True, I just meant that that was what it was like to be Irish at the time. Thanks for posting this though, I was just sorting through some old family documents to share with relatives who are going to be visiting for T-Day and I came across my Great Grandfather’s work visa application for when he emigrated over here from Dublin and among other things it lists the wages he will be earning ($35/wk) from the job he had been offered as a railroad maintenance worker. My father (two generations later) is a recently retired engineer. Saol fada chugat!
That thread took place before a meddling kid decided to use Google to check for herself.
I also noted that Jensen did reply claiming most ads were taken out of context, but much to his chagrin others did take a look too and Irish American magazine was not amused with Jensen.
I think Jensen defended himself adequately.
Seems to me though that physical NINA signs wouldn’t have lasted. Did people typically keep their wanted ads after they hired someone?
Those numbers he quotes are meaningless - they assumes equal significance of all pages, but surely one should restrict it to just the help wanted pages rather than consider all pages to determine pervasiveness?
And Jensen comes across as a complete tool in that comments section. Hell, stuff like
and
look achingly familiar to anyone else? Note that the guy he’s arguing with, Phil Magness, does in fact have a PhD in history with economics thrown in - one a leeetle more recent than Jensen’s 1966 one, I might add.
Yep. And BTW** An Gadaí** I also did find and looked at that reply from Jensen that you linked at, that is why I looked around to see if others did look besides that kid and as Irish America reported it looks like if not a tool, at least Jensen is a researcher that came with a preconceived notion that prevented him from finding the big picture.
Ah, yes, I remember reading about that now. Good catch.
A good point on the help wanted pages, although how many of them were printed in the period covered to only yield 80-something results? It does seem like the print ads were vanishingly rare though not as much so as Jensen had posited. Jensen does come across as a bell end but it doesn’t seem that Fried’s counter was as much of a knock out as was reported. Fried looks like she’ll go far and I wish the best for her!
Interesting that wanted ads specifying Protestants were not unknown in the Republic of Ireland into the 1970s.
If you read the comments section, you’ll see that’s actually at the low end. Others have found higher numbers. And also excludes more coded/circumspect ads like “Only English and Americans need apply”, etc.
Yes. In those times it was still common to see phrases like ‘the English race’, so even if people spoke of an ‘Irish race’, ‘race’ didn’t necessarily have the same meaning as now. Also now the meaning of ‘race’ is fairly jumbled (as in ‘white Hispanics’, ‘racism’ of Caucasian ‘whites’ against Caucasians from the Mideast, etc) so who says it was crystal clear in the mid 19th century?
But as others have mentioned there was a clear practical distinction in the ‘race’ of the Irish v that of blacks in mid 19th century was in being subject to slavery. Though again today, it’s just a political construct of some people that there’s a such thing as ‘whites’ on one hand and ‘non whites’ on the other. Asians and various Hispanic groups and African Americans have a limited amount in common in practical fact in current US society just based on being ‘non white’. ‘Race relations’ in the US practically speaking now is still largely about the special situation of people of African descent.
My Irish-American Grandmother was born in Chicago in 1889.
She only received an education until the 3rd grade because as she was told “The Irish don’t need an education”…
She was a great person and I feel fortunate to have talked to her about growing up without automobiles, planes, telephones, modern medicine etc. etc.
.
In a legal and formal sense, yes the Irish were considered white; otherwise they would not have been eligible for naturalization under the 1790 (and subsequent) Naturalization Acts, which limited citizenship to “free white persons.”
There are historically two kinds of “white” status in American history, the first is legal status for naturalization, census taking, vital statistics, and so on. In this category, all Europeans, North Africans, Middle Easterners, and Latin Americans not specifically designated members of another racial group are “white.” Irish, Egyptians, Mexicans, and Iranians are white.
Then there is the man-in-the-street definition. In that second view, Irish Catholic people were arguably not fully “white” through the late nineteenth century, just as many people view Syrians as “non-white,” even though by historic law and custom they are.
“Do you not get it, lads? The Irish are the blacks of Europe. And Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland. And the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin. So say it once, say it loud: I’m black and I’m proud!”
– The Commitments
That’s the PC version.
He actually said "the niggers of Europe"etc. IIRC.
In the book, yes. The movie sanitized the language for some silly reason.
I think the problem of distinguishing current and past norms shows up in both categories. US Census questions about and definitions of ‘race’ constantly changed. You’re referring to the current system. At one time ‘Mexican’ for example was a ‘race’ in the Census.
In the second case, as in the comment you responded to, there’s a significant ambiguity between ‘prejudice, animus, suspicion against a group’ and ‘saying they aren’t white’. The ‘man in the street’ view of whether people from Mexico are ‘white’ does indeed differ from the current Census categorization (for people from Mexico who consider themselves white not black, it’s up to the respondent). Whether there was a serious view that the Irish weren’t white in that same sense is more debatable. Discriminated against, clearly; literally not viewed as ‘white’ (as opposed to flippant insults with that implication), debatable.
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’.
It’s not to sidetrack onto the Syria debate, but just to illustrate how ambiguous and POV dependent such characterizations are. And here we’re trying to determine ‘what the Irish were really viewed as’ in a time before living memory. Selective period quotes only go so far.
You basically are on the right track. This country was " started " by Anglo upper class men ( much like a country club ). They obviously did not want anyone else getting a piece of the action. A huge reason why other " whites " were relatively better tolerated than " others " was because they were the closest to them in skin color , religion , culture.
Not to mention , they needed workers . People to build their cities , dig their subways , fight their wars, do the dirty work. They had to let people in and other europeans were an obvious choice.
America is unique in that it has essentially been a white supremacist club since it was started.
A frenchman and a hungarian probably have nothing in common and may even hate each other’s guts but in this country they could just blend into the generally accepted definition of " white people ".
Good point about the Italians and Greeks. I have a notion about this. IMO , the " established whites " wanted to claim ancient Roman and Greek as " white " civilizations and because of the vague connection of modern day Italians and Greeks to the abovementioned , their acceptance was easier. I’m not saying that this was the only reason but it certainly helped especially in comparison to turks , persians and all others who look essentially the same but have roots in Islam which is essentially foreign.
Hmmm. I’m not sure how it discredits them anyway. They are already discredited.
If anything, I think the fact that the Irish were shunned even though they are white is discrediting.
BTW just to throw fuel on the fire, some Irish were imported as slaves to the New World along with blacks from Africa. Not many, but it happened, and yes they were real slaves, not indentured servants. Most went to the Caribbean. Just an interesting factoid.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. The ancestry of white Latin American people is indeed European (mostly south European), in the same way that the ancestry of most North Americans is European. And I personally have never met or seen any Latin American person of predominantly (or entirely) European ancestry who was not regarded as “white” (except in one or two cases where the person was clearly being facetious). Notice that the term “white Hispanic” is often used - a term that would be tautologically unnecessary if there weren’t “non-white Hispanics”. (Nevertheless, there may indeed be some relatively dark-skinned Latin American people of Mediterranean ancestry who may not call themselves “white” in the same way that Arab people often don’t regard themselves as “white”.)
Perhaps the belief is due to the fact that the word “Hispanic” is frequently used to refer to Spanish-speaking people of indigenous (native) American descent, as well as people of mixed indigenous and European (or African) descent. I suspect that many, if not all, the people in that list that represent the “Hispanic” part of each couple have noticeably indigenous ancestry and that may be the reason for the relationships being called “interracial”.