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DON JONES INDEX… |
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GAINS
POSTED in GREEN LOSSES POSTED in RED |
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3/19/21… 13,930.56 3/12/21… 13,932.67
6/27/13… 15,000.00 |
DOW JONES INDEX: 3/19/21…32,862.80;
3/12/21…32,640.11; 6/27/13…15,000.00)
LESSON for March 19, 2021 – “KILL ME, I’M IRISH!”
Wednesday was St. Paddy’s Day… such as it could be in the plague year,
to quote a devil of an Englishman… and there is a much of a much
inter-Christian and extra-racial clucking over a troubled Baptist boy, Robert
Aaron Long, whose slaughter of eight people in Atlanta-area massage parlours (seven women, six Asian) has enraged just about
every community of conscience, but also engaged woke partisans divided between
those who attribute the psychology of the massacre to racism and those who cite
misogyny. At a time when, so many
unaccompanied children surging over our Southern border have renewed
contentions of historic right-wing racism versus self-hating left-wing
weakness… few are actually Mexican – most, rather, come from the admittedly
failed states of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador… the migrants are again
hoisting water canons aimed at Lady Liberty’s torch, which spectacle was
thought to have fizzled out with the Trump 2020 campaign and subsequent legal
debacles.
(The fervent Anti-Communist may look back and ask, what of the
Nicaraguans for, after all, a lengthy war was fought there some four decades
ago… a covert war, to be sure, with few American troops and fewer casualties… but
a foreign war, nonetheless. And another
losing war: the revolutionary Daniel Ortega now squats in a Presidential palace
of his own, issuing manifestoes and directives against the Yanqui
imperialists no longer besieging his domain.
What indeed? See below!)
But no: it is not the Nicaraguans fleeing Ortega’s dictatorship, nor
the Mexicans, nor even the Venezuelans.
It is the population of a few small, poor countries horribly mismanaged
by corrupt leaders and ruthless criminal cartels, working hand in hand. This week, Democrats called the situation
“heartbreaking,” Republicans dubbed called the incursion a “hurricane” while
some of the press blamed it on “hope” while their confederates pointed fingers
at President Joe for reversing President Trump’s policy of sending those kids
back over the border to their butchers in buses or bodybags
or, in the more fortunate cases, locking them in cages to languish for days or
years while his poodles at the asylum adjudication bureau slo-walked
their appeals.
Being the time of year as it is, some might have a cause to reflect
upon the policies of immigration that have made the United States a very large
and very powerful nation (although the
contention might be disputed by certain tribal peoples as crossed from Siberia
to Alaska when a land bridge theretofore existed many thousands of years ago
(or, perhaps, paddled their canoes from the South Seas to the West Coast –
ethnologists and such have not made a final determination yet.)
What is a matter of undisputed historical provenance is this… more
than a century after Columbus and some years posterior to the arrival of
Spanish conquistadores in Mexico and South America, oceangoing English refugees
and adventurers crossed the Atlantic to settle in Virginia and, later, Massachusetts,
bringing with them their language, customs and religion. (Also, by and by, African slaves to do such
work as they preferred not to do themselves while they dreamt of their
philosophies and, after another century and a half, molded them into a rebellion,
a nation and a Constitution.)
Fast forward another seventy years and cracks began appearing in
foundations South (the stirrings of anti-slavery sentiment) and North (an
incursion of religiously incorrect migrants – to wit, the Irish.)
The North American land mass being vast and lightly defended, other
Europeans… and a few outliers like the Chinese and the Russians (who were
hardly considered proper Europeans at all) up and down the Pacific Coast). There were Dutchmen in Manhattan… soon
displaced… the French in Louisiana by way of Canada and assorted Swedes and
Germans, Poles and Italians. But the
greater portion of white, non-English immigrants to the United States
(particularly after 1850) were the Irish, to whom today is their national
holiday – though celebrated only in Savannah, Georgia and Dallas, passed by due
to the plague in New York and Chicago.
These Irish were tolerated as cheap labor, but not exactly welcomed
despite the similarity of their language – the principal cause being their adherence
to the Pope in Rome. Even as recently as
half a century ago, the prospect of a Catholic President was a cause of
abhorrence and dismay to many nativist (as opposed to native) Americans who
had, as Tom Deignan’s small history of the Irish in
America recalls, soundly slapped down the citified, Popified, Tammany-greased
Al Smith in 1928; electing, in his stead, one Herbert Hoover who masterminded
the United States into the original and still greatest Great Depression
(abetted by his two Republican predecessors Harding and Coolidge).
Wrote Mr. Deignan....
“After serving as one of New York’s most popular governors, (Smith)
was ready to ask the question: was America ready to elect a Catholic President?
“On September 19, 1938, Al Smith got his answer. As his campaign train entered Oklahoma, the
KKK burned crosses… enemies – many within his own Democratic Party – linked
Smith to the Irish stereotypes of “rum, Romanism and rebellion”. Amid dire warnings that he would be loyal to
the pope, not America, Smith lost even his beloved home state of New York.”
It would take another generation and a charismatic, handsome war hero,
his beautiful wife (and a smidgen of electoral chicanery in Chicago, such as a
then-eight-year-old Vladimir Putin might have appreciated) to win the
Presidency and then lose it to an assassin whose motives and confederates
remain unknown to this day. The
religious issue faded, of sorts (President Joe 2catholic) – the “rum, Romanism
and rebellion” bugaboo of a century before JFK becoming a sort of myth, a sop
to hard times overcome (in theory and, often, in practice) – a curiosity
relegated to popular media like the award-winning movie “Gangs of New York”
mercantile icons like the “Lucky Charms” leprechaun and to music hall
ditties. A Professor was even inspired
to probe into the darker corners of the 19th century and proclaim
(well, publish, at any rate c. 2002) his conclusions in an academic
journal. (See Attachment One)
With victimhood proving a profitable and even desirable state, it was
all but inevitable that other groups would pull the ladder up before the Irish
could also climb the wall and claim their unfair share of victim booty. In a recent column for USA today, Matthew
Brown excoriated the claims that Irish people were enslaved in
British North America as being “a longstanding myth and online meme sometimes associated
with neo-Confederates and white nationalists. The claim, which experts say is also
often politically motivated, is
untrue.” (See Attachment Two)
Brown dismissed the
contention that indentured servitude was anything like slavery, and cited various
sources (notably an Irish librarian interviewed by the Southern Poverty Law
Center (Attachment Two A) and an archaeologist who alleged many such advocates
were Nazis, parasites, partisans to the cause of Irish independence and simple
fortune seekers hoping to tap into the magical pot o’gold
at the end of the reparations rainbow. “Claims about Irish slaves were debunked last year, Brown stated, “as the House of
Representatives held hearings on legislation that would explore the possibility
of extending reparations to African Americans for slavery.”
“Rather than confront the brutal crime against humanity
and national original sin that was African chattel slavery, this narrative is
particularly appealing to those who want to proclaim that ‘my ancestors
suffered too!’,” Reilly, the archaeologist, stated.
On the other hand, one Lisa Wade submitted a parcel of
“Sociological Images” somewhat to the contrary.
(See Attachment Two B)
(The
message: “Help Wanted, No Irish Need Apply”) has become a stand-in for an
entire narrative about how immigrants are treated in America, according to an
article in VOX (Attachment Three), utilized both by Brown and by pro-Irish
partisans. “It's also the subject of a
surprisingly heated academic fight,” said article notes – a bit of an
understatement.
VOX
posited a third judgment upon Irish-Americans seeking the newly minted status
of victimhood – apart from the involuntary servitude of African captured and
sold in the New World and the voluntary migrations… from Latin America and
certain other places… spurred by economic or political oppression.
“Historians
have floated another idea: that Irish Americans, more than any other immigrant group,
saw themselves as exiles from their home country (or,
rather, the colony of internal incarceration which many of the emigrants
believed pre-192@ Ireland to be - DJI), rather than as people who were
choosing to come to the US for a better life.
Other antagonistic memes and tropes floated to the surface of the
political waters in the years leading up to the Civil War. Two decades before the imagined horrors of
Negro equality, the nativist political party “Know-Nothings” declared war on
immigrants of the Catholic persuasion… chiefly the Irish, but also Germans
(sorry, Sergeant “I know nothing!” Schulz from Hogan’s Heroes) and, as time
passed, Italians. (They did hate the
blacks, of course, as well as Jews and Asians and probably even those reptilian
aliens from outer space, but apparently thought such contemptibles
not even worth their measure of good, honest American hate.)
An unsigned (but extensively documented) analysis in UK Essays (see
Attachment Four) blamed (or credited) the rise of the N 👃 Ø mobs on “the influx of nearly three million
Irish and German immigrants in the 1830s,” most of whom were Catholics. “As a result, a secret society was formed
that was united by xenophobic hostility to immigration. Native-born Protestants
felt threatened by the new immigrants because they believed that the Catholic
Church represented tyranny and the potential to be subjugated by a foreign
power (i.e. the Pope).”
From 1850 to
1855, the Know-Nothing Party was the fastest growing party in the United States,
even outstripping the fledgling Republican party… their politics spiced-up by
the occasional lynching or church-burning.
They formed an “American Party” and, in 1856, nominated a disgraced ex-Presidentm the hapless Millard Filmore who was stomped by
the equally hapless James Buchanan, winning only eight electoral votes
“Even if
this party was not coherent enough to establish any legislation, they set the
basic framework for nativist behaviour in the later
centuries,” concluded the British essayist(s). Ultimately, however, “when party
leaders failed to actually reduce immigration, party members lost faith in the
leaders and turned to other parties to solve their problems.”
Sound
familiar?
Another exposition of the Know Nothings can also be gleaned from a
2015 essay by Elise Hoogendoorn, a student at the
University of Utrecht (Netherlands) who probes, in more detail, the role of a
KN founder and the election of 1856 – with many documents of the era and some
cartoons which may trigger the sensitive.
(See this.) One of the broadsides Hoogendoorn
unearthed attributed the origins of the Know Nothings to “the Order of the Star Spangled Banner, founded by
Charles B. Allen in 1850. The Order was a secret society whose members were not
allowed to disclose any information to outsiders. The initial goal of the
members was to “use their votes and personal influence to reduce the political
power of both immigrants and the politicians who purportedly pandered to them.”
And that they took the name Know Nothings “because they were to proclaim they
‘knew nothing’ when inquired about the Order or its activities.”
Sort of like Fight Club?
Or a certain ex-somebody?
Hoogendoorn, while less vitriolic
than Brown, nonetheless concurred with Jensen in that anti-Irish nativism
was based more on
economic, moral and religious conditions, rather than being based on a racial
approach because, despite the depictions of brutish,
“simian” Irishmen swilling liquor and raising their shillelaghs against decent
folk, “(t)he issue of race was not yet fully exercised
in the 1850s.”
And then, towards the advent of the Civil War, the racists
found new deplorables to hate
The British essayists (above) observed that when
a new menace to America… the Chinese… began showing up in the Pacific Coast
states, nativists fomented a political movement against the Chinese called the
Workingmen’s Party, led (ironically) by an Irish-born sailor named Dennis
Kearney, which became a strong force that supported passing legislation against
Chinese immigrants. The Workingmen’s Party never even became an electoral
factor, nor won any states, but influenced others to pass the Chinese Exclusion
Act, “which forced the Chinese to obtain certificates to prove their
eligibility to live and work in the United States” and was not repealed until
World War II found America supporting the Chinese (at least the Kuomintang)
against Japan. Japanese-Americans were
promptly railroaded off to camps for the duration of the war.
Whilst sampling the flavours and colours of the virtual Ould Sod
last week when not engaged in virtual Brexit meetings with Martin, President
Biden (See Attachment Six) might have had the time and leisure to consult a
recent history appropriate to the day… “St. Patrick’s Vermin” by Hidetaka Hirota… a review of which appeared in the Irish Times of
April 20, 2017. (Attachment Seven) This
important book, critic Christopher Kissane deduced, “shows that both Irish
America and Ireland have a historical responsibility to speak out for the poor
and desperate tossed across oceans and borders seeking better lives and
salvation. There but for the grace of time go we.”
Citing more than a century of mass deportations from the United States
and pointing the finger of shame at some
aspects of the Trump presidency (which often appear, in the president’s own
phrase, “unpresidented”), Kinsinger
pointed out that “the virulence of his anti-immigration language, and the
radicalism of his immigration policy have deep historical roots,” and adding:
“It is impossible to read (Hirota’s) stories without
thinking of the Syrian refugees and Mexican immigrants facing demonisation and immigration control in Trump’s America.
From its persecuted beginnings, Irish America itself became a home of racial
prejudice and nativism, and it is a cruel American twist that many supporting
bans and walls today bear surnames writ through 19th-century deportation
lists.”
Hirota was subsequently interviewed by the liberal Mother
Jones magazine during one of the more fervid attempts by the Trump administration to reshape legal immigration in the
United States. (See Attachment Eight)
US Citizenship and Immigration Services,
the agency that handles legal immigration, was on the verge of releasing a
regulation that expected to make it far easier to label immigrants as likely
future public charges. That, contended MJ interviewer Noah Lanard “would prevent immigrants in the United States from
extending their time in the country or receiving green cards and a path to
citizenship.”
Hirota pointed out that a key difference was
that, originally, the United States sought to exclude immigrants who would
become completely dependent on the government. By contrast, Trump’s
administration hoped to target working immigrants whose families receive only
some assistance. A family of four making 200 percent of the poverty line may
struggle to make ends meet, but it wouldn’t be a family of paupers, either.
“It’s part of the government’s crusade against immigration regardless of the
legal status,” Hirota said. “Put simply, it’s a
purely nativist agenda.”
The November
election left the White House to close out 2020 by “scrambling to lock in Trump’s
legacy on immigration policy before President-elect Biden
takes office.”
We remain in the Age of Trump… the age of BLM, the Proud Boys, Antifa,
Oath Keepers and the cancel culture – everything is racialized and victimhood
prized above all qualities. Perhaps
Americans have realized that they have reached the end of the road – there are
no more mountains to climb, no more accomplishments to accomplish and so,
because they still must eat and sleep (preferably in a home of their own or, at
least, a bed of their own in a rented domicile), they will have need of money –
which is hard to come by in a society that regards the vast majority of them as
useless… hence, expendable.
So we must weaponize our failure, find someone else to blame… if not
in the present than in the past… and hope that the masters of domains take pity
upon us and toss a few crumbs our way, the way that President Trump was wont to
throw rolls of paper towels to victims of tragedy. Being oppressed is a virtue – from the bums
on the sidewalk to the denizens of high castles; if somebody else is to blame
for your misfortunes, than you are free.
Since the movement for reparations to American blacks (from whites
and, by no means, the elites) social rage has spiked and calcified… other
racial, religious, gender and miscellaneous groupings have tried to elbow their
way into the handout culture which has been potentiated by the Covid virus that has taken not only lives, but liberty and
security. And if blacks can turn history
to their advantage, why not others.
Why not the Irish?
Are they not…
… Apes??
… the President???
President Joe, (See Attachment Six), celebrated the occasion by
holding a virtual discussion with Ireland's prime minister, Taoiseach Micheál
Martin on the potential perils of a U.K. Brexit forcing a closure of the border
between the North and the Republic and a return to “the troubles”. Emphasizing the President’s contention that
he is not only Catholic, but Irish Catholic, the Washington Post spun the
meeting in a manner calibrated to drive Mr. Brown (as well as many blacks,
Asians and other contending and contentious victims) up the bloody wall.
The
Post connected Biden’s Irishness to his outlook on immigration, as he talked
about his ancestors boarding coffin ships in the Irish Sea to escape a famine
in the 1840s.
This
identification with a long-oppressed minority enables him, even as a sitting president,
to claim common ground with those who feel dismissed for not graduating from an
Ivy League school. It lets a man who’s made millions pitch himself as
“Middle-Class Joe.”
“Guys who think because they have a lot more money that
they’re better than you, look down on you,” Biden said in the days before the
election. “I acknowledge I got a — I have a chip on my shoulder, coming from an
Irish Catholic neighborhood where it wasn’t viewed as being such a great
thing.”
Joe,
“once the poorest man in the Senate” is now estimated to be worth $9
million at present, which, according to MarieClaire
is significantly more than earlier in his career. This number, from Forbes and
calculated in 2019, is based on a total portfolio of $4 million in real estate (Joe and wife Jill Biden
own two homes in Delaware), cash/investments worth $4 million, and a federal
pension worth more than $1 million…
Fookin’ Nazi!
So, to sum up the holiday, Don Joneses… at least almost all of ‘em
except those who came over on the Mayflower (and kept their fortunes)… are
apparently resigned to a future eternity of letting the robots do the work that
sustains the elites and sit on the sidewalk, ragged cap and pitiful little sign
at hand, hoping for someone to drop a dime.
As former Rep. Parnell noted in an episode from Entropy and Renaissance,
with there no longer being a necessity for work or the workingman (sorry,
Kearny), the only issue to confront is that of distribution. And the prizes… or at least the sustenance…
go to the most pitiful, the most victimized, the most abject and irredeemable
failures that America can offer! Blacks
must fight the Irish to determine who is worse off, the women and Chinese do
battle to claim the status of most abused and Mexicans now have to contend with
those on their Southern border who
consider themselves more deserving of charity, owing to the exponential and
malevolent qualities of their leaders – a situation no longer foreign to many
natives.
What’s to do about it? Open a
bottle, drink up, then go out and beat up some goddam other (according to your prejudices). Write a sneering business review, push an old
lady off the subway tracks. Most people
will hate you but many will give a thumbs up.
Or even elect you to office!
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Johnson & Johnson vaxxes are finally on the way, giving the index a 100 point boost (without which, we’d be in the red,
again). There was a slight improvement in
employment, but pretty much everything was down – so those who hope should hope
for better things to come. Better
weather, for example. A better means of
vaccination scheduling.
Its only two weeks ‘til spring.
