2. My father’s family came from County Cork Ireland, and
settled in New York and Pennsylvania. There, they were
domestic workers, coal miners, steel workers, railway men,
and police officers. This is a common narrative in the Irish
American story, and Irish Americans take pride in knowing
that their ancestors helped build and mould the United
States. But what is largely forgotten is that Irish Americans
faced resistance in the New World, and for a time they were
not considered white, making them socially subhuman.
Faced with racism and social injustice, the Irish established
themselves and gained “whiteness,” much as the Jews and
Italians have done at other points in American history.
4. Why exile? To understand this, we must first
understand the history of Ireland and the factors
causing them to leave their homeland.
5. The Famine
The Irish potato famine started in 1845. Before then,
Ireland was the most densely populated country in all
of Europe, and because of this the poor were very
dependant on the potato as a food source and income.
When the famine hit, the English government largely
dismissed the claims of starvation and was slow to
intervene. When the government did act, they
intended the Irish to work for the relief aid, which
caused many people to die before they could collect
paychecks for the canals they had been building as part
of the relief plan. The government used this famine as
an opportunity to repeal the corn laws, but this did
nothing to help the Irish, as the government continued
to export large quantities of food from Ireland. (Bloy)
6. The Famine
The new English government of 1846 did not aid
Ireland until the next year, and even then did so on
loan only, putting already poor people into debt.
When soup kitchens were set up, the starving
population flocked to them in large numbers, which
caused outbreaks of disease. “The 1841 census
recorded an Irish population of 8.2 million. By 1851,
this figure had been reduced to 6.5 million. These
statistics give some indication of the scale of the
disaster, but since many of those affected by the famine
lived in remote and inaccessible places, it is more than
possible that far more people died than has ever been
thought.” (Bloy)
7. Other factors
Irish people were facing discrimination in the United
Kingdom based on their religion, increasing rents and
evictions. Evictions only increased after the repeal of
the British Corn Laws 1846 and the new Encumbered
Estates Act being passed in 1849, as well as the removal
of existing civil rights. There had been agrarian
terrorism against landlords, which these new laws were
to help crush. Any hope for change was squashed with
the death of the political leader championing for
Ireland, Daniel O’Connell, in 1847 and the failed
rising of the Young Irelanders in 1848.
(Wikipedia, Irish Diaspora)
8. A Letter from America
A letter from farmer from Ulster who settled in
Missouri wrote to a Belfast newspaper in 1821, in
which he said:
“In Ulster I could go to a fair, or a wake, or a dance, or
I could spend the winter nights in a neighbour's house
cracking jokes by the turf fire. If I had there but a sore
head I would have a neighbour within every hundred
yards of me that would run to see me. But here
everyone can get so much land, and generally has so
much, that they calls them neighbours that lives two or
three miles off. I would sit down and cry and curse him
that made me leave home.” (Irish Immigration)
9. This letter echoes the same sentiment other Irish
immigrants all over America felt.
The Irish faced such crippling poverty and brutalizing
social policy for hundreds of years, it is no wonder they
felt pushed out of their own lands. The British
considered them an underclass, a different race, and
this carried on into the United States, where Nativists
were largely made up of people who had emigrated
from England.
11. In this picture, you can see a comparison between an
English woman, and an Irish woman. The Irish woman
is barely recognizable as a woman and is unkempt and
cave man like. The English woman is a lady, beautiful
and lovely. This is how the U.S. viewed the difference
between the “natives” and the incoming Irish
population. The comparison between the Irish and
apes was a way to dehumanize the Irish and lump them
into the same category as Africans Americans, another
group compared to apes. Because of this, the Irish and
freed slaves lived in the same slums and worked side by
side. “The Irish were often referred to as Negroes
turned inside out and Negroes as smoked Irish.” A
famous quip of the time attributed to a black man
went something like this: “My master is a great tyrant,
he treats me like a common Irishman.” (McDonald,
Art)
12. If whiteness is not based on the colour of ones skin,
then it must be a social construct, for if whiteness was
based only on ones skin colour, the Irish would have
most certainly been considered white. Yet if the Irish
were once considered black, but are now considered
white, that must mean that whiteness is not only fluid,
but it is something that can be attained. Whiteness is
not actual whiteness, whiteness is power. How did the
Irish achieve this?
13.
14. The American Experience
The picture above depicts the popular stereotypes for
Irish men at the time. Stereotypes depicted the Irish
men as lazy, drunkards, stupid, and criminals. The
women were depicted as hard workers and model
minorities, but this did not protect them from the
same racism that the men faced. They competed for
jobs with freed slaves, often doing labourious tasks in
unsafe conditions, if they could get hired. Some
employers, so tired of the many Irish seeking jobs, or
just flat out racist against them, refused to hire them
15. No Irish Need Apply
Those that did not want to hire the Irish simply placed
a NINA sign in their shop window, or in the
employment ad. In response to this the Irish turned
the phrase “No Irish Need Apply” into a famous
balled. There is some contention about whether or not
the NINA signs existed.
