No Irish Need Apply

[lisaquestions]

Shinin' the Light on White Privilege:

"White mob violence guaranteed the white privileges from the economy of internal colonialism. In the 1840's and 1850's Irish working class immigrants pushed African Americans out of the skilled trades in New York City by burning down parts of the Black community while Irish police and fire fighters looked on. White homesteaders murdered indigenous warriors trying to protect their historical homelands, and slaughtered millions of their buffalo. Unemployed white workers burned down parts of San Francisco Chinatown in the 1880's to drive Chinese workers out of the cigar-making and shoe industries. White squatters lynched Chicanos fighting to keep their ancestral lands in Occupied America."

Saving this link the next time anyone talks about how the Irish were oppressed in the US.

Comments

[lisaquestions]

BTW, thanks for that information. I hadn't been aware of what things were like in the UK.

[youngsoulrebel]

No problem. In general, it's at its worst among older UK generations, but films like 9 Dead Gay Guys (which is otherwise pretty hilarious) still reinforce negative stereotypes that "Paddies" come across the Irish Sea to drink British booze, leach off British welfare, squat in abandoned British buildings, and, on occasion, prostitute themselves because Catholic morality is weaker than Anglican; Afro-Caribbean characters in that film, by comparison, are treated more positively and the stereotyping (which frankly all comedy is based on) at least seem, on the surface, less cutting (but having never been an African and Afro-Caribbean in the UK, that's about as far as I can make that judgement), and the stereotyping of the sole Pakistani(?) and Orthodox Jewish characters seems pretty light (Middle Eastern guy is a cab driver; Orthodox Jew thinks he's more closeted than he is cos he's Orthodox). I know Tony Blair recently "came out" as Catholic, citing the very real negative and often hostile climate faced by many Catholics in the UK for why he waited so long; it's just a bit more complex in some ways in the UK than the U$, and I think that's largely do to the nature of the U$ defining itself as "a nation of immigrants" so at some point "race" in the U$ became defined differently than in many other countries ("race" in the UK and pretty much the rest of Europe is generally defined not by skin colour, but by nation of origin and/or cultural identity), but measure for measure, neither place is really better nor worse about their -isms.