America. While we, as Americans, and maybe not just that but as people in general would like to believe that America is truly free, and that it is a democratic republic. And while that is the case for many Americans today, for most of American history, many people came to the harsh realization that it wasn’t the case.
Black Americans suffered from Slavery, racism, and discrimination, and even after the 60’s, when most laws that segregated and discriminated against African-Americans were removed, they still face a lot of racism and discrimination today. Native Americans suffered genocide after genocide and watched helplessly as their land was taken from them by Anglo-American and Western European settlers. They still own only a hint of the land that was once theirs, even after the U.S Gov’t returned some of it. Hispanic Americans saw themselves become the victims of wage slavery and discrimination and only did the dirty jobs no one else wanted to do, because that was the only type of work they could find. But one group, whose story many Americans don’t even know about, faced just as bad if not worse discrimination than other minority groups like the 3 I just mentioned. They were catholic. They were white. They would soon find that they comprised around 20% of the American Population decades later. But they. Were despised.
They were the Irish-Americans, and to the shock of many, they endured some of the harshest treatment and discrimination for several decades when they first came to America. Even before-hand, they always suffered from the stereotype of being barbaric, uncivilized people. Even though, just like their discriminators, they were white. Funny enough, I myself have partial irish ancestry from both my mom and dad’s families, and my moms family came to America during the time they were hated most.
In this article, I will talk about the Irish-Americans and the forgotten story, of how we became victims of the White Mans burden.
Long ago, before mainstream nationstates even became a thing, several tribal groups lived on what we now know as Ireland, mainly in prehistoric sites now known as Céide Fields and Newgrange, but their origins are unknown (neither how they got there) and neither their cultures nor language have survived to date. It is thought that many people started to inhabit the island of Ireland ranging from Celtic tribals, to Romans, to Icelandic vikings, hell, Irish legends have it that around 1,000 BC, there were even settlers from Iberia who came to settle in Ireland. Basically the point is there’s no specific date of when Ireland became an actual thing and it’s a really mysterious island that was super diverse.
The terms “Irish” and “Ireland” are also thought to have originated from the Irish goddess, Ériu. So that’s a basic, oversimplified summary of the beginning of the Irish people as a whole. However... It gets a lot darker from there. It gets very, very dark.
Because of all the viking raids, slave trafficking going on in Ireland (this all went on from around 800 to the 1600’s) and lack of actual infrastructure (what I mean is Ireland didn’t really even have massive cities or areas of commerce at a time when Europe was starting to build cities and huge infrastructure projects), the Irish people and the island itself got this incredibly racist stereotype that the Irish people we uneducated, savage, and primal barbarians who had no living other than raping, pillaging, and criminal activity.
What didn’t help is that most of the Celtics (another term for Irish-Scottish people) were irreligious (or just not christian) in a time when Europe was deeply religious and run by the pope, so not believing in god or catholicism at the time was seen as so blasphemous that you deserved a literal crusade or crucifixion. So now the Irish got the stereotype of being Infidels. And there pesky neighbors over in the British Isles, would NOT let that slide.
Anti-Irish sentiment ran deep in most Britons and Anglo-Saxons during the 1200s-1700s during a time of religious controversy when the Irish as whole didn’t fit the religious standards at the time due to their lifestyle and beliefs. Not saying Anti-Irish sentiment from Britons has not stopped being a problem, but you get the point. Stereotypes of the Irish being filthy tribals who were bastardizing the European race flew left and right. To quote Gerald of Wales, this is what he had to say about the Irish:
“They (the Irish) live on beasts only, and live like beasts. They have not progressed at all from the habits of pastoral living. ..This is a filthy people, wallowing in vice. Of all peoples it is the least instructed in the rudiments of the faith. They do not yet pay tithes or first fruits or contract marriages. They do not avoid incest.” - Gerald of Wales.
That sums up how much hate Europe, mainly Britain wrongly held against the Irish at the time.
