Barack Obama's Irish Roots

From: TheDailyBeast

Barack Obama's Irish Roots

The Irish village of Moneygall is preparing to welcome an American president whose ancestor was a native son. Obama's planned May visit has excited locals—and prompted more racial awareness, writes Tom Sykes.

President Obama set down in Dublin Monday as part of a six-day European trip that will include a stop in Moneygall, the tiny town where his great-great-great grandfather was born. In anticipation, the 350 people who live there have painted their homes and opened a coffee shop called “Obama’s café.” Tom Sykes on the president's Irish roots.

The great, but generally unvocalized, astonishment of the people of Moneygall is not so much that one of their descendants is president of the United States, but that one of their descendants is black. You see, a lad going off to America and doing well for himself … well, all the folks in the pub drinking their pints of Guinness can get their heads around that story; sure, wasn't JFK the most famous Irishman of all?

Obama has Irish roots. Credit: Evan Vucci / AP Photo

But a black man? From Moneygall? What?

Moneygall, a very, very small village on the edge of a very, very large Irish bog, is the hometown of Barack Obama's great-great-great-great-grandfather, Joseph Kearney, an Irish wigmaker who emigrated to Ohio in 1849. As such, it will host the president on his current trip to Ireland.

After a bit of bemused head-scratching when the genealogical breakthrough was made by a parish priest during Obama's battle with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, the news has now been digested and processed by the collective consciousness of Moneygall, population 299.

So when (not if) the subject of "O'Bama" comes up at Ollie Hayes's stars and stripes-festooned saloon—Ollie's has been declared Obama HQ by the media because the Kearney family home was located out the back, and Obama's 24-year-old ninth cousin, Henry Healy, a plumber, drinks there—and you start to say, "But how come…" they cut you off right away, and explain patiently that Obama is "mixed race" and his mother's side are Irish and his father's side are Kenyan, and this is why the president is dark-skinned.

 "People didn't really relate to the idea of a black president having Irish roots."

But the fact remains: Moneygall is very, very white. There are no black people living in the village, although there is a "very nice Indian family" living in the housing estate outside town. But Moneygall is not unusual in that respect; rural Ireland is very, very white. The 2006 census showed that just 1.06 percent of Irish citizens are black, and outside major city centers, black people are still a rarity. In the countryside, the presence of black people is usually commented on. Inadvertent racism pervades conversation and society, both polite and impolite. Mixed-race people, for example, are often referred to as "half-castes" or "half-and-halfs."

A university-educated, professional friend of mine who was going to stay with an Irish friend in London who is married to a black woman recently told me he was due to visit "Mandela Hall." It's not malicious (usually), just naivete and a lack of familiarity, awareness, and education. But still, you don't quite know where to look.
You might expect the Irish to be a bit more sensitive. They are far from unfamiliar with prejudice themselves. Generations of Irish emigrants saw signs in the windows of London hotels reading, "No Blacks, no Irish, no dogs."
Moneygall itself has been through an accelerated racial-awareness program since the news of Obama's heritage broke. You hear more people using the words "mixed-race" than "half-caste" here. But the village was unusually well-prepared compared with most of rural Ireland for the extraordinary news that one of their descendants was black, for, back in the 1930s, another black man lived in Moneygall.

His name was Joe Kelly, and he lived at the local big house, Ballintemple, which is located directly opposite the Anglican church where Obama's ancestors worshipped, married, and christened their children, and where the records identifying Obama's heritage were found. Ballintemple was occupied by a family of farmers called Burris until around 1930, when it was sold to the grandparents of the current owner, Henry Hogg.

"We still call his old room 'Joe Kelly's room,'" Hogg says. "Children from orphanages were basically handed out to families, and Joe Kelly was taken in by Mrs. Burris. When the house was sold the family 'inherited' Joe Kelly. He came with the house. It was where he had always lived, so he wouldn't actually have had anywhere else to go. My uncle later told me that his mother was a prostitute in Dublin. He was a houseboy for Mrs. Burris and then he was a houseboy for my grandmother. He used to go into Cloghjordan (a nearby town) at the weekends and go to the pub and so on.

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