# "The Irish weren't considered white."

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-irish-werent-considered-white/738171>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [November 21, 2015, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-irish-werent-considered-white/738171 "2015-11-21T07:45:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 6

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\
**Post date:** [January 23, 2016, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-irish-werent-considered-white/738171/101 "2016-01-23T05:05:51Z")

</div>

A lot of this goes back to eugencis and the falsified idea of skull shapes and measurements which they use to claim as a reliable way to deduce lineage, criminal behavior and intelligence. If you search for a 19th century book called “The races of the old world” by Charles Loring Brace you will see the justification for this

> [@](#):
>
> The difference between the average English and Irish skull is nine cubic inches, and only four between the average African and Irish.

This is where my “Finnish” (although part of Russia at the time) ancestors were also not considered white due to the presence of an occipital bun on the skull which similar eugenicists associated with the neanderthal.

Eugenics is truly one of the ugliest eras of “science” and is a good reminder to step back and ensure that you are avoiding cognitive biases.

Now if we could just shake the scientific myth (yet a manufactured socioeconomic reality) of race which is just as flawed.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\
**Post date:** [January 23, 2016, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-irish-werent-considered-white/738171/102 "2016-01-23T05:19:15Z")

</div>

There are lots of books that document this by the way, a simple google search for “Simian features Irish” will return enough results from that period of history to quell any debate.

This obsession with “Simian features” is a major reason why it is “non-PC” to call people of color apes or monkeys, it was, and is actively used to categorize people into groups in a way which those of an “aryan” background could dehumanize them without guilt.

Here is a collection of images from the above google search that demonstrates this in relation to Irish people.

> **[Irish Apes: Tactics of De-Humanization - Sociological Images](https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/01/28/irish-apes-tactics-of-de-humanization/)**
>
> The Society Pages (TSP) is an open-access social science project headquartered in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![syncrolecyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f08c70/32.png) [@syncrolecyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/syncrolecyne)\
**Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-irish-werent-considered-white/738171/103 "2016-01-25T03:56:51Z")

</div>

> [@Corry\_El](#):
>
> Same goes for current example you give. The left side of the modern US political spectrum is generally eager to characterize the right’s views as ‘racist’. So they, the left, may say the right doesn’t view Syrians as ‘white’ and are thus showing racism to oppose letting in Syrian refugees (or slow down or re-examine the vetting process etc). But the right claims to be opposed to admitting Syrian refugees because they might be infiltrated by Islamist extremists, or become extremists once in the US, and/or the vetting process to prevent this is actually questionable. It can be debated whether the right’s actual argument is valid or whether it’s simply a smokescreen for unstated ‘racism’, but the general stated argument on the right is not in fact that ‘Syrians shouldn’t come because they aren’t white’.

I wouldn’t necessarily attribute the anti-Syrian hysteria to the entire “right” - and many Arab Americans are steadfast conservatives. But there is a populist racism that is clearly inciting anti-Syrian sentiment; meanwhile the very similar influx of whiter Bosnian Muslims into the United States, particularly to St. Louis, receives very little attention.

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-irish-werent-considered-white/738171.md?page=5)