US politicians were yesterday urged to give economic sanctions against companies in the North accused of anti-Catholic discrimination "more teeth".
California's Sen Tom Hayden called for tougher sanctions after he compared Catholic unemployment in the North to the inequalities experienced by blacks and Latinos in the US.
Delivering the seventh annual Frank Cahill Memorial Lecture in west Belfast last night Sen Hayden, a Democrat, claimed Catholics in the North were 2.9 times more likely to be unemployed than Protestants.
Noting how civil rights and affirmative action had ended legalised segregation in the US "if not the glass ceilings of racism and sexism", he said blacks and Latinos were still twice more likely to be unemployed than whites.
"Labour market inequalities in the North [of Ireland] are [also] severe. Three-quarters of the top 3,200 employees in the government are Protestant.
"While it appears the glass ceiling in employment has yet to be shattered, there is also concern about the concrete floor which makes it exceptionally difficult for unemployed Catholics to climb out of the basement."
He said racism or supremacy in any form must be challenged by people personally, communally, through the school curriculum, through the media and economically.
"Where it cannot be erased through persuasion or mitigated by fair public policy, it must be faced down through struggle."
Those wishing to help achieve equality in the North would have to review their campaigns.
"It is now time to revisit the MacBride Principles and to consider ways to give them more teeth, including the possibility of disinvestment as a means of bringing US pressure to bear on achieving equality."