Black-white mixed race young people in Ireland and their lived experiences of racialised exclusion

Introduction

Recent years have witnessed a rise in interracial unions across all western societies (Song, 2009). Due to increased rates of migration, the multiracial family and the existence of mixed race children have also come to be a regular feature of Irish familial life (CSO, 2016). In fact, Census data (2016) indicates that the fastest growing ethnic category since the 2011 Census has been ‘other, including mixed background’ which displayed an annualised growth of 14.7% and comprises 1.5 per cent of the population.

With a few exceptions (e.g. King-O’Riain, 2021; Morrison, 2004), there has been a dearth of academic scholarship relating to racial mixedness in Ireland and most significantly, to date, there has been no substantive consideration of the lived experiences of the emerging generation of black-white mixed race young people in Ireland. Whilst this may be understandable in the light of Ireland’s relatively small mixed race population, there is ample evidence to suggest that, from a global perspective at least, there has been a marked increase in the number of people who racially identify as mixed race (Alba et al., 2018).

This paper, therefore, sets out to provide empirical insight into the lives of fifteen black-white mixed race young people (aged 4–18) with a particular focus on their experiences of racialised exclusion in a society which is constructed homogenously as white. My intention here is to highlight a particular pattern of mixed race family formation – black (African) and white (Irish) – in contemporary Ireland.

The article begins by tracing the significant moments and features that have shaped racialised belonging in the Irish context. I then chart the emergence of critical mixed race studies as a subfield which encompasses a more global perspective. I then outline the material and methods employed before moving into an examination of the data related to the black-white mixed race young person’s lived experiences of race and racism. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the wider implications of the findings as relates to the positioning of the mixed race subject in the Irish context.

The specificity of the Irish socio-political landscape vis-à-vis racialised belonging

The specific manifestations of race and racism in Ireland have all intertwined in complex ways to shape the national landscape of racialised belonging. Since the foundation of the state, the ‘Irish-Ireland’ (Fanning, 2012: 30) nation-building project has promulgated notions of ethnic and religious homogeneity with Irish identity being racialised exclusively as white (Considine, 2018). This dominant myth of homogeneity means that racism continues to be produced both institutionally and in the course of everyday interaction as minority groups (such as Travellers, Jewish and black/mixed race people) are subject to negative racialisation and contiguously, excluded from dominant constructions of the Irish nation (Fanning, 2012).

Popular and political discourses regarding migration in the Irish context also tend to racialise all asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants as black (Lentin and McVeigh, 2006). In fact, the re-configuration of Ireland’s citizenship regime in the 2004 Referendum can be regarded as a state response to the levels of national vitriol being directed towards black asylum-seekers (and more specifically, pregnant African women) who were discursively constructed as ‘illegal immigrants’, ‘bogus refugees’ and ‘failed asylum seekers’ (Lentin, 2007: 617). In the Referendum, the Irish electorate voted, in a 4 to 1 majority, to remove the automatic entitlement to jus soli for the Irish born children of non-Irish nationals and to opt instead for the incorporation of jus sanguinis principles in constitutional law (Lentin, 2007). According to the Irish government at the time, these Irish-born children were to be denied the constitutional right to citizenship on the basis that they lacked ‘a sufficient connection’ to Ireland (Tormey, 2007). Indeed, by means of the racialised principles of sanguinity, the government has informed us of what ‘a sufficient connection’ may actually mean - ‘it was a connection of blood, ultimately a racial tracing’ (Tormey, 2007: 81).

The Referendum could be said, therefore, to constitute an effort by the state to keep the Irish bloodlines running pure by making ‘blood and heredity the cornerstone of Irish citizenship’ (Mullally, 2005: 101). Indeed, Lentin (2007: 611) regards the Citizenship Referendum as ‘a turning point in the recent history of racism in Ireland’. Moreover, it can be argued that the Referendum continues to frame emergent conversations around who is allowed to be Irish (Tormey, 2007). As Mullally (2005) further observes, the manner in which these questions of belonging are resolved will have vast implications for the future of the Irish national body politic.

In fact, during the Referendum era, it was actually the Irish-born children (of African immigrants) who became the locus of anxieties around the perceived cultural (read racial) dilution of Irish identity (Garner, 2004). In essence, these African-Irish children came to symbolise ‘a rebuke to the state’s attempts to preserve membership in the nation-state for a putatively homogenous group’ (Enright, 2011: 469).

