Irish dance and identity politics on TikTok

ABSTRACT

During the COVID-19 pandemic TikTok became a vibrant virtual space to circulate dance performances and challenges when other forms of movement were heavily restricted. A new generation of Irish dancers joined the app to share their choreographies and creativity, bringing this form of Irish culture to young global audiences. Evident as part of this trend were new mediations of Irishness attached to the cultural concerns of Gen Z (primary users of the TikTok app). African American Irish dancer, Morgan Bullock, provides an informative case study on the tensions that emerge between national Irish and diasporic identities. Articulations of Ireland as especially inclusive are explored through a range of popular culture productions including viral short videos, comment sections, television series and dance performances. These explorations reveal layers of meaning attached to “being Irish” through the contestations and negotiations of Irish identity in online spaces. The article concludes that while performances of inclusion carry considerable weight in virtual spaces like TikTok, this is not for the most part reflected in the social and political policies that shape the everyday experiences of people of colour living and working in Ireland.

KEYWORDS:

• TikTok
• Irish dance
• Ireland
• America
• inclusion
• diversity

Introduction

Pandemic lockdowns drove many dancers to the video-based social media platform TikTok to share their choreographies, dance practices and creativity at a time when mobility and public performance were heavily restricted. New global audiences for Irish dance emerged as part of this trend through the posting of viral-short videos by a new generation of dancers used to engaging with content online. For hundreds of years Irish dance has existed beyond national boundaries, carried throughout the world by the extensive diaspora. Historiographies of Irish dance already exist and much research has been undertaken exploring how it developed from ancient times to renewal and global appeal during the Celtic Tiger years (1990s–2000s).¹ Building on previous research, this article considers how Irish dance has more recently been shaped by new media technologies, the cultural concerns of Gen Z and negotiations of globalised Irishness on and offline.

TikTok is one of the most popular social media apps in the world with over 3 billion users including 113 million downloads in the United States making it the largest single market for the app.² Given the popularity of the app and the concentrations of Irish dance schools in America it is unsurprising that one of the biggest Irish dance stars of the last few years emerged not from Ireland but the United States. The celebrity of African American Irish dancer Morgan Bullock is examined in this article to better understand the ways that Irish identity is imagined in the current moment. Bullock provides an informative case study given her transition from social media to mainstream celebrity and her positioning not as part of the diaspora but as someone who elevates or “appreciates,” to use her own word, Irish culture. Bullock’s celebrity also became a flashpoint for mediations of Irish and Irish American cultural identities, unsettled by political events in the USA since 2016 with the election of Donald Trump, and the visibility of prominent Irish American politicians with decidedly conservative values and ideologies. Bullock’s celebrity began on TikTok and this article analyses in the first instance content and comment section exchanges from that app on videos posted by Bullock and other creators. The article expands to include other forms of popular culture representations and performances of Irish culture and dance that are sentimentally similar to the content being considered from the Tik Tok app including Irish dance, poetry and television series. The purpose of this approach is to reveal the layers of meaning attached to “being Irish” through the contestations and negotiations of that identity in online spaces.

Media and culture play a significant role in the construction of the “imagined community” of nation state, and by extension forms of citizenship and national identity often flow from the reproduction of these ideologies as they are negotiated in the public sphere.³ Perceptions of belonging, therefore, mediate inclusion in national spaces including performances of national identity. However, this article highlights the ways that cultural expressions of belonging and inclusion can also operate on separate planes to systemic/structural equality, within structures of meaning that are transactional in nature and much like the fallacy of trickle-down economics, trickle down inclusion is often an empty promise, but one that is effective in appearing to be “doing something” about transnational identities and experiences. In her writings on identity politics, Nancy Fraser contends that “justice today requires both redistribution and recognition” and that “the task is to devise an overarching conception of justice that can accommodate both defensible claims for social equality and defensible claims for the recognition of difference.”⁴ By focusing on mediations of Irish dance within globalised social media networks, this article highlights the ways that the politics of recognition can create an appearance of inclusion that has little impact on existing structural inequalities but has a great deal of traction in cultural spaces. In relation to Irish dance, this paper maps the kinds of interactions that have the potential to create generalised impressions of Ireland as an especially inclusive place. Within this exploration, contesting Irish-American conservatism is highlighted for the role it has played in solidifying a neoliberal inclusionary imaginary of Irishness (national and global), positioning inclusion as a defining feature of modern Ireland in a way that is detached from everyday realities within the state.

