Den bunnløse sorgen.

Det er, for å si det med Øystein Runde, med skjelvende hender jeg skriver dette. Fredagens to grufulle angrep har etterlatt meg med en sorg jeg tidligere kun har kjent på ved bortgangen til personer som sto meg svært nær. Det er en sorg som til stadighet vender tilbake, både på naturlige steder og i mer uventede situasjoner. Sorgen vender tilbake når man ferdes rundt i Oslos gater, når man er samlet med sine nærmeste og når man ser på minnegudstjenesten. Men sorgen slår også innover deg med all mulig kraft når man venter det som minst. Når man våkner, i dusjen eller i bilen. Det er en bunnløs sorg som har inntruffet det norske folk etter tragediene i Oslo og på Utøya. En sorg som kommer til å følge oss svært lenge.

Feige og grufulle terrorhandlinger som vi fra før av kjenner fra land som Irak, Afghanistan, Palestina, Somalia, Kenya og Tanzania, men også fra land som USA, Italia, Spania, England, Tyskland og Finland, har nå truffet oss med all sin umenneskelighet. Det er et angrep på en fantastisk, demokratisk nasjon, og et angrep på en fantastisk, pulserende, multikulturell by. Slik sett er det et angrep på oss alle. Et angrep på alle nordmenn som hver dag deltar, bistår og trygger det norske demokratiet. Et angrep på alle Osloborgere, som hver dag gjør Oslo til den fantastiske byen den er. Slik sett er sorgen grenseløs. Den har ingen begrensninger verken i forhold til alder, politisk ståsted, kjønn, religion eller hudfarge. Terroristen har påført oss en sorg, og den rammer oss alle. Slik sett har selvfølgelig terroristen allerede tapt på alle mulige måter. Sorgen, og minnet om ofrene, vil for alltid kun gjøre oss mer stolte over å være medlemmer av det moderne, demokratiske Norge, og det vil for alltid kun gjøre oss mer stolte over å bo i det flerkulturelle Oslo. Landet vårt og byen vår har allerede med stolthet, storhet og varme reist seg igjen. Terrorisme vil aldri ha en mulighet til å knekke oss. Det viser helgens hendelser.

Men de feige og grufulle terrorhandlingene er også noe mer en et angrep på Oslo og den norske befolkningen. De er et angrep på den norske venstresiden. Det er et angrep på solidariteten, antirasismen og humanismen som venstresiden i stor grad har kjempet frem i Norge. (Selvfølgelig i samarbeid med og med støtte fra partier og politikere fra sentrum, deler av høyresiden og en lang rekke aktører fra andre deler av det norske samfunnsliv.) Jeg har forsøkt å sette ord på den sorgen og sympatien jeg føler for alle i AUF, uten å klare det. Det eneste som står klart for meg er at AUF og den norske venstresiden vil reise seg igjen. Akkurat som våre verdier vil fortsette å seire. Solidaritet, antirasisme og humanisme har alltid i moderne tid blitt angrepet av høyreekstreme. Dette er en kamp vi alltid har vunnet og vil vinne hver eneste gang så lenge det er nødvendig. Da høyreekstreme kom med bombetrusler mot 17. mai-barnetoget på 80-tallet samlet vi oss om våre verdier og vant. Da nynazismen vokste på 90-tallet mobiliserte vi og vant. Da Benjamin og Are ble drept samlet det norske folk seg rundt de grunnleggende humanistiske prinsippene: Medmenneskelighet, solidaritet, toleranse og antirasisme. Det vil vi også gjøre nå. Den norske venstresiden og arbeiderbevegelsen har allerede med stolthet, storhet og varme reist seg igjen. Terrorisme vil aldri ha en mulighet til å knekke oss og våre verdier. Det viser helgens hendelser.
Anders Behring Breivik har, i hvert fall tilsynelatende, ene og alene ansvaret for de to feige og grufulle terrorhandlingene på fredag. En psykopat(hva nå det betyr?) og en kvasiintellektuell(noen kaller han intellektuell, en helt avskyelig betegnelse all den tid han tydelig verken kan rasjonalisere, eller se logikk.). Han var også visstnok et monster, noe som jeg helt ærlig ikke helt vet hva betyr. Jeg tror ikke på monstre, men jeg vet at han var en nordmann. En Osloborger som vokste opp og stadig lot seg forme av det samfunnet alle vi andre har skapt. Breivik var ingen isolert galning som utførte sine handlinger i et vakuum. Anders Behring Breivik levde i et samfunn der Carl I. Hagen kunne si på TV2 under valgkampen i 2005 at ”ikke alle muslimer er terrorister, men alle terrorister er muslimer”, uten å bli møtt med tilstrekkelig kritikk. Dette til tross for at 90,2 prosent av terrorhandlingene i Europa mellom 2006 og 2009 ble, ifølge Europol, begått av høyreekstreme. Breivik levde i et samfunn der personer som Hege Storhaug og Human Rights Service til stadighet kunne påstå at de ”ble kneblet og tvunget til taushet av politisk korrekthet”, uten å bli møtt med tilstrekkelig kritikk. Dette til tross fra at deres hatefulle innlegg, spekket med faktafeil og selektiv statistikk, fikk ukentlig spalteplass i norske medier. Breivik levde i et land der titusener, kanskje hundretusener, snakket om å kaste ut ”alle muslimer og stenge grensene” i de første timene etter bomben i Oslo, uten å bli møtt med tilstrekkelig kritikk. Hva skjer for øvrig nå? Skal vi kaste ut alle med blondt hår, alle fra Oslo vest, eller alle som sier at de er konservative kristne?

