Barry Clifford: The Stigma Of Passive Prejudice

• "Intelligent for a black man." This heading was part of an anti-racism poster I saw on a billboard in Florida, aimed at the subtleties of prejudice in its many forms. These forms are also directed at atheists or Christians and Muslims, and most anything in between by using people's culture, colour or background against them, and especially so if they are accused of child abuse. If you accuse a person of child abuse, the weight of that charge is so great that being found not guilty is almost a technical point. When those accusations are supported by the 'there-is-no-smoke-without-fire' brigade, it fuels an inferno of prejudice so monumental that the person accused carries a life sentence whether they are black, white, or any shade in between. Headlines that say: "A child was abducted by a black man" or "Pakistani man runs a child prostitution ring" promotes a prejudice that is plain wrong.

A cleric too who is accused of child abuse should not be in the media on the accusation alone, nor anyone else for that matter. Only when found guilty should they be there at all. When this happens, then only the victim should remain unnamed, should they wish to do so.

About five years ago in Galway there was a high expectation that the murder and rape of Manuela Riedo, A beautiful Swedish teenage girl, was committed by a foreign national. The man who did this heinous crime was not and had a long history of violence.

In some states in the US, they release photographs of people to the media who have been accused of all kinds of crimes while being, photographed in the most unflattering of poses before any trial; so much for fairness and balance. One media outlet boldly headlined: "Man accused of murdering a priest." Later, they sheepishly headlined: "Murder accused said priest had made unwanted advances." Only when found guilty of his murder did this man at last admit he made up those accusations. Which headline was bigger, the former or the latter? Had this admission not happened, then the priest's legacy and all the good that he had done in his lifetime would have been consigned to the dustbin of infamy and interred with his bones.

It is not that we have to be more cautious in what we do, what we write or say to "appear" more balanced and fair in our daily lives and the media along with the definitive truth, but we do need to ask ourselves why we or they are not so in the first place.

Barry Clifford