Tag: Atlantic

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The Black and Green Atlantic: Similar, but Different, and Still Much Left to Discover

Going into this semester, I did not really know what to expect. As I had no experience with Irish or black texts, jumping into dense theoretical materials was a challenge. It is certainly not the easiest to think of things abstractly. Looking back at the blog posts from the first few weeks, I remember wondering when all of the texts that we were reading would make sense and come together to form “The Black and Green Atlantic.” 

In my midterm paper, I wrote about the shared sense of placelessness between the Irish and the blacks, as seen in Gulliver’s Travels and McCann’s TransAtlantic. In that part of the course, I was still asking whether or not the two groups should be allowed to make comparisons. We were dealing with a lot of Irish texts that were using problematic comparisons, such as “wage slavery.”  I thought that determining whether the groups would be allowed to gesture would be a definite yes or no, but I came to realize that it is not that simple a question. Our course objective was not to determine whether these texts were allowed to exist, but to grapple with the texts that do exist and ask “why?” This is when I began to rethink the whole way that I was looking at the course. Comparisons can, and have been made. I started thinking about the gestures found within the texts and asking whether they were appropriate or not and why. In order for them to be appropriate and to work, the comparison must be just that—a comparison, not a proclamation of being exactly the same. As we saw in The Commitments, it is possible for the Irish to make gestures towards black culture in a show of solidarity. These gestures, however, only work to a certain extent, and it is when you completely collapse the two identities that the gesture falls apart and becomes problematic. While the Irish and Black experiences contain general similarities, they are not the same and cannot be equated. The differences in their cultures and their travels work to create a divide between the two identities. 

This semester flew by, and I feel that we have learned and covered so much material on the Black and Green Atlantic. Yet, there is still material that we were just unable to fit into the course, and there is so much more to be discovered in the Atlantic. The flurry of questions and puzzling scenes in “An Octoroon” represented to me many of the questions that remain and how this topic has endless possibilities. For me, questions remain on the role of Irish Americans and where they fit into the mix. Joey gave us a taste of that in The Commitments, but I wish that we had been able to discuss where they fit into the greater scheme of this journey. Who claims the Irish Americans? Why do their gestures always seem to be problematic? Even in “An Octoroon,” Jacob-Jenkins erases Boucicault’s Irish identity and he is just left “white.” Could we consider Boucicault an Irish American? What does this say about Irish Americans today? Overall, I am grateful for the great discussions we were able to have this semester. I feel that we took our own journey across the Atlantic this semester—a journey that will certainly affect the way that I view and question gestures going forward.

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“Fuck Me? Fuck You!” The Mentality of the Black and Green Atlantic

When writing out my final thoughts on our class, I cannot stop thinking about the scene between Jacobs-Jenkins and Boucicault in “An Octoroon” where the two playwrights engage in a back and forth game of telling the other, “fuck you.” At first glance, this argument seems to be a simple attempt at humor, depicting two playwrights arguing against each other for little reason other than the fact that they’re both drinking. But I believe that this half-page of expletives is a perfect way to describe the engagement between the blacks and Irish of the Atlantic throughout the course of history.

Throughout the course of this semester we have seen African Americans and the Irish attempt to describe their systems of oppression through analogies toward the other group. I am arguing in my final paper that these analogies are mainly one-sided on the part of the Irish and that African Americans typically reject the comparison. The black vocalization of “fuck me? fuck you!” can be interpreted as “fuck me for not understanding your struggle? fuck you for making the comparison!” whereas the Irish vocalization of this phrase can be interpreted as “fuck me for making the comparison? fuck you for not understanding our struggle!” This ends up being a constant loop, just as we see in “An Octoroon,” a back and forth game of trying to figure out whether the two groups’ struggles are equivalent to one another. But I don’t believe that equivalence decides whether the Black and Green comparison is valid.

There are similarities between the two struggles, albeit I believe African Americans had it much harder than the Irish, but arguing against one another over who’s struggle was more severe does not really do much to improve one’s situation. At first I believed Douglass’s claim that “there is no comparison” between the two struggles, but now I am starting to doubt my initial thought. Human suffering should be something anyone can empathize with, yet we divide our sufferings based on race. If we believe Gilroy that race is nothing but a social construct, then why do we restrict our empathy based on differences in race? The “fuck me? fuck you!” mentality is predicated upon differences in race; Jacob-Jenkins and Boucicault offer two interpretations of the same story and argue with each other over who is a true playwright, the black playwright of the modern era who struggles to produce the play or the Irish playwright who wrote the original story who put on the production with ease. The two men are too focused on their differences to accept that, maybe, both of their interpretations of the same story are valid. There is a struggle between African Americans and the Irish to empathize with each other throughout every work we’ve read due to the differences in their struggles, and the constant focus on which situation was more severe. But if the two groups could hone in on the similarities of the struggles, I believe that we live closer to Gilroy’s image of a world without race than a world where groups constantly question the validity of pleas for empathy.

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Digging In…

It was mentioned yesterday that one topic you would have liked to learn more about is the period in the middle of the twentieth century that joins the Black and Green Atlantics. That time of radicalism and revolution.