Jeg prøver med dette ikke å legge skylden på politiske motstandere, og jeg prøver definitivt ikke å fraskrive Breivik noe ansvar. Som jeg allerede har skrevet er det ene og alene Breivik som har ansvaret for fredagens avskyelige angrep på AUF, arbeiderbevegelsen, Oslo og alle oss nordmenn. Men på lik linje som vi skal være stolte over måten vi har møtt disse terrorhandlingene på, og på lik linje som vi skal være stolte over våre demokratiske og tolerante verdier, skal vi også erkjenne at det var en nordmann som utførte disse handlingene. En nordmann født, oppvokst og formet i byen og landet vårt. Det tvinger oss alle til å se oss selv hardt og lenge i speilet. Det gjelder oss alle. Det gjelder mediene, Dagbladet, hegnar.no, VG osv., som i søk etter mest mulig profitt og flest mulig klikk, lot sine internettsider fungere som søppelkasser for rasistisk og fremmedfiendtlig dritt. Det gjelder de som har hengt seg på bølgen av konspirasjoner uten så mye som en kritisk tanke. Det gjelder de som nå velger å møte Breiviks ønske om et totalitært samfunn ved å rope ut om dødsstraff, tortur, angrep på hans advokat og andre totalitære trekk som vil bryte ned vår rettsstat og vår tro på verdien av hvert eneste menneskeliv. Det gjelder samtlige politikere og partier som nærmest har utkonkurrert hverandre i å være hardest og mest ubarmhjertig i møte med de som har flyktet fra krig og konflikt og andre av våre nye landsmenn. Det gjelder alle de som til stadighet har stemplet hele folkegrupper ut i fra enkeltpersoners handlinger. Det gjelder alle, og dette er tross alt den store majoriteten av den norske befolkningen, som tror på med medmenneskelighet og antirasisme, men som har sviktet i å demme opp for en slik tankegang som Breivik har tilegnet seg. Det gjelder altså oss alle.

Det er kanskje dette som gjør sorgen om mulig enda mer bunnløs. Men ved å se oss selv i speilet, ser vi også noe annet. Vi ser et folk som er overbevist om at vårt demokrati skal gro sterkere. Vi ser verdier som skal få vokse ytterligere. Vi ser et land og en by som skal vokse seg stoltere, mer selvsikker og varmere. Og ikke minst: Vi ser et folk som aldri skal la 22.7.2011 få skje igjen. Det fyller meg faktisk med en grenseløs stolthet i den bunnløse sorgen.

Bachelor, Smachelor.

For et par måneder siden gjorde jeg meg endelig ferdig med min bachelorgrad på Blindern. Tok noen år før jeg fant ut hva jeg ville studere, noe som jeg vel egentlig fortsatt er litt usikker på, men nå er jeg i hvert fall ferdig med første del. Bacheloroppgaven er jeg, foruten litt småpirk her og der, ganske så fornøyd med. Den handlet om rasisme mot irer i USA, og hvordan dette fenomenet er koblet opp mot Britisk innvandring, og selvfølgelig en hel del andre ting. For spesielt interesserte følger den under. (Ønskeliste til bryllup er lenger ned på siden, hvis noen leter etter det da...)

The Origins of (American) Racism against the Irish

How a British Mindset Helped Shape the Prejudices against the Irish in America

1. Introduction

1.1. There is Something Special About the Irish!

1.1.1. There is Nothing Special About the British?

1.2. Were Prejudices against Irish Americans a Result of British Americans Particularities?

2. Failing to See the British as an Immigrant Group.

2.1. The Origins of British Racism.

2.2. A Common Problem in the Narration of Immigrant Groups?

2.3. The Dismissal of the Idea of the Racial Irish Other.

3. Fears and Ideas of Racial Superiority.

3.1. Frightened of the Pope, St. Patrick or Both?

3.2. The Racial Part of the Prejudices.

4. Irish Americans and the Social Construction of Whiteness.

5. Nativism and its British Input.

6. Conclusion.

7. Bibliography.

1. Introduction

1.1 There is Something Special About the Irish!

There is an Irish American folk song from the Civil War, called “Kelly’s Irish Brigade”, in which Irish participation on the side of the Confederates is explained and justified with these words: “They have called us Rebels and Traitors / But themselves have thrown off that name of late; / They were called it by the English Invaders, / At home in seventeen and ninety-eight".[1] Almost 150 years later the Irish group The Chieftains got together with American guitarist Ry Cooder in a musical celebration of Irish Americans who deserted from the American army and volunteered themselves to the Mexican army as the San Patricio battalion. (Zinn, 1987: 157-158) In the collaboration’s song “March to Battle” the following is stated: “We are the San Patricio’s.(…) There will be no white flag flying within this green command”,[2] and we quickly realize that this is yet another attempt to interpret actions executed by Irish Americans as something condemned by their “Irishness”. The voice that speaks these words belongs to actor Liam Neeson, perhaps most famous for starring in blockbusters, like Michael Collins and Gangs of New York, which amongst other things explore the relations between the United States and Irish and Irish American rebellion.

