Where are you from?: Politics of Location in Northern Ireland

I have not posted on this blog in more than a year but I wanted to put a brief post today. Its not a permanent return to this outpost but a reflection on something relevant to the trip that started it all.

This morning, actually afternoon in Ireland/UK, a officer of the Northern Irish police, the PSNI was shoot outside a school. The officer was a Catholic, a group that for most of its history was essentially banned from joining the PSNI. The act is being blamed on dissidents, whom I would assume seeing joining the police force that is accused of collusion to harm Catholics as selling out. I could give a long historical view of the situation but I just want to comment on one fact.

If you read RTE's, the Irish press, report the attack happened in the city of Derry. If you hoop over the the BBC's Northern Ireland coverage, you see the attack happened in Londonderry. No, there has been no mistake its just that people don't agree on what to call the place.

I visited (London)Derry while in Northern Ireland. It's a deeply divided city where Catholics and Protestants are literally divided by a river. Its also the city where Bloody Sunday happened and Irish Catholics have declared the area "Free Derry."

I was, and still, am stunned how absolutely everything in Northern Ireland is politicized. In fact as a blogger at ogra shinn fein, which calls itself the "official blog of Irish Republican Youth," a protest was held in July to have the city's name officially changed.

So you cannot even talk about where you are from without revealing a possible religious/political affiliation. Talk about problems for discourse.