Madam, - Marie MacSweeney (October 21st) misses the point about travellers and ethnicity. She says it is clear that their difference from the rest of the population is "social rather than racial". I don't think anyone ever said that travellers are a separate race. There is only one race, the human race and the same DNA flows through all our bodies, albeit with different patterns and arrangements.
The point is that ethnicity is a social construct depending on the way people produce and reproduce, practise their religion and exercise their customs. Defined in this way the Traveller community constitutes an ethnic minority in Ireland.
Ethnicity is not an absolute but a relative construct. It is not one's surnames that define one's ethnic group or nationality. In the making of policies travellers want their ethnicity recognised. They want to be integrated into the wider society, not assimilated.
The Traveller economy is banjaxed, just like many of the old labour-intensive industries of Dublin's inner city. Travellers have many skills and gifts which should be nurtured so they can play a positive role in a modern, capitalist society. That can be done only by respecting their differences and their right to retain the positive qualities of their ethnicity, thus easing what is potentially a very painful transition. The absence of such policies has led to dysfunctionality in parts of the Traveller community.
Traveller organisations have asked for a dialogue on these issues but what they get back is the voice, and sometime the self-righteous voice, of the dominant groups in Irish society with their ideologically false views of ethnicity and race. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL RAFFERTY, Community Technical Aid, Fenian Street,
Dublin 2.
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Madam, - Marie MacSweeney bases her theory on Travellers and ethnicity on two assumptions. The first is that someone with a particular surname is automatically from a certain ethnic background. The other is the flawed belief that there is an ethnic "stock" and that DNA testing could somehow establish this.
On the first assumption, one could argue that Martin Luther King is of the same "ethnic stock" as the TV3 weather forecaster Martin King and that Irish and Chinese families bearing the surname "Lee" would also share an ethnic affinity. The reality is more complex and interesting than Ms Mac Sweeney's assumption would allow.
Ethnicity is a cultural derivation based on accepted criteria. These are that one is born into the group; that the group has shared history, traditions and culture; and that the group sees itself as different and is seen as different by others.
It is only by acknowledging the distinct ethnic status of Travellers that we can begin working together to achieve a true island of equals. - Yours, etc.,
BRENDAN Ó CAOLÁIN, Cultural Heritage Programme, Pavee Point, North Great Charles Street, Dublin 1.