Expressions of Irish Americans sentiments and peculiarities are of course not limited to Irish folk culture and American popular culture. Open a book on American history and you can read how the “Irish immigrants’ loathing of aristocracy, which they associated with English rule, attracted them to the party claiming to represent ‘the common man’.” (Tindall & Shi, 2007: 324) Explore American immigration history and you will soon find essays on how “American wakes” contributed to the distinct character of the Irish Americans. (Miller, 1998: 113-122) Look at academic works on ethnicity and nationalism in general and you will see how Americans of Irish descent can be used as an example of long-distance nationalism. (Eriksen, 2002: 153-155) There is an idea that Irish Americans have behaved through history in a certain way because of their national legacy, and this idea is all around us; in academia, in culture and in the mindset of American and Irish citizens.

Even if some of this are obviously rooted in mythology, I personally don’t find the attachment of an Irish peculiarity of the history of Americans of Irish descent problematic. It seems true enough that because of the oppression of Ireland, many Irish immigrants perceived America as an exile. It is hard to argue that Irish American opposition to American involvement in World War I was unrelated to the relationship between Britain and Ireland. And Irish American economic and military funding, from early connections to the Irish Volunteers in the 19^th century to the IRA-gun-running in Florida just over ten years ago, evidently illustrates transnational political activities in Irish American communities. (Miller, 1998: 113-122)(Tindall & Shi, 2007: 709)(Fallows, 1979: 120-123)(Ellison URL 2000)

1.1.1 There is Nothing Special About the British?

The problem is not that stressing the Irish background of the immigrants is wrong. It is, however, according to this writer, a problem when emphasizing the distinct characters of Irish immigrants contributes to an unbalanced focus in American history. The classical perspective of the Irish experience in America becomes somewhat incomplete in the sense that an occupation of a county has serious effects on more than just the immigrants from the occupied country. It also affects the residents of the occupying country. Here is perhaps an unbalanced focus in American history positioned - in the history of immigrants from countries that were involved in conflicts in general, and in the history of British and Irish immigrants especially.

1.2 Were Prejudices against Irish Americans a Result of British Americans Particularities?

The resistance against the Irish in the United States is an example on this subject. It is in critical literature mostly treated as an American phenomenon. It is explained exclusively in terms of social class in America, Nativism and anti-Catholic sentiments.

George Brown Tindall’s and David Emory Shi’s history book America – A Narrative History is quoted in the introduction as an example of an academic work that speaks of the impact the Irish heritage had on life in America. On page 324 is the first mentioning of anti-Irish prejudices. “Irish immigrants confronted demeaning stereotypes and violent anti-Catholic prejudices. It was commonly assumed that the Irish were ignorant, filthy, clannish folk incapable of assimilation.” (2007: 324) The question is then; where did the prejudices originate? They could of course come from the fact that the Irish neighborhoods were “filthy, poorly ventilated buildings plagued by high rates of crime, infectious disease, prostitution and alcoholism.” (Tindall & Shi, 2007: 326-327) Poverty alone creates prejudices, poverty mixed with crime is a sure fix, and then we have the voting blocs, unfamiliar religious practices and Catholic authoritarianism. Catholic Irish immigrants were targeted from the beginning by portions of the American population because the colonial settlement patterns were rooted in the Protestant doctrinal ideology that developed out of the sixteenth-century Reformation in Europe. (Glazier, 1999: 654) All of these reasons are probably needed to understand the opposition, and they are all rooted in American culture and history. But did the prejudices have a more diverse background?

Would it be more fruitful if we look at the opposition against the Irish as partly a British phenomenon translated into American social and political terms? It can be argued that colonialism and occupation contributed to a British mentality in the 18^th to mid-20^th century that had elements of narrow-mindedness, and which used racism, pseudoscientific and pseudo-religious arguments for British supremacy. Can prejudices against Irish Americans be completely understood if we ignore the deep rooted racism and the ideology of superiority that existed in the British mentality? The British imperialist policy was of course very much a result of elite decision making, but it would not have succeeded without a sense of support inside the population. Is it completely explored if this mentality had an impact on the British immigrants?

If we continue to take Tindall’s and Shi’s book as an example, then we can see, as mentioned earlier, that it also explores the Irish particularities several times. Irish participation in the Democratic Party, terrorism conducted by the Molly Maguires and opposition against American involvement in World War I are occurrences that are explained as a result of the relationship between Britain and Ireland (2007: 324, 573-574 & 709), but this is never explored the other way.