TikTok and dance cultures

TikTok has grown into one of the top social media apps in the world especially in catering for young audiences with over sixty per cent of its users being under 30 years old.⁵ Assessing media activities on global apps of this nature is challenging, not only because of the scale and volume of content but also because of the way algorithms shape and curate the experiences of individual users. TikTok’s users are primarily “digital natives”⁶; a generation used to leveraging every experience good or bad, every relationship positive or negative, and all interactions with family members, friends, foes and followers into opportunities to produce sufficient levels of content to create and maintain social media celebrity. It is, however, important not to overstate the levels of individual creative output on the app as data shows that the majority of young people who use TikTok do not create content consistently and are more likely to be present as viewers.⁷ Users of TikTok might also be less easily categorised as “followers” since this app works differently to other social media platforms and content is filtered more by viewer preferences for certain types of content than by the accounts and celebrities they follow.⁸ The activities of most users encompass “small acts of engagement” such as clicks, likes, shares and comments.⁹ TikTok is arguably a platform for observation, engaging with streams of fast-changing content from the position of a viewer rather than user of the social media app, situated perhaps somewhere between the “flow” of watching television and social media interaction.¹⁰ To a large extent, the streams of content that engage young audiences on TikTok are informed by tropes familiar from lifestyle and reality TV such as challenges, pranks, big reveals and transformations. Food, pets, lifehacks, comedy, beauty, fashion and DIY feature heavily. A distinguishing feature of the platform has been the popularity of and audience engagement with dance challenges. Dance has been a steady form of creative currency on the app for celebrities and ordinary users. Laura Cervi points out that dance is everywhere on TikTok not just in dance challenges but also in many other types of videos such as coming out announcements, wedding videos and family celebrations.¹¹ Dance also appears in forms of online activism to communicate social and political messages. It makes sense in many ways that dance should define a global social media app that rose to prominence during the pandemic. During the series of lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, dance provided a corporeal language for global communication in a time when movement and mobility were heavily restricted. Collette Eloi describes the popular pandemic dance craze Jeruselema as creating a “congregational global body” that united, soothed and made a ritual of pandemic restrictions and physical distancing.¹²

Irish dance on TikTok

In a space already teeming with dance trends and competing social media influencers, content creators must offer something distinct but also connected to the trends and affordances of the app. In relation to the latter, Irish dance is especially suited to the restricted performance space provided by the propped up mobile phone since it is primarily a solo dance form and is famous for having little upper body movement. Dance videos on TikTok are traditionally very short – frequently no more than 15–30 seconds in length.¹³ The kind of Irish dance that has succeeded in gaining significant attention on TikTok has tended to lean into the technological limitations of the app, offering short bursts of movement and sound (soft shoe dancing is very rare for example). Hard shoe Irish dance videos performed to popular music including hip hop, r’n’b and chart-topping pop hits are more likely to gain attention on the app. Unlike other social media apps, videos on TikTok can trend based as much on their sound as their visual content, so going viral on TikTok relies heavily on the choice of music or sound file. Irish dances are less likely to get noticed/or go viral if they are performed to Irish music. Adrian Scahill argues that while Riverdance was recognised as a success story for Irish music and culture on the world stage, the music score moved away from the traditional and local and “reflects the fluidity, diversity, and hybridity of the modern tradition.”¹⁴ If Riverdance moved from local tradition to global hybrid, Irish dance on TikTok has become further detached from Irish music, in order to be open to a greater extent to global consumption and the likelihood of internet virality.

On TikTok, the rapid pace of viral content, both in terms of volume of videos and the turnover of trends, means that differentiating between Irish dance content created in or outside Ireland is not always immediately possible – Irish dance made and shared from anywhere in the world has an equal platform. To meet the demands of virality while still coding their performances as ethnically Irish, many Irish-based dancers perform their short choreographies to popular music on country boreens, at touristic sites such as castle ruins or the cliffs of Moher or other recognisably Irish locations.¹⁵ Such backdrops take on a new importance when other markers of Irish dance have been largely abandoned. Traditionally, Irish dance has been recognisable through the wearing of elaborate costumes, hairstyles and heavy make-up (especially tanning), associated with Irish dance competitions the world over. Kristina R. Varade points out that given the global nature of Irish dance participation (500 certified teachers in Ireland and 1500 worldwide), costumes have played a “large part in defining identity for the participants.”¹⁶ It is notable then, that on TikTok this significant marker of Irish dance identity has all but been erased. Jeans, leggings, football jerseys, suits and active wear are the most likely costumes of choice on TikTok. Outfits for female performers tend to conform to the influencer aesthetic of active wear and sport luxe.¹⁷ Departing from these core identifiers of Irish dance (music and costumes) indicates perhaps content creators’ struggles to meet the algorithmic demands of social media that requires material to be both spectacular and relatable.

