Question for the Americans

[james_davis_nicoll]

When Irish-Americans go off on rants about the evils of demographic change do you think they are in any way aware that a century ago people making that speech would have been complaining about the Irish?

Comments

[onyxlynx]

Probably not; irony is lost on "conservatives."

[boxofdelights]

Yeah, they do, and they will tell you completely seriously that that means they understand irrational prejudice in a way that most people don't, and that is how they know that their prejudices are rational.

[bcholmes]

"Like"

[boxofdelights]

Your relatives too, huh?

[mmegaera]

This makes my brain hurt.

[bibliofile]

which is why you're not Bill O'Reilly (and thank ghu for small favors)

[dsgood]

Add: People whose ancestors came from the Scottish Border or from Sicily complaining about lawless immigrants.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, sometimes not. When they are aware of it, they think it's different this time.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Yup. Their shtick is that they came here and worked hard and didn't depend on either government handouts (lol) or criminality (LOL) to assimilate.

Works almost every time!

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

Don't forget about how they had to face terrible prejudice, which was completely unlike the legitimate complaints their descendents have about non-white people today.

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

My paternal grandfather, a lifelong Democrat, refused to vote for Kennedy because he didn't think an Irish Catholic was capable of being an honest President. His daughter, my aunt, eventually married an Irish Catholic, and later in life thought exactly about Hispanics as her father had thought about the Irish. Part of assimilating is learning to look down.

[hano.livejournal.com]

Further proof, if it were ever needed that O'Reilly's an asshole

[http://users.livejournal.com/krin_o_o_/]

If you are listening to Fox News the you are already in deep doodoo

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

The Irish are white.

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

Now.

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

See also Jews. Who of course come in just about every color imaginable (though the ones who emigrated to the US tended to be paler, since there was less persecution of Jews in the Middle East and North Africa in the first half of the 20th century) but are nowadays considered white.

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

And, of course, not all Irish are white these days.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a Brit, "Hispanic" means white to me. Because: Spaniards, right?

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

Yep, Spaniards white. I'm unclear on what Hispanic means. Are Spaniards who live in the US considered Hispanic?

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

Not an expert on this by any means, but my understanding is that "hispanic" is a cultural description rather than a physical one - there are light- and dark-skinned South Americans, but they are generally described as hispanic.

Also, I think "Spaniards = White" might also be a relatively recent development. I'm pretty sure literature up until a certain point tied Spaniards pretty strongly to descriptors like "swarthy."

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

They're actually Africans, you know. That Moorish occupation made a deep impression.

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

On the forms around here, "White (not Hispanic)".

I grew up in San Fernando, so my self-image was always ... confused.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Lots of racism in Spain against Latin Americans who can't "pass" as Spaniards. Oodles.

[(Anonymous)]

Back in the day of colonies, even Senor whitey mcwhite was suspect if born in Mexico or Peru or whatever, and the top levels of colonial administration was for Spanish-born only: no real surprise for the people who came up with Limpieza De Sangre.

Bruce

[autopope.livejournal.com]

* Facepalm *

(Disclaimer: I haven't visited Spain since I was 14. Which is quite a long time ago.)

Bigotry is fractal ...

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

"Hispanic" can best be understood in the New World as shorthand for "hispanohablante." (though it isn't, etymologically)

In the regions of the US where there are significant numbers of people whose antecedents are in fact Spanish rather than mestizo or Native (that is, the Southwest), they seem to occupy a fluid middle ground mediated by class. So, if they are rich, they are white: if they are poor: they are not.

[maruad.livejournal.com]

Exactly. One of my grandfathers had to change his name so he wouldn't be discriminated against... for being Icelandic.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Try renting a house in London with an Irish surname and see how long it takes you to run into "no blacks,dogs, Jews or Irish".

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine "no dogs". The level of dogs around London seems remarkably high to me.

And of course they're required on certain tube station escalators :-) .

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

Not in private sector rentals, very hard to find private sector rentals that allow pets.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

How recently did you run into that? (Because I believe it's been strictly illegal since definitely the 1990s and probably the 1970s, although proving discrimination would be the hard part.)

[matgb]

1970s, Race Relations Act was specifically written to stop anti-Irish crap as well as anti-black stuff, hence the English Democrats can win cases against the Royal Armouries for refusing to rent rooms to them as an English organisation &c.

But just because it's illegal doesn't mean it's not happening and hard to prove.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

The one I've noticed recently in the UK is restaurant reservations. Give my name or probably yours, and no problem. Give an Irish name and somehow they "lose" it.

Harder to legislate against that.

But in 1997, in Cambridge, calling flats to rent from the paper -- 100% of the ones I called made appointments for us to see them, but rysmiel got three "Sorry, gone already" in a row and got discouraged. This was on voice alone. (Calling flats *from the paper* seems so old fashioned! So last century! Maybe everything has changed.)

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

Jesus. I thought it was something from long before my timme.

[(Anonymous)]

That's never being a problem for me.

Stephen Shevlin

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Yeah, tell that to Ben Franklin.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

We could go back to Cromwell, if you wish.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Cromwell might have been more open-minded on this than Franklin. Not that Cromwell was a touchy-feely liberal but Franklin had a pretty narrow definition of white, one that for example your Swedes didn't meet.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I don't remember that Ben was into genocide.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

To be fair, he complained about it. (http://www.historycarper.com/1764/03/01/a-narrative-of-the-late-massacres/)

[peter-erwin.livejournal.com]

Not only did he complain about it[*], he helped raise a temporary militia to prevent the perpetrators of the massacre from marching on Philadelphia and killing more Indians living there.