As in other works, there are attempts to describe how the formerly oppressed are shaped by their nations’ history, but rarely do we see anyone exploring the link between British occupational mentality and American prejudices against the Irish. What about the British ethos of “The Island”, with the Irish as the degenerated neighbor? What about fears for connections between a large Irish American community and various Irish resistance and independence movements? These potential causes are in academia and beyond largely ignored. Is that because there is nothing to these reasons, or is our understanding of American immigration history incomplete?

This thesis tries to explore and give answers to these questions with the hope that it can introduce a new perspective in the debate on the historical hostilities in the United States towards Irish Americans: A perspective which argues that the prejudices against the Irish in the United States was partly a severe consequence of the British occupation of Ireland.

2. Failing to See the British as an Immigrant Group.

If there is some substance to any of these reasons it might be thinkable that we ignore such matters because we often fail to see the British as an immigrant group. But the idea of the British as just natural interior in America is of course untrue. Britain was the source of one of the biggest immigrant group for every single decade all the way up to the 1970s. (Spickard, 2007: 488) But is a failure to perceive British Americans as immigrants the full reason?

2.1 The Origins of British Racism

If we are to explore any potential links between prejudices against the Irish in Britain and prejudices against Irish immigrants in the United States, it is necessary to understand the specific nature of British racism. In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt attacks the misconception that racism is a kind of exaggerated nationalism. According to Arendt racism is the only national ideology which consistently denied the “great principle upon which national organizations of peoples are built, the principle of equality and solidarity of all peoples guaranteed by the idea of mankind”. (1968: 160-161) For Arendt this kind of racism as an ideology in England can be traced back to the French Revolution. A tendency to discriminate against any French idea combined with social inequality being the basis of English society made rather scared Tories come up with something allegedly better than the Rights of Men: The rights of Englishmen. (Arendt, 1968: 175) The evolvement of English racism can perhaps be seen as something else than a “gigantic competition between race-thinking and class-thinking for dominion over the minds of modern men” (1968: 160-161), but Arendt’s statement on racism as the main, perhaps the only, ideological weapon of imperialistic politics seems likely to be true.

As Ireland continued to be a victim of British imperialism in the 19^th century, it also became a victim of the racism that trailed British imperialistic politics. This followed to what Anton Blok summarized as “the fact that the fiercest struggles often take place between individuals, groups and communities that differ very little – or between which the differences have greatly diminished.” (Jones, 2006: 262) Closeness between the two groups, concerning linguistic, geography and religion, is ignored because, like Freud observed, the “communal feeling of groups requires, in order to complete it, hostility towards some extraneous minority.” (Jones, 2006: 262) As Adam Jones writes “the psychological dynamic by which the “Self” and the “We” are defined against the “Other” is fundamental to genocide”. (2006: 262) The point here is not to discuss if the British was responsible for genocide in Ireland.[3] But we can certainly replace genocide with less serious violations against humanity and we will still find that the notion of “We” and the “Other” was fundamental. What philosopher Jonathan Glover has catchy enough called “festivals of cruelty”, certainly took place in Ireland. This could not have happened if moral resources, such as moral identity, in the British people had not been systematically attacked by forces that played on enmity, ideas of racial and cultural superiority and an accept for violence. (Glover, 2001: 22-40) (Brandal, Stensrud and Thorsen, 2008: 547)

It is fair to question the use of the word racism here. After all the Irish looked nearly identical with the British, and a sense of mental superiority in an imperial nation does not have to come from racism. What separate the two peoples are clearly cultural differences. But as David M. Reimers has argued “the racial theories of the turn of the century were not only concerned with black-white relations but also with relations among various white groups.” (1972: 6) Reimer’s argument is proved by the prejudices against the Irish. As Noel Ignative writes “Eighteenth-century Ireland presents a classic case of racial oppression. Catholics there were known as native Irish, Celts, or Gaels (as well as ‘Papists’ and other equally derogatory names), and were regarded, and frequently spoke of themselves, as a ‘race’ rather than a nation.” (1995: 35) As we can see, Irishmen were not only looked upon as a racial other, and in turn exposed to racism, they also responded in a way that is usual when one is being attacked by racism: Not by questioning the dogma of racism, but by replying in kind against the race of his opponent. Thomas F. Gossett has a good summary of the development of race-thinking in England and Ireland: ”In England when complacent racists derided the Irishman for being a furious and mercurial Celt, the Irishman responded by calling the Englishman a boorish and sluggish Anglo-Saxon.” (1972: 86) There is in other words a strong argument to be made that notions of racial differences between the Irish and the English become popular in both countries.

