Racism is a vile contagion that poses constant threat

THE arson attack on a hotel earmarked for direct provision in Co Donegal and other suspected outbreaks of racism across the county should concern us all.

If we stand by and say nothing in response to such incidents we become complicit in this persecution of our fellow human beings, including people who have already suffered in horrific conflicts in other parts of the world.

Have they not endured enough of man’s inhumanity without being subjected to hatred and intolerance in what we used to think of as the Land of a Thousand Welcomes?

Most Irish people who flocked to the cinemas to see ‘Schindler’s List’ and similar movies have been shocked and sickened all over again at what was possibly the greatest crime ever committed on this planet. And they’d recoil in horror from reports or images of tyranny in faraway places.

Yet some Irish people seem quite capable of whipping up hatred against ethnic minorities, asylum seekers and refugees who, in their estimation, don’t fit into Irish society.

Most of them wouldn’t personally throw petrol bombs or physically assault anyone, but they forget that cruel words and persistent offensive namecalling can also be lethal in certain circumstances.

It’s time we looked racism straight in the face and see it for what it is: not something that happens elsewhere, or in another time and place, but as a contagion that can infect our own minds at any time if we allow it to blind us to our humanity and to every person’s birthright to live a decent life, free of hatred, fear and oppression. John Fitzgerald

Callan, Co Kilkenny