IT’S commonplace in our public conversation to deify Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, but the connection between Irishness and racism is studiously avoided. Its uncomfortable, it’s ingrained, but it’s a deeply unattractive part of us.

Missouri governor Jay Nixon has ordered the US state’s National Guard to begin withdrawing from Ferguson, where nightly scenes of unrest have erupted since a white police officer fatally shot an unarmed black 18-year-old.