So, performers on TikTok walk a line between coding their performances as distinctly Irish while also presenting the form as global and accessible. To a high degree, trending videos and sounds on the app must be distinct but also malleable. Irish dance is, therefore, privileged in this environment as a form of content that can be both ethnic and exchangeable, recognisable but not exclusive. While most TikTok dance challenges are simple enough for people with little dance experience to learn and perform, Irish dance videos showcase discipline, talent and cultural expression. They are mostly designed for spectacle and comment rather than imitation, the exception being collaborations and duets. Creating duet videos on TikTok is a way to respond (positively or negatively) to the videos of other creators. During the pandemic this style of video rose to prominence as a way to literally duet with other singers and musicians. Duetting and stitching videos on TikTok are used to respond verbally or through facial expressions, handwritten signs or imitation, to all kinds of TikTok videos.¹⁸ Stitched responses can be critical of the content in the original video or agree with or add to a video from another creator. Responding to a video by creating another similar or sister video is a well-established practice on TikTok and video creators often share screen space with the original content. This phenomenon is evidenced in an early example of a viral Irish dance TikTok video made by Irish American dancer Mary Papageorge and performed to the song “Fergilicious” by Fergie (Papageorge 2020).¹⁹ Her short performance garnered millions of views before being picked up by another TikToker who used a split screen function to create a duet dance that became a global hit.Dancers and celebrities from all over the world including Will Smith, Marshmello, Derek Hough, Olly Murs and Jason Derulo imposed their upper bodies over the dancing legs of Papageorge to create a series of short videos in which Irish dance was only one element. The popularity of this video (that generated more than 35 m views and 4.7 m likes), and its continuous circulation, situates Irish dance as a form of ethnic performance that can be reworked and exchanged without (for the most part) attracting critiques of cultural appropriation. In this way Irish culture gets to appear open and flexible, unburdened by identity politics including the unpacking of how power and privilege has shaped cultural performances, and can thus be positioned as both ethnic and inclusive (albeit within existing asymmetrical boundaries of diasporic versus national Irish cultural authenticity). The next section further demonstrates that when debates about identity politics arise, interactions tend to reconfirm Irishness as an exceptional form of white ethnicity that can be safely represented and explored.

Morgan Bullock, identity politics and popular culture

Notions of Irishness as an especially inclusive culture are further amplified when viral videos from TikTok gain enough attention to be picked up by mainstream media. In the competitive and fickle world of TikTok celebrity, no Irish dancer has gained more attention than African American, Morgan Bullock. Bullock’s success arose from her posting a 15 second video of herself on TikTok performing an Irish dance to the Megan Thee Stallion song “Savage.”²⁰ Bullock’s race and ethnicity were central to the virality of the video, becoming a talking point because she did not have a biological link to Ireland through her ancestry and therefore couldn’t claim cultural association through a distant family member. Bullock received mainly positive comments, but some also questioned her right to perform an ethnic dance she had no direct cultural connections to. Exchanges on Bullock’s video mirror heated online debates on the appropriation of African American culture in a North American context (a very common point of interactions on TikTok). Despite widespread discussions in the last 10 years across media and academia in relation to cultural appropriation, consensus and clarity are difficult to perceive. Transgressions are often debated on a case-by-case basis, can be historical or contemporary, and have been raised by a wide variety of minority groups (in Western societies) including South Asian, African, Native American, South American and East Asian peoples. In online spaces, appropriation disputes are often linked to call-out/cancel culture and perceptions of political correctness. Nilsson outlines how instances of calling-out appropriation in online community spaces like whitegirlswithbindis.tumblr.com had the dual intention of shaming and educating those outside South Asian cultural backgrounds who were unaware or ignorant of racialised experiences of wearing markers of ethnic identity in Western multi-cultural societies.²¹ Negative reactions to Bullock’s performance of Irish dance might be understood in this context as a method of deflecting the shame arising from the withdrawal of forms of cultural performance within predominantly white cultures. This defensive reflex is well represented in comments like “if we can’t have cornrows you can’t have this.” It is worth emphasising, however, that such comments made up a minority of the overwhelmingly positive responses to the video. When the story was picked up by mainstream media, interviews often honed in on the issue of cultural appropriation with Bullock explaining how her performance of Irish dance fell into the category of appreciation rather than appropriation. In an interview with RTÉ Bullock explained that many people were “failing to recognise the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation” and further clarified in an online statement that the international popularity of Irish dance had allowed people of all national and ethnic backgrounds to participate.²² These debates provided a platform to also discuss the limits of Irishness and Irish culture. Articles on and offline emphasised Irish inclusivity and the flexibility of Irish culture in the context of the extensive global Irish diaspora. Bullock was subsequently invited to perform in Riverdance and to take part in the St Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin. Previous scholarship has highlighted the global nature of Irish dance claiming that most Irish dancers had “multi-ethnic and multi-cultural backgrounds” and that many had no claim to Irish heritage whatsoever.²³ So, if Bullock’s ethnicity in the context of Irish dance is not exactly new – one might ask why it has received so much attention in the current moment?

