Ireland learns to love its growing multiculturalism

A new children’s book reflects the broadening demographic changes in this country. How are children dealing with this? Suzanne Harrington investigates.

A new picture book has been launched in Cork by local author, Constantina O’Sullivan. Aimed at 2-to-6-year-olds, it features a group of children — Emily, Darek, Sophia, Sanjay and Katy — playing separately in the park, when another child arrives with a bubble wand. This brings the children together to play — the book’s title is Everyone Loves Bubbles, and, according to its publishers, it “aims to support young children’s understanding of ‘difference’”.

Once upon a time in the quite recent past, Ireland was a monocultural, monotheistic place where pretty much everyone was a white Irish Catholic, with cultural diversity comprised of a small scattering of white Irish Protestants. A line in Ulysses notes how Ireland “never persecuted the Jews”, because “she never let them in”, and a person of colour was so rare in Ireland that the Irish language could not quite describe black people other than as a ‘fearr gorm’ — a ‘blue man’. It would not be an overstatement to say that racist attitudes were ingrained, despite there being almost no racial or cultural diversity.