By the 20th century, "Black Irish" had become a [[Performativity|performative]] identity played out by Irish-Americans authors such as [[F. Scott Fitzgerald]] and [[Robert E. Howard]]. In Ireland, in the 21st century, ''Black Irish'' is used primarily to refer to Irish nationals of African descent, and the American meaning is rarely used.<ref name="CSO" />
==Spanish origin myth==
The primary version of the storymyth proposes that a strain of Irish people with black hair and dark complexions were the descendants of Spanish sailors shipwrecked during the [[Spanish Armada]] of 1588.<ref name="O'Toole"/><ref name="Pramaggiore"/><ref name="Hughes"/> TheIn reality, of the roughly 5,000 Spanish sailors who were recorded as being wrecked off the coast of Ireland and Scotland, largelythe matedvery withfew that survived the natives,wrecks beingwere ofeither thehunted low-Stonedown Ageand typekilled by English troops or immediately returned to Spain,<ref>{{cite book |last=Mattingly |first=Garrett |author-link= |date=2005 |title=The Armada |url= |location= |publisher=Houghton Mifflin |page=369 |isbn=9780618565917}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Burnett |first1=Bruce I. |date=July 1988 |title=The Great Enterprise |url=https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/1988/july/great-enterprise |journal=Naval History Magazine |volume=2 |issue=3 |pages= |doi= |access-date= |quote=The rest, seeking safe harbor on the wild Irish coast without pilots and charts and sometimes without anchors, were smashed more effectively by the rocks than by the English broadsides. Some Spaniards, no doubt, found refuge amongst fellow Catholics, albeit nowhere near enough to justify the myth of the “Black Irish” being descended from them. Most were simply murdered as they lay exhausted on the beaches or were handed over to English soldiers for almost certain execution.}}</ref> and thus significantlycould not have impacted the Irish gene pool in any significant manner.<ref>{{cite book |last=Kilfeather |first=T.P. |author-link= |date=1967 |title=Ireland: Graveyard of the Spanish Armada |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=k0J2AAAAIAAJ |location= |publisher=G. P. Putnam's sons |page=63 |isbn= 978-0-900068-43-0|quote=The belief that men of Spanish appearance...inter-married with the Irish cannot stand the test of historical examination.}}</ref>
In 1912, Irish author [[James Joyce]] asserted ana alternativedifferent version of the storymyth, suggesting in an article that the residents of [[Galway]] were of "the true Spanish type" owing to their interaction and trade with the Spanish in the medieval era.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ruiz-Mas |first1=José |date=2023 |title=Joyce, Galway and the Spanish Armada |url=https://www.estudiosirlandeses.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/EI-18-Jose-Ruiz-Mas.pdf |journal=Estudios Irlandeses |volume= |issue=18 |pages=94–102 |doi=10.24162/EI2023-11386 |s2cid=257588035 }}</ref>
