Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Episode: Mary M. Burke, "Race, Politics, and Irish America: A Gothic History" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Host: Aidan Beatty
Guest: Mary M. Burke (Professor of English, University of Connecticut)
Date: January 3, 2026

Overview

This episode delves into Mary M. Burke's groundbreaking book Race, Politics, and Irish America: A Gothic History. Burke re-examines the history and identity of Irish America through a wide lens, moving beyond the typical narrative centered on the post-1845 Famine Irish. Her work foregrounds racial dynamics—how Irish and Irish-descended peoples were racialized, transformed, and often complicit within America’s structures of race—and highlights the crucial, often overlooked, Gothic quality of Irish American cultural and literary production. The episode explores the multifaceted intersections of race, ethnicity, politics, and narrative, and stretches from early Irish presence in the Americas through the Kennedy era to the contemporary moment.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining Irish America and Its Racial Complexity (02:46–07:59)

• Broader Conception of Irish America:
  Burke argues that "Irish America" should encompass more than just post-Famine (post-1845) Catholic immigrants. She includes earlier cohorts: the forcibly transported 17th-century Irish, the 18th-century Presbyterian Ulster Scots, and later waves.

  “The term Irish America is often, I think unthinkingly, used solely to refer to the post-1845 salmon immigrant cohort…But that I think effaces centuries of previous Irish presence in the Americas.” (05:22, Burke)

• Racialization of the Irish:

  • The Irish were racialized “not once, as is often said, but multiple times” in America.
  • Terms like "Redlegs," "Scots Irish," and "Black Irish" originated in the Americas to signify specific racialized statuses. (03:58–07:30)

2. Explaining Key Ethnoracial Designations (06:12–08:40)

• Redlegs: Irish transported to the Caribbean, termed for their tendency to sunburn. Their paleness became a liability until racial boundaries were formally codified.

• Scots Irish: Ulster Presbyterians who occupied a liminal position, acting as a buffer between Native Americans and Anglo colonists.

• Black Irish: Historically used in convoluted ways, sometimes for marginalized white Irish, sometimes for African/Caribbean individuals with Irish ancestry, and more recently in apolitical ways by privileged white Irish Americans.

• Impact on Heritage Figures:
  Writers with mixed heritage, such as Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz and Frank Yerby, confront both the contentious Irish/POC history and their own complex legacies. Yerby in particular, despite Irish roots, remains “invisible within the Irish American canon” due to narrow, “sectarian” definitions favoring whiteness. (08:55, Burke)

3. Gothic as a Lens on Irish American History (11:01–16:33)

• Gothic History Defined:
  Burke proposes that “history itself is Gothic” in Irish American culture. Gothic is a genre about “a troubled past that refuses to stay there,” perfectly capturing the sense of returning trauma and racial anxiety.

  "Gothic is a genre about a troubled past that refuses to stay there. So it’s kind of a perfect conduit…for thinking about unfinished Irish history." (11:13, Burke)

• Scots Irish Gothic:

  • A subgenre evident in works by Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, Henry James, and Faulkner—each highlighting the “unease of the Ulster settler in America.”
  • Violence and “unfinished history” haunt Irish American narratives; Andrew Jackson, for example, reappears as a “spectral, malevolent presence” in both politics and fiction. (13:29, Burke)

• Patronymics and Ancestral Hauntings:
  The inheritance of family names and political allegiances becomes a source of intergenerational "haunting," as illustrated through figures like John Mitchel and his grandson. (14:57–16:33)

4. Diversifying the Irish American Narrative (16:33–18:56)

• Moving Beyond the White Male Canon:
  Burke critiques the traditional focus on straight, white, Catholic Irish American men. She expands the narrative by including black, female, queer, and Scots Irish figures—ranging from Frederick Douglass to Mariah Carey.

  “I’m trying to correct for literary critics' traditional focus on the straight male Catholic Irish American author as the only voice that represents the Irish experience in the Americas.” (17:18, Burke)

5. Case Studies: Literature, Whiteness, and Race (18:56–24:06)

• O’Neill vs. Fitzgerald:
  O’Neill critiques the failure of Irish Americans to build solidarity with other oppressed groups and stages interracial relationships (often at personal risk), while Fitzgerald’s work is marked by anxiety about class and race, as he downplays his Irish roots for “Saxon whiteness.”

  “O’Neill’s drama critiques the Irish presence...as one long failure to create solidarity with…peoples of color.” (19:11, Burke)

• Dermal and Social Whiteness:
  Both authors express “defective Irish whiteness,” from the societal liability of having pale, sunburn-prone skin (“Redlegs”) to the social spectacle of suntanning popularized by Fitzgerald.

  “There are kind of extraordinary racial implications…to the fact that the trend for suntanning among elite whites was popularized by …Fitzgerald and his Riviera Circle. Yet Fitzgerald also denigrated himself as half black Irish.” (22:21, Burke)

6. Plantation Novels and the Big House Parallel (24:06–32:56)

• Shared Literary Characteristics:
  Burke examines Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell), Absalom, Absalom! (Faulkner), and The Foxes of Harrow (Yerby). Each features off-white protagonists of Irish (or Scottish Gaelic) descent, striving for “whiteness” by subjugating others.

