Songs, Stories & Shenanigans, Episode 5: Anti-Racist copertina

Songs, Stories & Shenanigans, Episode 5: Anti-Racist

Songs, Stories & Shenanigans, Episode 5: Anti-Racist

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 You may have seen the term Anti-Racist pop up on social media this past week, or before. Being anti-racist is viewing all racial groups as equal and supporting policies that lead to equality and justice. It not only means to acknowledge that racism exists, but to fight it whenever it arises. Don’t be tone deaf either. I cannot speak for my brother, for I have never walked as a minority in America. But my forebears did. They experienced racism as Irish immigrants in America, the No Irish Need Apply, and all that hardship that mentality symbolizes. Under British overlords, they were stolen or sentenced to slavery, often in Barbados, or even the U.S. “The curse of Cromwell: revisiting the Irish slavery debate” By John Donoghue, searches through the comparison between Irish and black slaves. Donoghue is an associate professor of history at Loyola University, Chicago. Published in 18th-19th Century Social Perspectives, Early Modern History Social Perspectives, Features, Issue 4 (July/August 2017), Volume 25 A few excerpts from this work, both relevant, and insightful: “Cromwell himself oversaw the first wave of colonial transportation to the Caribbean. Writing to parliament after leading the slaughter at Drogheda (Drohg heed ah) in September 1649, the general reported that the ‘officers were knocked on the head, and every tenth man of the soldiers killed, and the rest shipped for the Barbadoes’. Slipping easily into imperial voice, Cromwell argued that massacre and transportation were benevolent forms of terrorism, as they would frighten the Irish into submission and thus ‘prevent the effusion of blood for the future’. In this light, the history of Irish slavery should lead to solidarity with—rather than scorn for—the deep history driving the Black Lives Matter movement. Interracial solidarity may be the only means by which we can lift the curse of Cromwell that still haunts the Irish in America.  “Importantly, Irish servants and others from England and Scotland referred to themselves as ‘slaves’. African slaves also regarded Irish field hands as slaves. An anonymous writer on Barbados, most likely Major John Scott, wrote in 1667 that the Irish were ‘derided by the negroes, and branded with the epithet of “white slaves”’. Africans referred to the Irish as slaves, as the Irish did themselves, to reflect the brutal exploitation they endured as unfree plantation workers who, having been kidnapped or transported, were violently forced to work against their will. Irish sailors voyaging to the West Indies on commercial ventures or with Prince Rupert’s Royalist fleet in 1652 would have seen Irish people subjected to plantation bondage. In 1655, Irish sailors had themselves been transported after being captured serving with Royalist forces.” The Irish race – faced 800 years of attempts to euthanize us. An Gorta Mor, The Great Hunger, whose epicenter was Black 47, is only the most famous. Still they, and we, stand. The Jewish race - faced the Holocaust, and 6 million of them were murdered. Still they, and we, stand. The American Indian race – Driven from their centuries long owned land, treaties violated and starvation. Still they, and we, stand. The Black and Brown race – faced Slavery. Still they, and we, stand. Unfortunately, I am sure there are other such defining cultural attempts at systemic euthanasia. Why did so many Irish become cops, lawyers and then judges, with each succeeding generation following, even to today? This doesn’t lessen the Black cause, it validates it. Despite attempts by others, an equal opportunity gained through hard work, perseverance, wisdom and planning was available to us, often with a hand down for the ones coming after.  Blacks did not, and some still do not, have that.  To revisit Donaghue above, “… approximately twelve million Africans who endured the Middle Passage to the Americas from the early sixteenth century through to the late nineteenth century, who, if they lived (approximately two million of them perished), faced perpetual slavery for themselves and their children, something whites never or almost never experienced.”  The difference for the Irish is that it did not pass on to their children. You cannot equate Irish bondage with perpetual, racial slavery, as experienced by Black slaves. Similarities, certainly. Understanding and empathy, certainly. But surely you can see the systemic racism evident past and present, not just in America, but systemic here for sure. Is silence consent?  Are you, like me, afraid to speak up at times, for fear of saying the wrong thing to our brothers and sisters, and be accused of being a racist, which would crush my human loving soul, while really just wanting to help? In both interest and profession, I study our Irish and American history, and in overlap, I know just a little of what Black history is.   But, just a little. I listen, I strive to understand, to do more than just ...
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