Paul Gilroy asserts that, for African-Americans, the memory of slavery, a lived crisis, supersedes labor, a systemic crisis. However, one way in which black people and the Irish are connected to each other is through labor. Thus, Gilroy’s assertion that labor is secondary to the living memory of slavery threatens our investigation of the relationship between these two peoples. Yet, I believe that, rather than dismantling this relationship, the prominence of the living memory of slavery provides an important nuance to our study. While the Irish and people of African descent may have spoken to one another, their oppression was not the same. While it is silly to compare the oppression of different groups of people, we must recognize that, despite their horrible treatment at the hands of the British, the Irish were never slaves. Though Thomas Carlyle calls the Irish “white negroes” and the Irish occasionally call themselves “slaves,” the word “Irish” never takes on such a close definition to slavery as the word “Negro.” Blacks aren’t derogatorily called “Irish” in the manner that the Irish are called “black.” This fact leads to an important distinction elaborated on by David Lloyd: the Irish and the people of African descent are not the same. While the British considered both West Indian Blacks and the Irish “not yet ready” to rule themselves, the Irish, through the nature of their whiteness, still had hope for future self-determination after some “civilizing” effort. Yet the blacks were never going to be ready to run their own lives on the basis of their racial difference. The Irish did not become white; they were always white, but America provided them an opportunity to mobilize their whiteness for the perpetuation of racial dominance. Black people were never afforded an opportunity to utilize the benefits of their racial background in the New World.
I do not craft this nuance to say that the Irish and people of African descent should not be compared. In fact, from the theory we have read, the comparison often comes from the oppressors, which makes it an intriguing subject of inquiry. Yet we must also always make the distinction that the Irish and people of African descent, despite both undergoing oppression and suffering, were never considered the same.