# Were the Irish once thought of as 'Blacks?' **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 3, 2004, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-irish-once-thought-of-as-blacks/253335 "2004-07-03T03:53:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2004, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-irish-once-thought-of-as-blacks/253335/21 "2004-07-03T22:14:07Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > 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? In Alex Haley’s _Queen_, Queen, a supposed slave ancestor of Haley’s, was the product of an aristocratic second-generation Irish plantation owner and a slave. Although Haley takes considerable license with other parts of the story, I see no reason to doubt the accuracy of this. I imagine that Irish immigrants that arrived with money, prior to the 1850s, would have been treated differently than the Potato Famine refugees that came over later in that century. Just as European Jews of the 1800s were granted better treatment than their brethren who arrived in the early 1900s. There is literature out there that theorizes on the racial background of the Irish. I wish I could remember the citation, but I remember coming across something that linked the “rudiness” in Irish pigmentation to the dark skin of the negroes and the “rogue” in white women’s cheeks (I’m not making this up). According to this “thinker”, the amount of “rudiness” is correlated with intellience and moral fiber. The emotional nature of (white) women is due to this “rogue”. When found in increasing quantities, you get the wild behavior of the ruddy Irish. Add some more, and you get the negro. ---
**Author:** ![PaulFitzroy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/2acd7d/32.png) [@PaulFitzroy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PaulFitzroy)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2004, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-irish-once-thought-of-as-blacks/253335/22 "2004-07-03T23:04:58Z")
Yeah, we all know that the Vikings of Scandinavia didn’t behave wildly at all. ---
**Author:** ![missbunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/76d3ee/32.png) [@missbunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/missbunny)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2004, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-irish-once-thought-of-as-blacks/253335/23 "2004-07-03T23:48:11Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > 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 wasn’t typical in the book either. If I recall, the Robillards (Mrs. O’Hara’s family) were surprised and shocked that she chose to marry someone so far out of their “league,” which she only did because she was heartbroken over the death in a duel of true love, her cousin Phillippe Robillard. I think his family didn’t want her to get involved with him either, being that he was a wild hell-raiser, but I can’t remember. The irony in the book is that Scarlett aspires for years to be a “great lady” like her mother and yet her mother defied her family and married an immigrant one step up from a potato farmer. He was rich, yes, but still a “potato farmer” in the eyes of the Old Guard Robillards, although he becomes eminently respectable with the passage of enough years. And Scarlet, of course, ends up with Rhett, who also took years to become “respectable” to the Old Guard. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2004, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-irish-once-thought-of-as-blacks/253335/24 "2004-07-04T00:44:34Z")
> [@Scopata Fuori](#): > > 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. According to the Perfect Master, this is [total crap](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_111.html) > [@](#): > > A few Spaniards stuck around for a while, of course; several were on hand to help a combined force of Scotch and Irish defeat an English army at Ballyshannon in northwest Ireland in 1597. But it’s fair to say the Armada’s castoffs didn’t make much of a dent on the ethnic makeup of the country. ---
**Author:** ![Random](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/57b2e6/32.png) [@Random](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Random)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2004, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-irish-once-thought-of-as-blacks/253335/25 "2004-07-04T13:04:04Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Not exactly. While Irish were faced with de facto segregation, [this article](http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/no-irish.htm) 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. Your article’s conclusion seems questionable. The author seems to rely on searches of period magazines and newspapers to refute and disregard testimony from people who remember the ads, which mostly were in the form of job site signs, not ads in the New York Times. (Consider the kinds of jobs involved.) If the widespread use of NINA is a 20th century myth, how come Mark Twain used it four times in one chapter of his semi-autobiographical novel, _Roughing It_, published 1891, and descriptive of times decades earlier? [http://wyllie.lib.virginia.edu:8086/perl/toccer-new?id=TwaRoug.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=47&division=div1](http://wyllie.lib.virginia.edu:8086/perl/toccer-new?id=TwaRoug.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=47&division=div1) ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2004, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-irish-once-thought-of-as-blacks/253335/26 "2004-07-04T17:32:54Z")
> [@Random](#): > > Your article’s conclusion seems questionable. The author seems to rely on searches of period magazines and newspapers to refute and disregard testimony from people who remember the ads, **which mostly were in the form of job site signs, not ads in the New York Times.