Of all the psychological perspectives surrounding the occupation of Ireland, pathological narcissism arguably stood out. The individual victims of British imperialism around the world started to exist in the mind of many British with the only purpose of fortifying, magnifying and idolizing the British man. This more than anything created the British ethos of “The Island”. Canadian author Margaret Atwood claims that every country has a single unifying symbol that functions like a system of beliefs.[4] If we are to find a symbol that held England together, then “The Island” seems like a potential choice. It explains the idea of England as the center of the world and it leads back to the argument that inequality belonged to their national character.[5] (Atwood, 1972: 31-32) (Arendt, 1968: 175) Such a system of beliefs is more suitable in analyzing the unfairness Irish immigrants encountered than the American symbol of “The Frontier”. That is not to say that common American ideas, like the vision of alien intruders in the “Promised Land”, should be excluded in such a study. (Bennett, 1988: 2 & 80) But the picture of this particular form of American racism is incomplete, if we reject the types of ideas that shaped British philosophy. If we accept that Irish immigrants brought their ideological particularities over the Atlantic Ocean, then we should also accept that British immigrants did so. That we choose not do this is perhaps, as written earlier, that we often fail to see the British as an immigrant group. But we should not believe that this is the whole explanation, because ethos can, at best, only help us understand some of the background, and besides; there are a couple of other arguments here.

2.2 A Common Problem in the Narration of Immigrant Groups?

We can argue that the same is being done with other immigrant groups in America, for example the Koreans and the Japanese. We can use the book Strangers from a Different Shore – A History of Asian Americans, by Ronald Takaki, as a model here. It has several good analysis of how the Japanese occupation of Korea shaped Korean Americans’ action, behavior and culture, but shows no attempt to explore if there were any Japanese American prejudice against Koreans based on their motherland’s colonial politics. (Takaki, 1998) So this is perhaps a common theme when we think about immigrant groups in America, and probably also elsewhere. We analyze the actions made by immigrants from suppressed countries in terms of their origin, but we are less eager to question the impact of colonization and occupation on the mindset of the British, Japanese, or immigrant groups from other countries with what was then an ongoing history of occupying and colonizing.

2.3 The Dismissal of the Idea of the Racial Irish Other.

Authors that even make a point out of the fact that the British constitute a continuous immigrant group in American history, like Paul Spickard, also reject any British influence on the topic of prejudices against the Irish. Spickard writes that: “A legitimate argument can be made that the colonial relationship between Britain and Ireland resulted in the creation in British minds of the idea of an Irish Other that had racial qualities to it.” But then he dismisses that such a mindset can be translated; stating that “it is not, in my judgment, possible to do the same in the American context”. (Spickard, 2007: 125) From the 1840’s to the 1910’s there were over 3,5 million British immigrants coming to America, and from 1860 to 1890 Britain sent constantly more immigrants to the U.S. than Ireland. (Spickard, 2007: 488 and 490) Is it not likely that the British immigrants had this idea of the “Irish Other”? And if so; is it not likely that this became a factor behind the prejudices against the Irish? Can we not assume that the continuous influx of British immigrants helped translating the idea of the Irish as racial disadvantaged from a British to an Anglo-American context?

3. Fears and Ideas of Racial Superiority.

Prejudices against the Irish consisted of many things. We can be quite certain that many Americans disliked the Irish without having any contact with British ideas, attitudes, immigrants or groups. This makes it quite difficult to prove that there were any significant differences in respect to feelings towards the Irish between Americans who were British immigrants, or at least were inspired by British ideas and associations, on the one hand, and Americans who had no contact with anything British on the other. There were after all no, or at least very few, British immigrant groups, and the Federalist-inspired Hartford Convention from the early 19^th century is one of the last noticeable Anglophile groups. (Bennett, 1988: 22-23) But by analyzing the similarities between British and American prejudices against the Irish, we can perhaps point out aspects of the prejudices that took place in the United States that had connections to Britain.

First of all, much of the hostilities were motivated by anxieties. Fears could be reliable or false, but the actual reality of these fears is of lesser importance for this thesis. What is important are which fears we attach to the American public. Type of fears that are often mentioned concerns voting blocs, unfamiliar religious practices and Catholic authoritarianism. Could it also be that many Americans feared possible connections between Irish-Americans and Irish resistance movements?

Secondly, it is this writer’s opinion that the negative sentiments against Irish immigrants consisted of something more than fears, opposition against Catholicism and reactions to social situations and problems. I believe that there was a type of racism against the Irish immigrants. Different ideas of racial superiority, or Social Darwinism, are often connected to imperialism. That is not to say that all forms of racism in America are exclusively rooted in Old World imperialism. In fact, the combination of America’s position as a free haven of liberty on the one hand and the enslavement of Africans on the other generated an extreme form of racism that Europe at the time had never seen. (Payne, 1998: 38-39) Racism towards non-whites has surely its own American version. Can racism towards Irish Americans be described with the same “Americaness”?