We are, therefore, enabled to understand both the wider historical and socio-political context of the racialised exclusion experienced by black-white mixed race subjects in contemporary Ireland. Indeed, it may also be argued that the marginalised positioning of the mixed race Irish subject is further reinforced by the limited selection of racial categories (i.e. either ‘white’ or ‘black or black Irish’) which were available in the Census 2016. Whilst mixed race people did retain the option of self-enumerating as ‘other including mixed background’ and furnishing written details of one’s mixed origins, this may have the effect of being located ‘outside’ the category of Irishness (Michael, 2015).

Such citizens, therefore, whilst emblematic of the ‘inherent contradictions of narrow ethno-national ideas of citizenship based on the principles of jus sanguinis’ (Ní Laoire et al., 2011: 154), live everyday lives firmly entrenched in the racialised categories of ‘us’ and ‘them’ which continue to frame Irish belonging and manifest at an institutional level (Ní Laoire et al., 2011). In fact, the mixed race Irish subject, who challenges the conflation of national and racial identity, comes to represent a ‘related fear come to life, that kinship and race are not reliable gate-keepers of the nation-state’ (Enright, 2011: 469).

CMRS - The critical turn in mixed race studies

The intensification of academic debate related to the mixed race experience has led to mixed race studies evolving into a distinct area of inquiry in its own right (Daniel et al., 2014). Much of the recent research highlights the exercise of agency by mixed race individuals as relates to choice of ethno-racial identity (Song, 2003). As such, a variety of racial terms have emerged – those which emphasise a monoracial identity (black, white) or racial mixing (mixed race, mixed heritage) or indeed, those which opt for a transcendent type of identification (such as ‘there is only one race, the human race’) (Caballero, 2014). Indeed, the racial term chosen feeds into a particular assemblage of political ideologies and debates related to racial construction and/or identification (Caballero, 2014).

More recently, insider accounts have emerged which present more complex analyses and attempt to refute notions of fixed, immutable identities (Ifekwunigwe, 1999). The majority of insider accounts suggest that the mixed race person strives to extend his/her identity and belonging beyond essentialist notions of skin colour (Ifekwunigwe, 1999). These accounts emphasise the need for a racial term which captures the distinctiveness of their racial location without the reification of race (Ifekwunigwe, 1999). Moreover, since the 1990s, it has been widely acknowledged that mixed race people are not afflicted by identity issues and that the majority prefer to racially identify as ‘mixed’ as opposed to black (Aspinall and Song, 2013; Sims and Joseph-Salisbury, 2019).

Mixed race scholarship has, however, historically tended to focus on the US context (Daniel et al., 2014). Even though there is an emerging body of academic scholarship which explores the experiences of mixed race communities within their specific national contexts (and particular racial history), it is now widely recognised that there exists the need for a transnational body of literature which acknowledges the significance of racial mixedness as an identity which extends beyond state borders (Daniel et al., 2014). The critical turn in mixed race studies, therefore, sets out to broaden the focus by facilitating an international comparison of the patterns and trends related to mixed race identification, classification and positioning within a more global framework (King-O'Riain et al., 2014).

The research – data and method

This paper draws specifically upon data from interviews with fifteen young people (aged 4 to 18) who are racially ascribed as mixed race (black African/white Irish) with white Irish mothers and African immigrant fathers. The young people are from a range of class backgrounds and geographical locations (towns, cities and rural settings) throughout Ireland. Due to the marginalised positioning of the multiracial family, I used a non-random strategy (purposive sampling) for participant recruitment such as formal/informal social networks, public advertisement and the utilisation of the snowball approach (Hennink et al., 2011).

I received ethical approval from the University’s Research Ethics Committee and from the outset, I adhered very closely to ethical stipulations in relation to voluntary participation, informed consent (e.g. use of an age appropriate information sheet) and issues of confidentiality and anonymity (e.g. the use of pseudonyms). The research was further supported by a critical and self-reflexive engagement with child protection issues. In this regard, the younger children were interviewed in the presence of the mother. It is further important to note, however, that, in order to accommodate the fluidity of family day-to-day living, ethical considerations (such as informed consent) need to be constantly (re) negotiated when interviewing young people in their homes (Bushin, 2007).