THE DON JONES INDEX
CHART of CATEGORIES w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000
(REFLECTING… approximately… DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013)
See a further explanation of categories here…
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ECONOMIC INDICES (60%) |
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DON JONES’ PERSONAL ECONOMIC INDEX (45% of TOTAL INDEX POINTS) |
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CATEGORY |
VALUE |
BASE |
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RESULTS |
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SCORE |
SCORE |
OUR SOURCE(S) and COMMENTS |
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INCOME |
(24%) |
6/27/13 |
LAST |
CHANGE |
NEXT |
3/12/21 |
3/19/21 |
SOURCE |
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Wages (hourly, per capita) |
9% |
1350 pts. |
3/12/21 |
+0.04% |
3/26/21 |
1,429.18 |
1,429.18 |
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages 25.19 |
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Median Income
(yearly) |
4% |
600 |
3/12/21 |
+0.025% |
3/26/21 |
668.32 |
668.49 |
http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 35,375 384 |
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Unempl. (BLS –
in millions |
4% |
600 |
12/1/20 |
+1.61% |
3/26/21 |
323.48 |
323.48 |
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000 6.2% |
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Official (DC – in millions) |
2% |
300 |
3/12/21 |
+0.02% |
3/26/21 |
389.59 |
389.67 |
http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 9,969 967 |
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Total. (DC – in millions) |
2% |
300 |
3/12/21 |
+0.17% |
3/26/21 |
326.18 |
326.73 |
http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 17,737 707 |
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Workforce
Participation Number (in
millions) Percentage
(DC) |
2% |
300 |
3/12/21 |
+0.013% +0.012% |
3/26/21 |
311.59 |
311.63 |
In
150,273 294 Out 100,758 751
Total: 251,031 045 http://www.usdebtclock.org/
59.87 |
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WP Percentage (ycharts)* |
1% |
150 |
12/1/20 |
-0.16% |
3/26/21 |
151.74 |
151.74 |
http://ycharts.com/indicators/labor_force_participation_rate 61.40 |
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OUTGO |
(15%) |
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Total Inflation |
7% |
1050 |
3/12/21 |
+0.4% |
3/26/21 |
1,014.25 |
1,014.25 |
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0.4
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Food |
2% |
300 |
3/12/21 |
+0.2% |
3/26/21 |
283.27 |
283.27 |
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0.2 |
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Gasoline |
2% |
300 |
3/12/21 |
+6.4% |
3/26/21 |
297.02 |
297.02 |
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +6.4 |
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Medical Costs |
2% |
300 |
3/12/21 |
+0.5% |
3/26/21 |
287.06 |
287.06 |
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0.5 |
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Shelter |
2% |
300 |
3/12/21 |
+0.2% |
3/26/21 |
294.32 |
294.32 |
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0.2 |
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WEALTH |
(6%) |
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Dow Jones Index |
2% |
300 |
3/12/21 |
+0.68% |
3/26/21 |
358.12 |
360.56 |
https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/index/DJIA 32,862.80 |
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Sales
(homes) Valuation
(homes) |
1% 1% |
150 150 |
3/12/21 |
-1.04% -1.90% |
3/26/21 |
196.44 165.43 |
194.41 162.28 |
https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics
Sales (M):
6.76 ..69 Valuations (K): 309.8
303.9 |
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Debt (Personal) |
2% |
300 |
3/12/21 |
+0.07% |
3/26/21 |
274.45 |
274.26 |
http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 64,105 150 |
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AMERICAN
ECONOMIC INDEX (15% of TOTAL INDEX POINTS) |
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NATIONAL |
(10%) |
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Revenues (in
trillions) |
2% |
300 |
3/12/21 |
+0.06% |
3/26/21 |
296.97 |
297.10 |
debtclock.org/ 3,471 473 |
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Expenditures (in tr.) |
2% |
300 |
3/12/21 |
-0.09% |
3/26/21 |
221.98 |
221.78 |
debtclock.org/ 6,698 704 |
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National Debt (tr.) |
3% |
450 |
3/12/21 |
+0.09% |
3/26/21 |
330.48 |
330.18 |
http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 28,040 066 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Aggregate Debt (tr.) |
3% |
450 |
3/12/21 |
+0.07% |
3/26/21 |
382.47 |
382.21 |
http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 82,636 692 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
GLOBAL |
(5%) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Foreign Debt (tr.) |
2% |
300 |
3/12/21 |
+0.07% |
3/26/21 |
290.97
|
290.57 |
http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 7,118 123 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Exports (in
billions – bl.) |
1% |
150 |
3/12/21 |
+1.00% |
3/26/21 |
159.63 |
159.63 |
https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/index.html 191.9 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Imports (bl.) |
1% |
150 |
3/12/21 |
-1.38% |
3/26/21 |
134.93 |
134.93 |
https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/index.html
260.2 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Trade Deficit (bl.) |
1% |
150 |
3/12/21 |
+2.35% |
3/26/21 |
106.13 |
106.13 |
https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/index.html 68.2 |
|
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|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
SOCIAL INDICES (40%) |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
ACTS of MAN |
(12%) |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
World Peace |
3% |
450 |
3/12/21 |
-0.4% |
3/26/21 |
399.48 |
397.88 |
As
Covid re-spikes, France starts deporting vulnerables from Paris while sixteen countries cancel
Astra Zeneca. Policeman kidnaps and
kills UK woman, riots ensue. Myanmar
military kills 22 more anti-coup protesters; Haitian government
collapsing. NoKo,
tired of being ignored, ramps up nuke production and snarls at President Joe. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Terrorism |
2% |
300 |
3/12/21 |
+0.7% |
3/26/21 |
244.58 |
242.87 |
Some
barricades and fencing to be removed from Capitol – because they are an “eyesore”. (State of Union
hasn’t happened yet!) Firebombs
planted at Mar-a-Lago… they don’t go off.
Gunmen kill 58 in marketplace attack in Niger. 8 killed in either sexually or racially
motivated Atlanta assault (or both!).
Family members are turning in Capitol rioters. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Politics |
3% |
450 |
3/12/21 |
+0.1% |
3/26/21 |
434.69 |
435.12 |
Mario Cuomo’s troubles mount as accusers
stream from woodwork and old friends defect.
Cali. Gov. Newsome faces recall due to maskless
donor dinner. Matthew McConaughey
ponders a run for Governor of Texas and orchestrates plague benefit. All right, all right! DHS Sec. Mayorga calls border crisis “not a
crisis.” |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Economics |
3% |
450 |
3/12/21 |
+0.1% |
3/26/21 |
397.53
|
397.93 |
Inflation
surge targets gas and lumber prices (and, to a lesser extent) food. Amazon surpasses WalMart
as Number One clothing retailer.
Disneyland will open on MayDay – but only
for local residents. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Crime |
1% |
150 |
3/12/21 |
+0.4% |
3/26/21 |
257.79 |
256.36 |
Gunmen
shoot up Christmas concert at NYC cathedral, psycho arrested in front of VP
Harris house. Honduran president takes
250K from drug gangs. Drunk and maskless Jet Blue passenger fined $1,400, another
urinates. After learning a third of users cheat, Netflix cracks down on password sharing. |
|
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|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
ACTS of GOD |
(6%) |
(with, in some
cases, a little… or lots of… help from men, and a few women) |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Environment/Weather |
3% |
450 |
3/12/21 |
-0.1% |
3/26/21 |
415.22 |
414.80 |
Tornado
season underway in Texas. Winter hangs
on in Colorado. More people driving
despite expensive gas means that air pollution levels returning to pre-plague
peaks. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Natural/Unnatural
Disaster |
3% |
450 |
3/12/21 |
-0.2% |
3/26/21 |
414.33 |
413.50 |
House
being used as fireworks factory explodes in Oakland, CA, 2 killed. 16 tornadoes sweep through South, feathers
fly as one levels a chicken farm in Whistler, MS. Toddlers being terminated on Pelaton treadmills. |
|
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|
LIFESTYLE/JUSTICE INDEX (15%) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
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|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Science, Tech, Education |
4% |
600 |
3/12/21 |
+0.2% |
3/26/21 |
650.90 |
652.20 |
ISS
spacemen vent toxic ammonia from premises.
Space X launches Falcon 9 rocket to seed the cosmos with “cell
towers”. Schools in Maine stop expelling
delinquents so as to improve racial equality. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Equality (econ./social) |
4% |
600 |
3/12/21 |
nc |
3/26/21 |
567.07 |
567.07 |
More Dems demand Cuomo resignation (see above). Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wi) calls Capitol
rioters “friendly and jovial” people, says not so if they were black – BLM
calls for him to resign. Fat
chance! Pope Francis douses gays with
(cold) holy water, says: “You can’t bless sin.” (But adds that Godly people
shouldn’t murder them.) Jesuits
promise $100M in slavery reparations.
Georgetown cancels prof for saying blacks have lower test scores and
promises to purge any others who defame “vulnerables”. Kentucky, on the other hand, hands out 90
days jail for anybody who insults a cop. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Health |
4% |
600 |
3/12/21 |
nc |
3/26/21 |
507.31 |
507.31 |
Jackson,
MS still has dirty water, weeks after the deep freeze. Prince Philip (99) sent home after a month’s
hospitalization for heart surgery. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Plague |
+0.1% |
- 102.11 |
- 102.21 |
Moderna now advocates vaxxes for kids as young as six years and is testing them
as are young as six months. New Covid infections move off their plateau – up! New spikes in Europe and Brazil. Florida Governor calls for $1,000 more Stim
Cash for first responders. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Freedom and Justice |
3% |
450 |
3/12/21 |
+0.5% |
3/26/21 |
450.20 |
452.45 |
RBG
statue erected in Brooklyn. FBI
rounding up more Oath Keepers and such (see above). Lawyers investigate Google for privacy
violations hereabouts and Meghan Markle for “bullying” over there. FCC slaps robocallers
with $225M fine. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
MISCELLANEOUS and
TRANSIENT INDEX (7%)
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Cultural incidents |
3% |
450 |
3/12/21 |
+0.2% |
3/26/21 |
488.84 |
489.82 |
St.
Paddy’s parades cancelled in Chicago and New York, on in Savannah and
Dallas. Chinese re-release boosts
“Avatar” over “Avengers Endgame” for forever #1 movie. Awards and nominations: Beyonce
sweeps Grammys, women directors nominated for smooth
little gold men. Sharon Osborne’s
“Talk” on hiatus after she says nice words about racist Piers Morgan. NCAA tournaments begin with Stanford (W)
and Gonzaga (M) top seeds and Sister Jean rooting on Loyola. Lebron James buys share of Red Sox. RIP boxer Marvin Hagler,
actor Yapher Kotto. R(etire) in
Peace: Drew Brees. |
|
|
|||||||||
|
Miscellaneous incidents |
4% |
450 |
3/12/21 |
+0.1% |
3/26/21 |
472.58 |
473.05 |
Charitable Americans give away costly gas in NC,
food in Louisville. Uncharitable
cheetah attacks Columbus OH zookeeper.
Survey shows Houston is the best American city. (Pre-freeze, probably.) FEMA to help plague victims with funeral
expenses. |
|
|
|
|||||||||
|
The Don Jones Index for the week
of March 5th, through March 18th, 2021 was DOWN 2.11 points. The Don Jones Index is sponsored by the
Coalition for a New Consensus: retired Congressman and Independent Presidential
candidate Jack “Catfish” Parnell, Chairman; Brian Doohan,
Managing Editor. The CNC denies,
emphatically, allegations that the organization, as well as any of its
officers (including former Congressman Parnell,
environmentalist/America-Firster Austin Tillerman and cosmetics CEO Rayna
Finch) and references to Parnell’s works, “Entropy and Renaissance” and “The
Coming Kill-Off” are fictitious or, at best, mere pawns in the web-serial
“Black Helicopters” – and promise swift, effective legal action against
parties promulgating this and/or other such slanders. Comments, complaints, donations (especially SUPERPAC
donations) always welcome at feedme@generisis.com or: speak@donjonesindex.com |
|||||||||
|
|
BACK
See further indicators at Economist – https://www.economist.com/economic-and
inancialndicators/2019/02/02/economic-data-commodities-and-markets
ATTACHMENT ONE – from JOURNAL
of SOCIAL HISTORY 36.2 (2002) 405-429
By Richard Jensen, Retired Professor of History, University
of Illinois, Chicago
"NO IRISH NEED APPLY"
A
MYTH OF VICTIMIZATION
Abstract
Irish
Catholics in America have a vibrant memory of humiliating job discrimination,
which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming "Help Wanted--No Irish Need
Apply!" No one has ever seen one of these NINA signs because they were
extremely rare or nonexistent. The market for female household workers
occasionally specified religion or nationality. Newspaper ads for women
sometimes did include NINA, but Irish women nevertheless dominated the market
for domestics because they provided a reliable supply of an essential service.
Newspaper ads for men with NINA were exceedingly rare. The slogan was
commonplace in upper class London by 1820; in 1862 in London there was a song,
"No Irish Need Apply," purportedly by a maid looking for work. The
song reached America and was modified to depict a man recently arrived in
America who sees a NINA ad and confronts and beats up the culprit. The song was
an immediate hit, and is the source of the myth. Evidence from the job market
shows no significant discrimination against the Irish--on the contrary,
employers eagerly sought them out. Some Americans feared the Irish because of
their religion, their use of violence, and their threat to democratic
elections. By the Civil War these fears had subsided and there were no efforts
to exclude Irish immigrants. The Irish worked in gangs in job sites they could
control by force. The NINA slogan told them they had to stick together against
the Protestant Enemy, in terms of jobs and politics. The NINA myth justified
physical assaults, and persisted because it aided ethnic solidarity. After 1940
the solidarity faded away, yet NINA remained as a powerful memory.
Introduction
The
Irish American community harbors a deeply held belief that it was the victim of
systematic job discrimination in America, and that the discrimination was done
publicly in highly humiliating fashion through signs that announced "Help
Wanted: No Irish Need Apply." This "NINA" slogan could have been
a metaphor for their troubles—akin to tales that America was a "golden
mountain" or had "streets paved with gold." But the Irish insist
that the signs really existed and prove the existence of widespread
discrimination and prejudice. 1
The
fact that Irish vividly "remember" NINA signs is a curious historical
puzzle. There are no contemporary or retrospective accounts of a specific sign
at a specific location. No particular business enterprise is named as a
culprit. No historian, 2 archivist, or museum
curator has ever located one 3 ; no photograph or
drawing exists. 4 No other ethnic group
complained about being singled out by comparable signs. Only Irish Catholics
have reported seeing the sign in America—no Protestant, no Jew, no non-Irish
Catholic has reported seeing one. This is especially strange since signs were
primarily directed toward these others: the signs said that employment was
available here and invited Yankees, French-Canadians, Italians and any other
non-Irish to come inside and apply. The business literature, both published and
unpublished, never mentions NINA or any policy remotely like it. The newspapers
and magazines are silent. The courts are silent. There is no record of an angry
youth tossing a brick through the window that held such a sign. Have we not
discovered all of the signs of an urban legend?
The
NINA slogan seems to have originated in England, probably after the 1798 Irish
rebellion. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries it was used by English to
indicate their distrust of the Irish, both Catholic and Protestant. For example
the Anglican bishop of London used the phrase to say he did not want any Irish
Anglican ministers in his diocese. By the 1820s it was a cliché in upper and upper
middle class London that some fussy housewives refused to hire Irish and had
even posted NINA signs in their windows. It is possible that handwritten NINA
signs regarding maids did appear in a few American windows, though no one ever
reported one. We DO have actual newspaper want ads for women workers that
specifies Irish are not wanted; they will be discussed below. In the entire
file of the New York Times from 1851 to 1923, there are two NINA ads for
men, one of which is for a teenager. Computer searches of classified help
wanted ads in the daily editions of other online newspapers before 1923 such as
the Booklyn Eagle, the Washington
Post and the Chicago Tribune show that NINA ads for men were
extremely rare--fewer than two per decade. The complete absence of evidence
suggests that probably zero such signs were seen at commercial establishments,
shops, factories, stores, hotels, railroads, union halls, hiring halls,
personnel offices, labor recruiters etc. anywhere in America, at any time. NINA
signs and newspaper ads for apartments to let did exist in England and Northern
Ireland, but historians have not discovered reports of any in the United
States, Canada or Australia. The myth focuses on public NINA signs which
deliberately marginalized and humiliated Irish male job applicants. The
overwhelming evidence is that such signs never existed.
Irish
Americans all have heard about them—and remember elderly relatives
insisting they existed. The myth had "legs": people still believe it,
even scholars. The late Tip O'Neill remembered the signs from his youth in
Boston in 1920s; Senator Ted Kennedy reported the most recent sighting, telling
the Senate during a civil rights debate that he saw them when growing up 5 Historically, [End Page 405] physical NINA signs
could have flourished only in intensely anti-Catholic or anti-Irish eras,
especially the 1830—1870 period. Thus reports of sightings in the 1920s or
1930s suggest the myth had become so deeply rooted in Irish-American folk
mythology that it was impervious to evidence. Perhaps the Irish had constructed
an Evil Other out of stereotypes of outsiders—a demon that could frighten
children like the young Ted Kennedy and adults as well. The challenge for the
historian is to explain the origins and especially the durability of the myth.
Did the demon exist outside the Irish imagination—and if not how did it get
there? This paper will explain how the myth originated and will explore its
long-lasting value to the Irish community as a protective device. It was an
enhancement of political solidarity against a hostile Other; and a way to
insulate a preindustrial non-individualistic group-oriented work culture from
the individualism rampant in American culture.
We
must first ask if the 19th century American environment contained enough fear
or hatred of the Irish community to support the existence of the NINA
sentiment? Did the Irish-American community constitute an "Other"
that was reviled and discriminated against? Did more modern Americans recoil in
disgust at the premodern Irish immigrants? The evidence suggests that all the
criticism of the Irish was connected to one of three factors, their
"premodern" behavior, their Catholicism, and their political
relationship to the ideals of republicanism. If the Irish had enemies they
never tried to restrict the flow of Irish immigration. 6 Much louder was the
complaint that the Irish were responsible for public disorder and poverty, and
above all the fears that the Irish were undermining republicanism. These fears
indeed stimulated efforts to insert long delays into the citizenship process,
as attempted by the Federalists in 1798 and the Know Nothings in the 1850s.
Those efforts failed. As proof of their citizenship the Irish largely supported
the Civil War in its critical first year. 7 Furthermore they took the
lead in the 1860s in bringing into citizenship thousands of new immigrants even
before the technicalities of residence requirements had been met. 8 The Irish claimed to
be better republicans than the Yankees because they had fled into exile
from aristocratic oppression and because they hated the British so much. 9
The
use of systematic violence to achieve Irish communal goals might be considered
a "premodern" trait; it angered many people and three bloody episodes
proved it would not work in conflict with American republicanism. In 1863 the
Irish rioted against the draft in New York City; Lincoln moved in combat troops
who used cannon to regain control of the streets and resume the draft. In 1871
the Irish Catholics demanded the Protestant Irish not be allowed an Orange
parade in New York City, but the Democratic governor sent five armed regiments
of state militia to support the 700 city police protecting the one hundred
marchers. The Catholics attacked anyway, and were shot down by the hundreds. In
the 1860s and 1870s the Molly Maguires used midnight assassination squads to
terrorize the anthracite mining camps in Pennsylvania. The railroad brought in
Pinkertons to infiltrate the Mollys, twenty of whom
were hung. In every instance Irish Catholics law enforcement officials played a
major role in upholding the modern forms of republicanism that emphasized
constitutional political processes rather than clandestine courts or mob
action. In each instance the Irish leaders of the Catholic Church supported
modern republicanism. 10 After the [End Page 406] 1870s the Irish
achieved a modern voice through legitimate means, especially through politics
and law enforcement. Further enhancing their status as full citizens making a
valuable contribution to the community, the Catholics built monumental churches
(which were immediately and widely praised), as well as a massive network of
schools, colleges, hospitals, orphanages and other charitable institutions. 11
Regardless
of their growing status, something intensely real was stimulating the Irish
Catholics and only them. The NINA myth fostered among the Irish a misperception
or gross exaggeration that other Americans were prejudiced against them, and
were deliberately holding back their economic progress. Hence the "chip on
the shoulder" mentality that many observers and historians have noted. 12 As for the question
of anti-Irish prejudice: it existed but it was basically anti-Catholic or
anti-anti-republican. There have been no documented instances of job
discrimination against Irish men. 13 Was there any
systematic job discrimination against the Catholic Irish in the US: possibly,
but direct evidence is very hard to come by. On the other hand Protestant
businessmen vigorously raised money for mills, factories and construction
projects they knew would mostly employ Irishmen, 14 while the great
majority of middle class Protestant households in the major cities employed
Irish maids. The earliest unquestioned usage found comes from the English
novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, using the phrase in Pendennis, a
novel of growing up in London in the 1820s. The context suggests that the NINA
slogan was a slightly ridiculous and old-fashioned bit of prejudice 15 Other ethnic groups
also had a strong recollection of discrimination but never reported such signs.
The Protestant (Orange) Irish do not recall "NINA signs. 16 Were the signs used
only against Irish targets?
An
electronic search of all the text of the several hundred thousand pages of
magazines and books online at Library of Congress, Cornell University Library
and the University of Michigan Library, and complete runs of The New York
Times and The Nation, turned up about a dozen uses of NINA. 17 The complete text of
New York Times is searchable from 1851 through 1923. Although the
optical character recognition is not perfect (some microfilmed pages are
blurry), it captures most of the text. A search of seventy years of the daily
paper revealed only two classified ads with NINA—one posted by a Brooklyn
harness shop that wanted a boy who could write, and a request for a couple to
take charge of a cottage upstate. 18 Unlike the
employment market for men, the market for female servants included a small
submarket in which religion or ethnicity was specified. Thus
newspaper ads for nannies, cooks, maids, nurses and companions sometimes
specified "Protestant Only." "I can't imagine, Carrie, why you
object so strongly to a Roman Catholic," protests the husband in an 1854
short story. "Why, Edward, they are so ignorant, filthy, and
superstitious. It would never do to trust the children alone with one, for
there is no telling what they might learn." 19 Intimate household relationships
were delicate matters for some families, but the great majority of maids in
large cities were Irish women, so the submarket that refused to hire them could
not have been more than ten percent. 20
The
first American usage was a printed song-sheet, dated Philadelphia, 1862. It is
a reprint of a British song sheet. The narrator is a maid looking for a job in
London who reads an ad in London Times and sings about Irish pride. The
last verse was clearly added in America. 21 (See Attachment One (b)
NO
IRISH NEED APPLY: Written by JOHN F.