Given the size of Ireland’s diaspora (far greater than the size of the national population), it has played a significant role in shaping Irish identity globally. As an ethnic identity within the United States, Irishness takes on particular meanings, built to respond to the socio-cultural contexts of American public life. Diane Negra has observed that from the early 2000s Irish American cultural performances mostly rebutted identity politics by claiming to “carry ethnicity” while seemingly “not whining about it.”²⁴ Once established, this trope of Irishness as a benign form of white ethnicity allowed Irish Americans (and by default the Irish) to clear a space for themselves within the culture wars, operating outside of those necessary conversations and confrontations that have come to symbolise a fractured and polarised public sphere. This formulation of Irish identity was also evident in Irish cultural productions of that era. In her critique of the Riverdance show, Aoife Monks noted the inclusion of other folk dances and traditions including Russian dance, flamenco, African-American tap dance and gospel, and argued that through the process of aligning the Irish experience of emigration with other folk cultures, Irishness and Irish culture were transformed into the “organising essence” that governed “the logic of the other performance practices and cultural traditions.”²⁵ In the introduction to her book, Other People’s Diasporas, Sinéad Moynihan provides an important account of the ways Irish identity has shifted over time to align itself with the experiences of other migrant populations but particularly African Americans. She highlights, however, that such claims of amalgam between Irish and wider diasporic experiences are often absent at times of policy change, such as the 2004 referendum on citizenship, proposed at a time when Ireland was experiencing its first real waves of immigration and the aim of which was to reduce the citizenship rights of “non-nationals” giving birth to children in Ireland. In relation to the topic being explored in this article, Moynihan makes two key points on “white Irish-black encounters.” First, that they were “central to representations of multi-cultural Ireland during the Celtic Tiger years”²⁶ and secondly that they “have a great deal of currency in historical and contemporary culture and society on both sides of the Atlantic.”²⁷ It is the case, however, that celebrations of shared cultural experiences extending from emigration and diaspora (like inviting Bullock to the Saint Patrick’s Day parade) are far more evident than movement on the legal and social frameworks that define the lived experiences of immigrants and those seeking international protection in Ireland.²⁸ David Lloyd makes clear that “instances of Irish solidarity with other racialised groups … are massively outweighed in the historical record by Irish participation in the US and British imperial wars of expansion, race riots, racially exclusive unions, and so forth.”²⁹ Although academic research highlighting the nuances of Irish experiences of emigration has grown considerably in the last few decades, within popular culture Irish emigration narratives tend to be more fixed and dependant on tropes of exile and impoverishment. Delaney and MacRaild argue that “the language of exile still remains potent” in North America “in the context of competing versions of the past.”³⁰ While forced emigration was undeniably part of the Irish experience in the 19^th century, exile tends to be over-represented in the cultural imaginary when, in reality, for the last hundred years at least, most emigration from Ireland has been economic migration.

Successful Irish Americans are widely celebrated and elevated in Irish society; national attachment to and celebration of John F. Kennedy and attention to the Irish heritage of Barack Obama are just two examples. Obama’s relationship with Ireland has been analysed through a number of theoretical frameworks, understood as part of his multiracial/multicultural identity³¹ and critiqued in relation to post-race politics and his “race-neutral” approach.³² For others, Obama’s visit to Ireland and the erection of the Barak Obama Plaza, a petrol station near his hometown in Moneygall, was evidence of Ireland’s tendency towards “hijacking history and muscling in on other people’s identity.”³³ While opinion might be split as to the motivations for celebrating Obama’s Irish ancestry there is little to debate about the degree to which public and political sentiment in Ireland was positively engaged in embracing Obama as “one of our own.” In the Trump era however, there was little celebration or exploration of the new clutch of Irish names in the halls of power at the White House. Few profile pieces emerged tracing the Irish ancestry of Sean Spicer, Paul Ryan or Brett Kavanaugh. Liam Kennedy has pointed to a growing “disconnection between Ireland and Irish America,” linked primarily to concerns about the drift towards illiberal politics.³⁴

