Emer O’Neill has shared her heartache after her son Ky was the target of a racist comment.
The RTÉ presenter revealed that earlier this week, her seven-year-old and his friends were approached by a group of kids aged about 11 or 12 while they were playing on the green in their estate.
Emer admitted she was “at a loss for words” when Ky told her one of the kids said to him: “Your dad’s George Floyd”, referring to the man who became the symbol of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 after he was murdered by police officer Derek Chauvin.
Speaking to RSVP Live about the incident, the Today show host said: “I asked him if he was OK and he turned and looked at me and said, ‘To be honest mom, I am’. It took everything for me not to cry, I just focused on the road. My heart ached for him.”
“I was remembering experiencing things like this as a child and feeling so embarrassed that it happened in front of my friends, and thinking they wouldn’t want to be friends anymore with the brown girl that brings that kind of attention.”
“I always blamed myself for bringing those kind of comments around them.”
Emer said Ky didn’t say anything back to the boy who made the comment to him, which she told him was the right thing to do.
“I said ‘People like that don’t deserve your time or energy. Ignoring him was the right thing to do. You are a very special and beautiful boy and I am so proud of you’.”
“I thanked him for telling me about it and said if you see him again on the green to come and get me so I can give him a piece of my mind and find out where he lives so I can go to his parents.”
Emer admitted she had worried about her children going through what she went through when she first found out she was pregnant.
She said: “I always said I would shield him and protect him from it but it is impossible to unless I am to never let him out of my sight.”
“It was always inevitable and that became very clear to me two years ago and continues to each day. About three months ago, he was called “a black d*ck” from someone at school and a week before that another kid told him his skin looked like poo.”
“Growing up is hard enough. Parents, schools, clubs – please talk to your children about this. Please teach them the pain their words can cause others. Ky and every other child of colour in Ireland don’t deserve this.”