POOLE and sung, with immense success, by the great Comic-Vocalist of the age,
TONY PASTOR (See
Attachment One (a)
No Irish Need
Apply
by John F. Poole, 1862, sung by Brendan Nolan.
Hear it online at http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/no-irish.htm
See the lyrics that
version popularized by one Kathleen
O’Neill, written and performed in response to an advertisement for a domestic
servant in the London Times of February, 1862 as Attachment One (B)
An American female
version, popularized by famous folksingers: Attachment One (C)
After
a few rounds of singing and drinking, you could easily read the sign. Note that
in the New York City version, Poole changed the London maid to a newly arrived
country boy; the maid lamented, but the lad fights back vigorously. This is a
song to encourage bullies. The lad starts his job search by scanning the want
ads in the city's leading Republican newspaper, the New York Tribune,
which seems an unlikely resource for a new arrival from a remote village. In
the draft riots of 1863 the Tribune was a special target of Irish mobs. 24
Did
the Irish feel discriminated against before the NINA slogan became current?
First note the last stanza of the 1862 London song shown above. If the NINA
slogan had been current in America surely the songwriter would not have
included the line "you will not deny, A place in your hearts for Kathleen,
where 'All Irish may apply."' The second evidence comes from the
Confederacy in 1863. The Rebels hailed and incited Irish unrest in the North. A
major editorial in the Richmond Enquirer May 29, 1863 enumerated
multiple reasons for the Irish to hate the Yankees, such as convent attacks and
church burnings. The catalog of grievances focused on anti-Catholicism and did
not mention job discrimination or NINA—probably because the Poole song had not
yet reached Richmond. 25
We
can now summarize our explanation of where the NINA myth comes from. There
probably were occasional handwritten signs in London homes in the 1820s seeking
non-Irish maids. The slogan became a cliché in Britain for hostility to the
Irish. Tens of thousands of middle-class English migrated to America, and it is
possible a few used the same sort of handwritten sign in the 1830—1850 period;
the old British cliché was probably known in America. There is no evidence for
any printed NINA signs in America or for their display at places of employment
other than private homes. Poole's song of 1862 popularized the phrase. The key
change that made the second version such a hit was gender reversal—the London
song lamented the maid's troubles, the New York City version called for
Irishmen to assert their manhood in defiance of a cowardly [End Page 409] enemy. By 1863 every
Irishman knew and resented the slogan—and it perhaps helped foment the draft
riots that year. The stimulus was not visual but rather aural—a song about NINA
sung only by the Irish. There was indeed such a song, and it became quite
popular during the 1863 crisis of the draft riots of the Civil War; it still
circulates. The song was a war cry that encouraged Irish gangs to beat up
suspicious strangers and it warned Irish jobseekers against breaking with the group
and going to work for The Enemy.
Recollection
is a group phenomenon—especially in a community so well known for its
conviviality and story telling. Congressman Tip O'Neill of Massachusetts grew
up hearing horror stories of how the terrible Protestants burned down a nearby
convent school run by the Catholic Ursuline nuns. When O'Neill went to college
he was astonished to read in a history book that it happened a century earlier
in 1834—he had assumed it was a recent event. 26 It is most unlikely
that businesses in Boston routinely displayed NINA signs in the 20th century
and yet left no trace whatever in the records. People who "remember"
the signs in the 20th century only remember the urban legend. 27
Political
mobilization against the Irish was never successful. The most important effort
was the Know Nothing movement, which swept the Northeast and South in 1854—56.
It was a poorly led grass roots movement that generated no significant or
permanent anti-Catholic or anti-Irish legislation. There was no known
employment discrimination. Know-Nothing employers, for example, were never
accused of firing their Irish employees. The Know-Nothings were primarily a
purification movement. They believed that all politicians were corrupt, that
the Democrats were the worst, and that Irish support for Democrats, plus their
growing numbers, made them highly suspect. The party lasted longer in the South
where it was the anti-Democratic party but only slightly anti-Catholic. Ray Billington concludes "The almost complete failure of
the Know-Nothings to carry into effect the doctrines of anti-Catholic and
anti-foreign propagandists contributed to the rapid decline of this nativistic party." 28 Likewise there were
few visible effects of the APA movement of the 1890s, or the KKK in the 1920s.
The conclusion is that, despite occasional temptations, Americans considered
their "equal rights" republicanism to be incompatible with systematic
economic or political discrimination against the Irish. Given the overlap of
anti-Catholic and anti-Irish prejudice how can historians tell the difference?
In both cases, the anti's would attack on political grounds—elections,
candidates, appointments, bosses, machines, election frauds, registration laws,
civil service reform. 29 Anti-Catholics would
focus on certain issues, especially saints and Mariolatry, parochial schools,
sacramentalism, convents, missions to the Indians, and Bible-reading in
schools. 30 They also were
intensely alert to activities of the Papacy, and the political power of priests
and bishops. The Vatican certainly controlled ecclesiastical affairs, but it
carefully avoided American political issues. 31 By 1865 politicians
realized that bishops and priests largely avoided even informal electoral
endorsements of any kind—they were far less active than pietistic Protestants, as
the annals of temperance and anti-slavery demonstrate. 32
Were
Irish men the victims of job discrimination in reality? That was possible
without any signs of course. The evidence is exceedingly thin—the Irish started
poor and worked their way up slowly, all along believing that the Protestant
world [End Page 410] hated them
and blocked their every move. Contemporary observers commented that the
Protestant Irish were doing well in America, but that preindustrial work habits
were blocking progress for the Catholics. As Thernstrom
has shown, Irish had one of the lowest rates of upward mobility. 33
A
likely explanation is the strong group ethos that encouraged Irish to always
work together, and resist individualistic attempts to break away. (The slogan
tells them that trying to make it in the Yankee world is impossible anyway.) No
other European Catholic group seems to have shared that chip on the shoulder
(not the Germans or Italians—not even anti-Irish groups such as the French
Canadians). Historians agree the political hostility against the Irish
Democrats in the Civil War Era was real enough. Critics complained that the
Irish had poor morals and a weak work ethic (and hence low status). Much more
serious was the allegation that they were politically corrupt and
priest-controlled, and therefore violated true republican values. The Irish
could shoot back that The Enemy did not practice equal rights. The Irish
community used the allegation of job discrimination on the part of the Other to
reinforce political solidarity among (male) voters, which in any case was very
high indeed—probably he highest for any political group in American history
before the 1960s.
It
is easy to identify job discrimination in the 19th century against blacks and
Chinese (the latter indeed led by the Irish in California). Discrimination
against the Irish was invisible to the non-Irish. 34 That is perhaps why
this urban legend did not die out naturally. Benign Protestant factory owners
could not soften the tensions by removing signs that never existed. When
Protestants denied NINA that perhaps just reinforced the Irish sense of
conspiracy against them (even today people who deny NINA are suspected of
prejudice.) The slogan served both to explain their poverty 35 and to identify a
villain against whom it was all right retaliate on sight—a donnybrook for the
foes of St. Patrick. 36 The myth justified
bullying strangers and helped sour relations between Irish and everyone else. 37 The sense of
victimhood perhaps blinded some Irish to the discrimination suffered by other
groups. 38
Perhaps
the slogan has reemerged in recent years as the Irish feel the political need
to be bona-fide victims. The Potato Famine of course had all the ingredients to
make them victims, 39 but it will not do
to have the villains overseas: there must be American villains. 40 If we conclude the
Irish were systematically deluding themselves over a period of a century or
more about their primary symbol of job discrimination, the next question to ask
is, was it all imaginary or was there a real basis for the grievances
about the economic hostility of Protestants to Irish aspirations? Historians
need to be critical. Because a group truly believes it was a victim, does not
make it so. On the other hand, the Irish chip-on-the-shoulder attitude may have
generated a high level of group solidarity in both politics and the job market,
which could have had a significant impact on the on the occupational experience
of the Irish.
How
successful were the Irish in the job market? Observers noticed that the Irish
tended to work in equalitarian collective situations, such as labor gangs,
longshoremen crews, construction crews, or with strong labor unions, usually in
units dominated numerically and politically by Irishmen. Wage rates were often
heavily influenced by collective activity, such as boycotts, strikes and [End Page 411] union contracts, or by
the political pressures that could be exerted on behalf of employees in
government jobs, or working for contractors holding city contracts, or for
regulated utilities such as street railways and subways.
The
first arrivals formed all-Irish work crews for construction companies in the
building of railroads in the 1830s. 41 Sometimes the Irish
managed to monopolize a specific labor market sector—they comprised 95% of the
canal workers by 1840, and 95% of the New York City longshoremen by 1900. 42 The monopoly of
course facilitated group action, and once a crossing point was reached it was
possible to exclude virtually all Others. Solidarity (with or without formal
union organization) made for excellent bargaining power, augmented as needed by
the use of intimidation, strikes, arson, terrorism and destructive violence to
settle any grievances they may have had with their employers, not to mention
internal feuds linked to historic feuds back in Ireland. Direct evidence that
employers did not want Irish workers is absent. By the early 20th century major
corporations had personnel offices and written procedures. If the Irish had a
reputation for being unsatisfactory, the personnel managers never commented
upon it. Job discrimination against blacks and Asians continued, and was quite
visible in the corporate records and the media. Discrimination against newer
immigrant groups can be identified as late as 1941 (when it was banned for
government contract holders). No trace of anti-Irish hostility has turned up in
the corporate records of the literature of personnel management. Can we prove
there was no job discrimination against the Irish? Zero is too hard to
"prove"—though no historian has found any evidence of any actual
discrimination by any business or factory. 43 The main
"evidence" referenced in the historical literature is three fold:
First,
the NINA myth was so convincing that the Irish saw no need to investigate
further, or to document the discrimination, or to set up a protective
organization. (They of course organized extensively, in both Ireland and
America, to protest maltreatment back in Ireland.) 44
Second,
historians point to contemporaries who commented unfavorably on the Irish,
generalizing from a handful of cases to create a stereotype of the dominant
views of all of American society. Now indeed the 19th century literature is
filled with eyewitness and statistical descriptions of Irish drunkenness,
crime, violence, poverty, extortion, insanity, ignorance, political corruption
and lawless behavior. The reports come from many cities, from Catholics and
non-Catholics, social scientists and journalists, Irish and non-Irish. 45 The question is not
whether the Irish were admired. (They were not.) The argument that the dominant
popular stereotypes of the Irish were especially nasty does not hold up under
careful examination. There is no evidence that more than one in a thousand
Americans considered the Irish as racially inferior, non-white or ape-like. 46
Third,
as noted, historians point to statistical evidence that the Irish had lower rates
of upward social mobility than average, in the 1850—1880 period. The Irish must
have been held back by something: but was it internal or external, or just
random historical luck? Given the 20th century success story of the Irish—they
are among the wealthiest groups today—the disability or discrimination ended
somewhere along the line. [End Page
412]
Many
different models can explain the Irish condition: First there was lack of
financial and human capital. The Irish who arrived in the 1840s and 1850s came
with few useful industrial or agricultural skills, while the British and
Germans who came at the same time brought cash and much more human capital.
Thus the distribution of human capital can be said to have allocated Irish to
unskilled jobs, and other immigrants to more skilled opportunities. After 1890
the Irish had acquired some schooling and skills, while the current newcomers
were primarily unskilled peasants from southern and eastern Europe. The latter
groups moved into the unskilled jobs while the Irish moved up. In the coal
fields, with very few job opportunities above the level of unskilled miner, the
arrival of new competitors led to significant tensions and violence. In some
cases the new competitors were more skilled than the Irish; thus the Swedes who
came to Worcester in the late 19th century displaced the less skilled Irish in
the metals factories.
The
Irish did invest heavily in human capital, through their system of parochial
schools and colleges. The impact of such investment was necessarily long-term,
and seems to have become visible by 1900. To a considerable extent the goal was
preservation and protection of traditional religious values, and the creation
of a social system that would discourage intermarriage. However the schools did
follow a standardized curriculum that inculcated literacy and learning skills.
Negative investment in human capital involved internal self-defeating factors,
such as heavy alcoholism, weak motivation, poor work habits, and disorganized
family life. This was widely commented on regarding 19th century Irish, but not
much reported in 20th century. 47 Rather few Irish
became entrepreneurs; the community did not generate pools of financial capital.
Perhaps more important was a low communal value on the individualistic
businessman. Construction contracting seems to have been the only business in
which they had any significant ownership role, and that depended on control of
labor and access to government contracts rather than financial capital. The
Irish did operate many saloons, but they were financed by the German brewers
and generated little new capital for the community. 48
Comparing
rates of social mobility assumes that the Irish were seeking that goal to the
same extent as the Yankees. Perhaps their ambitions looked more toward
non-individualistic goals (such as building impressive churches), or non-career
family advancement strategies focused on political leadership or home
ownership, or (in the case of nuns and priests) honorific careers that involved
a vow of poverty. A strikingly high proportion of talented Irish youth went
into very low paying, very high prestige religious careers. The community more
often honored priests and bishops than business entrepreneurs.
Social
mobility depends upon strong family structures. Weak ties in a group would
indicate fathers and uncles did not assist their kin. The Irish had a reputation
for the opposite traits (clannishness and nepotism), but also had reportedly
high rates of internal family discord. 49 On the other hand
kinship ties could be too strong and impede upward mobility. Parents
might demand more child labor, valuing family collective goals over the child's
individualistic career potential. Did the Irish tend to remove their children
from schools to put them to work early? This would produce ready funds for home
ownership, but less long-run human capital. Census data indicate high rates of
school attendance, at least to [End
Page 413] age 14. 50 Special family
needs, especially sending funds to Ireland for subsistence and bringing over
more relatives, might have drained the capital needed for upward mobility
through small business. This indeed was a major factor among the Irish down to
the 1880s.
Perhaps
the Irish ethic placed more stress on equality and communal sharing of wealth.
Different customs can have this effect—for example extensive charity (tithing),
or heavy gambling that redistributes earned income in random fashion. Irish
levels of charity were moderately high (especially donations to the church);
observers did not comment on heavy gambling. In some cultures, when a man gets
money he must share it widely with relatives, thus diffusing it and slowing
accumulation in entrepreneurial hands. Observers did not report this trait as
especially characteristic of the Irish community. In the context of social
mobility, "clannishness" can refer to a collective ethic whereby the
goal is for the group as a whole moves ahead, with individual initiative
discouraged. 51 Bad historical luck
could lock a group into the wrong skills or geography, causing retarded growth
and structural unemployment. A group could cling too long to old-fashioned
skills that were dead-end or slow growth, or be attached to businesses or
geographical areas that grew very slowly. This may have happened to the
Germans, and certainly did happen in the 20th century to coal miners. The Irish
however, were noted for their willingness to change jobs, move to new
neighborhoods or cities, and abandon trades. However, the quest for political
patronage probably locked Irish men into overpaid but dead-end blue-collar
jobs, and channeled talent into public administration rather than private
entrepreneurship. 52
Perhaps
businessmen figured Irish were unacceptable and decided not to hire any? There
is little evidence for, and vast evidence against, this hypothesis. Beginning
with Samuel Slater, New England entrepreneurs built hundreds of textile mills
in the ante-bellum period. Although the Yankee owners were at first eager to
use Yankee workers like themselves (the famous "Lowell Girls") they
soon switched to Irish and French Canadian Catholics. Pleased with this new
labor supply, they built more mills, often in small towns that had previously
been entirely Yankee. They counted on a steady inflow of Catholic workers,
borrowing millions of dollars to create these jobs. Once the Irish did have
mill jobs they were four times more likely to put their children to work in the
same mill than Yankees—rather odd behavior if they were mistreated so badly. 53 Perhaps foremen and
superintendents hired Irish for low level jobs but deliberately held them back
or promote them very slowly? Major research projects by Tamara Hareven (dealing with Amoskeag,
the largest textile mill in the world), and Walter Licht, dealing with internal
promotion system in railroads, finds no evidence of this. Business historians
and biographers have turned up no instances of systematic anti-Irish
discrimination by any employer in the US, at any time. 54
NINA
originated with women domestic servants, and we need to rethink their position.
No one has suggested the Irish women used violence, boycotts or threats to
achieve dominance in this industry. "Bridget" had a reputation for
mediocre quality work, but this liability was offset by communal assets that
made them attractive employees. They spoke English. Along with African
Americans and Swedes, they had a strong commitment to service jobs and were
available in large numbers. Because of late marriages and spinsterhood, they
spent years in service, accumulating experience and maturity that made them
more attractive [End Page 414]
than inexperienced teenagers. Off the job the Irish had a well-developed
support network that provided friendship, entertainment, advice, and
connections to find new employers. These support networks established informal
job standards regarding working hours, housing, food, perquisites and pay
scales. The standards were enforced by the maid immediately quitting if the
employer violated the standards, with knowledge her friends would be supportive
and would help her find a new position. Despite scare stories in the
anti-Catholic pamphlets, the Irish servants did not proselytize or interfere
with household religious activity. Given the dominance of Irish women among
maids in the large cities, and the constant turnover of servants, we can
estimate that the large majority (perhaps 80 or 90 percent) of middle class
families, regardless of their own ethnic or religious affiliations, routinely
hired Irish women. 55
The
economic theory of discrimination focuses on the tastes of the employers, coworkers
and customers, and the costs to each (in terms of profits, wages and prices) of
having a distaste for a category of workers. If there is underemployment of a
target group in a competitive market, then some entrepreneur can make a bigger
profit by seeking out and hiring that group. Coworkers who have a strong
distaste for working alongside the target can react by boycotting that
employer, forcing up his other costs. By looking at wage rates in workplaces
with different mixes of groups, economists hope to estimate the
"distaste" factor: that is, workers will have to be paid more to work
alongside a target group (and will accept lower pay if there are no coworkers
from that group.) Estimates of the distaste factor come from a historical study
dealing with Michigan furniture workers in the 1890s. It found that in general
all groups have a preference for their own kind as
coworkers (and were willing to take a 5—10% wage cut for the privilege of
working alongside their own kind.) People who were willing to work with
outsiders were paid more. "Distaste" for Irish measured out about the
same as for other groups. Overall discrimination was small—combined with
language skills and the myriad of other unmeasured factors it was less than 5%
of the average wage. Doubtless there was a tendency for owners of small shops
to hire only their own ethnicity. While this would have the effect of excluding
Irish from certain jobs, it cannot be called "anti-Irish" in
motivation. Probably the Irish practiced closed hiring as much as or more than
any group. 56
We
know from the experience of African Americans and Chinese that the most
powerful form of job discrimination came from workers who vowed to boycott or
shut down any employer who hired the excluded class. Employers who were
personally willing to hire Chinese or blacks were forced to submit to the
threats. 57 There were no
reports of mobs attacking Irish employment, even during sporadic episodes of
attacks on Catholic church facilities in 1830s and 1840s. No one has reported
claims that co-workers refused to work alongside Irish; this powerful form of
discrimination probably did not affect the Irish in significant ways. On the
other hand the Irish repeatedly attacked employers who hired African Americans
or Chinese. If a group is systematically discriminated against in a major way
by most employers, it will be segregated into a small niche. This segregation
should be visible in the census statistics of occupation, when comparing it to
other groups, especially to British Protestant immigrants who were not
reputedly subject to discrimination. The most useful analysis of any large city
for the 19th century is the "Philadelphia Social History Project" [End Page 415] which computerized
hundreds of thousands of census entries. The Irish comprised 15—30% of the
labor force there. How segregated were they, and how did the segregation
decline over time? Table 1 shows an index of
how different the Irish and others were from native Americans. (Philadelphia
was one of the few cities with a large native American working class.) The data
show the Irish were about in the same position as German immigrants, and much
less liable to being boxed into a job niche than blacks, Italians, Poles or
Jews. The Irish had about the same score in 1930 as the British, which is
consistent with very little discrimination by employers. The index is about the
same for Irish of the first and second generation (1880) and later Irish (1930)
indicating that the level of anti-Irish discrimination did not change much over
time; it can be seen as equally low in both 1880 and 1930. [End Page 416]
Assuming
the Irish relied somewhat less on individual skills or market forces, and more
on collective action and political prowess for their job security and pay
rates, we must ask how successful were they? By the early twentieth century
their pay scales were probably at least average. Peter Baskerville has
discovered the Irish Catholics in urban Canada in 1901 were about average in
terms of both family incomes and standards of living.