The considerable attention to Morgan Bullock then occurs at a time when Irish American politics has been a source of an uncomfortable disjuncture with national Irish identity. While the Irish American diaspora was once a source of pride, underlined as a significant force in the development of modern America and produced as evidence of the enduring greatness of Irishness itself, in more recent times it has been a source of shame, ridicule and even cultural cringe, best symbolised perhaps by another Irish dance moment when Michael Flatley’s Lord of the Dance troupe performed at Donald Trump’s inauguration ball.³⁵ In her consideration of this performance, scholar, Kathryn Holt, raises concerns about how Irish dance “might be used to bolster” the politics of an “omnipotent white masculinity” that has continued to be a significant feature of American politics post-Trump.³⁶ The performance was widely criticised in Ireland and in the UK, with Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle commenting “Somehow I always knew that Michael Flatley would play a key role in the Apocalypse.”³⁷ Such distancing from the performance of Irish culture in a prestigious political space, reveals the sensibilities of a post-Celtic Irishness that situates its connection to American culture closer to Silicon Valley than traditional Irish America. Recent work by Diane Negra and Anthony McIntyre notes that the economic austerity of the post-Celtic Tiger years in Ireland was paired with an emphasis on social progressiveness, matching the approach and values of the American technology companies situated in Ireland including Apple, Google, Meta and Twitter.³⁸ Commenting on the data surveillance financial model of social media giants like Facebook, Tὃrnberg and Uitermark highlight how “a central part of the marketing of these platforms is an emphasis on progressive values, calling upon the ideas of the counterculture movement.”³⁹ This strategic alignment of Ireland and Silicon Valley is troubled when Irish American surnames appear more consistently on the conservative side of American politics and are associated with regressive policies and tactics including the appointment of Supreme Court Judges Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett during the Trump administration, widely viewed as a way to guarantee the overturning of Roe v Wade and the retraction of reproductive rights for women in the United States. In June 2022, only 4 years after the introduction of abortion rights in Ireland, the supreme court moved to overturn women’s reproductive rights in the United States.

Boundaries of Irish identity in popular culture

In his book, Racism in the Irish Experience Steve Garner⁴⁰ defines the concept of “historical duty” as the process in which Irish experiences of migration are aligned with “other people’s diasporas.” He observes that this “moral obligation … has ramifications that lie within the political, economic and social spheres, but are not touched on.” Imelda May’s 2020 poem, “You Don’t Get to be Racist and Irish” pitches the historical duty argument against claims to Irishness itself.⁴¹ In May’s poem the struggles of Irish migrants are recalled vividly,

“Our colour pasty

Our accents thick

Hands like shovels from mortar and bricklaying

foundations of cities you now stand upon

Our suffering seeps from every stone.”

Like many cultural iterations of this line of argumentation, the famine and the struggles of Irish migrants in the 19^th century are most often the focal point with little reference to later waves of economic migration from Ireland in the 20^th century. In a TikTok video entitled “Irish Means Guilt Free,” Irish comedian David Nihill jokes about arriving in America and discovering that “he is just another white guy” and meant to have “the white guilt.”⁴² He claims to have no white guilt because “in Ireland we had potatoes in the ground and we picked them ourselves. We never went to another continent, stole all their people and made them pick the potatoes.”Referring indirectly to the famine and slavery and directly to white identity, Irishness is leveraged here as an open repudiation of notions of white privilege, relocating contemporary arguments to a point in history that works to absolve Irish whiteness in the present day. In the video’s comment section, Nihill goes on to claim that “Ireland historically has been the underdog, spoke out in the face of wrongdoing globally and stayed neutral,” giving a sense of the degree to which Irishness can be rendered as beyond reproach in identity politics. Although Nihill’s joke and May’s poem are sentimentally and stylistically entirely different, they both build on an underlying assumption that racism is antithetical to Irishness. Selective histories are utilised in both cases, cataloguing the Irish as essentially different in their knowledge of migration and suffering. Nihill’s joke permits a hop, skip and jump from the famine to present day United States with the assumption that Irishness holds a get-out-clause in current debates on white privilege and the culture wars.

