My father, who is mainly of Irish heritage himself, claims that the Irish were “thought of as blacks” by the English for centuries and by Americans in the 1800s and early 1900s. He says that Irish were stereotyped as dark, apelike, and primitive, and that people even called African-Americans “Smoked Irish” at one point.
I have a hard time understanding this, since the Irish are usually fair-skinned. I mean, it’s one thing to think of a people as being primitive and dumb; it’s another thing to specifically link them to “blacks.”
He didn’t elaborate on this issue (and I didn’t ask him to, because I wasn’t that interested at the time.) Now I’m more curious but I can’t ask him right now. Does anyone else here have any knowledege of this cultural phenomenon?
Well, IANAH (I am not an historian), but I have seen political cartoons from the 1800s that portrayed the Irish as dark, simian shillelagh-carrying animals.
Also, NINA (No Irish Need Apply) was a common acronym in employment ads of the era.
The Irish weren’t literally regarded as being black. But most of the stereotypes that would later be applied to blacks were once applied to the Irish. Well, except that no one ever said the Irish had natural rhythm and no one ever accused the blacks of being Papists.
As I understand it, the Irish were either red haired with green eyes, or black hair abd blue eyes. My Welsh great grandmother called the latter “black Irish”
feckin’ micks. Niggahs to the English since Christ was a kid. But that’s another thread. Being a cross breed (English/Irish) I know not how to feel…but that was funny!
There’s a book I see every once in a while in bookstores (in the social sciences/culture section) called, How the Irish Became White, which I think hints at the image others, particularly those of English descent, had of the Irish.
Alas, I have seen a book that demonstrates this cartoonish stereotyping was still current in the UK in right-wing newspapers such as The Sun right up into the 1970s, particularly during the IRA bombing campaign in England, depicting the Irish people (as opposed to the terrorists) as apelike and bloodthirsty.
Sickeningly, during the mass immigration into the UK of both Irish and Afro-Caribbeans during the 1950s and 60s, it was common for boarding houses in England to display a sign that read:
No blacks
No Irish
No dogs
This “nostalgic” image was used as a poster here during the recent referendum as an incentive to vote against immigration controls.
Clearly there are three strands to the “Irish as black”: the phrase referring to hair colour (in my experience, this is peculiarly American - I had never heard the phrase “black Irish” until I joined this board); British and American racist imagery of Irish and blacks as subhuman; and self-identification of the Irish as an oppressed people.
As a final aside, the black English stand-up comedian Lenny Henry once referred to the laid-back atmosphere in the west of Ireland as like being in “a cold Jamaica”.
Well, if you were to read the literature put out by the American (“Know-Nothing”) Party in 1852, you’d find that Irish immigrants were regarded by native-born American Protestants just as blacks and Mexican illegal aliens are regarded by modern-day bigots.
It was taken for granted that the Irish could never be assimmilated, that they could never be “real” Americans. They were regarded in many quarters as lazy, shiftless drunkards who weren’t good for anything but menial labor and making a lot of illegitimate babies.
And while this is obviously foolish and unfair (history shows that the Irish HAVE assimmilated quite nicely), it’s equally clear that the social pathologies we now associate with blacks in the American ghettoes were very common among the Irish immigrants of the 19th century, too- and for all the same reasons.
Indeed, it’s precisely BECAUSE the Irish and the blacks had so much in common that the Irish rioted against the draft, during the Civil War. After all, if you and your people are doing the dirtiest, most low-paying jobs in America, what could be worse for you than an influx of freed black slaves who’d surely come North looking foir similar jobs at even LOWER wages?
I always wondered why Margaret Mitchell had her main character in Gone With the Wind, Scarlett O’Hara, be the daughter of a nouveau-rich Irish immigrant who had married into the southern aristocracy. Surely that wasn’t typical either for the Irish or for antebellum slave holders?
It’s quite remarkable how bigoted Americans were in general. Nobody seemed to like anybody.
In popular culture, this was epitomized (for me, at least) in a line from the Godfather, set in 1945:
Jack Woltz (a Jew): Now listen to me, you smooth-talking son-of-a-bitch! Let me lay it on the line for you and your boss, whoever he is: Johnny Fontane will never get that movie! I don’t care how many daigo guinea WOP greaseball goombahs come out of the woodwork!
Tom Hagen: I’m German-Irish.
Jack Woltz: Well let me tell you something my kraut mick friend! I’m gonna make so much trouble for you, you won’t know what hit you!
My grandmother was black and born in ireland and thats all I know . Im guessing she was born in the early 1900’s. I dont know anything about her husband race wise or where he is from. Im guessing that he is white since my dad is extremely light skinned and when I look up my lastname I get it comes from Britain. Now im also partially jamaican my dad was born in jamaica im not sure why my grandmother moved to jamaica or if she met my grandfather there.
I’m 3/4 French-Canadian, and 1/4 Irish. My paternal Grandmother was 100% Irish while all my other grandparents were 100% French (there’s rumor of some Native American in there, which wouldn’t surprise me, though I’m as white as a frigging sheet).
What saddened me to learn, long after my paternal grandfather passed away was that, while he professed to love my grandmother, he hated the Irish. And where he was growing up (a milltown in Norther Maine), the French were treated like dirt by the largely English and German upper-class of the community, and his mother was so ashamed of their heritage, she eventually forbade French at the dinner table. Just bizarre.
I’ve never understood, though, how the Irish somehow managed to occupy what appears to be the lowest rung on the white ladder. I mean, what European immigrant group to the States didn’t look down on them?
An even sadder irony is the bussing fiasco in South Boston. The micks vs. the niggers with the limeys looking on in dismay. Tragic.
Not exactly. While Irish were faced with de facto segregation, this article makes it clear that NINA or “No Irish Need Apply” was never a common phrase in America. The only (occasional) examples of it were in ads for female domestic help – but domestic service was a very common occupation for Irish women, so it had little effect.
The myth of the signs developed from a popular song of the time.
I remember being taught in high school social studies class, that the “Dark Irish” were long removed descendants of the Moors, in their travels through Auld Eire, by way of the Spaniards. But I think the OP had to do with the class perception of the Irish in general, at the bottom of the socio-economic food chain.