Table
1: 1880 Index of Job Segregation , Philadelphia
(100=max)58
|
Old Stock |
0 |
|
Black |
53 |
|
Irish Immigrants |
35 |
|
Sons of Irish immigrants |
34 |
|
German Immigrants |
37 |
|
Sons of German immigrants |
31 |
1930 Index of Job
Segregation, Philadelphia
|
White, US born parents |
0 |
|
Black |
62 |
|
Italian |
60 |
|
Jewish |
57 |
|
Polish |
55 |
|
German |
33 |
|
Irish |
29 |
|
British |
25 |
My analysis of
Iowa data in 1915 in Table 2 shows the Irish Catholics had slightly above
average incomes, but that additional years of schooling helped them less than
other groups. This suggests that group solidarity was a powerful force for
uplift, but it improved the status of the group as a unit rather than as an
average of separate individuals. Autobiographies of overly ambitious youth
relate how they were harassed by their classmates and warned against the sin of
pride by the priest and nuns. 60
Table
2: Lifetime Earnings and return to additional schooling Iowa
Non-Farm
Men, 1915
Group N $Lifetime Return ALL
909 100
10.6%
OLD
STOCK 499 97
9.7%
No Religion 243 93
9.1%
Methodist 164 95
9.7%
ETHNICS 410 100
10.6%
German 147 109
12.2%
Lutheran 34 95
9.5%
Catholic 46 106
13.9%
Scandinavian 87 103
12.2%
British 58 114
14.7%
Irish Catholic 57 104
8.4%
Pete Hamill explained how the collective spirit affected
him, growing up in Brooklyn in 1940s: 61
This was part of the most sickening
aspect of Irish-American life in those days: the assumption that if you rose
above an acceptable level of mediocrity, you were guilty of the sin of pride.
You were to accept your place and stay in it for the rest of your life; the
true rewards would be given to you in heaven, after you were dead. There was
ferocious pressure to conform, to avoid breaking out of the pack; self-denial
was the supreme virtue...it was arrogant, a sin of pride, to conceive of a life
beyond the certainties, rhythms, and traditions of the Neighborhood. Sometimes
the attitude was expressed directlyMore often, it was
implied. But the Neighborhood view of the world had fierce power. Who did I
think I was?
When the Irish grumbled about "No
Irish Need Apply," they perhaps were really warning each other against
taking jobs which were controlled by the Other and immune from the political
pressures that group solidarity could exert. There was method to the myth,
which is why it persisted so long. Individual upward mobility was a priority
for individualistic strivers imbued with the "Protestant Ethic."
There is no reason to assume it motivated the Irish. Their individual upward
mobility rates were modest. 62
If the Irish turned both politics and the job market
into a group struggle, then we might expect different outcomes when comparing
the three situations where the Irish were too weak to make much difference,
where they had the "right amount" of leverage, and where they were too
numerous. Statistical studies of social mobility in the 1850—1920 era suggest
that the Irish did best in the Midwest (where they had just the right amount of
strength), and not nearly as well in the Northeast, where they were too
numerous to be advantaged by zero-sum power maneuvering. 63 Why the difference?
Both Midwest and Northeast regions were doing very well, industrializing
rapidly at that time. Let's examine the model of collective solidarity of the
Irish in the labor market. It was a technique to facilitate the group as a
whole moving rather than individuals. It had zero-sum properties (what one
group gained, other groups lost). Their technique would work much better when
the Irish were 10—30% of the population, and not nearly as well when they were
in a majority. (If their numbers went above 50%, then it was dysfunctional, for
most gains would come at the expense of other Irish.) The Irish did have a
numerical dominance in Boston and other northeastern [End Page 417] cities, such as Troy. There were fewer rivals to
elbow out of the way, and their technique was therefore much less successful
there. The Irish approach discouraged entrepreneurship (which is positive-sum).
It encouraged government work, and jobs (such as canal or railroad
construction, longshoremen, transit) where government contacts or franchises
were involved (thus allowing them to use their political muscle). In order to
expand their preferred job base the Irish supported expansion of government
spending and government regulation—what John Buenker
has called "urban liberalism." Successors to the Al Smith tradition
of urban liberalism, such as Speakers John McCormack and Tip O'Neill and
Senator Ted Kennedy could well boast of their achievements in expanding
government (or preventing its contraction) during and after the New Deal era. 64
After 1860 fears that the Irish were a threat to
republicanism rapidly disappeared. The most decisive event came in spring 1861;
when the War broke out the Irish rallied to the American flag, and joined the
army. Although they strenuously opposed the draft and emancipation, they never
supported the Confederacy (unlike some old-line Democratic leaders who took
Confederate money.) Irish veterans were welcomed into the GAR, whose
camaraderie validated their republicanism. The worst forms of poverty and
destitution eventually disappeared, and a solid class of property owners and
civil servants emerged to anchor the Irish in their communities. The Catholic
Church, controlled by the Irish, vigorously supported law and order, and
effectively suppressed the premodern urge to use violence for political goals.
The Pope never dictated politics, and the bishops and priests never became
active in domestic politics. They focused on building schools, colleges,
hospitals, asylums and the stunningly beautiful churches. Many
critics—throughout the 19th and 20th centuries—were
alarmed that parochial schools threatened the public school system, which they
insisted was the only guarantee of republican values. The Catholics vehemently
rejected this allegation, and over the years gained surprising allies, as other
denominations started their own parochial schools, including the German
Lutherans, Dutch Calvinists, Orthodox Jews, and evangelicals. Lingering
anti-Catholicism reappeared in debates over prohibition, and especially over
the nomination of Catholics to the presidency, but it is notable that
politicians were never attacked for their Irish heritage. 65
Irish collective solidarity seems to have broken down
after World War Two, as New Deal work relief ended, the big city machines
collapsed, unions entered an era of slow, steady decline, and the Catholic
school system generated high school and college graduates well-equipped to make
their way in the white collar world entirely as individuals, with minimal need
for group support. By the 1960s the Irish had moved from the bottom to near the
top of the ladder, with an economic status that surpassed their old Yankee
antagonists. With the election of John Kennedy in 1960, Irish political
solidarity climaxed. The Last Hurrah came in 1964, when Irish Catholics voted
78 percent for Lyndon Johnson. They abandoned Humphrey in 1968; since then they
have split evenly between the parties and no longer comprise a bloc vote. 66
Did the Irish come to America in the face of intense
hostility, symbolized by the omnipresent sign, "Help Wanted: No Irish Need
Apply"? The hard evidence suggests that on the whole Irish immigrants as
employees were welcomed by employers; their entry was never restricted; and
no one proposed they be excluded [End
Page 418] like the Chinese, let alone sent back. Instead of firing
Catholics to make way for Protestant workers, most employers did exactly the
opposite. That is, the dominant culture actively moved to create new jobs
specifically for the unskilled Irish workers. As soon as the Irish acquired
education and skills they moved up the social status ladder, reaching near the
top by the 1960s. For a while political questions were raised about the
devotion of the Irish to America's republican ideals, but these doubts largely
faded away during the 1860s. The Irish rarely if ever had to confront an
avowedly "anti-Irish" politician of national or statewide
reputation—itself powerful evidence for the absence of deep-rooted anti-Irish
sentiment. By the late 19th century the Irish were fully accepted politically
and economically. However, reality and perception diverged. After the song
appeared in 1862 the Irish themselves "saw" the NINA signs
everywhere, seeing in them ugly discrimination that was forcing them downward
into the worst jobs. It was deliberate humiliation by arrogant Protestant
Yankees. The myth was undeniable—anyone inside the group would be called a
traitor for suggesting that internal weaknesses inside the Irish community
caused its problems; anyone outside would be called a prejudiced bigot. 67 But what if there
were no such signs? The NINA slogan was in the mind's eye, conjured by an
enormously popular song from 1862. Job discrimination by the Other was too well
known to the Irish to need evidence beyond NINA, or the "recent"
burning of the Ursuline convent. Historians engaging in cultural studies must
beware the trap that privileges evidence derived from the protests of self-proclaimed
victims. Practically every ethnoreligious group in America cherishes its
martyrs and warns its members that outsiders "discriminate" against
them, or would if they had the opportunity. The NINA slogan had the effect of
reinforcing political, social and religious solidarity. It had a major economic
role as well, strengthening the politicized work-gang outlook of Irish workers
who had to stick together at all times. It warned the Irish against looking for
jobs outside their community, and it explained away their low individual rates
of upward social mobility. The slogan identified an enemy to blame, and
justified bully behavior on the city streets. NINA signs never faded away, even
as the Irish prospered and discrimination vanished—they remained a myth about origins
that could not be abandoned.
See footnotes and illustrations here.
ATTACHMENT ONE (a) – from the Poole version
NO IRISH NEED APPLY.
Written by JOHN F. POOLE,
and sung, with immense
success, by the great Comic-Vocalist of the age,
TONY PASTOR.
I'm a dacint
boy, just landed from the town of Ballyfad;
I want a situation: yis, I want it mighty bad.
I saw a place advartised. It's the thing for me, says
I;
But the dirty spalpeen ended with: No Irish need
apply.
Whoo! says I; but that's an insult—though to get the
place I'll try.
So, I wint to see the blaggar
with: No Irish need apply.
I started off to find the house, I got it mighty soon;
There I found the ould chap saited:
he was reading the TRIBUNE.
I tould him what I came for, whin
he in a rage did fly:
No! says he, you are a Paddy, and no Irish need apply!
Thin I felt my dandher rising, and I'd like to black
his eye—
To tell an Irish Gintleman: No Irish need apply!
I couldn't stand it longer: so, a hoult of him I
took,
And I gave him such a welting as he'd get at Donnybrook.
He hollered: Millia murther!
and to get away did try,
And swore he'd never write again: No Irish need apply.
He made a big apology; I bid him thin good-bye,
Saying: Whin next you want a bating, add: No Irish
need apply! [End Page 408]
Sure, I've heard that in America it always is the plan
That an Irishman is just as good as any other man;
A home and hospitality they never will deny
The stranger here, or ever say: No Irish need apply.
But some black sheep are in the flock: a dirty lot, say I;
A dacint man will never write: No Irish need apply!
Sure, Paddy's heart is in his hand, as all the world does know,
His praties and his whiskey he will share with friend
or foe;
His door is always open to the stranger passing by;
He never thinks of saying: None but Irish may apply.
And, in Columbia's history, his name is ranking high;
Thin, the Divil take the knaves that write: No Irish
need apply!
Ould Ireland on the battle-field a lasting fame has
made;
We all have heard of Meagher's men, and Corcoran's brigade. 23
Though fools may flout and bigots rave, and fanatics may cry,
Yet when they want good fighting-men, the Irish may apply,
And when for freedom and the right they raise the battle-cry,
Then the Rebel ranks begin to think: No Irish need apply
ATTACHMENT ONE (b) – from the London Times (ladies’
version)
NO IRISH NEED APPLY
I’m a simple Irish girl, and I’m looking for a place,
I’ve felt the grip of poverty, but sure that’s no
disgrace.
‘Twill be long before I get one, tho’
indeed it’s hard I try,
For I reach in each advertisement, “No Irish need
apply.”
Alas for my poor country, which I never will deny,
How they insult us when they write: “No Irish need
apply.”
Now I wonder what’s the reason that the
fortune-favored few,
Should throw on us that dirty slur, and treat us as
they do.
Sure they all know paddy’s heart is warm, and willing
is his hand,
They rule us, yet we may not earn a living in their
land,
O, to their sister country, how can they bread deny,
By sending forth this cruel line, “No Irish need
apply.”
Sure I did not do the like when they anchor’d on our shore,
For Irish hospitality theres
no need to deplore,
And every door is open to the weary stranger still,
Pat would give his last Potato, yes, and give it with
a will,
Nor whisky, which he prizes so, in any case deny,
Then wherefore do they always write, “No Irish need
apply.”
Now what have they against us, sure the world knows
Paddy’s brave,
For he’s helped to fight their battles, both on land
and on the wave,
At the storming of Sebastopol, and beneath an Indian
sky,
Pat raised his head, for their General said, “All
Irish might apply.”
Do you mind Lieutenant Massy, when he raised the
battle cry!
Then are they not ashamed to write, “No Irish need
apply.”
Them they can’t deny us genius, with “Sheridan” – “Tom
Moore”
The late lamented “Catharine Hays,” and Sam Lover to
the fore –
Altho they may laugh at our “Bulls” they cannot but admit,
That Pat is always sensible and has a ready wit –
And if they ask for Beauty, what can beat their nice
black eye?
Then is it not a shame to write, “No Irish need
apply.”
Och! The Frnch must loudly crow
to find we’re slighted thus,
For they can ne’er forget the blow that was dealt by
one of us,
If the Iron Duke of Wellington had never drawn his
sword,
They might have had “Napoleon Sauce” with their beef,
upon my word,
They think now of their hero, dead; his name will
never die,
Where will they get another such if “No Irish need
apply.”
Ah! but now I’m in the land of the “Glorious and Free”
And proud I am to own it, a country dear to me.
I can see by your kind faces, that you will not deny
A place in your hearts for Kathleen, where “All Irish
may apply.”
Then long may the Union flourish, and ever may it be,
A pattern to the world, and the “Home of Liberty!”
ATTACHMENT ONE (c) – the American version
No Irish need apply
Sure I was out the other night on such a wild goose
chase
I saw an advertisement about a decent place
It is myself
the place will suit, but I cannot tell you why,
The lady said
did you not read, no Irish need apply!
For tis my
country you dislike, I’m sure I don’t know why,
Faith tis all
blarney when you say, no Irish need apply
Just take a trip to Ireland, they will treat you like a man,
The whiskey they will put into you as long as
you can stand,
With heart and hand their welcome you, tell me
the reason why,
Our ears offend with that dirty end, no Irish
need apply,
So just look out and mind yourself, for I say,
by the by,
You all you lose your senses when you say, no
Irish need apply
You talk about your soldiers, now tell me if
you can,
If the bravest of them all are not Irish men,
In Russia, and in China too, and India by the
by,
You never say when you want men, no Irish need
apply,
For if you want good soldiers, listen to me by
the by,
Would you ever have a Wellington if no Irish
need apply.
Of generals and statesmen, old Ireland can
boast,
her poets too, tis well known to you, are
universal toasts,
There’s Campbell, Moore and Lover, and
Goldsmith by the by,
You would not get their equals if no Irish
need apply,
You talk about your country, but you know tis all my eye,
For the best feather in your cap is when Irish
do apply.
When the Queen was in Ireland, enjoying the
jaunting car,
the true hearted boys they shouted out “ Cead mile failte”
To defend their majesty they would fight and
die,
And
to prove to all the world at Irish need apply
So to conclude, toss off your glass, I see the
reason why
You should put in your advertisements no Irish
need apply
This
song was originally written as a response to the widely held belief that Irish
men were banned from working on the great exhibition of 1851. It was popular in
the early halls until the 1870s. Mrs Phillips wrote
the words to the Thomas Hudson tune, The spider and the fly.
Reflecting
the attitudes of the time, married women were not known by their first names,
but despite the fact that we do not know her first name, Mrs
Phillips was one of the very first female music hall singers and something of a
rarity in that she wrote her own material.
In
the later stages of her career, she became Ma Phillips, and was described in
the trade newspaper The Era:
This
lady has been long before the public and she is, without question, one of the
greatest public's greatest favourites. Strange to
say, she has achieved her position without the aid of a good voice. [But] Mrs Phillips has a style peculiarly her own and her songs
are invariably so well written and are given with such expression that she
never fails to take her audience by storm.
The
song appears to have been rewritten for an American audience in 1863 by
Kathleen O'Neill (without crediting the original British version). It was
probably this version which was adopted by number of singers drawing on
traditional Irish and American music including Pete Seeger. It is just about
possible that it was written in America first and then adopted in Britain, but
from what I can see, this is unlikely.
|
AKA |
No Irish wanted here |
|
Lyrics |
Mrs FR Phillips |
Music |
Thomas Hudson |
Roud Index |
RN1137 |
|
Music Hall performers |
Mrs FR Phillips , 1850s-70s |
|
Folk performances |
Wolfetones, The Weavers, Pete Seeger, Tommy Makem |
Sources:
Original lyrics
from Jolly Dogs Songster, available from VWML
British Music Hall,
an illustrated history
Kathleen O’Neil’s
version from the Lester Levy sheet music collection at https://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/collection/053/009
The song appears
to have been rewritten for an American audience in 1863 by Kathleen O'Neill
(without crediting the original British version). It was probably this version
which was adopted by number of singers drawing on traditional Irish and
American music including Pete Seeger. It is just about possible that it was
written in America first and then adopted in Britain, but from what I can see,
this is unlikely.
ATTACHMENT TWO – from USA Today
FACT CHECK: THE IRISH WERE INDENTURED SERVANTS, NOT SLAVES
Matthew Brown is a White House NOW Reporter at USA
TODAY, where he covers breaking news coming out of the Biden administration.
Originally from Georgia, Matthew is a graduate of Dartmouth College.
The claim: Irish Americans were
enslaved in the Americas and treated worse than enslaved Black people
National protests
against police brutality amid
a global pandemic have caused many Americans to reckon with the country’s history of racism and inequality.
The moment has caused a fake historical meme to again surface.
“The first slaves
shipped to the American colonies in 1619 were 100 white children from Ireland,”
reads a May 21 graphic shared over
5,000 times on Facebook. “Truth matters,” the meme also
says.
“The Irish slave
trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New
World,” the Facebook page Defending the
Heritage wrote. “Ireland quickly became the biggest source of
human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the
New World were actually white.”
Various examples
of the meme appear on social media,
each claiming that the Irish were enslaved in the Americas and treated as
brutally or worse as African slaves.
One
such example (added by DJI):
The Irish Factor June 16, 2020 ·
Thought you would
like this article. Green lives matter
The Irish slave trade began when 30,000 Irish prisoners were sold as slaves to
the New World. The King James I Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners
be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid
1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that
time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
Ireland quickly
became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The
majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.
From 1641 to 1652,
over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as
slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single
decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to
take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a
helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to
auction them off as well.
During the 1650s,
over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their
parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In
this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and
Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to
the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken
to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.
Many people today
will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come
up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the
Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were
nothing more than human cattle.
As an example, the
African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well
recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic
theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than
their Irish counterparts.
African slaves
were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came
cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an
Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but
far cheaper than killing a more expensive African. The English masters quickly
began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for
greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the
size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained
her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even
with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain
in servitude.
In time, the
English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as
young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish
women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion.
These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and,
likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African
slaves. This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on
for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed
“forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for
the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, it was stopped only
because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.
England continued
to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. Records
state that, after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold
to both America and Australia. There were horrible abuses of both African and
Irish captives. One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic
Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.
There is little
question that the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery as much (if not more
in the 17th Century) as the Africans did. There is, also, very little question
that those brown, tanned faces you witness in your travels to the West Indies
are very likely a combination of African and Irish ancestry. In 1839, Britain
finally decided on its own to end its participation in Satan’s highway to hell
and stopped transporting slaves. While their decision did not stop pirates from
doing what they desired, the new law slowly concluded THIS chapter of
nightmarish Irish misery.