3.1 Frightened of the Pope, St. Patrick or Both?

Is not Irish Americans’ transnational activity a factor that should be included when discussing fears as background for anti-Irish prejudices? In view of Irish Americans’ economic and military funding to Irish resistance movements and American citizenships of Irish soldiers, like Eamon de Valera or Thomas Clarke, this must be seen as a reasonable fear for any American concerned with England’s situation. Irish Americans more than anyone elevated the Irish drive for freedom from a national movement to an international issue. But when militant Fenian assaulted Canada in the period of the Civil War, on the first occasion for recognizing the potential impact of Irish voting power on American foreign policy, it was greeted with welcoming by American politicians. This was partly based on fear for losing the Irish vote, but it was also seen as a useful tool in negotiations with the British. (Fallows, 1979: 120-121) Irish Americans’ participation in The Irish land war of 1880-81 was welcomed even more heartily in America, and this time not only by the politicians, but also by the general audience. As Marjorie R. Fallows has described, “general sympathy for Ireland lead state legislatures to pass resolutions condemning British actions in Ireland”, and when American participators were “jailed along with Irish revolutionaries without right of trial by jury, prominent members of Congress interceded to bring pressure through the White House and State Department to have the Americans of Irish descent freed.” (Fallows, 1979: 122)

There are several stories like these, and it is little verification for saying that there at any point of time were profound anxieties in the general American public of the political pressure in America for a free Ireland.[6] Neither did the raids on the Canadian border cause much disgust in the United States. Common Americans had throughout the 19^th century and the early 20^th century their own anti-British feelings, and even if it is logical to believe that some Americans disliked, and even feared, Irish Americans contributions to the Irish-English conflict[7], it seems clear that the general audience first and foremost feared their Catholicism.[8]

3.2 The Racial Part of the Prejudices.

The Irish were overrepresented on many types of statistics, crime, prostitution, abuse of alcohol, unemployment and littering among more, which generally makes an immigrant group unpopular. Should this not be more than enough to write off the prejudices against Irish immigrants as just another example of widely held doubts in the United States towards new immigration groups? After all; we have an ethnic group who had another religion, who expressed dual nationalism, helped lower general wages and were largely portrayed as alcoholics. Furthermore, does not the United States own history, with its rejection of Britain, alliances with France and mythology of a class-free society, make Arendt’s thesis of English race-thinking irrelevant in an American context?

The answer in my opinion is no, and this is precisely so because race-thinking was to a large degree used to clarify the behaviors, or the allegedly behaviors, of the Irish. Instead of class-thinking or cultural differences, many Americans used descriptions and a terminology that portrayed the Irish as a racial lower class in order to give explanations to their social situation and behaviors.[9] How did such an idea of a racial other develop in the characterization of a people that in looks and skin color was almost indistinguishable from other Western European immigrants? Can we then argue that the aspects of the prejudices that are concerned with race-thinking are translated from British ideology?

4. Irish Americans and the Social Construction of Whiteness.

Paul Spickard claims that the idea of the Irish as a racial “other” did not exist in the United States. He comes to this conclusion by a comparison between how cartoonists portrayed the Irish in the two countries. While there were many bestial images in British depictions of Irish people, it varied highly, between bestial and normal, in the United States. (Spickard, 2007: 124-125) But this only shows that in America there were greater differences between cartoonists’ perceptions of the Irish immigrants. Some looked at them in a favorable light, some saw them as a cultural threat, and some indeed characterized them as monkeys and other non- or half-human characters. Spickard’s argument can be turned around, and it can be claimed that the idea of the Irish as a racial “other” did exist in the United States, but that the notion was not as populated as in Britain.

Contrary to Spickard, Richard J. Payne acknowledges that it was common in the United States to think of the Irish as a people with inferior racial qualities.

“Much of the terminology used to describe blacks was employed against early Irish immigrants to the United States. They were seen as lowbrow, savage, groveling, bestial, lazy, wild, and sensual. (…) Some Americans viewed the Irish as part of a separate caste or dark race, possibly originally African. In the early years, Irish settlers were often referred to as ‘niggers turned inside out’; the Negroes, for their part were sometimes called smoked Irish.” (Payne, 1998: 36)

Payne, like many others, does however not identify a British background for this terminology. But these ideas of a racial hierarchy and a degenerated Irish people are clearly identifiable as British ideas. The need for creating such sharp mythological dividing lines between two peoples, which in reality differs very little, comes from the conflict between England and Ireland.[10]

One can go so far as to argue that the whole idea of dividing the Irish from other European immigrants is simply un-American. Because if “whiteness was socially constructed to unify previously divided Europeans who now lived together in America”, and if “systematic efforts were made to strengthen racially constructed boundaries by downplaying differences among whites and highlighting differences between whites and excluded groups”, (Payne, 1998: 36) then the hostility in America towards Irish immigrants must have developed as a contradiction to the current American ideals. And if we believe that whiteness, and whiteness in opposition to blackness, or a unification of divided European immigrants, was central to American identity, then the racial attacks on Irish immigrants seems to be clashing against the central components of that period’s American ideas. (Payne, 1998: 36) (Spickard, 2007: 124-128) The constructed distinctions of the Irish became superfluous in America since the notion of “We” and the “Other” was already taken and revolved around larger pan-ethnic groups – White Americans, African Americans, Native Americans and Latinos. (Spickard, 2007: 4-28 and 126-128)

