The Irish Race?

On St. Patrick’s Day, everybody is Irish! But not too long ago, NOBODY wanted to be Irish–not even people of Irish descent. That’s because the Irish were victims of racist ideas and racist exclusion–first by the English (King James VI sold 30,000 Irish to the New World as indentured servants in 1625) and then by Americans of the colonies. Irish were treated as a ‘sub-human’ species, depicted as apes, compared to dogs in temperament and considered as “negroes turned inside out” or “the missing link” between Europeans and Africans. When millions of poor (and mostly Catholic) Irish flooded into the US following the Great Potato Famine, they faced almost the same treatment as African Americans.

In a fascinating book, How the Irish Became White, author Noel Ignatiev recounts the transformation of Irish from hatred radicalized group to respectable American citizens. In large part, their transition was facilitated by their racist treatment of African-Americans, aligning themselves with a majority of white Americans. Only by becoming as racist as other whites could they become “white” themselves.

Thanks to their skin tone, assimilation occurred quickly, leaving BIPOC at the bottom of the social/racial hierarchy. True, and sad.