I write as an Irish republican, not as a northern nationalist. One of the most damaging developments in recent years has been the tendency to treat racism as a problem that belongs exclusively to the Protestant, Unionist and Loyalist community. When racist incidents occur in loyalist districts, entire communities are condemned. When similar hostility emerges elsewhere, particularly within nationalist areas or across the south, they are explained away as isolated incidents, a product of deprivation, or an unfortunate exception.
Neither approach survives serious examination.
If one community can be judged collectively by the actions of its worst elements, then every community can. The logic is identical. The result is absurd. Neither the PUL nor the CNR population is a single political or cultural bloc. Both contain decent people, prejudiced people and people who simply wish to get on with their lives. Racism does not recognise constitutional preferences. It is carefully constructed and crosses every boundary that we know.
By turning racism into another front in the constitutional argument, the political class and the community gatekeepers have managed to sectarianise a human rights issue. The result is predictable. Communities retreat into defensiveness. Politicians score cheap points. Nothing changes.
The language employed in these debates exposes the contradiction. Terms such as “hun”, “planter” and “knuckledragger” are frequently deployed by Republicans under the banner of anti-racism. They are sectarian slurs. Their purpose is not to challenge prejudice but to reinforce it. They reduce complex communities to caricatures and then they congratulate themselves for doing so.
When Irish Republicans use sectarian slurs to condemn racial prejudice, they are not fighting intolerance, they are simply engaging in a different form of it. Weaponising anti-racism to score points against a traditional constitutional rival strips Republicanism of any moral authority it may hold.
Sectarianism and racism share the same intellectual foundation. Both begin by reducing individuals to a category. Both rely on inherited assumptions. Both permit collective guilt. The target changes. The method does not.
Nowhere is the reality of prejudice within the broader Irish population more starkly exposed than in the treatment of Irish Travellers. This is why the treatment of Irish Travellers matters. Travellers experience levels of discrimination that would provoke outrage if directed at any other group. They are refused access to businesses, excluded from opportunities and treated with suspicion based on surname, identity and background. Their health and social outcomes remain among the worst in Western Europe.
Yet this reality rarely features in conversations about racism within Irish society. Shared religion, shared geography and shared history have not protected Travellers from discrimination and racism. The lesson is obvious. Racism and exclusion are not confined to one tradition. They emerge wherever societies decide that some people matter less than others.
The institutional response in the North has been no more impressive.
The Executive’s record on racial equality is defined less by achievement than by inertia. The Racial Equality Strategy for 2015–2025 was widely criticised throughout its lifespan. During the same period race-hate incidents and crimes continued to rise. The most recent figures recorded by the PSNI are the highest since records began.
Faced with this reality, the Executive led by Sinn Fein has produced another framework. In March 2026, First Minister for All, Michelle O’Neill launched a public consultation on a new draft Race Relations Framework. Critics from across civil society responded with unusual consistency. Amnesty International described it as unfit for purpose. Others called for its withdrawal and redrafting. The criticism centred on a simple point. The framework treated racism as a problem of community relations and integration rather than a problem of structural inequality and discrimination.
Without targets, funding, timelines or accountability, strategy becomes performative. The draft strategy creates the appearance of action and change while avoiding its substance.
Alongside political failure sits another problem. Over the past three decades a substantial industry has developed around conflict management and community relations: the peace industry. Much valuable work has been undertaken by some within the community and voluntary sector, but the funding environment has also produced perverse incentives.
For years organisations relied upon large-scale peace funding. As those resources diminished, new funding priorities emerged. Anti-racism became one of them. The danger is not that racism receives attention. It should. The danger is that racism replaces sectarianism as a funding opportunity.
When organisations depend upon demonstrating crisis in order to secure resources, crisis acquires value. The problem is no longer solved. It is managed. This year, community organisations that once argued there was no racism in Republican areas in Belfast for example were to the fore in claiming funding allocated by the British Home Office to tackle anti-migrant sentiment.
Good relations funding is now allocated to the established gatekeepers, often to the detriment of the emerging support and advocacy groups established by the new migrant communities themselves.
Cultural awareness workshops, diversity seminars and performative events do nothing to address racism or sectarianism. They serve a dual purpose for both community gatekeepers and the political and social elites. It is highly cost-effective theatre. It is significantly cheaper for the Stormont Executive to throw a minor grant to a local community group for an "anti-racism workshop" than it is to build social housing.
Workshops, awareness sessions and symbolic events have their place. They may improve understanding. They may challenge ignorance. What they cannot do is substitute for aspiration, education, healthcare and economic opportunity.
The consequence of this approach is visible in working-class communities across the North. Areas experiencing poor housing, weak services and limited opportunity become vulnerable to resentment and manipulation. Far-right activists exploit those conditions. Migrants become convenient targets. The underlying causes remain untouched. There were no riots on the Malone Road.
When disorder follows, entire communities are denounced as backward or racist. This approach absolves government of responsibility. It transforms political failure into a cultural defect.
The North will not address racism through moral grandstanding. It will not address it through sectarian score-settling. It will not address it through endless declarations of concern.
It will address it only when we are prepared to apply the same standards to ourselves that we apply to others. True anti-racism requires looking inward with an unblinking, critical eye, regardless of the flags flying at the end of the street
That requires several things.
First, collective guilt must be rejected. Individuals should be held accountable for their actions. Communities should not.
Second, racial equality policy must move beyond rhetoric. Strategies require measurable objectives, funding and enforcement.
Third, public funding should be linked to demonstrable outcomes rather than the perpetual management of social problems.
Finally, inequality must be addressed directly. Housing, healthcare, education and economic opportunity are not distractions from anti-racism. They are part of it.
The recent riots did not create these problems. They exposed them.
The choice now is whether we continue to explain racism through the comforting language of tribal politics, or whether we recognise it for what it is: a societal failure shared across communities, institutions and governments alike.
⏩Muiris Ó Súilleabháin was a member of the Republican Movement until he retired in 2006 after 20 years of service. Fiche bhliain ag fás.
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