24. The Anti-Semitic Roots of a Racist Myth
The indentured servitude to which some Scottish and Irish migrants to the New World were subjected differs markedly from American chattel slavery. The latter was a unique institution that was based on race, had no end date, and was hereditary. Unlike indentured servitude contract holders, slave masters owned their black slaves outright, for their entire lives. Slave status attached to the slaves’ children from birth to death, as well. Blacks were enslaved. Irish Americans were not. Unsurprisingly for a racist myth, the untrue narrative of Irish American slavery grew from racist roots. Irish historian Liam Hogan traced the myth back to a 1990s book by Holocaust denier Michael A. Hoffman, that became a huge hit with white supremacists.
The Irish slavery story was further amplified in a 2000 book written by a non-historian, who claimed with zero supporting evidence that Irish slaves were branded like cattle. For good measure, he added the salacious but equally untrue tidbit that Irish slave women were sold to stud farms. Nothing of the sort ever happened. Incidentally, the photo used in the most prevalent Irish slavery meme is neither of Irish people nor of slaves. It is a 1908 photo taken in Barbados of people known locally as the “Redlegs of Barbados” – folk of mixed African and European ancestry. None of the mixed-race people pictured were slaves – slavery had been abolished decades earlier. Nor did any of them have an Irish surname.