Alongside the ongoing rhetoric of historical duty across forms of popular culture, the desire to align Irish and Black experiences, past and present, appears to have growing cultural traction. For example, the EPIC museum⁴³ launched its “Ireland and the Black Atlantic” Exhibition in 2022 which sought to “demonstrate significant themes and moments in the intertwining histories of the African and Irish diasporas” … “encapsulating Irish diaspora histories of abolition, racism, anti-racism and solidarity.” While these explorations acknowledge the complexity and contradictions of Irish interactions with African and African American culture and history, they almost always skew towards positivist representation. Such solidarities are most apparent in cultural spaces, performances and gestures, with the assumption of a “trickle down” effect rather than a request for direct action. A recent Irish dance example sees Morgan Bullock narrate an RTÉ production on the history of Irish dance which goes to great efforts to highlight interconnections between Irish and African dance in form and traditions. Following the opening credits, Steps to Freedom (2022) begins with a monologue from Bullock as she performs an Irish hard-shoe dance in the middle of an urban street in the USA, she immediately addresses her legitimacy to take up traditional Irish dance and suggests that “the answer to that question begins a long time ago in Ireland’s ancient history,” which then sets in motion an exploration of Irish dance from past to present.⁴⁴ In addition to segments that discuss the overlaps between Irish and African dance, there are many scenes in the documentary that place Irish and African dance forms in the same visual space through a series of dance offs representing more ancient and modern forms of Irish and African dance. While tap dance is one clear example where interplay between Irish and African dance forms contributed to a new American dance form, Constance Valis Hill reminds us that explorations of these interactions also brings into focus “the history of race, racisms and race relations in America.”⁴⁵ That the documentary Steps to Freedom goes to great efforts to align Irish dance with African and African American dance forms is evidenced in clips from the music videos of global African American music stars Beyoncé and Missy Elliot in the opening and closing credits. The inclusion of a dance sequence from Beyoncé’s 2011 hit Run the World is particularly egregious considering the origins of the choreography are well documented and belong to the Mozambique dance troupe Tofo Tofo who Beyoncé flew to the United States in order to learn their particular style of African dance.⁴⁶ In this instance, a minor resemblance to Irish dance allows for all of the social and cultural capital associated with a global superstar such as Beyoncé to be assembled within a flow of Irish cultural influence. In her critique of Riverdance and Lord of the Dance, Hazel V. Carby (2001, 330), cautions against the formation of a postmodern, neoliberal Irishness, as a “global culture without history” which erases the complexities, divergences and contradictions of Irish diasporic experiences.⁴⁷ It is, therefore, imperative for Irish cultural productions to acknowledge to a greater extent how the “internationalism of its peoples and cultures … have been messily intertwined in the social, political and economic relations that consistently crossed and recrossed racial and ethnic boundaries.”

To a degree recent popular cultural productions that attempt to affiliate Irish and African cultures might be situated within the trajectories of aspirational postraciality.⁴⁸ However, this might also be recognised as what O’Neill and Lloyd have identified as “an Irish ethnic desire to access the multicultural ethnic capital that accrues to those who can demonstrate a history of suffering comparable to that of (other) racialised minorities.”⁴⁹ To take that a step further, a useful perspective is provided by Brandi Summers in her work on the gentrification of urban spaces in Washington DC, where she argues that “blackness and diversity are deployed by the state and private actors in the pursuit of authenticity” and that the aesthetics of black culture are “subsumed under a capital-friendly umbrella of diversity.”⁵⁰ When this concept is applied to Bullock’s Irish dance celebrity, it is evident that a significant dimension to her cultural capital is her ability to move freely between performing Irish and African American identities. She is one of the few Irish dancers on TikTok to appear in the full regalia of Irish feis costumes and has recently performed Irish dance as the face of the new Ivy Park collaboration with Adidas.⁵¹ It is difficult to imagine another scenario where Irish dance would be an element in a high-profile collaboration with Adidas and Beyoncé’s clothing label. Therefore, Bullock’s mastery of Irish dance facilitates the placement of Irish dance within cultural spaces that might otherwise be contested or unattainable.

In the age of Black Lives Matter, cultural debates about power, privilege and whiteness have, in a very short space of time, become an everyday occurrence. Zoomers or Gen Z, comfortably engage in discussions about cultural identity, race, cultural appropriation and privilege. Content shared on TikTok is frequently critiqued by the platform’s youthful audience. Call-out videos tend to be pitched less aggressively than on wider social media – questioning and responding rather than dictating and destroying. Crystal Abidin’s research suggests that discussions of social justice on TikTok have been used to “mobilise social action, galvanise social change and institute a new peer culture of learning” but also at times Tiktokers have called-out and “publicly shamed other TikTokers as a route to internet celebrity.”⁵² What we can take from these observations more broadly is that TikTok is a space where the cultural preoccupations of Gen Z provide a powerful mode of address. Like so many other phenomena, sensibilities of Irish identity shudder across the social media platform unevenly – at times producing meanings that chime with well-established tropes and notions of Irishness. At other times, confused and contradictory representations occur as national and global Irish identities become a point of conflict for a generation negotiating the credos of identity politics. Irish dance provided one such example when Irish dancer, Maggie McIIroy, who performs at the Raglan Road Bar in Disney World, posted a video response to a comment on her TikTok profile “Asian girl dancing in an Irish bar wtf?.”⁵³ This video went on to receive more than 1.6 million likes and 21.5 thousand comments almost all referring to the Asian American identity of the dancer and the negative comment from the previous post. The breakdown of much of the discussion related to regressive Irish American attitudes to Irish culture – the term “gatekeeping” appears regularly in the comments in reference to policing the boundaries of Irish culture within the diaspora. One stitched video calls out Irish Americans for “weaponising” Irish culture to express racist attitudes.⁵⁴ In such debates it is evident that no linear assumptions can be made about how the diaspora extends Irish culture globally. These online clashes between Irish and Irish Americans almost always present anti-racism as a universal Irish value, most recently this frequently includes a repudiation of the Irish-slave myth and Irish American victimhood, narratives now associated with online alt-right spaces.⁵⁵ By calling out the white privilege or racism of Irish Americans, Irish Tiktokers exert that Ireland is a fundamentally more inclusive place by comparison, a positionality that garners considerable cultural capital in the online spaces occupied by Gen Z.

