{"id":55228,"date":"2017-11-20T04:46:27","date_gmt":"2017-11-20T04:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=55228"},"modified":"2017-11-20T04:50:02","modified_gmt":"2017-11-20T04:50:02","slug":"emma-on-whether-irish-black-people-are-woke-and-on-changing-foreign-names","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=55228","title":{"rendered":"Emma: On Whether Irish Black People Are Woke, and on Changing \u201cForeign\u201d Names"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emma: On Whether Irish Black People Are Woke, and on Changing \u201cForeign\u201d Names<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Dublin Inquirer<\/a>
\n2017-10-25<\/p>\n

Emma Dabiri<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nIllustration by Rob Mirolo<\/small><\/p>\n

Do you think Irish black people are woke<\/a>? What\u2019s being woke? Is there any civil-rights movement? You\u2019re mixed race, so are you black? Africa: would someone like yourself get the culture? What did you get culture-wise from your father\u2019s side? Irish people come across as just trying to look for one person they can say\u2026 Yes, here is our black successful person, as opposed to uplift black Irish people in general [\u2026] In Dublin<\/a>, Pavee Point<\/a> has a centre. The LGBT<\/a> community has Outhouse. Why do you think ethnic minorities don\u2019t have such a place?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cheeky<\/a>! This is like 10 questions but I like \u2018em, so let\u2019s go. Let\u2019s start with explaining \u201cwoke<\/a>\u201d. \u201cStaying woke\u201d refers to questioning the dominant paradigm, and occupying a state of awareness about structural oppressions.<\/p>\n

The phrase \u201cstaying woke\u201d has some early references in the 1960s, it was then further popularised in the 2008 song \u201cMaster Teacher<\/a>\u201d by Erykah Badu,<\/a> but really caught on following the wave of protest after the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson<\/a> and the subsequent rise of Black Lives Matter<\/a>. In 2016, \u201cwoke\u201d entered into the Oxford Dictionary<\/em><\/a>…<\/p>\n

…Am I black? Gosh you aren\u2019t shying away from the big questions, now are ye? But yes, I identify as black. The thing is, despite being told I was black (and often not so politely) my whole damn life, and often being reminded that I wasn\u2019t \u201creally Irish\u201d, my claiming of my blackness still elicits occasional cries of \u201cBut what about your ma?\u201d or \u201cYou\u2019re erasing your Irishness!\u201d Blah blah di blah blah blah.<\/p>\n

I think what we really need to look at is why a person with a white parent can identify as black, but why a person with a black parent can rarely, if ever, identify as white. We have to stop acting as though racial constructions are rational or ordered. They are not. I always say that you cannot be \u201chalf white\u201d. You are either white or you\u2019re not. And I\u2019m not…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Am I black? Gosh you aren\u2019t shying away from the big questions, now are ye? But yes, I identify as black. The thing is, despite being told I was black (and often not so politely) my whole damn life, and often being reminded that I wasn\u2019t \u201creally Irish\u201d, my claiming of my blackness still elicits occasional cries of \u201cBut what about your ma?\u201d or \u201cYou\u2019re erasing your Irishness!\u201d Blah blah di blah blah blah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,28,125,8],"tags":[27677,13842,246],"class_list":["post-55228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-europe","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","tag-dublin-inquirer","tag-emma-dabiri","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55228"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55230,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55228\/revisions\/55230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}