The social, political and economical development of Irish Americans demonstrates that they were included in the social construction of whiteness. (Payne, 1998: 36) One can then argue that racism towards Irish Americans came as a result of what sociologist Milton Gordon called “Anglo-conformity”. If there was “a central assumption [of] the desirability of maintaining English institutions (as modified by the Americans Revolution), the English language, and English-oriented cultural patterns as dominant and standard in American life” (Spickard, 2007: 128), then surely Irish immigrants were caught in between American ideology of whiteness and their heralded low status in Anglo-culture. Spickard embraces Gordon’s explanation of Anglo-conformity as the norm for ethnical development in the American republic, and he uses Anglo-conformity as an account for why “not all whites were blending together”. (Spickard, 2007: 5-6, 12 and 128) It becomes therefore even less understandable that he refuses to accept that the idea of “an Irish other that had racial qualities to it” appeared in an American context. (Spickard, 2007: 125) Anglo-conformity is also built on eugenics and theories of racial superiority of Western Europeans. That the Irish for a long time was not included in this group seems to give us an argument that Anglo-conformity borrowed English racial thinking.

We have accepted that Irish immigrants set off a distinct national character in part because of the occupation of their original homeland, this distinctiveness included for some time an acceptance of constructed ideas of racial qualities that differed from the “race” of the Anglo-Saxon. The social construction of race depends, like Payne writes, on its acceptance by both those who benefit and those who suffer from it. (Payne, 1998: 34) It therefore seems illogical that we have equally rejected the “Britishness” of the racial stereotyping of the Irish. We can accept that parts of the stigmatization of Irish immigrants were based on cultural differences, religious affiliations and social issues, and that these parts theoretically could have happened in a country totally isolated from anything British. But, the racial aspect seems unlikely to have been able to root and grow in an America without British input.

5. Nativism and its British Input.

Nativism is often described as a movement concerned with the preservation of American institutions and values. This is also how they to a large degree presented themselves. In a selection from Know Nothing Almanac and True Americans’ Manual for 1855, we can see that the nativists used a rhetoric that is not on the face of it concerned with the nationality of the immigrants. (Know Nothings, 1998: 147-148) And experts on nativism, like Tyler Anbinder, underlines that groups like the Know Nothing Party first and foremost searched to protect the Protestantism of American institutions. It was not so much that they were Irish that was the problem, but that they were Catholics. (Anbinder, 1998: 152-160) This may very well be a superficial position. Firstly it ignores that the movement was partly made up of newly British immigrants and Americans of English stock. The long tradition of discord between Britain and Ireland were to these members instrumental in their participation. It is difficult to say to which degree the immigrants were followers or leaders in these associations, but the heavy focus on Irish Catholics as the main sinister aliens in groups like the Know Nothings (Bennett, 1988: 3-4), suggest that British immigrants at least had some sort of input on their ideology. Glazier even goes so far as stating that the long lasting conflict between Britain and Ireland was deeply helpful in the development of nativism as a whole. (Glazier, 1999: 654)

Secondly it ignores the language that the nativists used. Look at how the Know Nothings presents their own agenda; “if this territory is to be claimed by anything bearing the human form, however bestly, degraded and vile, - then let us understand it, and govern ourselves accordingly.”[11] (Know Nothings, 1998: 147-148) The words that are being used are precisely the words that Payne explained as being used both against African Americans and Irish Americans. This is a terminology that speaks out on more than differences of religion. It is a language characterized by a mindset who thinks of the Irish as degenerated in racial terms. Or as Glazier writes it: “Nativist organizations promoting an anti-Irish agenda amalgamated critiques of Irish impoverishment and drinking stereotypes with the notion that as a race, the Irish were unassimilable.” (1999: 655)

6. Conclusion.

Throughout my North American studies, I have often seen it as a problem that the distinct characters of the Americans of Irish descent is constantly put emphasis on, while there are barely any focuses on British immigrants’ particularities. I have sometimes felt that it has been an unbalanced focus in the history of immigrant groups that migrated from conflicting countries to America, especially in the history of the British and Irish immigrants. This thesis has therefore tried to explore if the prejudices against Irish Americans were influenced by British ideas and immigrants. This has been done in the hope that it can introduce a new perspective in the debate on the historical hostilities towards Irish Americans. This, I have to admit, has been more difficult than expected.

First of all, this thesis acknowledges that prejudices against the Irish consisted of many things. Crime, Catholicism and voting blocks are just some of the aspects that made the Irish Americans less than popular in the United States, and we can be certain that many Americans disliked the Irish without having any contact with British ideas, attitudes, immigrants or groups. It is therefore difficult to point to any direct British influences on these prejudices, because there were hardly any British immigrant groups in the United States.

However, I believe, and have tried to show, that we can draw a line between the origins of British racism and the prejudices against Irish Americans. This thesis has argued that because of the long tradition of discord between the two countries an idea of an Irish other that had racial qualities to it started to appear in Britain. This was followed by a terminology and characterizations that portrayed the Irish as a racial lower class. One can then argue that this type of race-thinking had been translated to America. Even if it was not as common to think of the Irish as a racial other in the United States as it was in Britain, we can still see how this idea gained popularity in much of the terminology and characterizations that were targeted against the Irish in America. This is especially true if we look at the nativist movement, which constantly talked of Irish Americans in racial terms. This thesis argues then that the development of characterizing the Irish, a people that in looks and skin color was almost indistinguishable from other Western European immigrants, as racially different must have had some type of British influence. Because if it is true that identity in the United States in the 19^th century revolved around the social construction of whiteness and larger pan-ethnic groups, then portraying the Irish as a group with racial lower qualities seems unneeded, even unwanted.

