Black people in Ireland
[1] During the 18th century it was common and even fashionable for middle-class Anglo-Irish families to take Black servants into their households as a sign of wealth and prestige.
[5] In particular, having a young Black servant attend an Anglo-Irish lady of the house was considered a sign of exceptional wealth and high position in society.
[7] During the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), Small fled his owners from South Carolina, finding Lord Edward Fitzgerald in a near-death condition and assisting his recovery.
In addition to Tony Small, the preacher John Jea and the scholar William G. Allen both resided in Ireland for several years before all three relocated to England.
[10] After helping plot a slave rebellion, he was discovered by the colonists, and his release was negotiated for several months until agreed upon provided his instant deportation back to Ireland.
[19] However, throughout the 1960s until roughly the 1990s, the African population in Ireland, although remaining relatively small, consisted not only of students but of visitors and professionals, like doctors.
[17] Examples of Black African students in Ireland during this period include Jaja Wachuku, who studied at Trinity College Dublin in the 1940s and would later become a prominent statesman in his native Nigeria.
[citation needed] For non-EU persons, this led to restrictive laws and hundreds of deportations annually of those not qualifying for asylum or admission.
The town of Gort, County Galway, is home to a large Brazilian population, including Black and mixed-race individuals.
[28] Following the European migrant crisis of 2015, refugees from conflict zones in North, East and Central Africa, such as Eritrea, Sudan, Somalia, the Congo, and Burundi have settled in Ireland.
[29] There are a number of challenges noted by Ireland's Black people, including casual racism, persistence of stereotypes, and inequal treatment in education.
The reaction of those in Northern Ireland was 'largely color-blind', with acceptance generally offered from both Catholic and Protestant communities, who viewed the visiting soldiers primarily as American.
The lack of a color bar, by and large, in treatment in Northern Ireland led to feelings that equality was attainable at home as it was abroad.
[32] A number of black people from mainland Britain were stationed in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, as part of British Army deployments.
[36] Mixed-race children were subject to discrimination in these institutions, with fewer being offered for adoption at the same rate as White Irish babies.
[38] A prominent example of racial discrimination against mixed-race children in Ireland and across Britain is the study conducted by anthropologists Rachel Fleming and Herbert Fleur in 1924.
In 1930 Muriel Fletcher, a social scientist, produced a similar report, although focusing on the psychological aspects of mixed-race relationships and their children.
Predominantly rural positions of their military bases often resulted in mixed-race relationships between White British and Irish women and African American GIs.
A number of reasons are suggested for this lack of representation, including that people of African descent tend to be younger than the rest of the population, the PR-STV voting system failing to facilitate representation of minorities not clustered in a single geographic area, as well as the highly personalised nature of Irish politics being difficult for immigrants to make vital political connections.
In 2011, Darren Scully resigned as mayor of Naas after stating he would refuse to represent "black Africans" because of their "aggressiveness and bad manners".
[48] In June 2021, Lilian Seenoi-Barr, who is Maasai and originally from Kenya,[49] was co-opted by the SDLP to the Derry and Strabane District Council, becoming Northern Ireland's first Black councillor.
