Mixed Race Studies

Barack Obama’s Irish Roots

The Daily Beast
2011-04-11

Tom Sykes

President Obama set down in Dublin Monday [2011-05-23] as part of a six-day European trip that will include a stop in Moneygall, the tiny town where his great-great-great grandfather was born. In anticipation, the 350 people who live there have painted their homes and opened a coffee shop called “Obama’s café.” Tom Sykes on the president’s Irish roots.

The great, but generally unvocalized, astonishment of the people of Moneygall is not so much that one of their descendants is president of the United States, but that one of their descendants is black. You see, a lad going off to America and doing well for himself … well, all the folks in the pub drinking their pints of Guinness can get their heads around that story; sure, wasn’t JFK the most famous Irishman of all?

But a black man? From Moneygall? What?…

…But the fact remains: Moneygall is very, very white. There are no black people living in the village, although there is a “very nice Indian family” living in the housing estate outside town. But Moneygall is not unusual in that respect; rural Ireland is very, very white. The 2006 census showed that just 1.06 percent of Irish citizens are black, and outside major city centers, black people are still a rarity. In the countryside, the presence of black people is usually commented on. Inadvertent racism pervades conversation and society, both polite and impolite. Mixed-race people, for example, are often referred to as “half-castes” or “half-and-halfs.”…

Read the entire article here.

The Subject in Black and White: Afro-German Identity Formation in Ika Hügel-Marshall’s Autobiography Daheim unterwegs: Ein deutsches Leben

Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature & Culture
Volume 21 (2005)
pages 62-84
DOI: 10.1353/wgy.2005.0012
E-ISSN: 1940-512X;Print ISSN: 1058-7446

Deborah Janson, Associate Professor of Foreign Languages
West Virginia University

Black Germans still experience prejudice and social isolation based on their appearance. Alhough they are born and raised in Germany, their fellow citizens often do not accept them as Germans because of their skin color. Such social exclusion makes it difficult for Black Germans to define for themselves who they are and where they belong. Yet through their own community-building efforts and the transnational diasporic interactions with Blacks in other countries, Black Germans are developing the means to resist marginalization and discrimination, to gain social acceptance, and to construct a cultural identity for themselves. This essay explores these and other aspects of Afro-German identity formation via an examination of Ika Hügel-Marshall’s autobiography, a work that, until now, has received little scholarly attention despite its relevance to the ongoing—albeit relatively new—Black European identity movement. As an “occupation baby” of mixed-race origins who was raised in a Catholic home for children with special needs, Hügel-Marshall’s transformation from a neglected and abused child into an empowered and politically active adult is inspiring, while her experiences with racism are paradigmatic for the Black-German experience.