The Black Lives Matter, officially the Movement for Black Lives, released its platform of six demands this week. Number two on the list is “reparations for past and continuing harms.”1
The U.S. fight for civil rights has been going on as a result of slavery which began on North America’s soil centuries ago. Progress was realized in the 1960’s with various laws, but racial discrimination has not been eradicated, from both sides.
Obscured in the on-going strife is the fact black Americans have been not the only group poorly treated during our nation’s history. The common misunderstanding is so pervasive to the point that most U.S. citizens would think “race” when the word discrimination is mentioned. Women might be a second response, but most likely a distant second.
(see Footnote 2 for text and credit)
Time for a history refresher. Irish immigrants were very poorly treated for generations after their initial influx as a result of the potato famine in the 1840’s. Examples:
- “They were forced to live in cellars and shanties, partly because of poverty but also because they were considered bad for the neighborhood…they were unfamiliar with plumbing and running water. These living conditions bred sickness and early death. It was estimated that 80% of all infants born to Irish immigrants in New York City died. Their brogue and dress provoked ridicule; their poverty and illiteracy provoked scorn.”4
- “They became chamber maids, cooks, and the caretakers of children. Early Americans disdained this type of work, fit only for servants, the common sentiment being, “Let Negroes be servants, and if not Negroes, let Irishmen fill their place… The Blacks hated the Irish and it appeared to be a mutual feeling. They were the first to call the Irish ‘white nigger.'”4
- “The Know-Nothing Party- a political party in the late 19th century—developed with “native” Americans who hated the immigrant influx particularly the Irish.”5
- “Employers would place signs with NINA scrawled across the front. NINA spelled out is No Irish Need Apply, this would often be seen next to the No Dogs Allowed signs.”5
- “The Irish were ostracized from American society for many things besides just being newcomers. The Irish were ostracized for being Catholic. Many Protestants and ‘native’ Americans were distrustful of a religion that was, as they viewed it, highly irregular with its beads, meditative prayers to Jesus’ mother, oils, saints and statues. The Irish were also categorized as angry, alcoholic beings – (the term ‘don’t get your Irish up’, stemmed from a stereotypical belief in the volatile Irish temper) who drank all the time in saloons and had regular bar brawls and parties filled with revelry and debauchery.”5
- Even though early major league had Irish players, around the turn of the 20th century,” the large numbers of Irish fans misled the public into believing that the Irish dominated the game.” The same book printed this:6
Despite the cruel treatment, the Irish kept moving forward:
“The Irish were unique among immigrants… In New York City, during the Civil War, they rioted against the draft lottery after the first drawing showed most of the names were Irish. For three days the city was terrorized by Irish mobs and only after an appeal for peace by Archbishop Hughes did it end. In Pennsylvania they formed a secret organization called the Molly Maguires to fight mine owners who brutalized the miners and their families. They ambushed mine bosses, beat, and even killed them in their homes. The Irish used brutal methods to fight brutal oppression. They loved America and gladly fought in her wars… The days of ‘No Irish Need Apply’ passed. St.Patrick day paraded [sic] replaced violent confrontations…Through poverty and subhuman living conditions, the Irish tenaciously clung to each other. With their ingenuity for organization, they were able to gain power and acceptance. In 1850 at the crest of the Potato Famine immigration, Orestes Brownson, a celebrated convert to Catholicism, stated: ‘Out of these narrow lanes, dirty streets, damp cellars, and suffocating garrets, will come forth some of the noblest sons of our country, whom she will delight to own and honor.’ In little more than a century his prophecy rang true. Irish-Americans had moved from the position of the despised to the oval office.”4
Our American history has its proud moments, but we also need to remember those groups who were not always treated properly. Let’s not allow the tunnel-vision of political correctness to narrow our sense of fairness.
1 – “Black Lives Matter Releases Policy Agenda,” by Trymaine Lee, http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/black-lives-matter-releases-policy-agenda-n620966, 8/1/2016.
2 – “The Iberians are believed to have been originally an African race, who thousands of years ago spread themselves through Spain (undecipherable) Western Europe. Their remains are found in the barrows or burying places in sundry parts of these countries. The skulls are of low prognathous3 type. They came to Ireland and mixed with the natives of the South and West, who themselves are supposed to have been of low type and descendants of savages of the Stone Age, who, in consequence of isolation from the rest of the world, had never been (undecipherable) competed in the healthy struggle of life, and thus made way, according to the laws of nature for superior races.” Credited as coming from Harper’s Weekly, 1899. Artist Unknown, Misusing Darwin’s science theories as a basis, the idea of the Irish as less than fully white persisted. This 1899 cartoon showing the Irish stereotype as less evolved, presented as scientific fact 11 years after Nast’s last cartoon was published by Harper’s. Source: Wikipedia Commons, as published I “Irish As Subhuman,” https://thomasnastcartoons.com/category/irish-americans/, 3/1/2016.
3 – “being or having an upper or lower jaw that projects abnormally forward, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prognathous
4 – “Irish Immigrants in America in the 19th Century,” http://www.kinsella.org/history/histira.htm
5 – “The Irish in America: 1840’s- 1930’s,” http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug03/omara-alwala/irishkennedys.html
6 – From page 88 of “Baseball as America,” by George Plimpton, W.P.Kinsella, Paul Simon, Roger Angell, John Grisham, Jules Tygiel and others, National Geographic, Washington D.C., copyright National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, 2002.
CartaRemi 
More ahistorical generalizing from anecdotes.
And not even American anecdotes, but an English source that you falsely claimed came from “Harper’s Weekly”. No it didn’t. Your first illustration came from an English publication called “Ireland From One or Two Neglected Points of View”, by Strickland Constable. And it’s got nothing to do with the US, or US political cartoons.
