{"id":527455,"date":"2026-06-10T04:23:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T04:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/527455\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T04:23:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T04:23:20","slug":"backstory-on-rte-one-some-people-would-tell-me-im-absolutely-not-irish-i-feel-less-accepted-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/527455\/","title":{"rendered":"BackStory on RT\u00c9 One: \u2018Some people would tell me I\u2019m absolutely not Irish… I feel less accepted\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Until a few years ago, Irish-Zimbabwean singer-songwriter Siobh\u00e1n McClean<\/a>, better known as Shiv<\/a>, felt loved and accepted in Ireland. She was the only non-white kid in her school in Athy, Co Kildare<\/a>, but remembers this as a novelty \u2013 a bit of fun, really \u2013 rather than something that would cause her to question whether she belonged in the country where she grew up.<\/p>\n

That has changed as social media has amplified the racism that has always sloshed around among the dregs of society and has given the knuckle-draggers of the world (certainly the knuckle-draggers of Ireland) the means to unite and to wallow in each other\u2019s vitriol. And so a return to Zimbabwe, which she left aged five, has taken on a significance that would not have even been imaginable a decade ago, as we discover in the first episode of the new documentary, BackStory<\/b> (RT\u00c9 One, Monday).<\/p>\n

The big idea behind the series is that we accompany Irish people born into immigrant families as they \u201ctravel back to their parents\u2019 ancestral homeland\u201d and, in the process, discover something about themselves and their Irishness.<\/p>\n

Not so long ago, this would have been a fun excursion \u2013 but it has taken on an edge due to the rise of racism in Ireland. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m in a very weird place with identity,\u201d says McClean as she and her mother, Tambu, travel from Ireland to Zimbabwe\u2019s capital, Harare. \u201cIf somebody asked me, I would say I was Irish. I know there are some people who would tell me I\u2019m absolutely not in the last few years. I feel less accepted, I guess. On a day-to-day basis, if I give someone a smile, they might not smile back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ireland is home, but then, so too is Zimbabwe, and the journey is understandably emotional for McClean, who feels she has to unpack feelings locked away in Athy. She reveals that she hasn\u2019t been back in 15 years and that she had been putting off the return because there was tension within her about her identity. \u201cI felt I was not being Zimbabwean enough. The nerves come from not wanting to disappoint my family. It has made me feel my family won\u2019t accept me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Racists see the world as a binary place \u2013 either you\u2019re something, or you are something else. But identity is more complicated, and this absorbing film confirms that point by accompanying McClean to the rural farm where her extended family lives and then to Mutare, the city of her birth and the place where her parents, an Irish doctor and Zimbabwean nurse, met.<\/p>\n

BackStory avoids the familiar pitfall of depicting people in Africa as lacking agency, and dependent on western goodwill. The Zimbabwean people we meet here are ordinary individuals getting on with their lives \u2013 and so, not very different from those she left behind in Ireland, as is made clear when McClean records a song with a local producer.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Dublin singer Shiv: \u2018Rent is so high. It\u2019s hard to find places here creatives can go, hang out, meet each other, share ideas\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The increase in racism in Ireland has clearly affected McClean. \u201cIf they\u2019re not going to accept me, I have to figure out how to accept myself,\u201d she says. But her mother has her own take \u2013 which is essentially that such individuals are best ignored and that their racism says nothing about the target of their hate and everything about them. <\/p>\n

\u201cThose people who are saying go back to your country \u2013 they\u2019re not really important in your life,\u201d she says. \u201cThe problem is not yours, the problem is not you, the problem is that person\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Until a few years ago, Irish-Zimbabwean singer-songwriter Siobh\u00e1n McClean, better known as Shiv, felt loved and accepted in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[75],"tags":[18,117,19,17,1181,155764],"class_list":["post-527455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-rte","tag-shiv"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116723909169754948","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}