Whilst standard qualitative research methods (i.e. in-depth interviewing) were generally employed in relation to the older teenagers, in the case of the younger children, I needed to demonstrate flexibility in terms of technique and utilise child-centred research methods, where appropriate (e.g. by interspersing interviewing with play-time) (Bushin, 2007). The interviews largely began with some general, warm-up questions related to the young person’s everyday life – friends, school, hobbies and interests – but over the course of the interview, developed into discussions of everyday experiences of race and racism. In general, the mother’s presence during the interview did seem to provide a sense of comfort and although the questions were directed specifically at the young person, at certain points, spontaneous intra-family conversations did emerge. I did, however, also recognise the limitations of the mother’s presence (and interjections) which may have shaped the young person’s responses.

In terms of my own positionality, I am a white Irish mother of black-white mixed race children and as such, it can be argued that I have some experience of racism in a relational sense (Twine, 2010). However, I have further been subject to the homogenising discourses of white Irish identity and indeed, the norm of what it means to be Irish. Yet, as Edwards (1990 as cited in Gunaratnam, 2003) has indeed noted, the practice of strong reflexivity may facilitate a deeper level of engagement even in the context of interracial interviewing. Most crucially, there is a need to acknowledge that my phenotypic whiteness already implicates me in the structural power relationships which continue to privilege whiteness in the Irish context. The question then becomes how to ensure that the racial hierarchy is not being silently reproduced through the research encounter itself (Britton, 2020).

All interviews were recorded and transcribed in full. Following Riessman (2008), data analysis was thematic using an inductive approach to focus on dominant themes which emerged from the data. These themes are explored in detail below.

The black-white mixed race subject, racialised as black

In the context of Irish national narratives of white supremacy, the black-white mixed race young people interviewed very clearly articulated an awareness of being racialised as black in the public domain. Indeed, this significant finding accords with similar research carried out with black-white mixed race people in Poland, another majority white context (Balogun and Joseph-Salisbury, 2021).

Of course, being recognised as black invariably stirs up complex emotions for the young people as regards the racial meanings attributed to their skin colour as they are bodies marked as different, as bodies ‘out of place’ (Ahmed, 2002). By drawing our attention to the ‘violence’ of racial interpellation (‘look, a negro’ (2008: 85)), Fanon helps us understand that it is in the course of everyday interaction that bodies become racialised through processes of othering. In the context of the ‘black-white relation’ (Fanon, 2008: 3), Fanon describes how the abject internalises the racialised discourses by which he/she is lived and classified. That is, how the black body comes to embody racial difference in a process which Fanon terms ‘epidermalization’ or as Hall (2000: 5) defines it, ‘the writing of difference on the skin of the other’.

In fact, the interview narratives provide ample evidence that the young people’s world view is based around pervasive, ideological racial dualisms – dualisms which the youth reproduce as they narrate:

I just think that black people don’t wanna be with white people and white people don’t wanna be with black people (Tom, 10)

Or, as Colum (12) states:

Well, in Ireland, it’s not just that people are separate – but it’s just that Ireland is a white country – we are the black people who are in it - but when you think of it, there’s not that much – it’s not like there should be black people – it is a white country.

Colum responds to dominant national discourses which promulgate whiteness as a central aspect of Irish identity (Garner, 2004). By so doing, we are enabled to see that Colum forfeits any personal claim to belonging as he articulates his positioning, as a non-white person, within the nation-state. In terms of Colum’s personal trajectory of racialisation, we can observe that he has come to live his racial body, although discursively produced, as possessing ‘essence’ (Ahmed, 2002). In this regard, we can note Aaron’s (12) first utterance in the interview which is grounded very firmly in racial politics:

I am black because I’m not (emphasis) white

So, although Aaron begins the interview with a positive assertion of his skin colour, it is an assertion that is understood and explained in terms of not being white. Indeed, as Fanon explains: ‘not only must the black man be black: he must be black in relation to the white man’ (2008: 82–83). Yet, the converse does not apply – that is, the concept of whiteness does not need the referent ‘black’ for its symbolic constitution (Fanon, 2008). As Fanon (2008: 163) states, ‘the negro is comparison’.

It seems that Aaron is also interrogating the power relations that constitute whiteness as the norm (Dyer, 1997). In a sense, Aaron has rendered whiteness visible by opening it up as a racial category and by so doing, disturbs even momentarily the conflation which exists between whiteness and Irish identity. And, as has been well-documented elsewhere, whiteness retains its power by being unseen (Dyer, 1997).