And although you add citations to your page to make it look scholarly, none of the sources you’ve included here are reliable scholarship. One is NBC, one’s a dictionary, and two look like they date to the 1990s old web, and read like a child wrote them.
I don’t have time to unwind this disaster.
Very quickly: What’s going to happen if “Irish”-Americans ask for reparations is, historians will deal with it like they always do whenever “white Americans” try comparing their history of “oppression” to black people. See here:
https://limerick1914.medium.com/kiss-me-my-slave-owners-were-irish-86316555796c
Probably by explaining that well more than half of “Irish”-Americans don’t deserve any reparations, and a good number of them descend from slaveowners themselves.
1) Good job with regard to the research you did on the article I quoted from the Thomas Nast site which was posted almost six years ago. The part of having come from Harper’s Weekly was in the material taken verbatim from their source. I’m sure they would appreciate your correcting them. (It’s also possible the Harper Weekly article used by the Nast site quoted the original source you found.) 1a) I didn’t delve further into the source trail as even Master’s theses usually accept “secondary sources.”
2) The reason I used one footnote from a dictionary was to explain the meaning of the little used term, “prognathous,” found in the description of the various images. It was done as a service to the reader, not to appear “scholarly.” I use footnotes to give credit where it’s due so as to avoid plagiarism which many politicians are prone to, including the current resident of the White House.
3) If NBC is not an acceptable source, and that’s possible, then it supports the position that most mainstream news media has degenerated greatly since the days of Cronkite, Huntley & Brinkley, etc.
4) The example of a form of racism regarding the Irish taken from a source in England is certainly valid. When I wrote this article, I assumed that readers understood that ours is a nation of immigrants more so than any other country. When people arrived from different cultures, they brought their vices along with their virtues. Someone with a prejudicial attitude toward a certain group of people was not going to suddenly change when he reached Ellis Island or any other immigration port.
Thomas Sowell gave an example of retaining “old country” culture when settling in the U.S. in his 2005 book, “Black Rednecks and White Liberals.” These traits continued in our country long after the immigrants’ original land had changed a few generations later. “Emigration from Britain, like other migrations around the world, was not random either in its origins or its destinations. Most of the Britons who migrated to colonial Massachusetts, for example, came from within a 60-mile radius of the town of Haverhill in East Anglia. The Virginia aristocracy came from different localities in southern and western England. Most of the common white people of the South came from the northern borderlands of England — for centuries a no-man’s land between Scotland and England— as well as from the Scottish highlands and from Ulster County, Ireland. All these fringe areas were turbulent, if not lawless, regions… The rednecks of these regions [in Britain] were what one social historian has called ‘some of the most disorderly inhabitants of a deeply disordered land.’… Books, businesses, technology, and science were not the kind of things likely to be promoted or admired in the world of rednecks and crackers…What the rednecks or crackers brought with them across the ocean was a whole constellation of attitudes, values, and behavior patterns that might have made sense in the world in which they had lived for centuries, but which proved to be counterproductive in the world to which they were going — and counterproductive for the blacks who would live in their midst for centuries before emerging into freedom and migrating to the great urban centers of the United States, taking with them similar values.”
5) Whether my sources look like something from the 1990’s is unimportant. The concept of “NINA” (No Irish Need Apply), among other mistreatments is well documented throughout the last hundred years or more.
6) I didn’t intend to suggest that all oppressed groups, including the Irish, should request reparations. Otherwise, virtually every person of every race or ethnicity would have a claim in every part of the world. Reparations should be considered when either the wronged party is alive or whose descendants (like those of Jews from the concentration camps) remained harmed from those injustices today, such as in the case of valuable personal items which were stolen. The question is: to what extent are people responsible for the sins of their distant ancestors if the effects have faded?
7) The real disaster is not my article but the policies which have come out of the civil rights legislation era which all of us hoped would improve the nation.
Reparations are not the solution. In addition to the impossibility of implementing it fairly, it also erodes a person’s dignity. As Shelby Steele said about reparations in a Feb. 2019 interview with Laura Ingraham, “… but it’s self-defeating because you have to continue to see yourself as a victim. Waiting around in life, to be resurrected by the munificence of the larger society – by white guilt. And once again, you put your fate in the hands of other people, rather than yourself. I would like very much to think that I have the self-esteem, the dignity, to reject even the most lavish reparations. I have too much racial pride to consider such a thing. Keep your reparation. I will fight like every other man in the world, every person in the world, to get ahead, to make progress. But to cling to this idea is—is shameful.”
Two things would be of immense help. A) a welfare system which keeps the family together by not stifling initiative and B) choice in education which is necessary for any group to escape poverty.
Our well-intended welfare system was initiated just over a half-century ago, but the results have been abysmal. Single-parent households of Black children have gone from 1/3 in 1960 to 2/3 by 1994. 22% of Black children were born to unmarried women in 1960, thirty-four years later it was 70% (from the previously mentioned Sowell book). Until we come up with a system which doesn’t penalize initiative, it makes sense for many Black fathers to live separately so that their children will be better off.
Education is a known way out of poverty. While not every charter school outperforms the public schools, their track record is admirable. As far as claims that charter schools have an unfair advantage in “cherry-picking” the best students away from public schools, Thomas Sowell wrote this in his 2020 book, “Charter Schools and Their Enemies”: “In 2017, for example, there were 17,000 applicants for 3,000 places available in the Success Academy charter schools [NYC]. When charter schools took a fraction of the children from motivated families, why does that prevent the traditional public schools from comparably educating the remaining majority of children from those motivated families?” [emphasis retained]
P.S. The facts used in my original article and this response are not “anecdotes” (an account regarded as unreliable or hearsay).