By Jewelle Gomez–
An email exchange with scholar and writer Heather Petrocelli about the film Sinners by Ryan Coogler sent us on many different inquiries. One was to think about the significance of having the primary vampire in the film be Irish in his meditation on Black, Southern culture in the early part of the twentieth century. Aside from the benefit of the film having some really great blends between Irish and African American music, I wanted to know if there was a deeper meaning.
Then we considered the (under)use of members of the Choctaw Nation in the film. The film begins with an intriguing bang—with the tribal members hunting down the vampire leader—but then they completely disappear from the narrative. Their appearance alongside the fleeing Irish vampire villain, however, made us both remember the bond fostered between the Choctaw and the Irish in the 1800s.
Members of the Choctaw tribe took up a collection from their members that they donated to the Irish to stave off their starvation during the Great Potato Famine, which was aided and abetted by the colonial forces of England. Recently having ended their forced march on the Trail of Tears, Native Americans were sunk into poverty, but their empathy led them to a kind of generosity that is hard to find in official U.S. circles today.
Almost two hundred years later, citizens of County Cork, Ireland, erected a monument called Kindred Spirits to celebrate the generosity of that Native American tribe. During the recent pandemic, the Irish collected and donated $1 million to Native American nations to support Coronavirus care. The Choctaw unveiled in 2023 their monument, Eternal Heart, to celebrate the enduring connection between the geographically distant yet spiritually connected peoples.
Our vice president—oops, I mean our apartheid-raised, white, South African, non-elected official, Elon Musk—claims “the fundamental weakness of Western Civilization is empathy.” He may have hit on a core idea, but got it totally backward: lack of empathy is at the root of every conflict, murder, rape, or assorted violent assaults perpetrated by humanity. It’s the deliberate obscuring of that empathy by manipulative powers that turns one person against their neighbor for obscure or mythological reasons.
When I was growing up in Boston in the 1960s, I attended one of the poorest high schools in the state; it was a mix of African American, Italian, Chinese, and the Irish poor all sitting together with inadequate text books. There was our headmistress (I know, weird title, right?!) Miss Casey and the lovely colleen, Gerry G, who sat in front of me because of the spelling of her last name. She had the most brilliant green eyes I’d ever seen and sparked the melody of the song in me anytime I saw her. Truth be told, I can still sing it whenever I think of her! Crush much?
In the 1970s, the working class and poor Irish of South Boston were easily manipulated into forgetting how we’d sat together in schoolrooms in other parts of the city a decade earlier. Many were fooled into believing that working class African Americans who wanted to attend better schools were going to do them out their homes and jobs. The empathy that might flow between the two groups was short-circuited, precipitating ugly violence against young Black students.
It is this virus that our current administration is spreading among the population in the U.S.; it is also infecting other countries across the pond. Whenever we see such animosity being enflamed, it’s imperative we think about who will benefit—hint: it’s never those who are at each other’s throats.
Two thoughts emerge to illustrate the understanding that empathy and generosity are impulses that would benefit all of us. Legendary Irish folk singer, Christy Moore, has a lyric: “For all of our native tongues, we’re all natives here.” And the Choctaw have a saying: “In the circle we are all equal.”
Jewelle Gomez is a lesbian/feminist activist, novelist, poet, and playwright. She’s written for “The Advocate,” “Ms. Magazine,” “Black Scholar,” “The San Francisco Chronicle,” “The New York Times,” and “The Village Voice.” Follow her on Instagram and
Twitter @VampyreVamp
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Published on June 17, 2025
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