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40 Historical Facts Accepted as Real For Many Years

Khalid Elhassan February 14, 2020 34 min

Albrecht Gessler - William Tell — William Tell. Learn Swiss-German

23. Irish Slavery

A variant of the ‘Irish Slavery’ meme, in this case with a photo taken in 1908 of a group of mixed-race Afro-Europeans from Barbados, known as ‘Redlegs of Barbados’, none of whom had an Irish surname. Medium

Odds are that within the past few years, you have come across this meme or a variant thereof on social media. Frequently posted by somebody prefacing a statement with “I am not racist, but…“, the meme asserts that Irish Americans were enslaved just like African Americans. Yet, they are doing much better than blacks, and their descendants never complain about it.

The main reason why Irish people do not complain about their ancestors’ enslavement is that their ancestors were never enslaved. Additionally, Irish Americans have fared better than African Americans because the Irish in America never faced anything approaching the generations of institutionalized racism to which blacks were subjected.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.