These black-white mixed race young people are thus negotiating two oppositional discourses of blackness and whiteness with both categories possessing natural, fixed attributes which are fundamentally incompatible (Ifekwunigwe, 1999). In this vein, we can observe the following conversation between Nessa and her three children, Colum (12), Rian (9) and Mary (6):

The classic dualistic motif persists as Colum, Rian and Mary narrate a world based on black/white social stratification and proffer observations related to the public ideologies which both demarcate and hierarchically structure blackness and whiteness. Interestingly, the above narrative demonstrates how the young people locate themselves within discourses of blackness – positioning strategies which are influenced by narratives of white supremacy (‘it’s like white people are protected and not really black people’). In short, the young people are internalising the lesson that processes of racialisation invest skin colour with racial meaning to the extent that the terms black and white do not refer to phenotype but rather to racial identity (Ahmed, 2002). That is, race as an effect of racialisation rather than the cause (Ahmed, 2002). The above narrative also demonstrates how socially available de-racialised discourses fail to map onto the young peoples’ lived reality. In particular, we can note how Rian (9) interrogates the post-race contention that race is no longer a central organising principle, when she asks why racism continues to flourish (i.e. white gardaí shooting black people) when Obama has been a President.

As part of her positioning strategies within blackness, we can further see how Margaret (18) below draws on the black authenticity of her father:

My dad is very against tattoos and piercings – he went mental that I got that done – I told him about it and he flipped out – he said, ‘your skin is already something that holds you back’ – like I get what he means – I feel like I was very oblivious to that for a long time – I just didn’t see it but I get it now - so that is why my dad hates tattoos and that – because that will affect me more than my friends.

Margaret’s father, as the bearer of embodied blackness, has passed on to her his knowledge of the constraints of blackness as lived. Margaret narrates her trajectory in and through racialised subjectification in terms of a racial awakening (‘I just didn’t see it but I get it now’). Like her African father, Margaret now sees blackness as being biologically over-determined and moreover, the continuing power of racial categories to mark and define the black body.

Racialised ‘othering’ at the level of the everyday

Thus, the young peoples’ experiences are being translated through a politicised relationship to race and racism but it further seems that there is a ‘turning’ towards black at a personal level. This manifests as a counter-discourse of solidarity which arises from empathic identification with experiences of racism which is learned at this young age. In this regard, Rian (9) relates the following story regarding her empathy with a girl from school:

Her parents are from Ghana – and there’s this other girl and they got into a big fight at the start of this year – but now, they’re okay – but the girl would say stuff about the colour of her skin - and other girls would say horrible things as well - and she would get really upset and I would have to talk to her.

Sam (8) also interprets his school yard experiences through a racialised frame:

Well, there was one time when like me and xxxx went up to somebody and asked them if we could play and they said ‘no’ and like we were all the black ones – but, they were letting other people play that were white and I didn’t know if it was our colour or something else.

But, these black-white mixed race young people are also forced to assume responsibility for skin colour in another sense, as Dan (10) relates below:

As Dan is appealed to as an expert as to what constitutes racism, he is somehow being rendered accountable for his skin colour. In fact, it appears that there is a form of exchange at work here as Dan, by acting as a translator/mediator in the negotiation of racial differences must forfeit any claims to offence as a demonstration of loyalty to his white peers. Michelle (12) must similarly bear responsibility for an African priest who is associated with her school:

Like when he says something in an accent everyone is like this at me (staring expression) – as if like, you should get this and then they are really careful about what they say about him – it’s like ‘he’s so nice’ (fake voice) and you know, they look like they don’t wanna say something wrong.

The above scenario points towards Michelle’s inauthentic relationships with her white peers as her racial difference becomes that which must be benignly tolerated. Moreover, as the object of tolerance, she is regarded as possessing essential characteristics (Brown, 2006). Whilst Michelle’s account highlights both the ordinary and all-pervasive ways that the bodies of these mixed race young people are produced as ‘other’ and positioned outside Irishness, we are further enabled to see how processes of racialisation have reduced the wholeness and texture of Michelle’s life to a simple ‘raced’ narrative of skin colour (Fanon, 2008). In a similar vein, Margaret (18) states:

I know of a girl in my school who was black and she called another girl ‘a white [profanity]’ – and the white girl called her ‘a black [profanity]’ because the other girl said it first and of course, the white girl got suspended – nothing happened to the black girl – so like people were giving out about that, and they just kept complaining to me and I was like, ‘I don’t want anything to do with this’.

