Saturday, October 8, 2011

Clinging to Whiteness: Irish Americans and their Attack on the Black

[University of Michigan, 2005]
              Between 1828 and 1854, Irish Americans constituted the largest group of immigrants in the United States (Roediger 136).  Following Ireland’s potato famine in the 1840s, Irish Americans hasted to the shores of America with hopes of work, opportunity, land, and prosperity.  They arrived here poor and desperate, but willing to work hard.  Much like African Americans, the Irish were likely never to return to their homeland again.  In addition, both groups retained jobs of the lowest laboring class, often in domestic services and without special skills that other groups, such as the Germans, possessed.  Both the African Americans and the Irish Americans were poor, oppressed, and most likely occupied the northern part of the United States, for reasons of industrial laboring opportunities.  For all of these reasons, it is easy to see how comparable African Americans were with Irish Americans in the antebellum United States.  In fact, the two groups were often considered parallels insomuch as social status was concerned, much to the disconcertion of the Irish.
            Irish Americans had many reasons to be explicitly racist, pro-slavery, and discriminatory against African Americans.  The most obvious reason is the defense of the white working class.  African Americans were a threat to the industrial opportunities that the United States offered Irish American immigrants, especially the North, and while the Irish very well could have attacked the large number of other races and people competing in the job market, they chose to assail the African American race instead.  African Americans were less likely to fight back when attacked, were easily victimized, and provided an antithesis of exactly what Irish Americans did not want to be.
Arriving in a country where nativists were hesitant to accept immigrants as citizens, Irish Americans needed to define themselves as white.  They helped define their whiteness by stubbornly defining what they were not:  black.  They refused to identify with the black race, asserting that blacks were not worthy to be called American citizens.    Irish Americans needed to be viewed as white for political rights and for more job opportunities.  They therefore attacked all people surrounding them that were not white, including African Americans and even the Chinese race.  They wanted not only to be American, but to be white Americans.  Their wish came true, and the American population came to accept the Irish as whites.  In order to keep this identity, Irish Americans continued to push African Americans away, even engaging in acts of violence to show their devotion to the white population.  Because they were accepted among the white population, they were adamant on a white supremacy ideology to further confirm their status as a citizen with all political and economical rights.  With these rights, Irish Americans were able to gain independence and fulfill the dreams that America had promised.  To be white was to be free and prosperous, a citizen of a country full of promise.  To be black, however, was to be oppressed, ridiculed, poor, and unfree. Naturally, the Irish chose the latter. 
Irish Americans cleverly discovered that by clinging to the Democratic Party, which favored the citizenship of Irish Americans due to their large number and voting power, they were further safeguarded from being identified as black.  The Democratic Party, in turn, was predominantly pro-slavery and white supremacist, further strengthening Irish hatred for African Americans.  
            Preexisting thoughts about blacks also contributed to the racist ideas that the Irish Americans held.  To the Irish, a person with dark skin was thought to be the devil. Even if they had arrived in America with no knowledge of the social and economic standing of colored people, there is no reason to suspect that they would not have treated this race with contempt and abhorrence, if not fear, without the help of a country already deeply embodied in racist ethos.  Blacks were also affiliated with the British, and the Irish wanted nothing more to do with England or any of its associates.  The Catholic Church, as well, did not by any means mitigate the Irish animosity towards African Americans.  According to the Catholic Church, God created people of color not as humans, not even as creatures with potential to be humans, but solely as a “negro” (Roediger 140). 
            A final reason for racism within the Irish American people lies in projection. The Irish Americans left their homeland in a state of devastation and poverty, only to arrive in America penniless and desolate once again.  They were accused of being lazy, rash, and irresponsible.  Unhappy with their present circumstances in the United States and of their past lives back in Ireland, they desperately projected these accusations towards the group of people that, by attacking, would benefit them financially, economically, and socially.  Conveniently, an attack on the African American race was already widespread in the United States, and by clinging to this ideology, the Irish Americans asserted their place as true Americans. 




Works Cited

Roediger, David R.  “Irish American Workers and White Racial Formation in the
     Antebellum United States.”  The Wages of Whiteness:  Race and the Making of the
     American Working Class.  Ed. Mike Davis and Michael Sprinker.  New York:  Verso,  
     1999 (1991).  133-163. 



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