I am writing this article just as March and Irish American Heritage Month have closed. Given production deadlines, I have not been able to do a deep dive analysis of the results, but I think I can safely say we have kept our oath to promote and preserve the contributions of Irish Americans. One of our Irish American Heritage Month videos was seen by more than 300,000 people across the nation. Over a quarter of a million people became aware of the contributions that Irish men and women and their descendants have made to America, and equally important, they saw that the AOH is committed to keeping their story alive. Again, more details to follow.
However, while we turn the page of the calendar, we can not turn our back on our heritage. After surviving hundreds of years of oppression and efforts by one of the most powerful empires that history has ever seen to eradicate our history, we are seeing new and sadly very effective threats to our heritage.
The new danger is Artificial Intelligence airbrushing the Irish out of history. It must be appreciated that A.I. is not an “All Knowing.” unbiased oracle; its responses are tailored and limited to the material it is trained on. A.I. is only as good as what it’s trained on — and it’s primarily trained on recent documents that emphasize other heritages, but not the Irish. Our stories are often missing from that data. The risk is real: we may be digitally airbrushed out of the historical record, not out of malice, but out of omission. We all have likely laughed at some point when we have seen an obviously bad A.I. image, and how it is fake, but will our children (or even their teachers) be able to spot bad A.I. answers regarding their heritage? If we don’t speak for our history, no algorithm will.
Apathy toward our heritage among the young is growing; should that surprise us? How can you be passionate about something you know little about? That should sound alarm bells with every Hibernian. Edmund Burke, himself an Irishman, said it best: “People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.” If we don’t teach the next generation who we are and where we come from, they won’t know what’s worth defending — or what’s at risk of being lost.
March is Irish American Heritage Month, not Irish American History Month. History is the past, a collection of names and dates. Heritage is identity. It’s a legacy. It’s the roadmap of how people from a tiny Island on the fringe of Europe went from famine ships and “No Irish Need Apply” to being successful in every field of human endeavor. When we lose our connection to that past, we become easy prey to those who want to erase it or rewrite it because it may be an inconvenient truth that does not fit into a narrative they wish to tell.
We are members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, founded not just to celebrate Irish culture but to defend it. And you cannot defend what you do not know. If our children and grandchildren don’t learn about the Great Hunger, the Civil War Irish Brigade, the Molly Maguires, and the Easter Rising, our history dies with us. And if our history dies, our Irish identity becomes hollow — just green beer, inflatable Leprechauns, and plastic shamrocks once a year.
So I urge each of you: Don’t just be Irish once a year, be a Hibernian. Be the keeper of the flame. Share our stories, not only about Commodore Barry, but your Father, Grandfather, etc. We talk a lot about “keeping the tradition alive” and “being proud to be Irish”; let us translate those words into action.