But, if anyone, black
or white, believes that slavery was only an African experience, then they’ve
got it completely wrong.
"There are
many stories, newspaper articles, theories, denials, omissions, coverups,"
the above Facebook page The Irish Factor told USA TODAY about its claims.
The page cited British involvement in the slave
trade as explanation for the claim posted on its page.
Claims that Irish people
were enslaved in British North America are a longstanding myth and online meme sometimes associated with neo-Confederates
and white nationalists. The
claim, which experts
say is also often politically motivated, is
untrue.
Irish indentured
servants in the colonial Americas
The claim that
Irish people were enslaved in the British American Colonies stems from a
misrepresentation of the idea of “indentured servitude.”
Indentured servants were people required to complete unpaid labor for a
contracted period.
“While the majority of Irish people who became
indentured servants in the Colonies did so willingly (why they felt they had to
so is, of course, another question), a not insignificant number were forcibly
deported and sold into indentured servitude,” Liam Hogan, a librarian and historian
known for his work dispelling the Irish slave myth, told Pacific Standard magazine in
2018.
Many indentured
servants in the British colonies were working-class white immigrants from the
British Isles, including thousands of Irish people. Indentured servants were
often treated horribly by their masters, many dying before they were set free.
“During their period of servitude, their
treatment varied widely. Some suffered extreme violence and brutality,
especially the Irish in the Caribbean, but many had avenues to pursue legal
action against their masters, something never extended to the enslaved,”
Matthew Reilly, an archaeologist who has studied white communities in the
Caribbean, told USA TODAY.
Irish servants
versus African slaves
Crucially,
indentured servants were considered human beings under the law. African slaves
were seen as property rather than people; Africans were racialized as Black to cement this enslaved status as
permanent, inheritable and justifiable in the natural order.
"An indenture
implies two people have entered into a contract with each other but slavery is
not a contract," Leslie Harris, a professor of history at Northwestern
University, told the New York Times in 2017.
"It is often about being a prisoner of war or being bought or sold bodily
as part of a trade. That is a critical distinction," she continued.
This lack of legal
and social personhood, as well as accompanying racist ideologies, let slave
owners justify the many horrors inflicted on African slaves at mass scale.
Millions of Africans were shipped to the Americas and forced into
unprecedentedly cruel conditions, both in terms of scale and severity.
“The challenge in this discourse is
identifying what (slavery) means in the past and the present,” Hogan told
Pacific Standard, again noting that the subjugation inflicted on many Irish
indentured servants may qualify as a form of slavery but was not comparable to
the chattel slavery experienced by millions of Africans. Irish indentured
servants who were brutally mistreated were keenly aware of that fact.
“The rights that
servants could claim in Barbados were often muted in the face of social
realities and their relative powerlessness in the face of a judicial and legal
system that heavily favored the planter class but there was no mechanism, legal
or customary, whereby any slave could petition the governor or legislature of
Barbados, let alone the English/British parliament, for anything,” Reilly and his co-author Jerome
Handler wrote in a 2017 study.
“In fact, slaves had no legally recognized
rights. They were regarded as private property over which owners claimed
absolute authority, a fundamental characteristic of slave status in all New
World slave societies,” they continue.
Irish historians
widely agree that the treatment of indentured servants was extremely violent
and unjust. That said, they also agree it is a distortion of
the stories of the thousands of servants to inaccurately
equate their conditions with those of Africans subjected to chattel slavery.
“The most damaging element of the white
slavery narrative, while not taking anything away from the very real violence
and brutality done to indentured servants, is that it shifts our focus away
from the scale, scope, and horror of the system of race-based slavery that
built this country,” Reilly said.
The persistence of
the Irish slave myth
Liam Hogan, (a librarian
of Limerick, according to Vox – see Attachment Three, below) notes that the
Irish slave myth is rooted in a true historical injustice but that current
versions depend on the “drawing of a false equivalence with racialized
perpetual hereditary chattel slavery and/or the refusal to delineate servitude
and slavery.”
“There was almost
no situation where the meme was not used to derail discussions about the legacy
of slavery or ongoing anti-black racism,” Hogan told the SPLC in 2016. Modern versions of the meme have been popular
among neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis and white nationalists, among others.
How the Myth of the "Irish
slaves" Became a Favorite Meme of Racists Online
Memes citing the
Irish slave myth often circulate when national discussion centers on
race. Claims about Irish slaves were
debunked last year, for instance, as the House of
Representatives held hearings on legislation that would explore the possibility
of extending reparations to African Americans for slavery.
“Rather than
confront the brutal crime against humanity and national original sin that was
African chattel slavery, this narrative is particularly appealing to those who
want to proclaim that ‘my ancestors suffered too!’,” Reilly said.
“By blurring the
lines between the different forms of unfree labour,
these white supremacists seek to conceal the incontestable fact that these slavocracies were controlled by — and operated for the
benefit of — white Europeans. This narrative, which exists almost exclusively
in the United States, is essentially a form of nativism and racism masquerading
as conspiracy theory,” Hogan wrote in a 2015 blog post.
The myth of white
slaves sent to the Caribbean or North America, however, also has a long history
in Irish nationalism. Early Irish nationalists used the English-forced
deportation of Irish to the Caribbean as a rallying cry in the late 19th and
early 20th century.
“But these were
rhetorical claims, based on truth, but greatly exaggerated for effect and are
not to be confused with historical accuracy,” Hogan again told Pacific
Standard.
The Young Ireland
movement of the early 19th century also cited supposed Irish enslavement as
another reason for revolt against the British Empire, which controlled Ireland
at the time, according to historian Liam Kennedy’s
work "Unhappy the Land: The Most Oppressed People Ever, the Irish?"
“Post-independence,
a line was drawn by nationalists that everything that happened prior to this
was to be laid at the door of British Empire,” Hogan told Pacific Standard.
Irish involvement in both empire and slavery is, however, more complicated,
with some Irish actively participating in the
slave trade, while many Irish institutions benefited from the
system.
A history of anti-Irish sentiment in the United
States also might make the myth more plausible to many
Americans. While it is true that anti-Irish prejudice was common in the United
States well into the 20th century, it is not comparable to the legacy of
racism endured by Black Americans.
“The deeper problem here is that if we don't
admit to complexity in our past, how were we going to confront it in the
present?” Hogan told Pacific Standard.
Our ruling: False
Irish indentured servitude
was a historical atrocity that saw thousands of Irish people subjected to
unjust conditions in a brutal colonial society. The situation was far
worse for African slaves who were not afforded any rights under the law and
consequently treated with historically unprecedented levels of brutality.
Historians agree that the two situations, while closely linked, are distinct
and not comparable. Often, efforts to do so are disingenuous and politically
motivated. We rate the claim that the Irish were slaves FALSE because it is not
supported by our research.
Our fact-check
sources:
·
Investopedia, Indentured Servitude
·
Pacific Standard, No, The Irish Weren't Slaves Too
·
New York Times, Debunking a Myth: The Irish Were Not
Slaves, Too
·
PolitiFact, No, the first slaves shipped to the American
colonies weren’t white Irish children
·
Liam Hogan on Medium, Open Letter of Irish Academics
Condemning "Irish Slave" Disinformation
·
Liam Hogan on OpenDemocracy.net, ‘Irish slaves’: the
convenient myth
·
Liam Kennedy, Unhappy the Land: The Most Oppressed People
Ever, the Irish?
·
Liam Hogan on Medium, "Kiss me, my slave owners were
Irish”
·
History.com, When America Despised the Irish: The 19th
Century’s Refugee Crisis
·
Vox, Why historians are fighting about “No Irish Need
Apply” signs — and why it matters (See
#3, below)
·
Guardian, The history of British slave ownership has
been buried: now its scale can be revealed
·
New York Times, Debunking a Myth: The Irish Were Not
Slaves, Too
·
PolitiFact, No, the first slaves shipped to the
American colonies weren’t white Irish children
ATTACHMENT TWO (A) - from
HATEWATCH (Southern Poverty Law Center)
by Alex Amend,
April 19, 2016
Propaganda
is cheap to produce on the web. And a purposeful lie in an age of
"viral content" not only can race around the world in a
day but resurface time and time again with surprising resiliency.
Such is the case
with the myth of "Irish slaves," an a
historical reimagining of real events weaponized by racists and conspiracy
theorists before the Web and now reaching vast new audiences online.
In short, the
"Irish slaves" myth argues that the first slaves brought to the
Americas were Irish, that they were white, and that this fact, covered up
by liberal historians, undermines the legacy of the African slave trade
and proves that modern theories of racial inferiority are true.
Predictably, this
revisionism has attracted Neo-Nazis, White Nationalists, Neo-Confederates, and
even Holocaust deniers, while racist trolls have deployed the myth to
attack the Black Lives Matter movement. More
worrisome, though, is its widespread adoption by principally American
Internet users as if it were a point of "Irish pride."
Irish scholar Liam Hogan has been tracking
and debunking this reincarnated meme since he first saw it in 2013. Last year,
Hogan published an impressive five-part series exposing the myth and
provided a detailed historical analysis of the origins and evolution of the
meme.
Hatewatch reached out to Hogan (who you should follow on Twitter) and asked him to
share what he's learned in his work.
What’s your
academic background particularly as it applies to the study of systems of
slavery?
I’m a research
librarian at the Limerick City Library and an independent scholar. I am
particularly interested in the complex historical relationship between Ireland
and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. While researching this, I noticed that
there existed many common misconceptions about what is termed “Irish slavery,”
which is applied in various ways to the Irish experience in the
Anglo-Caribbean, Colonial America and the United States. I’ve since tried
to contextualize this important part of Irish diasporic history for the general
public while debunking some of the more egregious pieces of disinformation that
are currently en vogue. I also track white nationalist groups and others who
have purposefully spread “white slavery” or “Irish slavery” propaganda online
since at least 1998.
And let’s clear
the air: Are you Irish?
Yes. I’m from Youghalarra, which is a village near Lough Derg in Co. Tipperary.
Briefly stated,
what are the historical claims behind the “Irish slaves” meme?
It broadly claims that
indentured servitude and penal servitude can be equated with racialized
perpetual hereditary chattel slavery. It proclaims that an “Irish Slave Trade”
was initiated in 1612 and not abolished until 1839, and that this
concurrent transatlantic slave trade of “white slaves” has been covered up by
“liberal," “cultural Marxist” or “politically correct” historians.
The various memes
make many claims including (but not limited to) the following; that “Irish
slaves” were treated far worse than black slaves; that there were more “Irish
slaves” than black slaves; that “Irish slaves” were worth less than black
slaves, that enslaved Irish women were forced to breed with enslaved African
men, and that the Irish were slaves for much longer than black slaves.
This is then
invariably followed up by overtly racist statements, e.g. “yet, when is the
last time you heard an Irishman bitching and moaning about how the world owes
them a living?” The “Irish slaves” meme is a subset of the “white slavery”
contemporary discourse which emphasizes class over race and is fueled by a
potent cocktail of bad history, false equivalence, conspiracy theories, and
reductionist fallacies.
Your writing
points to one of the earliest reported instances of the online meme appearing
in December 2013, when a New Mexican Tea Party leader tweeted a version. When
did you first encounter the meme online, and have you been able to
isolate its earliest appearance on the social web?
I first noticed
the internet meme of “Irish slavery” in 2013 on Facebook when that Global
Research article went
viral. Irish politicians, celebrities, and the wider public began sharing it en
masse from then on. After reading it, I immediately saw the problem, but I was
unsure how to tackle it. So I continued my own research and the following
summer I published an article on theJournal.ie (a
popular Irish news site) about absentee slave-owners in Ireland who claimed
compensation for their human stock in the British West Indies in 1834. I was
surprised to find that the most popular below the line comment by
far was an excerpt of the Global Research “Irish
slaves” text.
It was quite clear
to me then that many would never engage with the history of the transatlantic
slave trade when they had this false equivalence to fall back on. I think
that’s what convinced me that I needed to put the record straight. Dr. Stephen
Mullen has also challenged a
similar phenomenon in Scotland where a “Scottish slaves” narrative is evoked to
avoid confronting their considerable history of involvement in race-based
plantation slavery in the ‘New World’.
I’ve yet to
isolate its earliest appearance on the social web, but it has been a
common trope on Stormfront since at least 2003, especially in opposition to
reparations for slavery. The earliest “white slavery” meme that I could find on
the web appeared on Michael A. Hoffman’s website in
1999 when he captioned a photo of child laborers in the early 20th century with
the line “what about the white slaves?” This same photograph is the centerpiece
of a new iteration of the “Irish slaves” meme that appeared on Facebook in
February 2016.
You’ve described
the most offensive facet of this meme being the appropriation of the Zong Massacre. Can you briefly summarize that for our
readers?
This specific
aspect of the meme is disturbing. It appropriates the massacre of around 132
African victims of the genocidal transatlantic slave trade in order to diminish
it. If you look at the Infowars version of the meme you’ll see
it has even appended an extra zero, making the number of victims amount to
1302, while adding that “these slaves weren’t from Africa, these forgotten
souls were from Ireland.” This shameless appropriation is then used by Infowars to
mock calls for reparatory justice for slavery.
I think that it is
quite telling that so many people who propagate this disinformation did not
recognize such a famous crime in the history of the transatlantic slave trade.
It suggests that there exists a critical mass of ignorance that needs to be
addressed. In too many cases this history is perceived as existing at a
distance, in a peripheral if not marginalized space relative to the core
nationalist narratives.
How has the
general meme spread? It seems to have something of a parasitic relationship to
the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.
I first noticed it
on Irish social media as part curiosity propagation and part free pass to dodge
any discussion of Irish involvement in the slave trade. I then asked myself, if
it found such utility here then what must be happening on social media in the
U.S.? So I began to research this, and it soon became apparent that the “Irish
were slaves too” retort had become one of the most popular obfuscation tactics
on the social web. And it was spreading like wildfire.
There was almost
no situation where the meme was not used to derail discussions about the legacy
of slavery or ongoing anti-black racism. Starting with Ferguson and with almost
every subsequent police killing of an unarmed black person from late 2014
through 2015, the meme was used to mock and denigrate the Black Lives Matter
movement. It is in a sense the “historical” version of the disingenuous All
Lives Matter response to demands for justice and truth telling. I have seen it
used to derail conversations about Sandra Bland, the McKinney pool party
incident, the Spring Valley High incident and so on. I have collected hundreds
of examples of it on Twitter (here) but it is a
more common on Facebook where it continues to incubate. Some of these racist
memes on Facebook have garnered over 200,000 shares so far and one in
particular was shared nearly 100,000 times in just over a week.
Notably the
Neo-Confederate community are another cohort who embrace the meme. In the wake
of Dylann Roof’s white supremacist terrorism in Charleston,
and the debate about the Confederate flag, it surfaced in some unexpected
places. In June 2015 a Confederate flag storeowner in Virginia referred to
"hundreds of thousands of white slaves from Ireland".
At a Confederate
Flag rally in Statesville, N.C., in July 2015, a protestor told a reporter for a
local paper, "There were more white Irish slaves then there were blacks.
And the Irish slaves were treated a lot worse than the black slaves.” At a
Confederate Flag rally in Mississippi in August 2015 even the "forced
breeding" aspect of the myth appeared when a man approached a Washington
Post journalist and
said “The Irish were bred with the African slaves, you know? Even the Irish, we
were slaves. At some point, you just have to get over it.”
This year I’ve
tracked the meme being shared by the Texas League of the South, History of the
True South, Love My Confederate Ancestors and the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
They seem to believe that this meme somehow negates the fact that the
Confederacy fought a war to perpetually enslave millions of African-Americans
and their descendants.
Is the meme most
popular in Ireland/UK, or just the United States?
Almost all of the
popular “Irish slaves” articles are promoted by websites or Facebook groups
based in the U.S. So it’s predominantly a social media phenomenon of white
America.
This is even more
pronounced when tracking the memes. I took a less than 0.1% random sample
of that extremely popular single instance of the meme that was shared on
Facebook in February 2016. I geotagged the location data of this sample and the
result illustrates that while this is definitely a U.S. trend, it is also
present internationally in line with white nationalist sentiment. This concurs
with my research as I’ve tracked its promotion both by individuals and white
nationalist groups in South Africa, Australia, Ireland, UK, Canada and
Zimbabwe.
Talk about this
revisionist history outside of the online meme. You refer to books like “To
Hell or Barbados” (2000) and “White Cargo” (2007) as “pseudo-history.” Is it
fair to call this a “revisionist project”? If so, what are its origins?
It’s complex as
there are multiple layers to this. The most crude are
the various racist visual internet memes in circulation. Next you have a wide range of ahistorical “Irish slaves”
blogs and articles that are promoted by high traffic sites like Daily Kos.
I believe the fact that major media outlets have endorsed this narrative is an
important factor in explaining why this mythology has gone mainstream. People
trust these sources and assume that editors have verified the claims made and
are authentic. Rather than being informative they are merely elongated memes
built exclusively on disinformation and distortion. Thousands of well meaning
people have been duped in this way.
It’s alleged that
supporting these articles are a range of oft-referenced works of popular
history authored exclusively by non-historians e.g. O’Callaghan’s “To Hell or
Barbados” (Brandon Books, 2001) or Jordan and Walsh’s “White Cargo” (NYU Press,
2007). While there are problems with both of these books, particularly the
former, which seeded the “forced breeding” part of the mythology, most of the
“Irish slaves” articles do not quote from them.
By using the cover
image of “White Cargo” they misrepresent the author’s work as being the source
for their propaganda when generally it is not. Nonetheless the sensationalist
cover and subtitle of this book has itself become an internet meme used to
equate racialized perpetual hereditary chattel slavery and indentured
servitude. These articles instead rely heavily on an unreferenced blog about
“Irish slaves in the Caribbean” that appeared on the Kavanagh Family website in
2003.
More pertinent is
the work of Michael A. Hoffman II, a Holocaust denier and conspiracy theorist
who self-published “They Were White and They Were Slaves” in the early 1990s.
It is by far the most influential book on so-called “white slavery” in white
supremacist circles and it appears to be the origin of this revisionist
project. For instance, when researching this, I found a PDF copy of
this book hosted on the Racial Volunteer Force (a Combat 18
splinter group) website. When I returned to this site some months later it had
been shut down. So I searched again and found another PDF of the book on Tom Metzger’s White Aryan
Resistance (WAR) website.
It is not
difficult to understand why white nationalists and fascists love this book. It
argues that all European indentured servants, child laborers, convicts, free
laborers, impressed sailors, the poor and the general working class population
were unequivocally “white slaves.” That “white guilt” is an invention of the
elite and that poor white Americans also deserve reparations because their
ancestors also endured “slavery.” Chapter titles include “White Slaves Treated
Worse than Blacks” and “White Losses in the Middle Passage Higher than that of
Blacks.” The book includes testimonials from Revile P. Oliver, Wilmot Robertson
and James J. Martin and an excerpt (“The Truth about Slavery”) has featured on
the website of
the Occidental Pan-Aryan Crusader since 1998. This group was a
member of William Pierce’s National Alliance.
Hoffman, true to
form, blames the “cover up” of “the true history of white slavery” on the
“approved house scholars.” Unfortunately for his conspiracy theory Hoffman
makes this claim in a book that is built on selective quotations taken from
nearly 200 different secondary sources. Quite the cover up. This book’s sole
purpose is to obscure the profound differences between white servitude and
black slavery in terms of scale, duration, type and legacy in an effort to deny
reparations for slavery in America. It is instructive to note that this is not
a new development. The exact same tactics were used by contemporaries to
justify the transatlantic slave trade and to defend the institution of
racialized perpetual hereditary chattel slavery in the Antebellum South and the
Anglo-Caribbean.
So this whataboutery as denialism has a pro-slavery ideological
lineage and to see it flood the social web in 2016 is just remarkable.
