If you have ever believed that the Irish were once slaves, you fell victim to racist propaganda. I know because it happened to me.

The Irish were never slaves, and there is significant historical evidence to back this up. The myth that the Irish were slaves too, or that they were the first slaves in America, is a purposeful lie. It is a reimagining of real events weaponized by racists and conspiracy theorists to minimize the effects of hereditary chattel slavery on Africans and their descendants.

The myth has been used to deny the existence of racism against African Americans and falsely conflates the status of an indentured servant with that of a slave. The Irish slave myth continues to help spread the idea that African Americans are too vocal in seeking justice for historical grievances. It claims that the Irish were able to ‘move on’ from the past, so Black people should be able to as well. The difference the Irish slave myth seeks to erase is that indentured servitude did not even come close to hereditary chattel slavery.

The Irish slave myth is spread mostly by memes online. An example is a popular meme that was shared by a Tea Party Leader in 2013. It contained the following text: “White Irish slaves were treated worse than any other race in the US. When is the last time you heard an Irishman bitching and moaning about how the world owes them a living.”

This meme is wrong for many reasons, one being that the photo it accompanies is not even from the U.S., nor does it depict “White Irish slaves.” According to Irish scholar Liam Hogan, memes like this one are extremely common across social media. They spread false information and often use historically inaccurate pictures that aren’t even of Irish people.

White nationalist groups and others have purposefully spread “white slavery” or “Irish slavery” propaganda online since the 1990s. After a little digging on the social platform X, I discovered that the myth is alive and well today with hundreds of posts about it in just the last couple of days. One such post claiming “The Irish were among the first slaves in the Americas” has over 13 million views.

The comments under this post created by @_HistoryNerd are pretty much what you would expect. User @Watchdog_MP wrote, “You never see the Irish out on the streets protesting & demanding reparations for slavery … I wonder why that is?” Commenter @SeanElwell24 wrote, “This is absolutely true … No public school history books mention it. Textbook publishers prefer the black victim / white oppressor over-simplified fiction.”

These comments are extremely concerning. Not just because Americans are supporting and spreading harmful misinformation, but because they are using their flawed logic to attack and delegitimize the African American experience. The Irish slave myth has even been used to attack the Black Lives Matter movement and justify police brutality against African Americans.

Being misinformed is understandable, but spreading fake history without fact-checking it and using it to attack others is inexcusable.

When I was in middle school, I partially believed in the Irish slave myth. Like many Americans, I was under the impression that all people were slaves at some point in history so the idea of Irish slaves seemed plausible. I did not understand how different and devastating American slavery truly was. Unlike American chattel slavery, the indentured servitude the Irish endured was temporary, offered more lenient punishment for disobedient servants, and wasn’t hereditary. The children of indentured servants were born free, while any child born of an enslaved woman was automatically enslaved for life, according to History.com.

I had heard of indentured servants and the Great Hunger, so Irish slaves seemed in the range of possibility until I learned differently.

That is the genius in the lie; it is convenient and easy to believe that white people were also victims. Believing that the Irish were slaves helps release white people of guilt, and further separates us from the fact that many Irish Americans actually owned slaves. It frees us from recognizing the atrocities committed by our ancestors, leaving us in a state of ignorance that makes progress impossible.

Many who believe the Irish slaves myth aren’t directly trying to undermine the legacy of the African slave trade, but are simply accepting a false version of history unknowingly. Unfortunately, the myth has attracted neo-nazis, white nationalists, neo-confederates and even Holocaust deniers. The root of the lie unequivocally comes from a place of racism and is a myth that needs to be put to rest so it can stop causing harm.

Now, more than ever, we must understand history accurately and reconsider viewpoints that have exclusively benefited white Americans. Dismantling the Irish slave myth is one way to do that.