• Don_Dickle@lemmy.worldOP
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    3 months ago

    Probably a dumb question but I am black irish with red hair. Would the racists of yester year attack me?

    • makeshiftreaper@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      3 months ago

      That’s kind of the point she makes, race isn’t really about it. It’s about creating social structures to have an oppressed class and a ruling class. It has more to do with the circumstances of your birth (which does typically highly correlate with your class) than the “distinctions”. Racism has no logical backing, so expecting it to follow logical rules is a fallacy

        • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          3 months ago

          No big deal, but the terminology is used in a way I’ve never seen before, and it made me confused.

          See, depending on whether you’re in the US, or Ireland, the term “black Irish” has different meanings.

          In the US, Irish immigrants used the term to refer to Irish people with dark hair, eyes, and complexion, but that were still not African-American. Part of my family is black Irish in that sense. There’s a lot of myth behind that, with various explanations of how and why that set of features came to be, including spanish settlement, but it wasn’t used for folks with African ancestry.

          Over in Ireland, black Irish is essentially the equivalent of African-American, people of African descent that live in Ireland.

          Since you’re from the US, it is surprising to see the term used for someone with red hair at all.

          Anyway, it’s all good, just means we have some shared ancestry, which is always interesting :)