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I’ve been vocal on here before about my grá for the Irish history community but I must say debate over the last few days shows how much we need some historians of colour, more historians of non-European spaces and more who read scholarship from beyond Ireland, UK, Europe and US.
The readiness to assume that any debate around the decolonising of public heritage is simply importing 'American cancel culture' shows an inability even to imagine that scholars, activists and communities in the Global South have been discussing these issues for years.
Discussions around decolonisation of heritage did not originate with hipsters in New York, they came from the works of African-American pioneers like Audre Lorde, African writers like Achille Mbembe, Cheikh Anta Diop and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, activists in universties in South Africa
The assumption that issues of race and legacies of Empire don't apply here shows a limited understanding of Ireland's own place in imperial structures and an exclusive understanding of what it means to be Irish historically and in the present day.
My thinking about my area of study, colonial Algeria, has been greatly enhanced by engaging with the rich historiography and cultural theory around Ireland and I know plenty of Irish scholars who would say the same for their engagement with African and Indian historiography.
We do have some great people working on Irish connections to slavery and Ireland's complex relationship with Empire and @EbunJoseph1's pioneering Black Studies module in UCD is exciting but how great would it be to have a Lecturer in Black Irish History!
Students are hungry for engagement with these questions. Our student bodies are far more diverse and often far more informed on these big societal issues than the teaching staff and other prominent voices in public discourse around history. We need to work to change this.
Finally to dismiss this types of questions as imported 'identity politics' is to ignore the fact that racism has always shaped the Irish state's dark history of institutionalisation, form the Mother and Baby homes to Direct Provision centres. This is our history too.