[*] And "complain" is putting it a bit mildly -- it's a pretty stirring rant, in which Franklin is quite happy to hold up various pagans, Muslims, and Catholics as exemplars of honorable behavior, far more civilized than the local "white Christian savages".

(Given Cromwell's treatment of Catholics, the idea that he was more open-minded than Franklin is ... pretty bizarre. Granted that Cromwell was, in some respects, more tolerant and liberal than a lot of mid-17th Century Europeans.)

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Cromwell was a touchy-feely liberal, by the standards of his times.

(... The times of the Thirty Years' War, lest we forget.)

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

And Cromwell was the one who ended the ban on Jews in England, as I recall. Still not necessarily the best friend the Irish ever had.

[uglychicken.livejournal.com]

We have issues with Cromwell.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

ObSF: the _1632_ series.

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

Just a tad.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

That is kind of terrifying to contemplate.

[pauldormer.livejournal.com]

Rather good play on in London about Charles I and Cromwell, with Mark Gatiss as Charles I. Saw it last week.

Both thought that God was telling them what to do, but in different ways. The religious fervour on both sides is something that seems odd to modern eyes.

[peter-erwin.livejournal.com]

In 1775, Franklin actually suggested that Ireland, along with the various British colonies in the Caribbean, Quebec, etc., be offered the opportunity to join the "United Colonies of North America"; this was included in his draft Proposed Articles of Confederation (http://www.historycarper.com/1775/07/21/proposed-articles-of-confederation/) presented to the Second Continental Congress.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

See http://www.amazon.com/Working-Toward-Whiteness-Americas-Immigrants/dp/0465070744/ ("Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs" by David Roediger for one theory on how the Polish, the Irish, the Jews, the Russians, etc. all became "white" in America. The last chapter is some theorizing about if the same process will apply to Latinos.

[elizaeffect.livejournal.com]

See also a statement I read a while ago by a white supremacist neonazi with a Polish surname. Wish I could find it again.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

"There came to the beach a poor exile of Erin,
The dew on his wet robe hung heavy and chill;
Ere the steamer that brought him had passed out of hearin’,
He was Alderman Mike inthrojuicin” a bill!"

A Kipling chapter-header for one of his Indian stories.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

The one I know certainly is not.

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

I love this anti-racism ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miUKTDMtTXg

Though I'm happy they disabled comments. They were awful last time I looked.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

There are a few members of my family who were around when that was still going on in Toronto/ And they manage to not know it.

[bastets-place.livejournal.com]

I confess (as a very pale-pink skinned female) that I sometimes wonder what my (far distant) native American ancestors would make of the "America for Americans" movement.

Given the sense of humor of my family (unchanged for 4 generations, now, that I know of) I suspect hysterical laughter with nothing of good humor to it.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

"This is our land! We stole it fair and square!"

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

And I'm Anglo-German-Scots-Irish-Cherokee-etc. (My maternal grandmother's branch of my family traces its American roots to a pre-Revolution 13-year-old German stowaway.) Green eyes, white skin, black hair, and not a whole lot of markers of my American Indian ancestry save possibly slightly high cheekbones. (My Native ancestors, according to family lore, are people who were on the Trail of Tears who managed to drop off and blend into the countryside, shedding their nominal "cultural heritage" in return for not being marched off to Fort Stinkindesert.) But I reckon that nearly anyone who looks at me, I'm "white." I certainly have all the White American Male Privilege there is to have, I reckon. My mother says that I have enough Native American ancestry to qualify as Native American for census and other purposes, save that we've never culturally identified that way. (Or, as one school counselor put it, "Do you feel Indian?")

As a walking example of the Great American Melting Pot, I've never really understood the desire of everyone who comes to America to pull the gangplank up behind them, and am horribly annoyed with how the US government's immigration and "security" policy leads to idiocy like the Peter Watts affair or of Cheryl Morgan being refused entry to the USA despite having followed all the written rules and being afraid to go to the Toronto WFC on account of how the USA can unilaterally and without reason or practical recourse deny airline boarding to anyone going to Canada, Mexico, etc. even if the flight doesn't cross US airspace.

[sahdwholurks.livejournal.com]

One of our neighbors is Irish (as in 'We moved from Belfast to Dublin'), who married an American and moved to Illinois. Someone asked her if she ever thought about moving back to Ireland and her response was 'No, there's too many foreigners there.'

Why, yes, they do have a Romney sign on their lawn, how did you guess?

[blpurdom.livejournal.com]

Well, it makes as much sense as some black politicians being against marriage equality but not remembering that slaves couldn't legally marry, or the huge funds spent by the LDS (Mormon) church to strike down same-gender marriage in California, even though Utah outlawing polygamy was necessary before it could be admitted to the union. In other words--it kind of makes a lot of sense, because it's perfectly in line with other groups also not remembering where they came from and what their forebears experienced. A very convenient form of amnesia that is practically required in these situations.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

They might be aware of it. We can't know.

Some people think "My people used to be attacked by bigots. Therefore I should work to make sure nobody is attacked by bigots in the future." This way of thinking generates a fair amount of anti-bigotry activism.

Others think, "My people used be attacked by bigots. Therefore I should work to make sure the bigots don't attack me or the people I love. It's safest to support the bigots and be on the side of the bigots while they attack other victims." This way of thinking is WRONG, but it's the evil kind of wrong, not the stupid kind of wrong.