What has been the
reception to your work? From other historians? From “Irish slaves” adherents?
The response from
the public has been mostly positive. For many people it seemed like this
intervention was long overdue, and I guess this also explains why public
historians have probably been the most enthusiastic group to support my work.
In general other historians have been exceptionally helpful and supportive. I
recently published an open letter addressed
to some mainstream media outlets who endorsed that ahistorical Global
Research “Irish slaves” article and 81 academics and historians
co-signed. Even the most critical peer review has been well meaning, helping me
to hone my arguments. Predictably I have also received much abuse and some
personal threats from various sources. I won’t list all the terms of endearment
that have been thrown my way, but they range from “Jewish supremacist” and
“agent of the New World Order” to a “sheltered Free Stater” and “anti-Irish
bigot.”
You mentioned you
are likely to expand your research into a book. What else do you hope to
explore on this topic?
I would like to
reclaim the history of Irish servitude in the 17th century Anglo-Caribbean
and present it in context for a general audience. The Cromwellian policy of
forced transportation to the colonies in the 1650s (which included an estimated
10,000 Irish people) understandably scars our collective memory and it
deserves both respect and close attention from anyone interested in the history
of the unfree labour systems in the Atlantic world.
Prior to the sugar revolution and the massive investment by Europeans in
enslaving and dehumanizing African people, the living and working conditions of
servants and slaves were similar. As the British colonies transitioned to
large-scale sugar plantations both groups were exploited for profit, indentured
servants for decades and enslaved Africans for centuries.
I also hope to
explore why the meme appeals to racists. Why is it used so often to justify
anti-black nativism and racism? The sentiment is we were slaves, too, but
we moved on, and it speaks to the racist essence of white nationalism.
This notion of racial assimilability can be traced back to Wilmot
Robertson’s The Dispossessed Majority and if you go back
further you’ll see that its main origin is the fascist ideologies of the 1930s,
especially Benito Mussolini’s Italian Fascist Party. Their “Manifesto of Race”
was published in 1938 and is a white nationalist playbook.
The racism then flows as these various groups of
Neo-Nazis posit why whites can overcome a “worse” situation than blacks and “do
not whine about it.” So the “get over it” racism that so often accompanies the
meme is not about history at all. It goes much deeper than that. Their belief
is that non-whites can’t move on due to racial inferiority or social
pathology. So through false equivalence and erasure, they attempt to
remove history as a determinant so that they can claim the current socioeconomic
position and mass incarceration of black people in the U.S. is due to racial
inferiority. I believe William H. Tucker’s work on the Pioneer Fund resonates here. He
charges that while the Pioneer Fund may have “supported some projects of
genuine scientific interest,” they were incidental to its true purpose, which
was “to provide intellectual justification for racial prejudice.”
Likewise these “Irish slaves” and “white slaves” memes project
a pseudo-mythological narrative to provide (a)historical justification for
racial prejudice. This explains why the memefication
of “white slavery” is catnip for racists.
ATTACHMENT
TWO (B) - from thesocietypages.org
Irish Apes: Tactics of De-Humanization
Images collected by Lisa Wade, PhD on January 28, 2011
In the last
few hundred years, dark-skinned peoples have been likened to apes in an
effort to dehumanize them and justify their oppression and exploitation.
This is familiar to most Americans as something that is done peculiarly
to Black people (as examples, see here, here, and here). The history of U.S. discrimination
against the Irish, however, offers an interesting comparative data point.
The Irish, too, have been compared to apes, suggesting that this comparison
is a generalizable tactic of oppression, not one inspired by the color of the
skin of Africans. (for example) Irish
woman, “Bridget McBruiser,” contrasted with Florence Nightengale.
DJI
Note: our server does not reproduce images, they can be seen here. Sensitive people should go away.
Two
examples: “In this
cartoon, captioned “A King of -Shanty,” the comparison becomes explicit. The “Ashantee” were a well known
African tribe; “shanty” was the Irish word for a shack or poor man’s house. The
cartoon mocks Irish poverty, caricatures irish people
as ape like and primitive, and suggests they are little different from
Africans, who the cartoonists seems to see the same way. This
cartroon (sic) irishman
has, again, the outhrust mouth, sloping forehead, and
flat wide nose of the standard Irish caricature.”
So, there you have it. Being compared to apes is tactic of oppression
totally unrelated to skin color — that is, it has nothing to do with Black
people and everything to do with the effort to exert control and power.
For more on anti-Irish discrimination, see our post on Gingerism. And see our
earlier post on anti-Irish caricaturein which we touched on this before.
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane
University. She is the author of American
Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender;
and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible
Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
(Not
surprisingly, the site’s Peanut Gallery had dozens of comments – pro, con and
simply strange. You’ll have to access the
site for the actual images, but the PG posts are below as Attachment Twelve)
ATTACHMENT THREE – from Vox
WHY HISTORIANS ARE FIGHTING ABOUT “NO IRISH NEED
APPLY” SIGNS — AND WHY IT MATTERS
By Dara Linddara@vox.com Updated Aug
4, 2015, 12:30pm EDT
·
UPDATE: After
this article was first published, in March 2015, Rebecca Fried published her
essay debunking academic claims that "No Irish Need Apply" signs were
vanishingly rare. The article has been updated to reflect Ms. Fried's findings
and the current controversy.
(The message: “Help Wanted, No Irish Need Apply”) has
become a stand-in for an entire narrative about how immigrants are treated in
America. It's also the subject of a surprisingly heated academic fight.
In one corner, arguing that an Irish immigrant in
mid-19th-century America was relatively unlikely to run into "No Irish
Need Apply" postings, is a tenured but ideologically iconoclastic
historian. In the other, arguing that they were a lot more widespread, is a
14-year-old with excellent archival research skills.
There's a reason (beyond academic infighting) that the
question of whether the symbolic "No Irish Need Apply" sign was
exaggerated — and with it, the scope of anti-Irish discrimination during the
first big wave of Irish Catholic immigration to the US — is still being fought
over almost 200 years later. That's because of the sign's symbolism. When
politicians or others refer to "No Irish Need Apply" signs, here's
what they're saying: every new immigrant group that's come to the United States
has faced discrimination from natives. But over time, the immigrant group has
fought back against discrimination and won, and has assimilated into broader
American society — to the point that it becomes hard to imagine they ever would
have been oppressed to begin with.
As it was with the Irish in the 19th century, the
story implies, so it will be with Latino and Asian immigrants today.
So the
controversy over "No Irish Need Apply" signs ask the same questions
that have been raised for every single group of immigrants since then: are they
really being discriminated against in material ways, like work and housing, or
are they just the victims of prejudiced attitudes? And if they react by
thinking of themselves as underdogs, are they acknowledging the truth, or
making themselves into victims?
What's clear, through the controversy, is that Irish
Americans chose to identify with the narrative the sign represents. And it's
made them a continued ally for immigrants — both Irish and not — straight
through to the 21st century.
The case that No
Irish Need Apply was less common than you think
In 2002, historian Richard Jensen published a takedown of "No Irish Need
Apply," calling it "a myth of
victimization." Jensen looked through newspaper classified ads from the
1850s to the 1920s and found, he wrote, that only about two ads per decade told
Irish men not to apply. (It was more common for ads for domestic workers to
specify no Irish or, more frequently, no Catholics.) Furthermore, Jensen wrote,
"there is no evidence for any printed NINA signs in America, or for their
display at places of employment other than private homes."
But that left Jensen with a tricky question to answer:
how on earth did "No Irish Need Apply" become part of Irish
Americans' collective memory? His alternative theory: because of a song.
Anti-Irish discrimination was rampant
in Britain, and a song became popular there in the 1850s called "No Irish
Need Apply." The song hopped the pond to America — in at least two
different versions. In one version, printed in Philadelphia, the narrator
recalls being discriminated against in London — but says now that she's in
"the land of the glorious and free," she's sure Americans will be
more welcoming to her. In the other version, printed in New York, the narrator
sees a "No Irish Need Apply" ad in America — and
proceeds to seek out the proprietor and beat him up.
Guess which version became wildly popular.
Jensen believed that in America, it was the song that
popularized the phrase — not the other way around.
Were Irish
Americans stuck in a "culture of victimhood"?
There's plenty of evidence that "native
Americans" considered Irish Catholics to be inferior. (Irish Protestants,
on the other hand, didn't come in for the same prejudice — and in fact, many of
them joined the nativist Know-Nothing Party in the 1830s to protest the arrival
of their Catholic counterparts.) But did that prejudice turn into outright
discrimination against Irish immigrants? Or have Irish Americans been holding
on to the "myth of victimization"?
In other words: was America in the mid-19th century
like some say America is today, with some people saying unpleasant things about
other ethnic groups but very little widespread oppression? Or was it like
another view of 21st-century America, with systemic racism that has material
effects on people's lives?
Jensen's in the first camp. As a result, his attitude
toward the Irish of the 19th century sounds a bit like conservatives blaming a
"culture of victimhood" for the problems facing nonwhites today:
When Protestants denied NINA that perhaps just
reinforced the Irish sense of conspiracy against them (even today people who
deny NINA are suspected of prejudice.) The slogan served both to explain their
poverty and to identify a villain against whom it was all right to retaliate on
sight—a donnybrook for the foes of St. Patrick. The myth justified bullying
strangers and helped sour relations between Irish and everyone else. The sense
of victimhood perhaps blinded some Irish to the discrimination suffered by
other groups.
Other historians think Jensen overstates his case when
he says there was no widespread job discrimination against Irish Catholics. And
there's suspicion that Jensen has an axe to grind, since his characterization
of Irish Americans as self-aggrandizing drama queens sounds a little like some
conservative characterizations of other ethnic minorities.
But he's not the only one saying racial discrimination
wasn't as big a factor in mid-19th-century Irish-American life as people tend
to think. Historians of Irish Americans have turned away from the idea that
Irish immigrants were considered "not white" when they came to the
US, and became "white" via assimilation (and by oppressing African Americans).
In the words of historian Kevin Kenny, the "whiteness" question
"obscured more than it clarified." And labor historians have
suggested that at least part of what looks like oppression based on ethnicity
was in fact oppression based on class: "Irish workers were certainly
exploited," in Kenny's words, "but they did not suffer from
racism."
The case that NINA
notices were everywhere, if you knew where to look for them
Other historians protested that anti-Irish
discrimination was widespread, but didn't contest Jensen's findings about NINA
signs. A couple of them even corroborated his conclusions. For what it's worth,
when I originally wrote this article, I did some follow-up research of my own
in the Library of Congress' digitized newspaper database — and found, similar
to Jensen, that there weren't any more than two wanted ads per decade that
specified "No Irish Need Apply."
But the problem was that the databases being used just
weren't complete enough. In spring 2015, Rebecca Fried, a 14-year-old whose
father had brought home the article from work, checked out Jensen's claims. She
found much more evidence of "No Irish Need Apply" notices than
Jensen's article had allowed.
Fried turned up about 50 businesses putting "No
Irish Need Apply" in their newspaper ads between 1842 and 1903. The
notices were especially popular in New York (which had "No Irish Need
Apply" ads for 15 businesses in 1842-1843 alone, and 7 after that) and
Boston, which had NINA ads for 9 businesses. Of course, these were also the centers
of Irish immigrant settlement at the time. And she found several news reports
that mentioned "No Irish Need Apply" signs — the ones that Jensen
said there was no evidence to believe ever existed — being hung at workplaces,
as well as public accommodations.
So while Jensen's research turned up about 2 ads a
decade, Fried's turned out closer to one a year — although that varied a lot
depending on where and when you were.
This obviously doesn't cover every newspaper published
during the period. But it's hard to tell how to extrapolate it. Databases like
the Library of Congress', which really don't have many
"No Irish Need Apply" ads, are obviously incomplete — but so are
databases that do have them. What's most representative of all newspapers of
the time?
There's a pretty spirited academic back-and-forth
between Fried and Jensen about Fried's findings, as covered in this article in
the Daily Beast. Jensen
points out that any given Irish immigrant, on any given day, was unlikely to
open a newspaper and see a "No Irish Need Apply" ad — which may
very well still be true. But Fried argues that the point is that they did, in
fact, exist — and so it makes sense that they'd become part of how Irish
Americans understand their role in American history.
Discrimination was
real — but memory has outlasted it
Three things are clearly true. There was obviously widespread
prejudice against Irish Catholics during the mid-19th-century wave of
immigration to the US, and that prejudice led to actual discrimination in at
least some cases (and, probably, fairly often).
The second truth is that Irish Americans have been resisting discrimination
for as long as they've been experiencing it. Alongside the want ads requesting
"No Irish Need Apply" that Fried found were reports of Irish workers
filing libel lawsuits, holding protests, or even going on strike in response to
such ads. Those reports are almost as old as the first NINA ads that Fried
found. And that's not to mention jokes that both Fried and I found in our
research that would be reprinted from one paper to another, using "No
Irish Need Apply" as a springboard for humor: one common joke involved an
Irishman, with an exaggerated accent, pretending to be French to get around the
sign.
That last category included several papers reprinting
the lyrics of one version or another of the "No Irish Need Apply"
song that Jensen says was so important. And remember, the version of the song
that became popular wasn't the one in which coming to America was a happy
ending; it was the version in which, even in America, there were bigots who
needed to get beaten up. Fighting back was as much a part of Irish American
history, as remembered by Irish Americans, as being held down.
But here's the third truth: memory of "No Irish
Need Apply" has long outlasted actual anti-Irish discrimination. Many of
the people who claimed to have seen NINA signs almost certainly didn't — just
like some of the places that claim "George Washington Slept Here."
The late Senator Ted Kennedy used to talk about seeing "No Irish Need
Apply" signs growing up; Kennedy was not only born in 1932, several
decades after anti-Irish prejudice had peaked, but he also grew up in an
upper-class neighborhood where (in Jensen's opinion)
he was unlikely to run across any stores that might have posted NINA signs. And
replica signs, like the one on top of this article, are so popular that maybe
they really are more common than real signs ever were.
Jensen might argue that this is because of the
"myth of victimization" — what other pundits might call a
"culture of victimhood." But historians have floated another idea:
that Irish Americans, more than any other immigrant group, saw themselves as
exiles from their home country, rather than as people who were choosing to come
to the US for a better life.
The "exile hypothesis" painted this as a bad
thing: Irish immigrants were mostly powerless in the face of historical forces,
both in Ireland and in the US. But just as the exile hypothesis was becoming
popular, in the mid-1980s, another wave of Irish immigrants were coming to the
US — and the reaction to them made it clear there was a substantial upside to
Irish Americans continuing to identify with victims. A plight not
unknown to the push-outs of Central America besieging our southern border, as
well as escapees from the racial and religious genocides of Africa, Asia and
the Middle East, - DJI
How the Irish
still shape immigration policy
During the 1980s, tens of thousands of Irish
immigrants came to the US — many of them coming on student or tourist visas and
then staying after those visas expired. Irish Americans welcomed the new unauthorized
immigrants — their Irishness mattered more than their
legal status. And because Irish Americans had political power, politicians set
about to fix the immigration system so it would be easier for Irish immigrants
to come the right way.
In 1990, Congress passed an Immigration Act —
championed by none other than Senator Ted Kennedy himself. The law created a
new visa lottery, which is today called the "diversity visa" — it
gives visas to people from countries that don't otherwise send many immigrants
to the US. But for the first three years of its existence, the law required
that 40 percent of the visas — called "Donnelly visas" — needed to go
to Irish immigrants. Furthermore, an additional temporary program gave
"Morrison visas" to Irish immigrants for the three years after the
law passed. (Both visas were named after the Irish-American members of Congress
who had championed them.) Between the two visas, most of the unauthorized Irish
immigrants in the US were able to achieve legal status.
Today, the Irish aren't among the top 25 countries for
unauthorized immigrants living in the US. (The only European country that
cracks the top 25 is Poland.) But Irish Americans and Irish immigrants maintain
an outsize presence in arguing for immigration reform to give legal status and
citizenship to unauthorized immigrants. (The Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform
has been a presence in New England and Washington for nearly a decade, since
the beginning of the current reform fight.) And even the Irish government praised
President Barack Obama for his executive actions last November, allowing
millions of unauthorized immigrants to apply for protection from deportation
and work permits.
Ostensibly, groups like the Irish Lobby are fighting
on behalf of the 50,000 unauthorized Irish immigrants.
But they're putting in more effort than, say, Polish groups, despite having
less of a direct stake in the outcome of reform. And Irish-American politicians
continue to draw a direct line from the memory (founded or not) of "No
Irish Need Apply" signs from 150 years ago to the unauthorized immigrants
in the shadows today.
Here's another version of the "No Irish Need
Apply" song. In this version, the narrator takes a deep breath and decides
not to beat up the proprietor. Instead, he educates him: "Your ancestors
came over here like me, to try to make a living in this land of liberty."
That's the role the Irish play in today's immigration debate — except now, they
are both the "ancestors" and the new immigrants trying to make good.
CORRECTION: This article misidentified Michael Fried, Rebecca's
father, as a history professor. He isn't.
ATTACHMENT FOUR – from UK Essays
NATIVISM IN AMERICA: THE TRUTH BEHIND THEIR FEARS
Info: 6308
words (25 pages) Essay
Published: 8th Feb 2020 in Human Rights
It
was the morning of October 24, 1871 when the dead bodies of three Chinese men
hung from places near the heart of downtown Los Angeles. One hung from the
wooden awning over a sidewalk, another from the sides of a wagon parked on the
street. The last body hung across a gate that led into a lumberyard. This was
the aftermath of the Chinese Massacre of 1871, where rioters killed 21 Chinese
immigrants and set 25 Chinese laundries on fire.[1] Though
there was a mob of 500 native citizens, only ten white men were convicted, and
the sentences against them were overturned on appeal due to technicalities.[2] This
massacre was the culmination of years of prejudice against Chinese immigrants,
and while it this particular incident targeted Chinese immigrants, it is one of
many examples of nativism in history. Though nativism is defined as a policy
that favours native inhabitants as opposed to
immigrants, and reflected as American exceptionalism in the present day,
nativist attitudes has reflected bias and prejudice. Nativism in the United
States supports three main misconceptions about immigrants: they are dangerous,
they threaten the workforce, and they are unable to assimilate. While these
arguments are recycled with each new wave of immigrants, they have never been
proven to be true. Throughout America’s history, nativist behaviour
is prominent through the Know-Nothings party, Anti-Chinese sentiment, the Ku
Klux Klan, and the current xenophobic attitude towards Mexican immigrants. No
matter the origins of the immigrant group, Nativist fears have never
demonstrated any truth.
Though
the United States prides itself on being the land of the “free,” it has a long
history of nativism that dates back to the 19th century. Perhaps the most well-known
sign of nativism in the United States that surfaced during the Antebellum era
was the Know-Nothings party. Starting in 1845, the Irish Potato Famine
motivated more than a million Irish and German Catholics to emigrate because of
growing unemployment.[3] The
influx of nearly three million Irish and German immigrants in the 1830s
introduced more people of the Catholic faith to America.[4] As
a result, a secret society was formed that was united by xenophobic hostility
to immigration. Native-born Protestants felt threatened by the new immigrants
because they believed that the Catholic Church represented tyranny and the
potential to be subjugated by a foreign power. Furthermore, many Americans were
appealed by nativism because they believed that immigrants often created slums
and turned to crime with their misdeeds. Many Know-Nothings felted threatened
by these immigrants because they blamed society’s ills on the stereotypes of
“whiskey-guzzling Irish” and “beer-swilling Germans”.[5] Competitions
for jobs also increased as more labourers arrived.
The flood of these immigrants expanded the labour
pool tremendously, and nativists argued that the foreigners competed unfairly
with the native-born because they were willing to accept any job that was
offered to them. They believed that the immigrants created economic
consequences for local workers because they pushed American workers out of jobs
and forced them to accept lower pay. Through the years 1850 to 1855, the
Know-Nothing Party was the fastest growing party in the United States, and even
outstripped the Republican party.[6] The
Know-Nothings also believed that the Catholic immigrants would be unable to
assimilate because, as Europeans coming from a different culture that respected
class distinctions, they would support slavery.[7] Know-Nothings
believed that this, coupled with the stereotypes of the German and Irish
immigrants, would pose a threat to the American way of life. This party is an
example of anti-Catholic and anti-Irish sentiment, centered around the belief
that “new immigrants” were unassimilable because of their ethnicity and
culture.
