Chapter 10 - Race, Irishness, and Popular Culture in Australia

Summary

This chapter demonstrates how many Irish migrants in nineteenth-century colonial Australia met with overt discrimination, underpinned by a widespread circulation of racialized stereotypes of Irishness in popular culture, including in images in the mainstream media as well as in fiction. These racialized images of Irishness depended on widespread cultural knowledge of Irish stereotypes, such as stereotypes of Irish speech patterns, facial characteristics, and dress. At the same time, stereotypes of First Nations people and Chinese were also circulating in popular culture, often in the same frame or act as Irish stereotypes. While today many Australians of Irish descent pride themselves on the fact that their ancestors were less culpable in the racist policies and practices of colonisation in Australia, the reality is more complex as Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland, recognised this is one of his first speeches on an official tour of Australia in 2017. This chapter analyses one element of that complexity by examining how Irish Australians have been represented in popular media and culture when in the same frame as two other racialized groups, First Nations people and Chinese Australians.