** (Consider the kinds of jobs involved.) > > If the widespread use of NINA is a 20th century myth, how come Mark Twain used it four times in one chapter of his semi-autobiographical novel, _Roughing It_, published 1891, and descriptive of times decades earlier? **Random**. Twain used the phrase(note–NOT the acronym) in his book. The phrase was popularized in the US by the song from 1862. There is little evidence that there were **signs** using the phrase in the US between 1840-1900. I’m certainly not gonna say that a scattered one didn’t show up, but it was most uncommon from everything I can find. And I searched my newspaper databases from 1800-1900. The newspapers searched are mostly common everyday newspapers, from the East, Midwest and West. Noting that Twain used it(and no doubt thousands of Americans in everyday speech in the last half of the 1800’s) doesn’t prove anything about the existance of signs in that period. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-irish-once-thought-of-as-blacks/253335/27 "2004-07-05T00:58:37Z")
[Here](http://www.fathom.com/feature/122035/1873_King.html) is a particularly apt cartoon depicting the Irish as equivalent to blacks: > [@](#): > > In Frederick B. Opper’s cartoon for Puck, titled The King of A-Shantee, Paddy and Bridget are portrayed as the stereotypical Irish peasant couple, living in their lowly shanty; the Irishman is connected through the pun of “A-Shantee” with the African Ashanti, just as his prognathous, simian features suggest that he may be the theorized “missing link” in the evolution between apes and black Africans. ---
**Author:** ![PaulFitzroy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/2acd7d/32.png) [@PaulFitzroy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PaulFitzroy)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-irish-once-thought-of-as-blacks/253335/28 "2004-07-05T02:39:02Z")
These cartoons are so stupid. Irish people look nothing like monkeys or apes. Most people couldn’t tell the difference between an Irishman and any other kind of white person if their life depended on it. Most Irish are MORE fair-skinned than other Europeans anyway. ---
**Author:** ![stockton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5a626/32.png) [@stockton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stockton)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-irish-once-thought-of-as-blacks/253335/29 "2004-07-05T04:35:10Z")
> [@samclem](#): > > Noting that Twain used it(and no doubt thousands of Americans in everyday speech in the last half of the 1800’s) doesn’t prove anything about the existance of signs in that period. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ll believe anything **samclem** has to say about Twain. Just a hunch. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-irish-once-thought-of-as-blacks/253335/30 "2004-07-05T06:47:43Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > 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? Main reason: Margaret Mitchell was an Irish-American Georgian. However, there were 6,808 Irish natives living in Georgia in the 1860 U.S. census. One suggestive example in Clayton County, where Tara is placed: Irish-born Thomas Fitzgerald and his Georgia-born wife Ellen owned real estate worth $21,000 (2.7% of the total land valuation in Clayton County) and personal estate worth $40,000. They had seven daughters, ages 3 to 19. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-irish-once-thought-of-as-blacks/253335/31 "2004-07-05T06:54:06Z")
I forgot to add that the Fitzgeralds owned 34 slaves. ---
**Author:** ![ruadh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 10:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-irish-once-thought-of-as-blacks/253335/32 "2004-07-05T10:04:19Z")
The name “Fitzgerald” implies that this family probably came from the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy, rather than from one of the families of destitute Gaelic Irish to whom the NINA attitude generally applied. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-irish-once-thought-of-as-blacks/253335/33 "2004-07-05T17:54:57Z")
The Fitzgeralds of Clayton County, Ga., were Roman Catholics. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-irish-once-thought-of-as-blacks/253335/34 "2004-07-05T18:40:45Z")
**Samclem** – was that your article? I guess that’s how I heard about it. Whether “No Irish Need Apply” was on a sign or not, it seems preposterous to assert (if anyone is) that “NINA” appeared on signs in the 19th century. That sort of acronymization of a phrase didn’t become common until WWII (though I recently discovered a 19th century example). ---
**Author:** ![Epoxy\_Moron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/edb3f5/32.png) [@Epoxy\_Moron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Epoxy_Moron)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-irish-once-thought-of-as-blacks/253335/35 "2004-07-05T19:37:04Z")
Black Irish? Well, I know one usage of the term was applied to the group of people known as ‘Melungeons’–of which my maternal grandmother was. Basically, she was descended from Africna-American, Irish, and Native American bloodline, which resulted in dark skin, dark hair, and pale eyes. I don’t think that really addresses everything that this thread is covering. ---
**Author:** ![ruadh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/d2c977/32.png) [@ruadh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ruadh)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-irish-once-thought-of-as-blacks/253335/36 "2004-07-05T19:43:47Z")
> [@Walloon](#): > > The Fitzgeralds of Clayton County, Ga., were Roman Catholics. That’s not necessarily relevant. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-irish-once-thought-of-as-blacks/253335.md?page=1)