Why Ireland isn't toasting VP Harris' ties

There has been a fair bit said about Kamala Harris’ identity since she emerged as the Democratic presidential candidate, and not all of it that nuanced. “Is she Indian? Or is she Black?” asked her Republican rival.

Well, Donald Trump, it is more complicated than that. She may also be a bit Irish, according to her father, the Jamaican-born professor Donald Harris.

But in contrast to the celebrations that took place in the Emerald Isle on discovery of Barack Obama’s Irish ancestry – or for that matter, the other 22 U.S. presidents with known Irish roots – there have been few signs of regulars at Irish pubs raising a glass of Guinness to Harris’ ancestral claims.

The reasons are complicated, as Quinnipiac University’s Christine Kinealy, a director of the African American Irish Diaspora Network, and two of her colleagues explain.

For starters, the man linking Harris to Ireland may not have identified as being Irish at all. His own ancestors were brought to Ireland from Scotland as part of a British colonizing project. Secondly, he was a slave owner in Jamaica. That raises uncomfortable questions, not only about the nature of the relationship between Harris’ Black female ancestor and the Irish plantation owner, but also Ireland’s complicity in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Kinealy and her co-authors write: “As the British empire expanded, Ireland found itself in the paradoxical role of being both colonized and colonizer.”

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