We can note the circulation of de-politicised discourses at work in the above account as, similar to Michelle’s account above, tolerance is being utilised as a normative discourse which serves to naturalise difference (Brown, 2006). In this vein, we can see how the above account is marked by a lack of awareness of the power relations which undergird racism (i.e. how the intent and implications of name-calling may vary across race) (Brown, 2006). This narrative further highlights Margaret’s unique positioning at the uneasy interface of racialised dynamics for it appears that Margaret is being offered partial inclusion within whiteness based on a dis-identification with blackness.

It is, therefore, interesting to note how Margaret self-positions in the above account. She, in fact, summons the powerful discourse of ‘reverse racism’ to make sense of the above incident (‘of course, the white girl got suspended’). In fact, one of the conditions of tolerance is that the tolerated are not allowed to stake claims in the political domain from the grounds of their difference but instead, must live out this difference in a de-politicised manner (Brown, 2006).

Yet, Margaret’s perception of her racialised body tells a different story. We can observe how ‘us-them’ racial constructs based on phenotype saturate this encounter as Margaret is ultimately reduced to the sum of her black body, regarded as possessing essential attributes. For, in the end, Margaret is rendered accountable for the above incident by virtue of skin colour (‘they just kept complaining to me’). We can, therefore, see how the discourse of tolerance, in effect, reproduces racialisation through the essentialising of difference (Brown, 2006). The black-white mixed race young people of this paper also narrate more explicitly embodied responses to processes of racialisation which can be explored through Fanon’s (2008) account of abjection as lived, as we can note in George’s (18) case below:

I do tend to find myself acting just that little bit more responsible than my friends just because I’m aware of the fact that I’m different – I’m the one that people will remember – so I do tend to make myself smaller – like in college I know everyone just because everyone remembers me – just because of how I look – like in ways that used to annoy me – but I’m kind of used to it at this point – I mean, you do it subconsciously – you don’t even realise – you make yourself small.

George explains his adaptive strategies to objectification by the white gaze as involving both psychic and bodily processes (‘you make yourself small’) as racialised abjection both ‘takes over the mind’ and further, finds a way of ‘getting under the skin’ (Fanon, 2008; Yancy, 2017). We are enabled to see, therefore, how through the violence of racist interpellation in the context of everyday encounters, George has internalised the white person’s vision of his ‘raced’ body (Fanon, 2008; Yancy, 2017). George further informs us that:

And I got used to people looking at me from an early age – when little kids look at me, I just stare back at them – and then they get uncomfortable and look away – when adults stare at me, I look at them like, ‘what are you looking at’? – the kids I understand because kids will look - but I suppose I do kind of understand when people stare at me – they are just not used to it like.

George’s body, like the black body of Fanon, in the seminal episode of the white child’s exclamation ‘look, a negro’ (2008: 113) is ‘sealed into the crushing objecthood of the skin’ (2008: 82). If we focus on race as ‘a regime of looking’ (Riggs, 2008), we can see how the black body is dissected by the white gaze and assigned the role of embodying racial difference – that is, ‘race is in the eye of the beholder’ (Byrne, 2006: 16). Similarly, Michelle (12) notes:

I suppose I have gotten used to people giving me a second look and asking me if I’m Irish – but it’s mainly people that I don’t know – but the teachers in my school used to ask me all the time in junior and senior infants – and I used to just keep repeating ‘my dad is (African) and my mam is Irish’ over and over – I suppose I just got used to it.

Michelle, too, has acquired a sense that she is a passive recipient of the white gaze (‘I suppose I just got used to it’) and more significantly, that white people control the direction of the gaze (Fanon, 2008). In fact, both Michelle and George implicitly attribute authority to the white person in the above accounts. Moreover, as Michelle relates how her grounds for Irish belonging were questioned at school, we are reminded of the sheer ordinariness of being located ‘outside’ the nation for these mixed race young people.

‘Betwixt and between’: Complex (Dis)identifications

Following de Certeau’s (1984) conceptualisation of everyday life, I regard the young people as political agents whose autonomy is exercised in the everyday domain by ongoing negotiations of their positioning and roles. My focus in this section is, therefore, how the black-white mixed race young people interact with dominant Irish societal assumptions independently through the ongoing negotiation of the ‘us-them’ racialised binary.

