A very interesting and insightful article by Sarah Harte called "Dear gentle reader, is Bridgerton's colourblind casting really harmful?"

In this short excerpt, Harte writes: "If we accept that enslavement was profoundly degrading and dehumanising, can it be right to relegate it to a minor subplot?

Let's say a child is learning about history and watching a documentary with reconstructions of the period.

Would it be desirable for them to picture former presidents Éamon de Valera or Mary Robinson as black? Would that not suggest that Ireland was a racially diverse society where people of colour rose to the top when the very opposite was true?"

I appreciated also that she quotes my Avidly/LA Review of Books article about Bridgerton's erasure of the Kingdom of Haiti:

“If people want to see black aristocracy on screen, then why not just put them in 19th century Haiti where they really lived?"

And I tend to agree with Harte's conclusion to the piece, in which she answers the question posed in its title:

 "I can’t help but think we need to teach children how the world was, rather than what it ought to have been. Otherwise, we risk giving ourselves a big old pass on racism while sanitising historical realities and pushing a myth of progress that is not rooted in fact."

Read the whole article here: https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/arid-41787242.html