The author makes a great point that one way (possibly the best/only way) to defeat racism is to get to know each other.  However, much of the rest of the article is based on a cursory understanding of Christian and Catholic history.  For starters, confusing dislike of Irish immigrants due to race is erroneous as it had little to do with race and instead with their Catholic religion.  The author acknowledges such, but doesn't clarify that it wasn't racism but rather "religion-ism".  Frankly, the mostly protestant people of early North America had good reason to be fearfull and distrustful of Catholics as they had just recently escaped the political, pseudo-religious iron thumb of the Cathalic church in Europe. The rooting out of heresy by the Catholic church started in the late 1100s and waxed/waned and persisted until the mid-1800s.  If people had escaped from nearly 600 years of persecution for their religious beliefs, its fairly understandable that they would react less than favourab