they were taken into care because they were mixed race, that there was a different unspoken \u201cpolicy\u201d for them and that they suffered an \u201cextra layer of abuse\u201d because of their racial identity. They say racism was endemic, systemic and systematic, in the care system and in Irish society, and that their experiences were particular to them…<\/p>\n

…Like other mixed-race Irish children in the mother-and-baby homes, she was never offered for adoption. She believes this was policy, based on a presumption that nobody would want to adopt a mixed-race baby. Instead she was fostered, or boarded out. \u201cWhen I was four I was sent to a couple in their 60s. No, they weren\u2019t vetted. They were invited to select a child. People were paid by the State to take in children. This couple had no pension, and I was an income source.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe woman was vicious. I have a clear memory of fearing the gardening gloves, because she would go and cut branches from the rose bushes and cut the flowers off. She called me filthy and nasty and would strip me naked. I was four, remember, and she would whip me with the thorns. Years later I still had scars on my back, buttocks, stomach, legs, arms and soles of my feet, but not my face,\u201d Adaser says. \u201cThe whippings were so bad I was hospitalised. After 18 months I was returned to St Patrick\u2019s.\u201d…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation urged to confront the racism endured by children taken into care and abused because they had a non-white parent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,28,459,8,820,4481],"tags":[246,16528,20457,20458,16529,20459,16526],"class_list":["post-41801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-europe","category-history","category-media-archive","category-religion","category-social-work","tag-ireland","tag-irish-times","tag-kitty-holland","tag-mother-and-baby-homes-commission-of-investigation","tag-rosemary-adaser","tag-rosemary-c-adaser","tag-the-irish-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41801"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55909,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41801\/revisions\/55909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}