It is a period that interests me as well and I look forward to discussing it with a new group of students in the Fall. The course, Bloody Conflict in America and Ireland: 1968-69, will explore how the decade that began with young idealism and revolutionary possibilities, ended with raised fists and violent terror.

One way that that period is rich with connections are the visual images that were created.

Thinking of this moment, I immediately remember the Guinness poster created in the 1970s that commercializes the “Black is Beautiful” slogan. That slogan became popular in the 1960s as a way of promoting black beauty and confidence that black women should reject European beauty standards, including wearing their hair naturally. Sixty years later, politics still surround the way in which black women wear their hair.

Though I have to do more research into the history of the poster, a 1978 NY Times editorial on the Americanization of modern Ireland found the poster crude. In, “The Blueing of Ireland,” the staff writer wrote:

On a commanding hillside overlooking Waterford stands a new hostelry imported from Miami, its lobby dominated by a huge bar and its environs stripped of any distracting public verandas. It took a week and the counsel of American, not Irish, guides to find “real” Irish bread and other delicacies. Most hotels limit themselves to American‐style toast and commercial marmalade. The potato alone has survived the cosmopolitan pretensions of the new Irish kitchen. And, as one American observed, the Irish have become an instant‐coffee nation. They are surrounded, too, by billboards, the worst of them shouting “Black is Beautiful” for the Guinness dark beer people. The one consolation of Ireland is the snail’s pace of everything — including change. There is still time to save the Republic if enough Americans will let it be known that they cross the Atlantic to find a taste of Ireland not home.

Personally, I like the Guinness “Black is Beautiful” poster. It makes me smile. Black is beautiful and the poster adds an additional layer to the multiple connections between black America and Ireland. The fascination (and at times, fetishization) of blackness in Ireland does not seem violent. For better or worse, even those offensive gestures are attempts at understanding Irish displacement; expressing solidarity with another participant in the struggle.

On 24 May, the Working Class Movement Library (WCML) is holding an online discussion regarding their Spring 2020 exhibition. This move to an online forum is another reminder about how in loss we have also gained during the pandemic. If it were business as usual, I would not have the opportunity to participate in the exhibition. If you take a look at the posters from the Civil Rights Era in Ireland, you will find a Black Panthers, Free Huey poster. And when I wrote WCML to find out more information on the exhibition, the exhibit’s curator was reminded of this moment remembered by Eamonn McCann in War and an Irish Town.

One of the loudest cheers I ever heard in the Bogside came in response to the cry: “The whole black nation has to be put together as a black army, and we’re gonna walk on this nation, we’re gonna walk on this racist power structure and we’re gonna say to the whole damn government-STICK ‘EM UP MOTHERFUCKER, this is a hold up, we’ve come for what’s ours…

The declaration was the last item in the ten-point programme of the Black Panther Party, enunciated in rich, booming R&B tones on the soundtrack of a film projected against the gable which was later to become Free Derry Wall, in the small hours of a riotous night in 1969.

The cheer had as much to do with the daring of the language as with the sentiment of the slogan. But it also signalled the extent to which civil rights campaigners at that time felt an association with the Panthers, then under murderous assault by the feds and local police forces across the US.

The international dimension has virtually been written out of history. The North is scarcely mentioned in accounts of sixties revolutionism, even by some who came among us to be pictured at barricades, clenched fists on militant show.

To insist now on the relevance of internationalism is to venture onto ground which has been little disturbed by the stride of standard-issue chroniclers who assume that Northern Ireland…

There’s a deep well of these connections and it was a pleasure sharing some of them with you. I look forward to seeing you all again in the Fall.

More information on the posters can be found here. Please get in touch if you are interested in joining the 24 May talk.

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Punishment

We are currently reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved in one of my classes and an image we discussed relates to this class so well. Super general plot – The story follows Sethe who escapes with her children from a plantation in Kentucky. In our class discussion we talked about how Sethe’s womb can be compared to the Atlantic Ocean. When Sethe’s water breaks in the story, the pool of water is compared directly to the ocean. We discussed how like the Atlantic, the womb delivers babies to a life in slavery. The novel likens the ocean – the womb – to a grave. I thought this was really interesting to think about in our discussions about the Atlantic world. Beloved considers that the Atlantic Ocean and its history is so deeply rooted in Sethe that she carries it when she is carrying her baby.

Seamus Heaney’s Punishment was a difficult read for me this week for multiple reasons. One is the question also addressed by Julian in his blog post about whether Heaney’s perspective about the continuity of suffering gives reason for the one inflicting suffering. Another reason was Heaney’s description of the female bog bodies – this was really difficult to read. He sexualized these tortured bodies, describing their nipples and naked front. He calls the bodies “My poor scapegoat” and say that he “almost love[d]” the woman. Heaney also shows understanding with the exact revenge wanted by the perpetrator of the act, showing his want for power and ownership over the bog body.

Heaney wrote poetry at a critical time in Ireland’s history. It is important to study and remember The Troubles and specifically the bog bodies. But in my opinion, Heaney’s narration and the way he wrote history in this poem is disgusting. Writing about the women who were tarred in feathered in a sexualizing way is problematic and abhorrent. What are other’s thoughts? Do you see value to Heaney’s poems in remembering and capturing the history of The Troubles and the bog bodies taking into account the way they are described? Did you find a similar difficulty in reading?