By Theodore W. Allen (Verso, Second Edition, 2012)
“No immigrants ever came to the United States better prepared by tradition and experience to empathize with the African-Americans than were these Irish who were emerging directly from the historic struggle against racial oppression in their own country.”
My Italian surname notwithstanding, I am mostly of Irish heritage. I have always been curious about why once in the States (mostly New York), not only did Irish immigrants not feel compelled to side with abolitionists and Reconstruction advocates but seemed overly anxious to side with the worst purveyors and protagonists of racial injustice. And even more so, I was curious as to why the Irish were “frequently identified with the most hostile acts against Negroes.” Having read the Invention of the White Race, by Theodore W. Allen, I have a better appreciation for how that came about.
Forced by oppression and starvation, millions emigrated from Ireland to the United States, most to New York, in the 19th Century. Once here, they were confronted with prejudice and suspicion, mostly due to their Catholic faith. They came from a place of oppression justified by Protestant Ascendancy and came to a new country where the analogous political drive (Manifest Destiny) was motivated by White (Protestant) Nationalism. Their arrival in such large numbers stimulated nativist movements that characterized the Irish as obedient to a foreign sovereign (the Pope), as unemployable, and as brutes, caricatured in mainstream publications like Harper’s Weekly as drunken monkeys, and representing the North’s equivalent to Southern Blacks. Mass movements, mob violence and the creation of Nativist parties, such as the Know-Nothings, became organized resistance to Irish assimilation. But instead of heading west, as many other European immigrants did, the Irish remained congregated, mostly in New York and later in Boston and beyond, where they eventually assimilated and became a political force…and eventually became “White.”
Before reading the book, I knew about British oppression and how the potato famine (combined with the mandated export and unaffordability of other sources of food) forced so many to emigrate, but I had no idea the British put in place so many policies to preclude Irish from having even the most basic freedoms in their place of origin, including ownership of land, workforce participation, inter-marriage with British, voting, religious practice, vagrancy laws (resulting in arrest and emigration), service on juries, holding public office, cottier (like sharecropper) women legally accessible to rape by landowner, and more. In many ways, these restrictions exacted over centuries in Ireland, appeared to presage what in this country would become Black Codes and Jim Crown laws and conventions. Given the parallels, which are extant throughout the book, it would seem natural for an affinity to develop between Irish seeking Repeal (of the union of Ireland with Great Britain) and American slaves seeking emancipation and equal rights. Indeed, in the beginning it appeared that would be the case. And although the great Irish liberator, Daniel O’Connell, remained steadfast in his dedication to emancipation and equal rights for African-Americans, sympathies bordering on love, admiration and sympathy (such as Frederick Douglass described after his trip to Ireland in 1845) for the plight of slaves ultimately evaporated, and did so well before the start of the Civil War. The Irish (my background included) became the exemplar of what Tressie MacMillan Cottom posits as the “elasticity of whiteness.” The Irish eventually became White.
The North grew tired of Reconstruction as Northern White workers were seduced into White preference in all matters of their lives. In the North/Northeast there were factories in need of workers and the potential for moving west, facilitated by the Homestead Act of 1862. “By shaping the homestead policy as a white-skin privilege, the ruling class had secured the acquiescence of laboring-class whites in the overthrow of black reconstruction.” The Irish component of this overall policy of discouraging comity among different parts of the labor force was to institute White preference in industrial labor policy. In effect, Irish traded recognition as White, in return for joining forces with White Supremacists.
Ironically (based upon pronounced Protestant fears of popery), Catholic clergy leadership in the United States disregarded the Pope’s pronouncements on the evils of slavery and took up the cause of the slave owners. Archbishop John Hughes went from a sympathizer to the plight of slaves (in his younger years) to an apologist for Southern slavery. The Catholic Church in the United States framed the issue as one of patriotism and an effort to preserve the “unity of spirit” of the Church. But this position did not end with the clergy. “…in the United States, authoritative Irish-Americans in the clergy, in the press, and in the legal profession, maintained an unrelenting attack against abolitionists…”
And contrary to the prevailing myth that the Irish gravitated towards support for slavery and Black oppression fearing freed slaves would compete for “their” jobs and force wages lower, it was rather the case that the overwhelming influx of Irish undercut and displaced employment opportunities for Blacks, such as jobs in which Blacks participated or even predominated, such as dockworkers in New York City
Even though the Irish faced discrimination, they were still, upon entry into the United States, entitled to all the rights and privileges of citizens and those on the path to citizenship. With a history of racial repression in Ireland, it seems my ancestors looked at what they had been subjected to, while looking ahead to the potential to separate from such treatment by rejecting any common bond with (in many regards) similarly treated Blacks. Presented with the opportunity to play a significant role within the White franchise, they decided to become part of the plebian aristocracy where, regardless of the depravity of circumstance, they were able to say, “Well, at least we are better, and better off than they are! And things will get better for us.” And so they did.
The book is well done and worth the read for those interested in this history or those who appreciate common themes of how colonialism and capitalism succeed by placing natural allies at odds with one another. This reminds me of the meme where there are three people seated at a table. At the head of the table is a prosperous looking, well-dressed fellow with a plate overflowing with cookies. To one side, is a White worker with one cookie on his plate. On the other side, is a Black worker with an empty plate. The man at the head of table turns to the White worker and says, “Look at him over there. I think he wants your cookie.” There is an important lesson here, as White Nationalism will eventually succumb to a Supremacy of the Elite.