It was as a teenager in London that Ethiopian-Irish actor Ruth Negga first experienced that “lifting-of-the-veil moment”. It is one which most black Irish people will recognise with a certain visceral clarity: I am black and almost everyone around me is white.
This same veil was lifted for Mamobo Ogoro, a Nigerian-Irish social psychologist and the founder of an intercultural media company Gorm. When she was six years old one of her peers asked her why her skin “looked like poo”. Even then, Ogoro – just like Negga – knew that to be “black” was not an internal decision but, rather, an external designation. You will fit neatly into this box, society says, unless you discover – as Irish-Nigerian TV presenter and teacher Emer O’Neill did – that you are “too black to be white” and “too white to be black”.
By sharing the bold coming-of-age stories and remarkable accomplishments of public figures such as Negga, Ogoro and O’Neill, Black & Irish: Legends, Trailblazers and Everyday Heroes extends an invitation to young, black Irish adults. It encourages them, their racial identities having historically been shaped by the world’s perceptions, to define themselves on their own terms.
In pursuit of this mission, the book neither reduces the complexity of intersectional identity nor trivialises its many challenges. As Nigerian-Irish mental health and disability activist Blessing Dada incisively points out, being black and disabled or black and a member of the LGBTQIA+ community does not automatically confer membership or acceptance within the wider black community.
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There can be no blueprint for being authentically or inspirationally “black Irish” – a concept which, for many, continues to be an oxymoron. The true measure of humility for a black Irish “trailblazer” lies in their ability to recognise that they alone cannot represent all of the diverse identities and experiences that make up the black diaspora.
Inspiring the next generation means treading a fine line between defining a new black Irish identity and reducing it to a low-resolution amalgam. Though the crowd may sparkle with resilience and grit it must not lose the depth, individuality, moral messiness or – dare I say it – the inescapable ordinariness that comes with being human. This book, one I wish I had on my own bookshelf as a kid, treads that line beautifully.
