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My parish is hosting some kind of social/fund raiser on St. Patrick’s day. Nothing untoward there, is there? It’s to be a Pub Night. Now, are you all right with that? I don’t think I am. What’s with the continued association of the Irish and drunkenness? How’s 4 Nobel prizes in literature? Why not a Yeats-Shaw-Beckett-Heaney read-a-thon? Or how about key figures in popular culture: U2, Liam Neeson, Pierce Brosnan, Brendan Gleason, Maeve Binchy, Dervla Kirwan, Sinead OConnor, Enya? Can’t build a night around that? No, the organizers have seized upon and perpetuated a negative stereotype. Or is it okay so long as we think of the Irish as charming little people with twee accents and a penchant for hard shoe tap?
Irish Catholics were persecuted in Ontario for over a hundred years, and I don’t think that we, their descendants, have to put up with insulting stereotypes any longer.
If it were any other group, wouldn’t this be considered racist?