Rosemary Adaser: ‘Two-thirds human’ — growing up black in Ireland’s institutionsPosted in Articles, Autobiography, Europe, History, Media Archive, Social Work on 2020-11-01 01:59Z by Steven |
Rosemary Adaser: ‘Two-thirds human’ — growing up black in Ireland’s institutions
Irish Examiner
2020-10-31
 Rosemary Adasar, founder of the Association of Mixed Race Irish. |
Ahead of the publication of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes report and as Black History Month ends, survivor Rosemary Adaser describes how mixed-race children were at the bottom of the ladder in institutions here.
OCTOBER was Black History Month, everywhere in Europe, it seems, except Ireland. In the UK, Black History Month is firmly established and, in the last two years, we have begun to celebrate a Black and Green History Month where the historical connections between people of African and Irish descent are celebrated; it is an exciting new development. In June, Black Lives Matter went global, bringing new meaning to Black History Month.
One of Ireland’s best-known mixed-race people was the late, great Christine Buckley, a heroine of mine and a fellow industrial school survivor. Christine was born in 1950s Ireland, as was I. She was far more sensible than I; she married a lovely Irish man, enjoyed a career, had beautiful children, and changed Ireland forever. That was not to be my path.
In the Ireland of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, colourism existed. Efforts to get the good people of Ireland to foster, not adopt, us “difficult and hot-tempered children, especially the girls”, according to a 1966 Department of Education official memo, led to the placement of advertisements in newspapers mentioning how light a child’s skin colour was.
In Margaret McCarthy’s 2001 book My Eyes Only Look Out, one of the interviewees among six mixed-race Irish children fostered to an Irish couple commented that “the darker kids had it worse”. I was one of the darker kids, and I did have it worse…
Read the entire article here.