One
of the most violent incidents caused by the Know-Nothings Party was the
Nativist Riots of 1844, where anti-immigrant mobs in Philadelphia attacked
Irish-American homes and Roman Catholic churches.[8] This
riot set off a wave of violence in American cities, and was provoked by the
determination of nativists to use xenophobia for political gain. Even if this
party was not coherent enough to establish any legislation, they set the basic
framework for nativist behaviour in the later
centuries. Ultimately, when party leaders failed to actually reduce
immigration, party members lost faith in the leaders and turned to other
parties to solve their problems. However, despite their shortcomings in the
political field, the Know-Nothings serve as the first example of how cultural
nativism can be tailored towards political goals. In order to further promote
their rhetoric, the Know-Nothing party linked nativism to American values in a
manner that convinced the audience that nativism was also consistent with
American culture. Perhaps this is also why acts of nativism are often labelled
as acts of patriotism. Their nativist spirit will later be revived through
other eras of prejudice against immigrants, and set the foundation for the
three misconceptions that immigrants were dangerous, threatening the workforce,
and unable to assimilate to American culture.
Following
the time period of the Know-Nothings, anti-Chinese sentiment also reflected the
three nativist claims against immigrants. From 1850 and 1860, almost 50,000
Chinese immigrated to the United States for jobs on the railroads and in the
mining industry.[9] In
one situation, the unsolved murder of Elsie Sigel in 1909 was blamed on the
Chinese in general because a Chinese person was a suspect.[10] As
a result, the media rushed to portrayed Chinese men as dangerous to young white
women, which further illustrates the nativist behaviour
that portrays immigrants as dangerous, despite the fact that the crimes against
the Chinese, such as the aforementioned Chinese Massacre of 1871, far
outnumbered any potential threat from said immigrants. There was also an
economic downturn in 1870 that increased labor competition between the Chinese
and native-born.[11] Chinese
immigrants competed with whites for employment, and often were willing to work
for lower pay. Because of that, there was much resentment against them by the
native population. Furthermore, the native resentment against Chinese came from
the perception that the ethnic group was “unassimilable”, with “vicious customs
and habits”.[12] Their
reason behind a Chinese person’s inability to assimilate was blamed on their
physical appearance, dress, culture, and hairstyle. Thus, the three arguments
against immigrants were once again used to channel native prejudice against
foreigners.
What
made the anti-Chinese sentiment different from the Know-Nothings was the fact
that there were legislation proposed to target and
humiliate the Chinese. The political movement against the Chinese was called
the Workingmen’s Party, and was led by an Irish-born sailor named Dennis
Kearney. The party was a strong force that supported passing legislation
against Chinese immigrants. Legislation that were passed against the Chinese included
the Chinese Exclusion Act, which forced the Chinese to obtain certificates to
prove their eligibility to live and work in the United States. This act
reflects the nativist claim that the Chinese immigrants were threatening the
workforce, because the law targeted a specific ethnic group to limit their
access for work. Furthermore, there was also the Scott Act in 1887 that
prohibited many Chinese who left the country to return, despite the fact that
some Chinese were legal citizens and residents. Closely following that came the
Geary Act in 1892, which denied bail to Chinese, and required all Chinese to
obtain a certificate of eligibility to remain in the United States.[13] These
laws made the Chinese vulnerable in the judicial system. There were similar
movements against other Asian communities, justified by nativists
characterizing immigrants as inherently different by being “immoral,
subversive, and servile”, and thus, impossible to assimilate.[14]
After
the anti-Chinese sentiment, a new wave of nativist behaviour
appeared through the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. Originally founded in 1866 by
ex-Confederate soldiers, it was 50 years later that William Joseph Simmons
revived the Ku Klux Klan and spread its message of hate to include Catholics,
Jews, and foreigners. By 1925, there were between three million to eight
million Klansmen who donned the white robes of the Ku Klux Klan.[15] Klansmen
argued that immigrants were taking jobs away from white people, and diluting
the racial purity of American society. They supported bills such as the
Emergency Immigration Act of 1921, which introduced limits to European
immigration for the first time in the United States history. Their hatred
towards foreigners stemmed from the belief that anyone who was not white and
Protestant was not truly American. The revival of the KKK reflected a society
that was struggling once again with immigration. One might realize the
hypocrisy of their argument, considering that immigrants from the very
beginning have populated the United States.
Now,
the United States is once against facing a similar situation with Mexican
immigration, and reacting in a disturbingly similar fashion to its predecessors
in history. Mexican immigration was unrestricted until the 1920s — not because
American nativists were more tolerant of them over other immigrants, but
because of economic profit. American policymakers became aware that “almost
every sector of the economy depended heavily on the bracero”, a bracero being a
Mexican laborer allowed into the US for a limited time as a seasonal
agricultural worker.[16] There
were similar xenophobic and nativist attitudes directed towards Mexican
migrants, with arguments based on a Mexican immigrants inability to assimilate
into mainstream society. Despite this, many agricultural and industrial lobbies
waived Mexicans from immigration laws in order to profit from their cheap and
prosperous labour. However, in 1929, when the stock
markets crashed and unemployment skyrocketed, United States citizens targeted
Mexicans specifically.[17] Local
and federal officials launched raids and campaigns to deport Mexican
immigrants, including many families and workers who had entered the United
States legally. These campaigns, which included Mexican children who were
American citizens, continued throughout the 1930s and was estimated to have
deported over 1.8 million people.[18] However,
immigrants from Mexico continue to arrive in the United States, and the
increased presence of such migrants drew out the same racist and nativist
attitudes that had been directed towards Asians and Europeans before.
Though
today’s nativism is less likely to be directed towards Asians, Europeans, or
Catholics, and instead towards undocumented immigrants who are predominantly
Mexican, Central American, and Muslim, the rhetoric of the modern nativism also
reflects the three misconceptions of immigrants, centered around the idea that
they are dangerous, and an economic drain on society while also being unable to
assimilate. The perception that they commit crimes at higher rates than the
native-born still reigns supreme amongst many Americans.[19] There
is also a perception that immigrants take jobs away from the native-born and
waste government resources without paying taxes. Furthermore, many nativists
reflected past beliefs that the Mexican immigrants couldn’t assimilate to
American culture. These arguments are also evidently false. First of all,
pertaining to the argument that immigrants are unable to fully assimilate into
society, a Stanford University study managed to measure cultural assimilation
by analyzing data on the names that parents choose for their children. For
example, a person named Hyman or Vito would be considered a child of an
immigrant; whereas children named Clay or John were very likely to have native
parents. Therefore, a child’s name signals their cultural identity. The study
showed that after 20 years in the United States, half of the gap between the
choice of names between immigrants and natives had disappeared, which suggests
that the gradual adoption of more native-sounding names is a part of the
process of assimilation.[20] By
seeing how immigrants name their children, it may imply lesser or more
assimilation. Therefore, the study shows that assimilation is possible for any
immigrant group, no matter which culture or background they come from.
Secondly,
the argument that immigrants are taking jobs from the native people is
disproven by the rejection of the “Lump of Labour
Fallacy”. This fallacy is based on the misleading assumption that there is a
fixed amount of jobs available, and that reducing standard work hours can
create more jobs.[21] The
counterargument to this fallacy centers around the fact that skilled immigrant
workers offer potentially new abilities that native workers do not have.
Furthermore, immigrants as a labour force can create
jobs because they become consumers the moment they enter the United States. Thus,
they cause an expansion of demand, which helps to generate more jobs directly
or indirectly. Scott B. Sumners, a professor at
Bentley University, commented that, “There’s simply no way that California
fruit and vegetable producers could pay enough money to attract America
workers…Their output would be replaced by imports. Instead, they’d switch to
crops that do not require significant farm labor. Thus, deporting illegals will
not create new jobs for American workers.”[22] Sumners suggests that it is impossible for immigrants to
take jobs from native people if their very presence generates more employment;
subsequently, this suggests that the nativist’ economic arguments against
immigrants are faulty and illogical.
Finally,
the argument that immigrants are detrimental to the safety of native citizens
is statistically untrue. The current United States President, Donald Trump,
proclaimed during a press conference on June 22, 2018:
So
here are just a few statistics on the human toll of illegal immigration.
According to a 2011 government report, the arrests attached to the criminal
alien population included an estimated 25,000 people for homicide, 42,000 for
robbery, nearly 70,000 for sex offenses, and nearly 15,000 for kidnapping. In
Texas alone, within the last seven years, more than a quarter million criminal
aliens have been arrested and charged with over 600,000 criminal offenses. You
don’t hear that. (Eisenhower)
In
response to President Trump’s claim, a professor of sociology named Michael
Light pointed out that the president was combining two issues that should not
be combined into one, and also misusing statistics.[23] To
put it into perspective, Light proposed the claim that women were less violent
than men. If one argued against the claim by stating the amount of crimes done
by women, it still does not contradict the argument that men are more violent
than women. In this case with illegal immigrants, President Trump implies that
immigrants are more dangerous than native citizens by only citing statistics on
the amount of crimes done by illegal immigrants. However, Trump’s statistics do
not actually support his argument, because he did not compare the crimes of
illegal immigrants with native citizens. In fact, the Cato Institute posted a
study that concluded, “Illegal immigrants are 47 percent less likely to be
incarcerated than natives.”[24] Furthermore,
numerous studies done by other researchers discovered that the crime rate
committed by immigrants overall are no higher than non-immigrants, and that
higher concentrations of immigrants do not lead to higher rates of violent
crime.[25] Therefore,
from these statistics, it is evident that the claim that immigrants are
hazardous to the safety of native citizens is unfounded and disproven. It is
acknowledged, however, that there are not nationwide crime statistics
categorized by immigration status in the United States, but the research that
is available have mostly estimated that the relationship between crime and
illegal immigrants are connected to lower crime rates.[26]
In
conclusion, the same three arguments that immigrants are dangerous, a threat to
the workforce, and unable to assimilate are applied to each new wave of
immigrants based on fear and not fact. History often repeats itself from time
to time, and in this case, nativism is a hand-me-down policy that is rewrapped
under different packaging material every time there is an influx of immigrant
population. Overcoming American nativism is a daunting task because of its
extensive and pervasive history in the United States. One key difference
between the nativists now and before is the fact that today’s nativists have an
outlet in the form of the current President, who not only seem to agree with
their arguments, but actively supports legislation aiming to implement
nativism. Those who oppose nativism must actively advocate for immigration
reform — a reform that can satisfy the needs of the labour
market, provide a means in which immigrants can legally enter the United States
without being persecuted, and move to legalize undocumented immigrants while
discouraging future undocumented immigration. It is only through this kind of
reform, which will require a complex approach and a more positive public
opinion on immigrants, that the United States can possibly combat its
deep-rooted nativism. Through this, the United States could achieve a
potentially brighter and better future instead of relapsing to its nativist
past.
[1] Young,
Julia G. “Making America 1920 Again? Nativism and US Immigration, Past
and Present.” Journal on Migration and Human
Security 5, no. 1 (2017):
1-10. Accessed March 12, 2019.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/
233150241700500111.
[2] Lui,
Mary Ting Yi. The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and
Other
Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-century
New York City. 2nd ed.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
2007.
[3] Fasulo, David F. “Nativism and the Know Nothings: Should
the United States
Restrict Immigration?” May 1, 2013. Issues
& Controversies in American
History. Infobase.
http://icah.infobaselearning.com/
icahfullarticle.aspx?ID=134411
(accessed May 3, 2019).
[4] Briggs,
Amy. “The Know-Nothings: The United States’ First Anti-Immigration
Party.” National Geographic. Last
modified July 2017. Accessed March 26,
2019.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/archaeology-and-history/magazine/
2017/07-08/know-nothings-and-nativism/.
[5] Fasulo, “Nativism and the Know-Nothings”
[6] Fasulo, “Nativism and the Know-Nothings”
[7] Fasulo, “Nativism and the Know-Nothings”
[8] Schrag, Peter. “The Unwanted: Immigration and Nativism in
America.” Immigration
Policy Center. Last modified September 13, 2010.
Accessed March 12, 2019.
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/sites/default/files/research/
Immigration_and_Natvism_091310.pdf.
[9] Young,
“Making America 1920 Again”
[10] Lui,
“The Chinatown Trunk Mystery”
[11] Young,
“Making America 1920 Again”
[12] Lui,
“The Chinatown Trunk Mystery”
[13]
Young, “Making America 1920 Again”
[14] Young,
“Maknig America 1920 Again”
[15] WGBH.
“The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.” American Experience. Last modified 2015.
Accessed May 5, 2019.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/
flood-klan/.
[16] Young,
“Making America 1920 Again”
[17] Young,
“Making America 1920 Again”
[18] Young,
“Making America 1920 Again”
[19] Young,
“Making America 1920 Again”
[20] Stanford
Institute for Economic Policy Research. “What History Tells Us about
Assimilation of Immigrants.” Stanford Public
Policy Program. Last modified
April 25, 2017. Accessed March 28, 2019.
https://publicpolicy.stanford.edu/
news/what-history-tells-us-about-assimilation-immigrants.
[21] Hejny, Helga. “The Lump of Labour
Fallacy.” Academia.edu. Accessed May 8, 2019.
https://www.academia.edu/7683047/THE_LUMP_OF_LABOUR_FALLACY.
[22] Sumner,
Scott. “Farm Jobs and the ‘Lump of Labour’ Fallacy.”
Foundation for
Economic Education. Last modified February 21,
2017. Accessed March 6,
2019.
https://fee.org/articles/farm-jobs-and-the-lump-of-labor-fallacy/.
[23] Light,
Michael T., and Ty Miller. “Does Undocumented Immigration Increase
Violent Crime?” Wiley Online Library. Last
modified March 25, 2018.
Accessed April 17, 2019.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/
1745-9125.12175.
[24] Landgrave,
Michelangelo, and Alex Nowrasteh. “Incarcerated Immigrants in 2016:
Their Numbers, Demographics, and Countries of
Origin.” Cato Institute. Last
modified June 4, 2018. Accessed March 8, 2019.
https://www.cato.org/
publications/immigration-research-policy-brief/
their-numbers-demographics-countries-origin.
[25] Graif, Corina and Robert J. Sampson. “Spatial Heterogeneity
in the Effects of
Immigration and Diversity on Neighborhood
Homicide Rates.” Homicide studies
vol. Last modified July 15, 2009. Accessed April
16, 2019. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2911240/
[26] Graif, “Spatial Heterogeneity in the Effects of
Immigration”
Bibliography
·
Baer,
Friederike. “German Americans, nativism, and the
tragedy of Paul Schoeppe, 1869-1872.” The
Journal of Civil War Era 5, no. 1 (2015): 97+. Expanded
Academic ASAP (accessed March 28, 2019).
https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A416302433/EAIM?u=santacatalina&sid=EAIM&xid=7d03f2f3.
o
This was found in the Gale database, so
it is credible. Friederike follows the Schoeppe case, which includes the death of Maria Steinecke and the persecution of her German physician, Dr.
Paul Schoeppe. After being sentenced to death, many
German Americans protested and said Germans in America suffered from nativism
the most out of any immigrant groups. Friederike
focuses on whether Schoeppe was rightfully condemned,
and where such a public outcry came from.
·
Briggs,
Vernon M., Jr. “Immigrants Out! The New Nativism and the Anti-Immigrant Impulse
in the United States.” Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 17,
no. 4, 1998, p. 114+. Expanded Academic ASAP,
https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A21148395/EAIM?u=santacatalina&sid=EAIM&xid=0a4d73ef.
Accessed 14 Mar. 2019.
o
Found in the Gale database, so this
article is credible. Briggs gives an analysis from the book “Immigrations Out”,
and offers up the main argument that nativists recognize the priority of
citizens over foreigners. Briggs offers many specific events that exhibited
nativist behaviour, including proposition 187 in
California. Briggs focuses on making sure that essays that argue against
nativism are more factual, fair, and less opinionated.
·
Briggs,
Amy. “The Know-Nothings: The United States’ First Anti-Immigration
Party.” National Geographic. Last modified July 2017. Accessed
March 26, 2019.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/archaeology-and-history/magazine/2017/07-08/know-nothings-and-nativism/.
o
This web page was found in the National
Geographic website’s History Magazine. Amy Briggs is the Executive Editor
of National Geographic History magazine; therefore, the source
is credible because it comes from a nationally renowned organization. She
provides background information about the Know-Nothings, and more specific
anecdotes of actions done by the Know-Nothings.
·
Fasulo, David F. “Nativism and the Know Nothings: Should the United
States Restrict Immigration?” May 1, 2013. Issues & Controversies
in American History. Infobase.
http://icah.infobaselearning.com/icahfullarticle.aspx?ID=134411 (accessed May
3, 2019).
o
This source was taken from an InfoBase
called Issues and Controversies in American History, which contains
award-winning and leading online reference materials. This source provides an
in-depth introduction to the Know-Nothings Party, and proceeds to list specific
dates and events that pertain to the Know-Nothings.
·
Graif, Corina and Robert J. Sampson. “Spatial Heterogeneity in the
Effects of Immigration and Diversity on Neighborhood Homicide Rates.” Homicide
studies vol. Last modified July 15, 2009. Accessed May 5, 2019.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pms/articles/PMC2911240/
o
This source is credible because it comes
from the National Center for Biotechnology, from the U.S. National Library of
Medicine. Graif and Sampson preformed a study between
the relation of immigrant and crime rates. Their research sheds light on the imigration-homicide nexus, and it is evidence that
disproves the misconception that immigrants are dangerous.
·
Hejny, Helga. “The Lump of Labour Fallacy.”
Academia.edu. Accessed May 8, 2019. https://www.academia.edu/7683047/THE_LUMP_OF_LABOUR_FALLACY.
o
Academia.edu is a commercial networking
website for academics. This platform allows papers to be published, shared, and
monitered for their impact. Hejny
is credible because she is a faculty member at Anglia Law School in Anglia
Ruskin University. She explains about how the fallacy is based on the
misleading assumption that there are only a fixed number of jobs.
·
Landgrave,
Michelangelo, and Alex Nowrasteh. “Incarcerated Immigrants in 2016: Their
Numbers, Demographics, and Countries of Origin.” Cato Institute. Last modified
June 4, 2018. Accessed March 8, 2019.
https://www.cato.org/publications/immigration-research-policy-brief/their-numbers-demographics-countries-origin.
o
This source is credible because it comes
from the Cato Institute, an American libertarian think tank headquartered in
Washington, D.C. Michelangelo Landgrave is a doctoral student in political
science at the University of California, Riverside. Alex Nowrasteh is a senior
immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty
and Prosperity. The work focuses on showing that immigrants are less likely to
be incarcerated than native-born Americans.
·
Light,
Michael T., and Ty Miller. “Does Undocumented Immigration Increase Violent
Crime?” Wiley Online Library. Last modified March 25, 2018. Accessed April 17,
2019. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1745-9125.12175.
o
This source is credible because it comes
from the Wiley Online Library, which is one of the largest and most
authoritative collections of online journals, books, and research resources,
covering life, health, social, and physical sciences. This passage comes from
Light and Miller’s cohesive paper of Criminology, and this specific passage
focuses on describing how President Trump misused statistics when talking about
Mexican immigrants.
·
Lui,
Mary Ting Yi. The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and
Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-century New York City. 2nd ed.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2007.
o
In her book, The Chinatown Trunk
Mystery, Lui offers specific anecdotes describing the relationship between the Chinese
and Non-Chinese population in America. She focuses on the murder of Elsie
Sigel, and the aftermath of racial danger that arose following her death
targeted at her male Chinese lover, Leon Ling. As a former curator of the
Museum of Chinese in the Americas in New York City, she offers a valuable
insight into the public’s response to the presence of Chinese immigrants during
the time of the Chinese Exclusion era.