At one point in the interview, Colum relates that transitory moment of being allowed to experience ‘insider’ status – that moment when he subverted racial categorisation:

In an emotional disclosure, Colum relates how, at times, he momentarily possesses an Irishness that cannot be called into question as his ‘O’ surname provides evidence of kinship belonging. But, we can further glimpse how a brief moment of identification with the nation was, in a sense, overshadowed by a subsequent moment of non-belonging. In fact, this narrative encapsulates how Colum is defined by both Irishness and Africanness in uneven and fragmented ways as he is interpellated by a variety of discourses which may link him to either country (Ní Mhurchú, 2015). Yet, it is precisely Colum’s failure to present intelligibly within the national framework which acts as a mode of resistance (although it is not resistance as we would normally understand it) (de Certeau, 1984; Kallio, 2007; Ní Mhurchú, 2015). In the following dialogue between Jane and her son Sam (8), she questions his rationale for choosing not to stake a claim to Irishness whilst living in Ireland:

This narrative illuminates both the complex subjectivities of Sam’s lived experience of dislocation but, also a life deeply entrenched in racialised discourses of immigration and belonging. Whilst both Ireland and Africa are ever-present, Sam is constantly dis-engaged from both as opposed to engaging with either. We get a sense therefore, of the constant ambiguity underlying his experiences of belonging (Ní Mhurchú, 2015). Yet, as he selectively chooses which aspect of his identity to reveal, we can see how Sam, like Colum above, exercises agency by failing to present intelligibly vis-à-vis the state. Rather, Sam’s lived experiences point towards ‘in-between-ness’ as another mode of political identity and belonging (Ní Mhurchú, 2015). Aaron (12) is also engaging with both Ireland and Africa in the following narrative:

We can see how insider/outsider logic fails to capture the complexity of Aaron’s political subjectivities; he is disembedded from Ireland yet, remains enduringly attached to, and expresses a ‘homing desire’ (Brah, 1996) for Africa. To similar effect, Margaret relates the following account:

When I was working in the (name of venue) – when I was in secondary school - some people would say to me ‘where are you from’ and I’d say, ‘I’m Irish’ but they’d say back, ‘but, no where are you from’ – I’d say, ‘from here’ and then ‘but really where are you from’ – so depending on the age of the person, I would either leave it at that or you know, if they were an older person, I would eventually say it to them, ‘my dad is African and my mother is Irish’ – or I’d say, ‘my dad is from Africa’ – or ‘my mam is Irish’ – then one time, one guy surprised me when he said, ‘is your granny from (name of village) (laugh) – so someone there knew my granny.

In the above scenario, Margaret is either interpellated into the national framework (‘is your granny from’) or, as is more likely, cast ‘outside’ the nation (‘where are you from’). Through the intrusive speculation of strangers in prosaic encounters, we are starkly reminded that, indeed, it is Margaret, who must bear the burden of strangerhood in Irish society as ‘the work of the nation is done as much through the everyday encounters in public life as it is done through the political machinery of the nation-state’ (Ahmed, 2000: 98).

Margaret’s narrative further speaks to the normalisation of the ‘what are you’? (Williams, 1996) encounter in the Irish context as she is obliged to invoke an oft-rehearsed repertoire of formulaic replies and varying levels of self-disclosure (which are context-dependent) in response to intrusive reading practices. We can further view Margaret’s agency as she complicates assumptions and/or at some level, negotiates the ambivalent spaces(s) opened up by the speculative questioning (Haritaworn, 2009). In essence, Margaret may be ‘fixed’ by the white gaze but she is attempting to exercise her capacity to ‘turn’ the gaze (Haritaworn, 2009).

Haritaworn (2009) focuses on processes of racialisation as specifically related to the mixed race experience. As has been well-documented, mixed race people are generally exposed to what Fanon (2008) regards as violent reading practices (the ‘what are you’? encounters (Williams, 1996)). But, we can further see how these mixed race dissective reading practices are underpinned by asymmetrical power relations (Haritaworn, 2009). In fact, mixed race ambiguity may serve to re-inscribe the relation which entitles the white gaze to be directed towards the ‘other’ (Haritaworn, 2009). At the end of the above narrative, Margaret relates the subjective experience of being allowed to experience a momentary affirmation of belonging through ancestry and blood-ties (her granny).

This section shows how the positioning shifts within each narrative – shifting momentarily from inside to outside, betwixt and between – shed light on how this continuous process of (dis) affiliation with the national may impact on subjectivities and indeed, are lived out (Lewis, 2006).

Reading race from popular culture

The black-white mixed race young people, oftentimes, engage with popular culture in their negotiations of both exclusionary discourses of belonging and the politics of race and racism. Take the following extract as an example:

I utilise this narrative to demonstrate how Colum explicitly and ably engages with the politics of race by means of popular culture. Through the prism of James Bond films, Colum critically examines his position in a racial order that naturalises and normalises white privilege (‘because that is what things are like’), racialised belonging, the intersections of gender and race and also, the impermeability of the black/white divide.

