The after-the-fact coverage of the Atlanta shootings March 16 just happened to be on Saint Patrick’s Day, and on March 17, and as I was getting up, the buzz on Facebook was largely about how certain people wanted to push an apologist line about how the shooter told police he had a “sex addiction” that compelled his actions. And then as I turned on the TV and went to MSDNC, Nicolle Wallace had a couple of people on, one black, one white Irish guy from Detroit, and they pointed out that if the suspect was going to attack women for “sex addiction” he could have gone to strip clubs or other places associated with sex, rather than attacking two Asian massage parlors and killing eight people, six of them Asian women.
But another thing the panel brought up is how Wallace and one of her guests were both Irish-American, and the white guy brought up that yes, there was some discrimination against Irish people when they first came to this country. It really pales in comparison (so to speak) with the attacks on non-white people today and over history, but it still ought to be addressed.
In more recent times after Catholic Ireland became independent, a lot of Irish moved to ‘the mother country’ in Britain to get work (a pattern that repeated with people from the West Indies, India, Pakistan and other parts of the former Empire) and suffered their own discrimination. Sex Pistols singer John Lydon (son of immigrants) titled his autobiography Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs. Considering that, and again, the later pattern of non-white immigration from other parts of the Commonwealth, it shouldn’t be surprising that one of the other big stories from Britain is the Oprah Winfrey interview with Meghan Markle and her husband Prince Harry about how they were essentially frozen out of the royal family over Harry’s decision to marry and have children with a biracial woman who is darker than the usual Brit but still fairly Caucasian.
Bringing up how Irish were discriminated against shouldn’t be whataboutism or negation of the point in question. It should point out to white people that if even other white people can get hit with prejudice and legal discrimination, that should tell you how bad it is for everybody else who’s not white. For black people, American Indians, Indian Indians, the Chinese during the 19th and early 20th Centuries, the Japanese after Pearl Harbor (for which we created internment camps), the Vietnamese refugees after 1975, all of it.
In this country, anti-Irish prejudice, like our other prejudices, has a longer provenance. Putting up “No Irish Need Apply” signs was enough of a tradition that they wrote songs about it. And in the time leading up to the Civil War, one of the major political movements was the American Party, who were actually called the “Know-Nothing Party” because as was the custom of the day, they organized into societies taking oaths of secrecy, obliging them to say “I know nothing” when asked about the movement. Of course, 19th Century English was also lacking in irony. But the other reason the name fit was because “members supported deportation of foreign beggars and criminals; a 21-year naturalization period for immigrants; mandatory Bible reading in schools; and the elimination of all Catholics from public office. They wanted to restore their vision of what America should look like with temperance, Protestantism, self-reliance, with American nationality and work ethic enshrined as the nation’s highest values.”
Stop me if this seems in any way familiar.
This sort of nativism was eclipsed during the Civil War, because we had other priorities, but the guy who led the Union at that time was also against the Know-Nothing sentiment. Abraham Lincoln had said: “I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.”
Again, a surprisingly relevant quote for today.
Now there’s also been some reconstructed history about how Irish indentured servitude in the American colonies meant that we have some claim to being slaves. That isn’t the case. But it ought to demonstrate some need for empathy, not “well, my people had it rough, so don’t complain so much.” Yet you not only have that attitude, you have ‘white separatists’ from Slavic families that would have been killed by the Nazis and Italian families that would have been attacked by the Klan. And then there’s Stephen Miller, and I don’t know what HIS fucking deal is.
Point is, we do have a pretty strong history of immigration (in addition to institutional racism against African Americans and native tribes), and in almost every case they came from countries where even white people couldn’t “pass” because they dressed different, spoke English “wrong”, had the “wrong” religion, whatever. In the days of the Know-Nothing Party the Catholic immigrants were Irish and Germans. Later they were Italians. Now they’re Mexicans and Central Americans.
And yet, the modern Know-Nothing Party, the Donald Trump Fan Club formerly known as the Republican Party, actually increased its share of black and Latino vote in the 2020 presidential election compared to 2016. Which seems odd given that both Republicans and Democrats wanted to brand Trump’s party with a certain form of identity politics, but people who talked about the subject told foreign interviewers that politics weren’t just “black and white.” One Texan told the BBC that while he grew up in a Mexican-Lebanese family, “”Neoliberal expansion has really hurt both Mexico and the US, and when you have family that live there, and you can see how it’s hurt people living, their jobs, their wages, it really has increased the narco-war, and this is one of the things Trump came in saying – ‘hey, we’re going to tear apart these trade deals’ – and then he actually did it.” Others pointed to the Republican stance against abortion, or against socialism, which was critical to the Cuban and Venezuelan communities that helped Trump win Florida.
This fact both undermines and supports the Left’s need to make everything about race. Even for non-white communities, not everything is about race. The recent waves of immigrants were discriminated against, just as the Irish were in their time, and as we see even now, they’re assimilating and voting for regressive politicians. Just as the Irish did. Because they don’t see how this stuff has anything to do with them.
Just ask the Jews who grew up in Germany during the 1930s (if there are any left). You can be a perfectly assimilated member of the society and think you’re just like anybody else only to have your rights taken away because some know-nothing faction took control of the government. That’s why everybody needs to be on guard against it.
May the luck of the Irish be with you.