Racist Ireland?

A few strange things happened last weekend while I was hanging out with some American dudes.

1) I was told I looked like Maggie Gyllenhaal (who lives in Park Slope too btw!)

2) A teenage Jewish boy serving me in Kosher takeaway in Brooklyn came up five minutes later to tell me he had forgotten to say what lovely eyes I had.... :P

3) A dude of middle Eastern descent told me the Irish were incredibly racist. I was a little taken aback and asked why he thought that since he'd never actually been to Ireland. Turns out it was because they'd never date a black guy apparently. Before I could respond he asked me if I would date a black guy. While I answered genuinely that I couldn't see any reason why I wouldn't, I did think about it a lot after. I attempted to explain to him that I really don't believe the Irish are racist, and those that are are just general wasters who will be belligerent towards whatever crosses their path. The fact is that prior to the mid 90s Ireland was a white Catholic country and anything other than that was only visible on television programmes from diverse cultures like the UK and US.

So are we racist? I find it hard to believe that we are considering how the Irish have gone to all corners of the earth. And just looking at the 1911 Census on www.census.nationalarchives.ie there were plenty of foreign born people in Ireland back then too. This census return for Blackrock College has two foreign born students from 25 (India and US), arguably they were children of Irish citizens though judging by their surnames. So ultimately they were probably white skinned. So if pretty much everyone in Ireland up until the Celtic Tiger had white skin, no wonder we got a bit of a shock when young Oisin/Sean/Patrick the star hurler, has parents from Sub Saharan Africa.

By contrast, Census 2006 recorded 414,000 'non nationals' living in Ireland, out of a population of just over 4.02 million.

So are we racist or needing a little time to adjust to the new scene????