Interestingly, Colum self-positions within discourses of blackness and by so doing, may have found a way to safely explore the connections between his theoretical understandings of race and his positioning in his social world. But, we can further view Colum as posing critical questions about the nature of Irish belonging here. Colum, as a mixed race citizen, lacks legitimacy at the level of the nation-state and therefore, his engagement with popular culture may provide a strategy for ‘turning away’ (even momentarily) from the national polity in order to experiment with various modes of identity and belonging (Ní Mhurchú, 2016). This ‘turn’ towards popular culture can be identified as an act of citizenship as Colum de-stabilises dominant modes of belonging (Ní Mhurchú, 2016).

In a similar fashion, Tom (10) states:

Sometimes, when I am watching TV, I see something racist – some films but I think they are usually based on a long time ago – from America – like in the Golden Globe awards – all the black people were like sitting at one table and all the white people at another table – and like sometimes you see things on the internet like when you search up someone – it’s all either black or white – and like Kevin Hart and all those – they are always hanging out with black people – and in all the cop films, if you are black you never have a white partner – you always have a black one.

Whilst reproducing the post-race thesis that racism is an historical phenomenon (‘based on a long time ago’), Tom’s critical reading of popular culture suggests an awareness of the ongoing salience of racial categorisation (and the hierarchical ranking of blackness and whiteness). We can further see how, in the above account, the process of racialisation (i.e. bodies coming to be lived as ‘essence’ (Ahmed, 2002)) is being mediated by means of popular culture. Margaret also draws on popular culture to make sense of her racialised world:

I remember being so delighted when the Cheerios ad had a mixed race family – and there’s a baby ad recently where the father is white and the baby is black – or mixed race – I remember thinking ‘I like seeing that’ – ‘I like seeing it’ – I never even thought about it until I saw it and I thought, ‘I like seeing this’ – it’s nice to see something different’ – it’s always like there’s a white family or there’s a black family – it was never like mixed.

She continues:

I had Samantha Mumba – I used to love her – I was about 4 when I found out about her and I remember I loved her – because she was like me – and I thought, ‘she’s like me’ – you do look for it – you subconsciously look for role models – and I did subconsciously think, ‘this one is like me’.

Margaret’s narratives are marked by a celebratory, jubilant tone as she sees her multiracial family constellation both normalised and reflected in popular culture. But, Margaret also seems to be engaged in the exploration of the ‘living out’ of a multiracial identity (i.e. Samantha Mumba as role model) as an alternative articulation of belonging of life in the ‘new’ Ireland. Margaret can be seen to exercise political agency through experimentation with notions of fluidity (i.e. a ‘mixing up’ of national and global cultural references) and hybridity as a way of carving out a space of belonging within hegemonic narratives of citizenship (Ní Mhurchú, 2016). Thus, in this section, we have seen how the young people, through the medium of popular culture, engage in what Ní Mhurchú (2016) regards as an ‘everyday de-stabilisation’ of dominant ideas of a unitary nationally defined culture (i.e. an act of citizenship (Isin, 2008; Ní Mhurchú, 2016)).

‘I am mixed race Irish, not African’

As discussed thus far, these black-white mixed race young people are racialised as black in the Irish public consciousness. As they are positioned as ‘racialised outsiders’ (Virdee, 2014) on the basis of physiognomic features, these young people demonstrate agency by means of a constant endeavour to re-inscribe their presence within ‘insider’ discourses.

In this regard, Margaret draws on discourses of skin shade in order to mediate her insider/outsider positioning:

Like, dad is a lot more aware of race because he’s so (emphasis) dark and his nickname as a child was ‘blackie’ – he’s very dark so I think he’s a lot more aware of it than I am.

We can further view the potency of biological discourses as Margaret infers a causal link between her father’s skin shade, his experiences of racism and by association, his outsider positioning. By utilising whiteness as a reference point, Margaret thus differentiates herself from the ‘truly’ black. Generally speaking, the concept of a skin shade hierarchy came into play in many of the young people’s accounts which of course, has its roots in colonialist discourses and the essentialism of the one-drop rule ² (Ifekwunigwe, 1999). The nuances of skin shade also featured in Daniel’s (10) account:

Once again, the black father features in order to lend authority to skin shade discussion. The above narrative further conveys the significance of race to the self-construction of the mixed race young people as Dan implicitly expresses a desire for normalising whiteness. But, indeed, Dan’s desire for whiteness may also equate to a desire for Irish authenticity which whiteness, or indeed, the proximity to whiteness (‘I am light brown’) may afford him.

