In one of his answers, Cecil implies that “Black Irish” refrs to Irish people with dark hair/eyes. I wonder if that is all it means?
The other day, I met a couple of young men here in Canada who told me they were related to the “black Donnellys”. If you are not familiar with this incident in Canadian history: One morning in February 1880 five members of the Donnelly family were brutally murdered near Lucan, Ontario. No one was ever found guilty of the crime, but it was clearly the result of some deep division in Irish society in the area.
There is even a web site dedicated to their memory at http://www.donnellys.com/mainpage.html. And to this day there is controversy about them. But if you look at the pictures of the family, they do not seem to be particularly dark-hued, taking into account that Victorian photos made hair look darker than it was.
The two youths I spoke to were not particularly dark-haired, but it was obvious they come from a poorer, less privileged class. And one of them said to me “we black Irish stick together.”
Also, there is a well-known history of Irish immigrants in America called “How the Irish Became White”. Obviously, the title is not really about race, but is a reference to social class and how the Irish rose from being a despised sub-class to having families like the Kennedys.
I have a theory that “black Irish” refers to poorer, marginalized families of Irish immigrants who were looked down upon (and sometimes even murdered) by others, even fellow Irish. Does anyone have any comments on this theory?
I first ever came across this phrase on the SDMB, so I’m guessing it’s largely US-usage.
I should just throw a spanner in the works to mention that “black” is occasionally used by Catholic Irish (meaning “in Ireland”, not American-Irish) people as a term of abuse - possibly of racist origin - to describe Protestants, and particularly Presbyterians, in the form “dirty black Presbyterians”.
Thank you Brian, but you will note that Wikipedia also recognizes the meaning of lower class and poor as I pointed out in my original message. It says: " It is also used historically to refer to the poorest of Irish citizens, exclusive of those with African heritage."
In other words, the term in its oldest meaning seems to have had nothing to do with hair or skin colour and everything to do with class. Even recent history gives us examples of underclasses of poor people who stick together and strike out, often viciously, at people in their own ethnic group or elsewhere who put them down. Poverty has a way of making people defensive. If you read about the “Black Donnellys” of Canada whom I refer to above, we see that they were very poor and constantly feuding with their neighbours. When the mother of the clan was chased by a neighbour’s bull after cutting through a field, the Donnellys reputedly retaliated by killing the bull and ripping its tongue out.
You will note that other caucasian underclasses in North America, such as hillbillies, crackers and southern “white trash” have the reputation of “sticking to their own” and are supposedly dangeous and nasty, lashing out at the people who look down on them.
That’s the context in which I’ve always heard it used. It’s never been a reference to colour; always to religion, generally in the form of ultra-low evangelical Protestantism.
Only problem with your theory and using that cite in wikipedia is that they were referring to the term as used in Ireland. The older meaning of the term, unless I"m reading things incorrectly, originated in the US and referred to what Cecil suggested. Coloration rather than class.