By examining how Irish racial attitudes intersected with national and cultural identity, this article dismantles the idea that conceptions of race and racism are somehow peripheral or irrelevant to the nation's social history. Outlining a series of racialised incidents perpetrated against overseas students in mid-twentieth-century Ireland, it explains how attitudes to newcomers and ethnic ‘others’ can shed new light on post-independence national identity. By highlighting these distinctive aspects of national discourse, this article begins incorporating Irish understandings of race and diversity into the overwhelmingly white field of Irish history. It also adds an Irish perspective to a growing body of literature on race in predominantly white societies and challenges scholars to consider how conceptions of history, culture and identity fostered social inclusion and exclusion and conditioned attitudes to national and ethnic outsiders.
