Emma Dabiri Instagram – Solidarity is subversive!!!
The threads that link black diaspora cultures Irish culture are strong, yet the Irish position as colonised & oppressed is also mediated through racialisation as white.
How does that impact upon points of mutuality when “white” “black” are constructed categories purposefully engineered to serve numerous functions, one of which was to prevent the identification of shared interests existing between members of both groups.
@macdarayeates thankyou so much for your vision in conceiving of and organising this powerful, beautiful, important evening.
Leni Sloan thankyou for highlighting centralising the uniting importance of craic, of conversation, of music song in both cultures, in both freedom traditions.
I dislike manufactured categories like “#blackjoy” which exist to try make legible under the logic of neoliberal market capitalism something that is more akin to a “flash of the spirit” that characteristic of black diaspora cultures to channel the divine to express it via various performative traditions. Similarly in Ireland there is an animating energy that comes though our cultural production that people struggle to categorise but is a wellspring of Irish creativity.
Conversation with Bernadette Devin McAliskey was even more than I could have imagined. At only 15 mins we could only just get started (but we have plans to expand the conversation) who else in the world could speak of their direct experience of Irish freedom fighting, aligning so directly with the work of groups like the Black Panthers The Young Lords, we all listened transfixed as she described her 1969 tour of the US, her work with these groups, her horror anger at the Irish American establishment who could identify passionately with Irish oppression as they trampled on the backs of Black Americans, how she learned about feminism from black brown American women and of course the through line to today to Irish solidarity with Palestine. She’s also great craic bloody hilarious.
Big up @dagogo_hart Christine Kinealy. @niamh.bury @cedric.watson_bijou.creole thankyou for your storytelling music. I’m now a huge fan of you both. | Posted on 17/Mar/2024 17:50:24
