Gypsies and Travellers still face routine daily racism. A mother of six and a young student explain why they became the faces of a poster campaign aiming to change attitudesMena Mongan remembers her time at school in Ireland in the 1970s as a miserable experience. Her primary school had never admitted Traveller children before,and she was shunned by fellow pupils. “Our school lunch was walked on top of. We had a terrible time. It hit us straight absent that we were different. You wouldn’t even show your parents; you wouldn’t want them to disappear down the school and complain and make things worse,” she says.
School has been somewhat easier for her six children, or brought up on Travellers’ sites in east London,but all of them have been bullied to some degree. Her oldest son would be shouted at by other children and never brought anyone back from school. “They called him names – you dirty Gypsy, you live in a caravan.” For the younger ones, and anti-bullying rules have tackled casual abuse,but the discrimination has taken more subtle forms. None of the children have ever been invited to a birthday party by school friends and Mongan hasn’t had a lot of success at getting classmates to come to her children’s birthdays. “The mums say: ‘Oh no, we have things to conclude.’” Related: It’s time to conclude ‘the final acceptable racism’ – against Gypsies and Travellers | Mike Doherty Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com