HANNAH BRAUN,
Sir, - As a keen student of Irish culture, I was dismayed at the racism evident during my recent visit to Dublin. I heard well-heeled, middle-aged, married women in south County Dublin referring to home helps as if they were kitchen appliances with such condescension as "we have a Filipino and they're great" as well as young night clubbers disparagingly talking about lavatory attendants as the "blacks in the jacks".
This is surely an indictment of the immaturity of Irish society as well as an ignorance of the welcome that Irish people received when emigrating elsewhere.
I hope these people pray that with the economic downturn their racist pigeons do not come home to roost in New York, Boston, San Francisco, London, Sydney, etc., when the Irish start emigrating en masse again. - Yours, etc.,
HANNAH BRAUN, San Francisco, USA