And when Catholicism started spreading across Europe, the Irish saw themselves became victims of a middle age version of the White Man’s burden. The Irish were too uncivilized and barbaric to know what was truly good for them. They were unfit to rule and live by themselves. They did not know the way. So the Anglo-Saxon Britons were going to have to teach them the way, by spreading god's word to them through catholicism. They forcefully spread a peaceful religion to the Irish. The britons brutally slaughtered people like the Irish in order to convert them to a religion that taught that under almost no circumstances should violence ever be used nor tolerated. They did this in the name of a god that did not approve of violence. The Irish fell victims to a bunch of bible thumpers from the Island to the east. And to be fair, despite all this mistreatment, most of the Irish populace became super catholic, and became a shining beacon for Catholicism. Only to become victims to a sad, discriminatory twist of Irony because they were now mostly affiliated with a religion that they had previously been forced to convert to.
Now the Irish were really hated. They were viewed as stubborn barbaric gentiles because no matter how hard protestants tried during the reformations, most of the Irish never converted to Protestantism, they wouldn’t do it. They just wouldn’t do it. They were now viewed as not only filthy tribal people who had no honor but gentiles because they were catholics. They now fell victims to the discrimination from the WASPs who had forced them to become catholics not too long ago. And unfortunately for the Irish, their streak of bad luck continued. Because when people started migrating and settling in what is now the current-day United States, those anti-catholic attitudes were carried along to the new world by the majority Anglo-Saxon and Germanic Protestant settlers.
When the first English colonies in America were being settled, people who wanted to settle there but did not have the money to do so found themselves stuck with only one option. Indentured Servitude. Basically just a polite term for slavery but you might be oh-so lucky enough to get paid less than minimum wage and find a way to freedom after being a slave for 7-10 years. Some of those servants didn’t even the ladder promise, and died a slave. But guess what, you know what group from Europe was full of mostly poor people who could barely make a living? The Irish. So guess who’s gonna suffer most of the same mistreatments the African Slaves faced on their trip to the Americas with the only differences being that they were white, supposedly had the promise of freedom after being a slave in disguise, and some of them came to the Americas by choice? Yup, the Irish.
While most Irish servant- you know what I’m just gonna be honest and used the term slave. While most Irish slaves did get the promise of freedom and were able to vote and own property after spending 7-10 years of their life as a slave, unlike their African counterparts, they still faced discrimination. Most Irish settlers and ex-slaves still suffered from the same stereotypes and discrimination they had dealt with back home years ago. Being working to lower-middle class catholics in a predominantly upper-class conservative protestant society did not help either.
Luckily though, the first wave of Irish-American immigrants that came to America during and shortly after the Revolutionary War after the whole indentured servitude incident were tolerated a bit more and suffered much less discrimination because 1. Most of the immigrants were seen as educable and held high-ranking jobs and positions, unlike the 2nd-wave Irish immigrants and 2. A lot of Irish people helped the American rebels in the Revolutionary War.
But once again, it would be proven that even in new lands separated from their old homes by an entire ocean, prejudice. Was not. Escapable, for the average Irishmen.
Back in Ireland, the Anti-Irish sentiment (also called “Hibernophobia”) from Britons was at an all time high.
Laws were made to discriminate against Irish Catholics and farmers, mainly potato farmers, which was a occupation held by many Irish people at the time. Poor farming and unhelpful segregation laws eventually caused a potato blight, meaning a majority of the potatoes Irish people farmed were not edible. Since so many Irish people’s main course of meal involved potatoes, this meant that the main source of food for a majority of the populace could no longer be relied on. A famine ensued from around 1845-49. 1 Million Irish people died, mainly from starvation in what is known as the Great Potato famine. This along with the immigration of several million Irish people shortly after the famine caused Ireland to lose 20-25% of it’s population (Which went from 8 Million people before hand to its current populace of around 4-5 million people). The discrimination they faced in America, the place they had immigrated to in hopes of freedom and opportunity, was just adding insult to injury.