It is evident that these rejections of Irish American culture and politics occupy the same virtual space as David Nihill’s joke about white privilege not applying to him as an Irish man in America – a video that has over 380k likes and almost 12,000 shares. While the presidency of Joe Biden moved Irish America back into safer territory, he offers a form of what Kennedy describes as a “redemptive” Catholic Irish identity, a presentation of Irishness that is “hollowed out” in how it addresses real structural and material inequality, producing a “deradicalized ethnicity.”⁵⁶ This appears to be the most recognisable brand of Irish inclusivity, one that maintains Ireland’s famed one-thousand-welcomes and does not damage their business-friendly identity but also does not result in any real transformation of the legal and structural frameworks that negatively impact people of colour in Ireland. Kelly Davidson encourages greater critique of the “dividends of diversity” in her observations on Irish companies and government organisations collaborations with young, successful, black women as diversity ambassadors. Davidson highlights the potential for these to act as “creative diversions from the Irish State’s ambivalent response to hate crime and racial discrimination and continued repressive actions in policing, racial profiling and asylum processing.”⁵⁷ Marcus Free has also questioned representations of Irish inclusivity in his work on media, diversity and sport.⁵⁸ He highlights the repetition of “reassuring narratives of integration into an already constituted conceptualisation of welcoming ‘Irish culture’,” thereby reducing the space for immigrants to express their experiences in a way that does not confirm broad social acceptance and Irish inclusivity. Through these interactions Ireland gets to appear inclusive – presenting a form of cosmopolitan, global Irish identity that signals inclusion and diversity but such formulations are significantly absent from Irish state policy and the supports for immigrants living and working in Ireland. Zélie Asava has argued that most representations of the Black Irish in cinema whitewashed “over the problems of assimilation by refusing to represent the Black Irish as an established community, framing multiculturalism and racism as new to the nation.”⁵⁹ There is a similar novelty in the form of inclusion extended to Morgan Bullock; her identity is not aligned with African Irish experiences but with the global appeal of Irishness itself. This is inclusion at a distance, a hand that reaches across the Atlantic but does not acknowledge Irish African communities closer to home. In her own right, Bullock is a positive role model for young people of colour and this article does not critique the individual but the systems of diversity and inclusion that control the dialogue and dynamics of equality. Her presence can certainly be read as part of a politics of recognition where visibility plays a key role. However, in his critique of diversity at the Royal Ballet, Lester Tomé argues that “the display of different bodies may be where diversity starts but not where it should end.”⁶⁰ On TikTok, Irish dance is attached to young, diverse, global dance ambassadors with progressive values and inclusive attitudes, inviting everyone to take part in this Irish cultural form. Irish dancers such as Bullock, the Gardiner brothers and Cairde accumulate new audiences and significant status for Irish culture across the world. This content exists in virtual spaces that often permit for such performances of individualised, neoliberal emancipation to be detached from national political circumstances. Irish dance performances on TikTok are focused on mediating the diktats of algorithmic virality and include just enough elements to be recognised as Irish, while still operating within and capitalising upon the new mores of identity politics. One danger to consistent references to Ireland as especially inclusive and open, is that it tends to act as a bulwark in the denial or diminishment of claims of exclusion when they arise. Ireland must, therefore, go beyond performing inclusivity if it is to address the real forms of exclusion that African Irish and other ethnic minorities experience as part of their daily lives in Ireland.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Monks, Comely Maidens and Celtic Tigers; Brennan, The Story of Irish Dance; and O’Connor, The Irish Dancing.

