MICHAEL FEEHELEY
Sir, - So Hannah Braun (August 21st) was surprised with the level of racism she found here and concludes that surely "this is an indictment of the immaturity of Irish society as well as an ignorance of the welcome that Irish people received whe emigrating elsewhere."
Yes, some Irish people are uncomfortable with the changes that immigration has brought. It is grossly unfair, however, to tarnish an entire people based on the actions of a few.
Otherwise, if we looked at Ms Braun's country, the USA, we would have to level the same criticisms and label her society as "immature".
For surely in the US one finds segregated neighbourhoods, anti-black and anti-Hispanic sentiment, lower life expectancy and lower education levels for racial minorities, and other egregious failures of the "land of the free" to embrace multiculturalism.
As for the welcome that the Irish received in history, it was not always as positive as Ms Braun would purport. During the Famine, most Irish ended up in Canada because as a British colony it could not, unlike the US, close its ports to the unwanted Irish immigrants.
Irish Catholics faced much discrimination because of their faith and it took a few generations before most Irish families were as comfortable as their Anglo-Saxon neighbours in most of the English- speaking world.
In time, Ireland will show the world that the failte that most citizens offer to tourists will also be the dominant impression of the way it treats its new, non-Celtic immigrants. - Yours, etc.,
MICHAEL FEEHELEY DA COSTA, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14