Important article for Irish people to read, digest and sit with. As we know, Ireland has a complicated history. We like to talk about ‘800 years of oppression’ not so much the reality of being colonized but also benefiting from colonization irishtimes.com/news/ireland/i…
Let’s deal with a few of the most typical ‘whataboutery’ comments that always appear BTL with such articles. Those Irish people who directly benefited from slavery were not just the ‘Protestant upper classes’. The Catholic landed and middle classes were slave owners too.
Catholics and Protestant Irishmen made up the backbone of the British Imperial system (alongside the Scots) as many of the soldiers and administrators of the British Empire. Many owned slaves but even if not the directly benefited from the inequalities of Empire.
The argument the Irish ‘became’ white (popularized by Ignatiev to argue ‘whiteness’ was a social construct that allows it to be destroyed) is problematic. It is simplified by many to suit an Irish ‘victim’ narrative that has facilitated #Irishslave narratives.
Most of us know that, biologically speaking, ‘race’ does not exist (excepting the ‘human race’) but racism must certainly does. Racism derived from the transatlantic slave trade marked African people as lesser who could be categorized as chattel rather than a person.
The racism that underpins the transatlantic slave trade is based on the colour of skin. This racism afflict us today, it is not negated by change of status and it cannot be shared by white people. This reality make any thesis that (white) Irish ppl ‘became’ white as colour-blind.
This does not mean that historically Irish people did not suffer from particular forms of oppression and / or anti-Irish discrimination (we know we did) or that anti-traveler racism does not exist (it does) but these are different issues from anti-Black racism.
Historically, Irish politicians have been great advocates for and against slavery. Famously Frederick Douglass wrote about his experiences of campaigning in Ireland in the 1840s as ‘transformative’. He saw common cause with the Irish, esp with O’Connell irishtimes.com/culture/books/…
But as the article above has noted there were many Irish men who were publicly strong supporters of slavery, including John Mitchel, the Presbyterian United Irishman whose statue in Newry is again the subject of calls for it to be removed. belfastlive.co.uk/news/belfast-n…
Following from Douglass’s writings, in many ways Irish people should be the more compelling and empathetic allies of anti-Black racism but this means we need to be honest about our histories. We need to accept our failings and commit to being anti-racist. bates.edu/news/2017/10/2…
Lastly we also need to listen to the many stories of Black Irish people who are experiencing racism today. Listen to them, acknowledge them, do better in seeing this racism and calling it out. Intervene where you can and advocate for structural changes irishtimes.com/life-and-style…