2. Statistica, “Tik Tok - Statistics & Facts.”

3. Anderson, Imagined Communities.

4. Fraser, “Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics.”

5. Wallaroo Media, “Tik Tok Statisitics.”

6. Prensky, “Digital Natives.”

7. Bucknell Bossen and Kottasz, “Uses and Gratifications.”

8. Abidin, “Mapping Internet Celebrity on TikTok.”

9. Piconeet al., “Small Acts of Engagement.”

10. Williams, Television Technology and Form.

11. Cervi, “Tik Tok and Generation Z.”

12. Eloi, “TikTok and Short-Form Screendance.”

13. In the beginning Tik Tok restricted videos to 15–30 seconds in length but has more recently permitted longer videos of up to 3 minutes. Users frequently make series of videos (part 1,2,3,) to circumnavigate these restrictions, however, dance videos have tended to stay short and are usually 30 secs or less in length.

14. Scahill, “Riverdance: Representing Irish Traditional Music,” 71.

15. How These 7 Irish Lads Went Viral With Their Dance Videos – The Tradition of Riverdance (youtube.com).

16. Varade, “Dressing the ‘Feirpora’,” 65.

17. Hearn, “We’re All ‘Influencers’ Now.”

18. Duet videos tend to share the screen with the original creator while in stitched videos the creator cuts back and forth between the original video and their addition. Variations on the process are also widespread on TikTok as new tools and practices develop.

19. https://www.tiktok.com/@marypapageorge/video/6834300627443600646?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7350265125641569824

20. Megan Thee Stallion had her first hit in the United States in 2019. This was followed up with the track “Savage” which generated a popular TikTok dance challenge before bring released as a remix featuring Beyoncé. Stallion was then invited to perform on the track “WAP” with Cardi B which became one of the biggest and most controversial pop hits of 2021 and one of the most famous TikTok dance challenges to date (Biography.com 2021).

21. Nilsson, “Critiquing Cultural Appropriation.”

22. Kennedy, “Dancer Morgan Bullock.”

23. Varade, “Dressing the ‘Feirpora’,” 64.

24. Negra, “The New Primitives,” 230.

25. Monks, Comely Maidens and Celtic Tigers.

26. Moynihan, Other People’s Diasporas, 3.

27. Ibid., 5.

28. An example of this would be the system of direct provision which has been in place in Ireland for more than 20 years and remains in place despite multiple criticisms of the system from human rights organisations and a 2021 government white paper recommending its abolition.

29. Lloyd, “Black Irish, Irish Whiteness.”

30. Delaney and MacRaild, “Introduction,” vii.

31. DaCosta, “Interracial Intimacies.”

32. Tesler and Sears, Obama’s Race; and Byrne, “Post-Race?”

33. O’Toole, “What the Moneygall”; and Moynihan, Other People’s Diasporas, 162.

34. Kennedy, “How White Americans Became Irish,” 439.

35. Lord of the Dance Perform at Trump Inaugural Ball – YouTube.

36. Holt, “Dancing Enriched Whiteness,” 15.

37. O’Malley, “Lovin.ie.”

38. Negra and McIntyre, “Ireland Inc.”

39. Tὃrnberg and Uitermark, “Complex Control.”

40. Garner, Racism in the Irish Experience, 160.

41. Imelda May Official, “You Don’t Get to be Irish and Racist.”

42. David Nihill Comedy, https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGe59ax6h/

43. EPIC, The Irish Emigration Museum is a private enterprise based in Dublin, Ireland. The Museum is one of Dublin’s top tourist attractions.

44. Steps to Freedom was produced by Tyrone Productions whose founding directors are Moya Doherty and John McColgan who also created Riverdance and many other Irish television shows on Irish dance. For more information go to: Home – Tyrone Productions.

45. Hill, Tap Dancing America.

46. iGazeti African Dream, “Beyoncé and the Tofo Tofo Boys.”

47. Carby, “What is this ‘Black’ in Irish Popular Culture?” 330.

48. Goldberg, Are We All Postracial Yet?

49. O’Neill and Lloyd, The Black and Green Atlantic, xvii

50. Summers, “Aesthetic Activism and the Quest for Authenticity in a Time of Crisis.”

51. Ivy Park is the fashion label owned by Beyoncé; Morgan Bullock – Drip 2 Ivy Park x Adidas Collection (youtube.com).

52. Abidin, “Mapping Internet Celebrity on TikTok,” 84.

53. McIlroy, https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJmBmRcT/.

54. Scorp:igbo, https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJmBaFXx/.

55. See note 34 above.

56. Ibid., 434.

57. Davidson, “The Dividends of Diversity.”

58. Free, “‘New Gaels’? Immigration, Irishness and Sport in Recent Irish Broadcasting.”

59. Asava, The Black Irish Onscreen, 184.

60. Tomé, “Black Star, Fetishized Other,” 299.