Mixed Up, An Irish Boy’s Journey To Belonging is a memoir telling the uplifting, emotional journey of Leon Diop, co-founder of Black & Irish, the non-profit organization dedicated to enhancing the lives of Black and Irish people through fostering equality and inclusivity by working closely with strategic partners across advocacy, community, education sectors. It’s a straightforward story of one man’s childhood and young adulthood, spanning topics from his mixed Senegalese and Irish heritage, grief and trauma in his teenage years and his experiences with racism.
“My youth was where I was facing a lot of difficulties,” Diop said. “And this book is a book for young people. I want them to show that some of the issues that they may be having in their younger years can be resolved, and that when you’re older, you may be able to look back on it in a different light.”
Short and sweet, Diop’s memoir packs a punch. He starts by describing his family history and heritage, how his Irish mother and Senegalese father met in a stroke of luck and highlighting how he was the only brown kid at his elementary school. Through the book, he talks about his difficult relationship with his late father and his initial disconnect from his Senegalese background, commenting how he didn’t even know how to pronounce his last name till he was 25 years old.
“I also wanted to intersect a couple of other pieces in there so it touches on, you know, briefly, the theme of poverty, the team of mental health,” he said. “They’re not just side by side issues with race and ethnicity. They’re compounding factors. They can make the other more difficult.”
But Diop’s life has taken twist and turn after twist and turn. From the deaths of close friends and family to a mid-twenties ADHD diagnosis to academic troubles, the tone of the book seems to remind the young reader that he’s still here, now more mature and thriving.
“It can be difficult,” he said. “You need to tap into a lot of fond memories, but also a lot of memories that can be quite challenging, quite difficult. There were things that I thought I had resolved and dealt with that ultimately I hadn’t.”
His memoir was sparked back in 2020, when he co-founded the organization Black & Irish after the murder of George Floyd, when a police officer knelt on the man’s neck long enough to kill him. In the book, Diop says he spoke about his experience with racism in Ireland and while some resonated with his words, others doubted the existence of racism in the country.
“In 2020, when I was starting Black and Irish, most of the rhetoric that I was seeing was, we don’t have racism in Ireland,” Diop said. “I think what we’ve seen as most of Ireland have moved on from, do we have racism in Ireland? to yes, we have racism in Ireland, and how are we going to challenge it? I also think that we’ve seen a polarization of people moving into the different extremes, so moving into either being anti racist or racist, you know, racist knowingly or racist unknowingly.”
Black and Irish aims to empower Black Irish people through advocacy, education and community. When it started, Diop learned many other Black people in Ireland faced racism in their childhood that sometimes morphed into subtler forms of discrimination in adulthood.
Now, as racism and discrimination are on the rise in Ireland, Diop is passionate about engaging with young adults and educating on race and equality in Ireland.
“We also took our eye off the ball a little bit,” Diop said. “I think we got a little bit too comfortable, we were seeing a very forward marching progressive society. We changed a number of things in our society that were quite conservative and backwards, for me, anyway. We got a little bit too interested in one another and what kind of activism we’re doing, rather than looking at the actual problems, and saying, ‘Well, we have a rise in the far right community that is preying on people’s fears.’”
He says a key part of his approach is about connecting with others to highlight how much they have in common rather than what is different about them. Both he and those who are saying racist rhetoric just want their family to be safe and have a secure future, he says.
“We’ve got a lot of young, disenfranchised people who are engaging in very explicit violence racial behavior,” he said.
Diop says his priority is giving them an alternative perspective rather than overtly disagreeing with them.
“I’m taking on what they’re saying, and I’m asking them to take on what I’m saying,” he said. “And both of those things can coexist, and I think the majority of students are ready to hear a positive story and a positive way forward.”
Words: Kaavya Butaney
Mixed Up, An Irish Boy’s Journey To Belonging by Leon Diop is out now on Little Island Books.
