Media contributions
1Media contributions
Title 'Platform': Empire, inequality and Irish complicity in slavery Degree of recognition National Media name/outlet History Ireland Media type Print Duration/Length/Size 1350 words Country/Territory Ireland Date 15/01/2021 Description Laurence Fenton (HI 28.5, Sept./Oct. 2020, Platform) raises important questions about how Irish society can best take part in and learn from this vital conversation. His piece reflects ongoing concerns expressed by Liam Hogan and others, whose research has been critical in countering malicious attempts to juxtapose Irish and African American suffering. Emanating mainly from an emboldened American far right and grounded in ludicrous claims about ‘Irish slavery’, these efforts are aimed—transparently—at denying the persistence of systemic racism and undermining demands for social justice and an end to police violence. In a world where growing inequality has been accompanied over recent years by an alarming rise in racism and xenophobia—including on our own doorsteps—I share Fenton’s concern that Ireland cannot afford complacency, and that the shameful treatment of immigrants and refugees, north and south, affords little basis for self-congratulation.
In important ways, however, Fenton’s piece shares with other recent commentary a problematic approach to understanding Irish complicity in transatlantic slavery. An article in the Irish Times earlier this year (headlined ‘Many Irish were implicated in the slave trade and the legacy lives on’) conveyed the impression that slave-owning was widespread across eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Ireland, and that broad sectors of Irish society profited from the provisioning of slave colonies and the sale of slave produce. The same assumptions permeate almost everything else written for popular consumption before or since. The country was, in the estimation of a Waterford blogger, ‘tainted at birth’ by the ‘original sin’ of slavery.Producer/Author Tommy Graham, ed. URL https://www.historyireland.com/empire-inequality-and-irish-complicity-in-slavery/ Persons Brian Kelly