Many Irish-Americans found discrimination preventing them from settling in safe, sanitary areas, so they had to settle in some of the worse, crime-filled, unwanted areas of urban cities like Boston, New York City, and Chicago because no one else wanted them. This just added to the already-popular racist stereotypes that Irish were basically just primal bastards with no honor. But it got worse. Many people refused to give Irish people jobs and they found themselves doing the dirty work no one wanted. There were literal signs on public areas and places of work that said “N.I.N.A” or, “No Irish Need Apply” because that’s how Hibernophobic most Americans were at the time.
So since Irish people could only find dirty, low-paying, public infrastructure work no one else wanted most of the time, you would find that most of the urban city roads, houses, railroads, etc. are built by Irishmen. In fact, a whole section of workers at the time could’ve been full-on Irish people.
But the discrimination didn’t stop there, not only were Irish basically viewed as barbaric, un-white, savages (ironically despite the fact they too, were white) because of their job positions and living conditions at the time, but they were persecuted for their religion too. In a protestant-filled nation full of people who worshipped the god at a local church, the idea of worshipping a figure thousands of miles away from them, was completely foreign and un-American to most.
So the Irish Catholics had to take gut punch after gut punch because of their religious beliefs. It was a fear instilled in many, that the unholy pope, an abuser and misinterpreter of God’s word, would mobilize his bishops, and send them down to America in the form of filthy Irishmen to invade them, and ruin and bastardize American culture and set up a new place of unholy worship that destroyed any honor America had.
There were literal riots against the Irish-Americans in the 1840’s and 50’s. In 1844, a nasty incident erupted in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Named the Know-Nothing Riots, a bunch of anti-catholic, Hibernophobic, nativist rioters whipped up violent Anti-Irish sentiment in attempt to remove catholic bibles and teachings from schools in the area and to remove any catholic or Irish influence in Philly. 20+ people died, mainly innocent Irish-Catholic immigrants and soldiers trying to protect the Irish, and 2 of the 13 catholic churches in the city were burned to the ground, showcasing once again, just how hated the Irish were in America at the time.
So since the Irish did all this lower-class work and lived in lower-class urban neighborhoods most of the time, they would be living in the same neighborhoods as African-Americans too. Now it’s not like the Irish-Americans and African-Americans were broskis, but compared to other white-and-black relationships at the time, The Afro-Irish relationships seemed extremely friendly. You would find that the Irish and Black people would inhabit the same houses, apartment complexes, public areas, bars, even interracial relationships, you name it. But at a time when multi-racial communities and families horrified many white Americans, this also turned more negative attention to the Irish-Americans, it just never ended.
Since so Many Irish people lived with or near African-Americans, many other White Americans just referred to the Irish as white (n-word)’s. I didn’t say the whole word, but you get the point.
So now you have the Irish-Americans of the mid-19th Century. Who are viewed as dirty, unwhite yet white barbarians, and filthy immigrants who had no culture and worshipped a false image of god while stealing everyone else's jobs yet also viewed as lazy slobs.
But how did the Irish turn around this view of them as being barbaric imbeciles? Well, many Irish-Americans did prove that they were “truly American” by eventually taking up high-ranking political positions and jobs like law enforcement, assimilating to American culture enough that they were approved of, and by supporting the Union in the civil war.
To end this article, I’ll say this. It’s not wrong to be Irish because of all this and the race riots they perpetrated later. It’s not wrong to be black, it’s not wrong to be white, it’s not wrong to be Hispanic, it’s not wrong to be Asian or Native American. It’s not wrong for you to be who you are just because of your race, don’t let others force you to be something you don’t want to be. Just don’t forget who you are, where your roots are, and don’t forget where you came from.
But just to sum it all up, yes with hard work, and enough assimilation the Irish went from being viewed as the burden of American society, to the most American and patriotic people ever. But that’s our story, and how we the Irish, were once the forgotten victims, of the White Mans Burden. We may have not been enslaved and chained like African-Americans unlike what white nationalists want you to believe, but our story is still one of suffering, trial, and triumph. - Nick Legue