Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

‘Paddy-bashing’ and the blind spot of progressives

The school textbook depicts the Irish family as eating cabbage and potatoes every day (Educational Company of Ireland (Edco))

There’s a new book out that depicts Irish people as gurning ginger-haired imbeciles who do Irish jigs in the garden and eat bacon and cabbage every day. Who produced this offensive tome? Must have been some Neanderthal bigots, right, who wish it was still the 1970s and still acceptable to Paddy-bash? Actually, it was a leading Irish publisher of school textbooks, and the book in question was intended for Irish schoolkids.

Irish schoolkids were agog at the blatant Mickphobia in their textbooks

Across the Irish Sea there’s a media storm about a textbook produced by the Educational Company of Ireland. It’s a study aid in Social, Personal and Health classes for secondary-school pupils. And it contains a section titled ‘All Different, All Equal’ that unfavourably contrasts a family of cabbage-gobbling Micks in Aran sweaters to a far more fun and enlightened mixed-race family who eat ‘curry, pizza and Asian food’.

It’s an extraordinary sight.

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