16. Richard Jensen claims in “No Irish Need Apply:
A Myth of Victimization” that although the Irish
remember being oppressed, and that there is a
common idea that the Irish were discriminated against,
the No Irish Need Apply signs often mentioned were
extremely rare or not even existent in America. He says
the signs originated in England, and although Irish
people heard about them, they simply did not exist to
the extent that is believed.
17. He says that the Irish established themselves through
legitimate means, politically and through law
enforcement, and yet despite this there is still a feeling
of oppression from Irish populations. After all of this
he goes on to say that he found a dozen instances of
No Irish Need Apply uses in the New York Times. He
also stated the No Irish Need Apply song, created out
of the discrimination the Irish faced, encourages
“bullies” because of the change in lyrics from a maid
that cries at the sight of the sign to a lad that fights
back at the sign users discrimination. (Jensen)
18. Jensen claims that the anti-Irish sentiment was actually
anti-catholic, but if that were the case, why make it a
race issue? Although Catholicism was a factor in the
Hibernaphobia of the U.S. at the time, it does not
explain away the fact that racism against the Irish was a
real thing, recorded by popular political cartoons.
Although Jensen would like to dismiss the struggles the
Irish faced in society, the fact still remains that
employers did discriminate against the Irish, twelve
instances of which he himself finds. Employment ads
were not the only way employers found workers, and
he fails to take into account the use of signs in
windows or doors. Many Irish men worked hard labour
jobs, travelling from place to place, not relying on
newspaper advertisements to find their work, but word
of mouth or, better yet, showing up to the company
themselves.
19. He is dismissing the collective memory of thousands
upon thousands of Irish immigrants.
20.
21. Achieving Whiteness
Art McDonald in “How The Irish Became White”
states that the Irish gave up their greenness to become
white. That is to say that to become white, the Irish
sided with their oppressors against the African
Americans in the U.S. “And so, we have the tragic
story of how one oppressed "race," Irish Catholics,
learned how to collaborate in the oppression of
another "race," Africans in America, in order to secure
their place in the white republic. Becoming white
meant losing their greenness, i.e., their Irish cultural
heritage and the legacy of oppression and
discrimination back home.” (McDonald, Art)
22. “I don’t see no Americans, I
see trespassers”
This quote is said in the film Gangs Of New York
(Caution: NSFW language at the link) by Bill the
Butcher, the Nativist of the film. A similar sentiment is
seen to this day, not in regards to the Irish, but other
racial groups, particularly Hispanic immigrants. Since
the opening of Ellis Island in 1892, Nativist rhetoric
has hardly changed. Today, instead of being blatantly
racist like they were in the mid 1800’s, they hide it
under the term “illegal,” a term used dehumanize a
population.
23. Rarely does one who holds these Nativist views take
into account the contribution of the “illegal”
immigrant to our society, and rarely do they see the
immigrants as actual people, working as hard as they
can to make a living the same way our ancestors did.
They don’t see them as exiles, heartbroken to have to
leave their home land because of brutal poverty and
systemic corruption. They also do not see their own
countrymen bringing them over to exploit their labour,
or the other mistreatments that take place.
24. For the Hispanic immigrants of all nations, becoming
legalized in this country does not save them from
racism, nor the “illegal” label. The passing of Arizona
SB 1070 made it legal to racially discriminate against
the Hispanic population. Although the bill was later
modified to take out some of the more controversial
provisions, the message was sent.
Facing all of this racism, can the Hispanic population
ever be considered white, that is to say, can they ever
achieve the same power that whiteness brings?
25. I believe they can. We have already seen it happen to
other groups such as the Jews and the Italians, and of
course the Irish. But the Irish way of becoming white
as cited by McDonald certainly was the wrong way.
They sacrificed their “greenness” to become the
oppressors, and that is not a proud legacy to leave to
future generations. Instead of oppressing others to gain
power, power can be attained through other means.
Not every Irish person was an oppressor, and some
went on to become a part of the privileged class
through other means such as politics, the arts, law
enforcement, and being a valuable member of their
community.
26. There is a saying that the people with the most power
and privilege recognize their power and privilege least.
While privileged Americans repeat the rhetoric that
illegal immigrants/too much immigration will cause
the destruction of America and cause other privileged
Americans to suffer, they do not see how much power
they really hold.
27. They only see the threat
The threat to “their” jobs.
The threat to “their” economy.
The threat to “their” 1950’s nostalgic way of life. A way
of life that never really was.
They do not see the threat of THEIR way of thinking
and what their way maintaining privilege does to
America.
28. Nativists held these same beliefs about the Irish, and
the Irish responded by helping to build America into
the great Nation that she is. Hispanic immigrants are
helping us continue to make America even better.