But, these mixed race young people also draw on discourses of skin shade as a means of comparison with the positioning of other minority groups (i.e. relational positioning (Phoenix, 2005)) or, as is the case with this paper, as a way of creating a distance between their positioning and that of more recently arrived African immigrants (who are negatively racialised). In this vein, Rian (9) relates an episode from school:

There are 3 girls in my school – they are from (Africa) and they’re not mixed – they have a deep, dark skin – and they get called names an awful lot and other kids sometimes pick on them because they are so dark.

As Rian attempts to position herself in relation to her African peers, she seems to proffer skin shade as a contributory factor in the negative experience of racism – that is, skin colour as provocation somehow or even as a justification. But, there is a further implicit suggestion that ‘real’ blackness is associated with African immigrants, the racialised ‘outsiders’. In the following dialogue, Michelle also attempts to make sense of the implications of skin colour vis-à-vis insider/outsider positioning:

Michelle resists the claiming of ‘Africanness’ in the public sphere which is semantically associated with ‘black’ and contiguously, ‘outsider’ status (White, 2002). She opts instead for the term ‘brown’, perhaps, as a form of whitening herself through differentiation from racialised migrants. Along similar lines, Margaret states:

My friend always refers to like pure African guys who haven’t been here long – she calls them FOBs – like, fresh off the boat – I said, what is an FOB and she says, ‘fresh off the boat’ – I said, ‘whaaa’! – so like if you are African and you are new and your accent is very thick, people are a little bit more wary of you.

Margaret also attempts to distance herself from recently arrived African immigrants (or who she terms FOBs) whose presence in the Irish state may interrupt or even disrupt her interpellation into the national framework, as a mixed race Irish citizen (Lewis, 2006). The young people further summon discourses of ‘blood’ and kinship belonging as a form of distantiation from immigrants. As Dan (10) notes:

I think you are Irish if you have Irish blood – you can be born in Africa but your mam could be Irish or you could be born in Switzerland and your mam or dad could be Irish – then you are still Irish because you have Irish blood or Irish blood and African blood or Irish blood and Switzerland blood.

Indeed, as Dan evokes the racialised principles of sanguinity, we are aware of how the blood-based notion of belonging is a powerful and deeply entrenched discourse.

Discussion and conclusion

By incorporating the global perspective of Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS), this paper has provided a more nuanced reading of race and racism in the Irish context particularly in relation to the newly emerging black-white mixed race community of young people. This paper has further demonstrated how, as in other white majority contexts, black-white mixed race people are interpellated as black and as such, are positioned as racialised outsiders. In fact, in their stories of racialised abjection, the mixed race young people narrate a lived reality which is firmly embedded within the historical legacy of black white social stratification.

The young peoples’ narrative accounts also highlight how racial categories come to be lived on the body as everyday encounters are saturated by racialised ‘us-them’ dualisms. It seems that essentialist notions of race prevail and as such, the desire for mixed race belonging - despite moments of affirmation being revealed in the narratives - is perpetually denied because the young people are always reduced to the sum of their racialised bodies (Ahmed, 2002). Most significantly, this points towards the fact that race continues to be regarded as an intrinsic property of bodies and to possess ongoing salience as a socially significant and divisive factor.

Yet, the young people wield some degree of political agency and self-determination in their mediations of insider/outsider positioning. In this regard, they make appeals to popular culture and selectively self-disclose and/or invoke ambivalent identities in order to articulate a sense of self and write themselves into the national narrative. They also invoke the logic of skin shade (e.g. light brown) and other positioning strategies such as notions of ‘blood’ belonging, establishing a differentiation from African immigrants and in some cases, their dark-skinned fathers. It is as if a gap, or a space of negotiation opens up between how they are positioned outsider by biological signifiers yet, positioned inside through discourses of blood belonging.

The negative racialisation of these young people and their subsequent liminal positioning at the margins of the national space provide testimony to the structural consequences of the centrality of whiteness as an institutionalised position of power. These young people, who are rendered as racialised outsiders, as opposed to being fully recognised as mixed race Irish citizens, are effectively deprived of a space in which to articulate their political identity and belonging within the existing statist (i.e. inside/outside) framework.