My black side and my Irish side compete for recognition within me, like two separate flames of a fire, dancing around each other, fighting to shine the brightest. Take the other night in London; I was out for a drink with a friend from school when we heard the melody of Irish accents from a group of guys close by, and chimed in to chat. Later, a British-African guy overheard part of the exchange and bemusedly declared that “the Irish men love black women!” Looking decidedly sheepish, the Irish lads asserted that I was Irish, to which the black guy replied, “No – she’s black.” I pretended not to hear and went to the toilet, leaving the projected shadows of who I am and who others think I am, dancing on the walls behind me.
Outside my immediate family, my blackness has been obvious and non-negotiable, but among some of my Irish family, it is up for debate or ignored entirely. A white identity was constructed for me 25 years ago and now unravelling this construct – and asking some of my Irish family to unravel it with me – feels like a Sisyphean task. Shedding my own psychology of whiteness is a work in progress, but when I am back in Ireland it’s easy to revert to default because that’s all we know.
Visiting West Clare in Ireland with my mum a few weeks ago was weird because my first night back in three years was marred by some low-key racism in a pub. A group of lads loudly declared there was a “black girl” in the smoking area with one melanin-lacking young man asking his friend, “Why are you talking to the black girl?” I alerted my mum and my cousin, who told me to ignore it, and said the exchange didn’t matter. The next day, the topic was off-limits entirely with one relation instructing me to stop talking about it, and another asserting that I “wasn’t black” anyway – just “tanned”. Moments like that make me feel as if I am lying in a glass coffin, screaming at everyone to let me out as they slowly lower me into the ground without realising that I’m still alive. “Tanned” is no longer something I’m willing to ascribe to myself, especially as we now all know the truth – that I have a black biological father.
When I close my eyes and see West Clare constructed in my mind’s eye, it is a series of benign colours: blue and yellow (the football jersey, the beaches); a muddied green (the wet, rolling fields); and an omnipresent grey (the sky, clouds, rain). There is no brown or black. As a kid, I remember my lovely Irish Granny saying I was “dark” like my cousin Julie, who has shiny black hair but creamy white skin. Despite what my family say, in West Clare I have always stuck out like a dark stain on a silk cloth, but felt love and acceptance from them anyway. So how do I process their denial of who I am?
A complex relationship with my Irish side and my Irish family is made even more difficult because, mainly, I’ve loved spending time there. The Year I Fell Into the Slurry Pit, aged seven, always brings a smile to my face, as does the memory of my aunt getting chased through a field by a bull and the time I kissed my cousin’s older friend, aged 15. But of course, The Year Some Teenagers Made Monkey Noises At Me and Told Me to Go Back to Africa won’t feature in anyone else’s memory catalogue and I doubt the details of this year will be recounted again.
I’ve read a few other stories from around the world, where brown people with white families have discussed the weirdness of embracing identities that were once denied to them. But I’m not sure how to reclaim something that, to some Irish relations, I was never even in possession of. To some family, I’ll always be the little white girl who simply sat out in the sun for too long. Although being complicit in the lie of whiteness was once easier in Ireland many summers ago, it’s now something I’m no longer prepared to do.