• Margaret Mitchell vs. Frank Yerby:
  Both raised in part-Irish Atlanta families, but their different racial identities shape profoundly different approaches.

  • Mitchell’s narrative is a “white fairytale”; slaves are presented as happy.
  • Yerby’s work foregrounds black characters and the ambiguity of racial status, challenging the black/white binary. (28:47–30:55)

• Haunted by Irish History:
  The return of Irish trauma (e.g., the 1798 rebellion) is woven, sometimes implicitly, into these plots, showing how old patterns of colonial oppression are re-enacted in the American South.

7. The Kennedy Era: Fairy Tale to Gothic Horror (33:44–38:41)

• Narrative Arc:
  The Kennedy era is often viewed as the “fairy tale” culmination of Irish Americans’ climb to unconditional whiteness. Burke traces a shift—from Grace Kelly’s royal wedding (the “white wedding”) to the “gothic horror” of the Kennedy assassinations, reflecting darker undercurrents beneath the assimilation story.

• Kennedy Gothic:
  Cultural readings of the Kennedy dynasty fracture along political lines: liberals see the family as tragic victims, conservatives as symbols of decay—both consistent with gothic narrative traditions about power and its dangers.

  “Gothic literature…has expressed the complicity of attaining and maintaining power. …I call this Kennedy Gothic.” (37:06, Burke)

8. Contemporary Politics: Biden, Trump, and the Gothic (38:41–40:27)

• Continuing the Pattern:
  President Biden is “only the second” Irish Catholic president, yet, as Fintan O’Toole suggests, he is a "revenant," a gothic figure from the Kennedy era now in a fractured America.

  “[Biden is] post the most gothic figure in American politics…a revenant from the Kennedy era.” (39:03, Burke)

• Disintegration of Alliances:
  The Kennedy era’s attempted fusion of Irish Catholic identity and progressive politics has fallen apart; new dynamics now shape the legacy of Irish America.

9. Possibility and Loss: Robert Kennedy’s Words (40:27–41:55)

• A Vision Not Realized:
  The tragic potential of black-Irish solidarity is summed up in Robert Kennedy’s response to Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination:

  "For there is another kind, a violence slower, but just as deadly…and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin is different colors." (40:58, Burke quoting Robert Kennedy)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On American-Centric Racialization of Irishness (05:22, Burke):
  “So the coinages for those of white Irish stock in the Americas—Redlegs, Scots Irish, Black Irish—these have no traditional corollary in Ireland…these terms emerge from America’s structures of race and ethnic hierarchy.”

• On Literary Haunting (14:57, Burke):
  "Surnames that come down the male line are at the root of a kind of intergenerational haunting in a number of Irish American Gothic texts…The Irish male body is itself a kind of ancestor-haunted text."

• On Inclusiveness (17:18, Burke):
  “The book includes writers, performers, and public figures of Irish connection who are black and female and queer…in an attempt to expand this standard Irish assimilation narrative and its centering of powerful and very …straight white Catholic Irishmen alone.”

• On Fitzgerald and Sunburn (22:21, Burke):
  “There are kind of extraordinary racial implications…to the fact that the trend for suntanning among elite whites was popularized…by Fitzgerald and his Riviera Circle. Yet Fitzgerald also denigrated himself as half black Irish.”

• On Faulkner and Yerby’s Plantation Novels (30:13, Burke):
  “Both Faulkner and Yerby mock the ambitions of their Irish planters to secure …legitimate male lines in perpetuity. …They do this by making their heirs illegitimate, mixed race young men…”

• On Kennedy Gothic and Political Power (37:06, Burke):
  "Gothic literature…has expressed the complicity of attaining and maintaining power...I call this Kennedy Gothic.”

• Robert Kennedy on Racial Violence (40:58, Burke quoting):
  “For there is another kind, a violence slower, but just as deadly…This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin is different colors.”

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:46] — Defining Irish America and its cohorts
• [03:58–08:40] — Redlegs, Scots Irish, Black Irish explanations and mixed heritage figures
• [11:13–13:29] — The Gothic as historical and literary framework; invention of Scots Irish Gothic
• [16:33–18:56] — Expanding beyond the white, male, straight, Catholic Irish narrative
• [18:56–24:06] — Fitzgerald, O’Neill, “defective Irish whiteness”
• [24:29–32:56] — Plantation novels, parallels to Irish Big House tradition, racialization in literature
• [33:44–38:41] — From “fairy tale” (Grace Kelly/Kennedys) to “Gothic horror” (assassinations, Kennedy Gothic)
• [38:41–40:27] — Irishness & Politics today: Biden, Trump, and the unraveling of Kennedyera alliances
• [40:58] — Robert Kennedy on violence, hope, and loss

Conclusion

Burke’s Race, Politics, and Irish America: A Gothic History radically reconfigures Irish American identity as a product of multiple waves, complex racialization, and literary “hauntings.” Her work traverses from the earliest forced migrations up to present political divides, arguing powerfully for the necessity to include marginalized voices and recognize the deeply Gothic undertones of the Irish American experience. The episode provides an engaging journey through American history, literature, and politics, reframing familiar narratives and suggesting that the past continually returns, in both trauma and possibility.