·
Pineda,
Richard. “The New Nativism: Proposition 187 and the Debate Over
Immigration.” Argumentation and Advocacy, vol. 46, no. 3, 2010, p.
170+. Expanded Academic ASAP,
https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A263439886/EAIM?u=santacatalina&sid=EAIM&xid=5f4e3965.
Accessed 14 Mar. 2019.
o
This article is from Gale database, so
it is credible. Pineda offers a review and summary from Robin Dale Jacobson’s
book, The New Nativism: Proposition 187 and the Debate Over Immigration. This
article offers a region (California) specific debate that exhibited nativist behaviour, and discusses the prevalence of fears about
growth tied to immigration and a sense of deteriorating quality of life in
communities impacted by undocumented immigration.
·
Sanchez,
George J. “Face the nation: race, immigration, and the rise of nativism in late
twentieth century America.” International Migration Review, vol.
31, no. 4, 1997, p. 1009+. Expanded Academic ASAP,
https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A20608701/EAIM?u=santacatalina&sid=EAIM&xid=b760fc81.
Accessed 14 Mar. 2019.
o
This article was found in gale database,
so it is credible. Sanchez focuses more on the contemporary part of nativism,
and explains the rise of nativism in the more recent years (the 20th century).
He gives more personal anecdotes of asian and latino victims of nativists. His claims of policy might be
a little hyperbolic, but he provides interesting narratives and opinions.
·
Schrag, Peter. “The Unwanted: Immigration and Nativism in America.”
Immigration Policy Center. Last modified September 13, 2010. Accessed March 12,
2019. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/sites/default/files/research/Immigration_and_Natvism_091310.pdf.
o
Schrag
is credible because he contributes to The Nation, Harper’s, The Los Angeles
Times, and other publications. The publisher is the Immigration Policy Center, a
prominent and nationally known center from American Immigration Council. Schrag introduces his views on nativism by linking nativism
to as early as when Americans began to consider themselves “a city upon a
hill”. He focuses on nativist policies, and covers nativist behaviour
throughout American history. He finishes with comments on nativist culture in
our current legislation, and emphasizes the fact that America is a nation of
immigrants.
·
Stanford
Institute for Economic Policy Research. “What History Tells Us about
Assimilation of Immigrants.” Stanford Public Policy Program. Last modified
April 25, 2017. Accessed March 28, 2019.
https://publicpolicy.stanford.edu/news/what-history-tells-us-about-assimilation-immigrants.
o
This source is credible because it comes
from the Stanford Public Policy Program, which is an institution that is known
for its credible research. The source disproves the misconception that
immigrants are unable to assimilate by using data of immigrant names. The
research provides an interesting and unique way to measure cultural
assimilation as accurately as possible.
·
Sumner,
Scott. “Farm Jobs and the ‘Lump of Labour’ Fallacy.”
Foundation for Economic Education. Last modified February 21, 2017. Accessed
March 6, 2019. https://fee.org/articles/farm-jobs-and-the-lump-of-labor-fallacy/.
o
This source is credible because it comes
from the Foundation for Economic Education, which is a non-political,
non-profit, tax-exempt educational foundation and has been trusted by parents and
teachers to teach sound economic principles and relevant and worldly daily
online content. Sumner is an American economist who teaches at Bentley
University. His insights on the Lump Labour Fallacy
relate directly to the crisis of undocumented immigrants in the United States
today.
·
WGBH.
“The Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.” American Experience. Last modified 2015.
Accessed May 5, 2019.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/flood-klan/.
o
This source is credible because American
Experience has been television’s most-watched history series. They create
documentaries that have been offered many awards, and are well-known for their
work on American history. They offer a background into the actions of the Ku
Klux Klan during the 1920s, and described the origin and rise of the Klansmen.
They provide key anecdotes about specific members of the Klan, including
William Joseph Simmons, who played a major role in the revival of the Ku Klux
Klan.
·
Young,
Julia G. “Making America 1920 Again? Nativism and US Immigration, Past and
Present.” Journal on Migration and Human Security 5, no. 1
(2017): 1-10. Accessed March 12, 2019.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/233150241700500111.
o
This article was found in the gale
database, so it is credible. Young offers insight into the similarities of
nativism back in 1920s and today. She cites specific historical events, such as
immigration waves and the Know-Nothings party. She then proceeds to expand on
nativist attitudes towards Asian immigrants and Mexican immigrants, before
completing her timeline of nativism with the current Trump administration. She
finishes her journal with solutions to counteract nativism in the present day.
ATTACHMENT FIVE – from Cambridge
online
HEROES OR VILLAINS?: THE IRISH, CRIME, AND DISORDER IN VICTORIAN
ENGLAND
By
Roger Swift - Published online by Cambridge University
Press: 11 July 2014
Extract
During the Victorian
period the link between Irish immigration, crime, and disorder in England was widely
regarded by contemporary observers as axiomatic. In 1836 the Report on the State of the Irish Poor in Great Britain devoted
four pages to the examination of Irish criminality, noting that “the Irish in
the larger towns of Lancashire commit more crimes than an equal number of
natives of the same places,” and in 1839 the Report of the Constabulary
Commissioners observed that in the towns of South Lancashire,
“when large bodies of Irish of less orderly habits, and far more prone to the
use of violence in fits of intoxication settled permanently in these towns, the
existing police force, which was sufficient to repress crime and disorders
among a purely English population, has been found, under these altered
circumstances, inadequate to the regular enforcement of the law.”
DJI lessons in the past have
noted that the draconian punishments of the Middle Ages made English more law
abiding
The belief that the Irish in England
were the harbingers of crime was by no means novel. With the substantial
increase in Irish immigration during the early Victorian period, the host
society's widespread belief in the innate criminality of the Irish—and, more
particularly, of the Irish poor—formed an integral component of the negative
side of the Irish stereotype. Witness, for example, Thomas Carlyle's
much-quoted view that “in his squalor and unreason, in his falsity and drunken
violence” the Irishman constituted “the ready-made nucleus of degradation and
disorder,” or Henry Mayhew's assertion that “as a body, moreover, the habitual
criminals of London are said to be, in nine cases out of ten, ‘Irish Cockneys,’
that is, persons born of Irish parents in the Metropolis.”
References
1
Report on the State of the
Irish Poor in Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers (hereafter
cited as P.P.), 34 (1836), pp. 20–23Google Scholar.
2
Report of the Royal Commission
to Inquire into the best means of Establishing an Efficient Constabulary Force
in the Counties of England and Wales, P.P. (1839),
p. 169, xix, 89, S. 97.
3
Carlyle, Thomas, Chartism (1839; London, 1972),
p. 183Google Scholar.
4
Mayhew, Henry and Binney, John, The
Criminal Prisons of London (London, 1862), p. 402Google Scholar.
5
Tristan, Flora, Promenades
Dans Londres (Paris, 1840),
pp. 134–36Google Scholar.
6
Faucher, Leon, Manchester in 1844: Its Present Condition and
Future Prospects (1844), p. 28Google Scholar.
7
Pearson, Geoffrey, Hooligan:
A History of Respectable Fears (London, 1981), p. 74Google Scholar.
8
The Nation, 6 June 1868.
9
Denvir, John, The
Irish in Britain (London, 1892), pp. 157–59, 460–62Google Scholar.
10
See, for example, Handley, James, The Irish in Scotland, 1798–1845 (Cork, 1945),
pp. 141–68Google Scholar; Handley, James, The Irish in Modern Scotland (Cork, 1947),
pp. 93–121Google Scholar; Jackson, John Archer, The Irish in Britain (London, 1963),
pp. 40–51Google Scholar.
11
See, for example, Swift, Roger, “Crime and the Irish in Nineteenth-Century
Britain,” in The Irish in Britain, 1815–1939,
eds. Swift, Roger and Gilley, Sheridan (London, 1989),
pp. 163–82Google Scholar; Neal, Frank, “A Criminal Profile of the Liverpool
Irish,” Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire [hereafter
cited as THSLC] 140 (1991): 161–99Google Scholar.
12
O'Day, Alan, “Varieties of Anti-Irish Behavior in Britain,
1846–1922,” in Racial Violence in Britain, 1840–1950,
ed. Panayi, Panikos (London, 1993),
pp. 26–43Google Scholar; Swift, Roger, “Anti-Irish
Violence in Victorian England: Some Perspectives,” Criminal Justice
History 15 (1994): 127–40Google Scholar.
13
See, for example, Finnegan, Frances, Poverty and Prejudice: A Study of
Irish Migrants in York, 1840–75 (Cork, 1982), pp. 132–54Google Scholar;
William J. Lowe, “The Irish in Lancashire, 1846–71,” (PhD diss., Trinity
College, Dublin, 1975); Richardson, Clem, “The
Irish in Victorian Bradford,” The Bradford Antiquary 9 (1976): 311Google Scholar; Swift, Roger, “Another Stafford Street Row: Law, Order, and
the Irish Presence in Mid-Victorian Wolverhampton,” Immigrants &
Minorities 3 (March 1984): 5–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
Finnegan shows that in York the Irish-born comprised 26 percent of all
prosecutions in 1850–51 (an index of overrepresentation of 3.6), 21 percent in 1860–61
(2.6), and 16 percent in 1870–71 (2.1); Lowe's study of Irish criminality in
selected Lancashire towns in 1861, 1871, 1881, and 1891 reveals a similar
picture: in these four census years the Irish-born percentage of all
prosecutions in Manchester comprised 30 percent (an index of overrepresentation
of 1.9), 22 percent (2.3), 17 percent (2.3) and 13 percent (2.8); in Liverpool
37 percent (2.0), 34 percent (2.2), 24 percent (1.9), and 16 percent (2.1); in
Preston 26 percent (3.1), 28 percent (5.2), 27 percent (6.1) and 26 percent
(8.4); Richardson's study of the Irish contribution to crime in Bradford
suggests that the Irish-born comprised 19 percent of all prosecutions in 1861
(3.3), 24 percent in 1871 (4.2), 15 percent in 1881 (3.5) and 5 percent in 1891
(2.0); while Swift shows that the Irish-born comprised 22 percent of
prosecutions in Wolverhampton during the 1850s, with an index of
overrepresentation of 2.8.
14
Report on the State of the
Irish Poor (1836), pp. 40–41Google Scholar.
15
Neal, Frank, Sectarian
Violence: The Liverpool Experience, 1819–1914 (Manchester, 1988),
pp. 110–15Google Scholar.
16
Judicial Statistics, England
and Wales 1861–1901, House of Commons
Papers, p. 16.
17
Report on the State of the
Irish Poor (1836), pp.
19–20, 57Google Scholar. Similarly, Gilbert Hogg, the chief constable of
Wolverhampton, reported in 1849 that the majority of commitments from the Irish
quarter “are mainly for offenses against the public peace, and not for the
crime of felony; the number of commitments of that kind being comparatively
few” (Board of Health, Report on the Sanitary
Condition of Wolverhampton, P.P. [1849], pp. 28–29Google Scholar).
18
Jones, David, Crime,
Protest, Community and Police in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London, 1982),
pp. 117–43Google Scholar; Dillon, Tom, “The Irish in
Leeds, 1851–61,” Thoresby Miscellany 16 (1979): 1–29Google Scholar; Finnegan, , Poverty and Prejudice,
pp. 132–54Google Scholar.
19
Swift, , “Crime and the
Irish,” pp. 163–82Google Scholar.
20
For example, Elizabeth
Malcolm concludes, “In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Irish people,
both Catholic and Protestant, subscribed to teetotalism in remarkably large
numbers.… The answer to the question “Did Paddy Drink?” is a complex one, being
both yes and no. In fact the question might most helpfully be worded “Which
Paddy Drank?” (Malcolm, Elizabeth, Ireland Sober, Ireland Free:
Drink and Temperance in Nineteenth-Century Ireland [Dublin, 1986],
pp. 331–33Google Scholar).
Also see Harrison, Brian, Drink and the Victorians: The
Temperance Question in England, 1815–1822 (Keele, 1994),
pp. 156–58Google Scholar.
21
Denvir, , The
Irish in Britain, p. 253Google Scholar.
22
Wolverhampton's chief
constable observed in 1849 that “many are tempted to spend their time and money
in these places from the total want of comfort at their own houses; indeed,
many of them have told me, after having been turned out of the public house,
that the place in which they lived was in such a miserable state that they
would rather remain out in the open air if the weather was not severe” (Report on the Sanitary Condition of Wolverhampton [1849], pp. 28–29Google Scholar).
23
Report of the Select Committee
on Public Houses, P.P. (1852–1853), p. xxxviiGoogle Scholar
.
Report on the State of the Irish Poor (1836),
Appendix I, pp. 40–41Google Scholar.
Jones, , Crime, Protest, Community, and Police,
p. 166Google Scholar.
Report on the State of the Irish Poor (1836),
Appendix II, pp. 19–20Google Scholar.
Report of the Constabulary Commission (1839),
pp. 18, S. 27Google Scholar.
Report on the Sanitary Condition of Wolverhampton (1849), p. 30Google Scholar.
Mayhew, and Binney, , The Criminal Prisons of
London, pp. 402–03Google Scholar.
Jones, , Crime, Protest, Community, and Police,
p. 8Google Scholar.
Report of the Constabulary Commission (1839),
p. 67Google Scholar.
Report of the Constabulary Commission (1839),
pp. 18, S. 27Google Scholar.
Jones, , Crime, Protest, Community, and Police,
p. 183Google Scholar.
Neal, , “A Criminal Profile of the Liverpool Irish,”
pp. 161–99Google Scholar.
Finnegan, , Poverty and Prejudice, pp. 134–43Google Scholar.
George, M. Dorothy, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1925),
p. 121Google Scholar.
Finnegan, , Poverty and Prejudice, p. 153Google Scholar.
Jones, , Crime, Protest, Community, and Police,
pp. 85–116Google Scholar.
Richardson, , “The Irish in Victorian Bradford,”
pp. 310–11Google Scholar.
Steedman, Carolyn, Policing the Victorian Community (London, 1984),
p. 48Google Scholar.
O'Day, , “Varieties of Anti-Irish
Behavior,” p. 26Google Scholar.
Davis, Graham, “Little Irelands,” in The Irish in Britain,
1815–1939, pp. 104–33Google Scholar.
Report on the State of the Irish Poor (1836),
p. 23Google Scholar.
Gallagher, , “A Tale of Two Cities,” pp. 106–29Google Scholar.
Lowe, William J., The Irish in Mid-Victorian Lancashire (New
York, 1989), p. 102Google Scholar.
Coleman, Terry, The Railway Navvies (London, 1965),
pp. 83–90Google Scholar.
Swift, , “Another Stafford Street Row,” pp. 5–29Google Scholar.
Coleman, , The Railway Navvies,
pp. 84Google Scholar.
Lowe, , The Irish in Mid-Victorian Lancashire, 145–78Google Scholar.
O'Day, , “Varieties of Anti-Irish
Behavior,” p. 37Google Scholar.
Hunt, E. H., British Labor History, 1815–1914 (London, 1981),
pp. 164–75Google Scholar.
O'Day, , “Varieties of Anti-Irish
Behavior,” p. 40Google Scholar.
ATTACHMENT SIX – from the Associated Press
BIDEN RECOMMITS TO GOOD FRIDAY ACCORD ON ST. PATRICK'S DAY
By ZEKE MILLER, DARLENE SUPERVILLE and DANICA KIRKA Associated
Press March 17, 2021, 6:52 PM
Biden, the
latest president of Irish descent, held a virtual meeting with Ireland's prime minister, Taoiseach Micheál Martin.
Biden told
Martin that it is “critically important” that the Good Friday Agreement be
maintained.
Unilateral
decisions by the U.K. undermine trust and threaten the peace process, the EU
said.
“We Irish are
the only people who are nostalgic for the future," he added.
ATTACHMENT
SEVEN – from the Irish Times
‘St Patrick’s
vermin’: the Irish victims of Trump’s 19th-century forerunners
by Christopher Kissane, Apr. 20, 2017
ATTACHMENT
EIGHT – from Mother Jones
An Old Anti-Irish Law Is at the Heart of Trump’s Plan to Reshape Legal
Immigration
The
administration is preparing a rule to crack down on immigrants who receive
public benefits.
ATTACHMENT
NINE – from the Peanut Gallery
From societypages.org.
Attachment 2B
Huh, I hadn't
put that together before, but leprechauns are usually drawn just like that.
Hmm, just
like St. Patrick's day today....
Laughingrat — January 28, 2011
(Of course,
the Warhammer goblins and orcs have fangs/tusks and are generally painted as
green.)
But we could
always hide our "irish-ness" if need be.
contrabalance — January 28, 2011
Congratulations
on your first interesting post, Lisa!
Man, there's
so much going on in that picture.
John Hensley
— January 30, 2011
Chestnut
Chicks = Pigs, Trolls, and Apes? « The Dumpling Cart — January 31, 2011
Emily Catherine
Dot Com | — March 6, 2011
Ohhhhhh. These people don't know about Irish Catholic Slavery in
America yet??
They were NOT
just indentured servants or immigrants.
Another
racist TEA Birther! - Page 7 - Christian Forums — April 20, 2011
Magically
Delicious! | Food and Visual Media — September 28, 2011
Aren’t we all
just members of the human race? | Erin V Echols — February 27, 2012
Si where's the
English James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, WB Yeats, Oscar Wilde, GB Shaw?
US American
Irish Stereotypes | I blame it on cultural capital — April 7, 2012
MJArmstrong — November 16, 2012
Dr. GS Hurd —
January 25, 2013
Star Trek:
Deep Space Nine – Captive Pursuit (Review) | the m0vie blog — September 5, 2013
Redheads =
Pigs, Trolls, and Apes? | The Dumpling Cart — January 6, 2014
That Line in
Human Nature « Professor Norton's Class Space — February 11, 2014
[…]
http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/01/28/irish-apes-tactics-of-de-humanization/
[…]
IRISH | Life
Is Color — March 17, 2014
[…] IRISH APES:
TACTICS OF DE-HUMANIZATION (thesocietypages.org) […]
[…] Irish
Apes: Tactics of De-Humanization. […]
Culturally
Inappropriate Team Names and Mascots: What about Notre Dame? | seandalai — April 8, 2014
"Banana
Envy": Notes on a Global Obsession « Americas Studies Americas Studies — May
2, 2014
You guys
screwed up. You never should have let us in.
Christian
Wright — March 10, 2015
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2015/mar/09/steve-bells-if-
Opinion:
Disheartening stereotypes cloud great Irish history | Montreal Gazette — March
20, 2015
Ireland 1916 1: Towards the Easter Rising | First World War
Hidden History — January 27, 2016
Blake Dim Mak Fitzgerald — September 9, 2016
Can anyone
confirm or deny that this was used on the Irish peoples first?
Dfabos@mail.com
— November 8, 2016
Ooyster.com -
hidden pearls of alternative news! — January 1, 2017
Paddy Works
on the Blog Post | Jeffrey K. Walker — March 15, 2017
Sebastian@reallyracist.com
— July 7, 2017
Pseudoscience
cant think. yes, on online wikapedia
The Cost of Addiction
to U.K. Society — August 18, 2017
The Past That
Forever Haunts Us – Global Modernisms in a Digital Age — September 17, 2017
flassbeck economics international - Economics and politics -
comment and analysis — January 12, 2018
Medicine
smell nothing. Everything again. Still real.
Jonathan Christophers — September 2, 2018
Edward ODonnell — April 15, 2019
Sir David Fabos — August
20, 2019
0 racis is question everyone do with or for once feel like
doctor?
Sir David Fabos — August
20, 2019
Then 0 racis not personality why have that study and no drugs real
Angelina Gudeeva — March
12, 2020
Angelina Gudeeva — March
12, 2020
Christopher
Fogarty — July 10, 2020
Read the
great book; Nothing But the Same Old Story, by Liz
Curtis.
