'Ireland, and black!': minstrelsy, racism, and black cultural production in 1970s Ireland

This essay examines the various ways in which we might read and conceptualise figures of racial difference and racial masquerade in Irish cultural productions of the 1970s. It considers figurations and performances of blackness in Richard Cork Leg, written by Brendan Behan and Alan Simpson, Paul Durcan's poem, 'Black Sister', and the songs of Phil Lynott and Thin Lizzy. In these texts, I argue, the paradoxes and tensions of postcolonial racism in contemporary Irish society are shown to have a problematic genealogy.