This thesis has therefore argued that the portrayal of Americans of Irish descent as racially different from other Western European immigrants was a severe consequence of the British occupation of Ireland.

7. Bibliography:

Arendt, Hannah. 1968. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: A Harvest Book.

Atwood, Margaret. 1972. Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature. Toronto: Anansi.

Bennett, David H. 1988. The Party of Fear – From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press.

Ellison, Michael. 2000. “Clash in Florida Court over ‘political’ IRA gunrunning trial.” [Internet] [Visited April 2011] The Guardian. Presented on: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/may/02/northernireland.michaelellison

Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. 2002. Ethnicity and Nationalism (Second Edition). London: Pluto Press.

Fallows, Majorie R. 1979. Irish Americans – Identity and Assimilation. Englewood: Prentice Hall

Hagtvet, Bernt (Editor). 2008. Folkemordenes svarte bok – Politisk Massevold og systematiske menneskerettighetsbrudd i det 20.århundret. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget.

- Brandal, Nik.; Stensrud, Ellen Emilie and Thorsen, Dag Einar. ”Møtet med den massive volden.”

- Waal, Ida. ”Folkemord – En juridisk og politisk begrepsanalyse.”

Higham, John. 2002. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925. London: Rutgers University Press.

Gjerde, Jon (Editor). 1998. Major Problems in American Immigration and Ethnic History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

- Anbinder, Tyler. “The Ideology of the Know Nothing Party.”

- Miller, Kerby A. “Irish Immigrants Who Perceive America as Exile.”

- The Know Nothings. “The Know Nothings, ‘The American Party,’ Defend Their Political Movement.” – Selection from Know Nothing Almanac and True Americans’ Manual for 1855.

Glazier, Michael (Editor). 1999. The Encyclopedia of the Irish in America. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press.

Glover, Jonathan. 2001. Humanity – A Moral History of the Twentieth Century. London: Pimlico.

Ignatiev, Noel. 1995. How the Irish Became White. New York: Routledge.

Jones, Adam. 2006. Genocide – A Comprehensive Introduction. London: Routledge.

Kenny, Kevin. 2000. The American Irish – A History. Harlow: Pearson Education.

Reimers, David M. (Editor). 1972. Racism in the United States – An American Dilemma? New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

- Reimers, David M. ”Introduction.”

- Gossett, Thomas F. ”The Scientific Revolt Against Racism.”

Payne, Richard J. 1998. Getting Beyond Race: The Changing American Culture. Boulder: Westview Press.

Spickard, Paul. 2007. Almost All Aliens – Immigration, Race, and Colonialism in American History and Identity. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Takaki, Ronald. 1998. Strangers from a Different Shore – A History of Asian Americans (Updated and Revised Edition). New York: Back Bay Books

Tindall, George Brown and Shi, David Emory. 2007. America – A Narrative History (Seventh Edition). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Zinn, Howard. 1987. A People’s History of the United States. London: Longman.

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[1] “Kelly’s Irish Brigade”. 2006. Kincaid, David. On the album The Irish-American’s Song, released on Haunted Field Music.

[2] “March to Battle (Across the Rio Grande). 2010. The Chieftains; Cooder, Ry and Neeson, Liam. On the album San Patricio, released on Hear Music.

[3] An author like Adam Jones, who is behind this quote, would label the Great Hunger in 1840s Ireland as a “genocidal famine”; while scholars like Helen Fein, Frank Chalk or Kurt Jonassohn would strongly disagree with connecting the British occupation with the word genocide. (Jones, 2006: 41) (Waal, 2008:80)

[4] This is, like Atwood herself admit, a sweeping generalization, but I believe that ethos can still be interesting to explore in this setting.

[5] As Atwood summarizes it: ”The kind of island I mean: islands-as-body, self-contained a Body Politic, evolving organically, with a hierarchical structure in which the King is the Head, the statesmen the hands, the peasants or farmers or workers the feet, and so on. The Englishman’s home as his castle is the popular form of this symbol, the feudal castle being not only an insular structure but a self-contained microcosm of the entire Body Politic.” (1972: 32)

[6] I believe that this statement is true, even when bearing in mind the anti-hyphenate campaign of, amongst others, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. (Higham, 2002: 198-199)

[7] We can for example speculate on why Woodrow Wilson, himself half-British, never mentioned Irish independence in Versailles despite the strong Irish support for the Democratic Party. (Fallows, 1979: 122-123)

[8] It should however be noted that there are earlier examples of American-Protestant reactions to actions done in Britain and Ireland. When for example the British government granted legislative freedoms to Catholics in Ireland under the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1828, it further galvanized opinions to the idea of protecting American institutions from Irish-Catholic corruption. This was followed with a rise in hostile incidents in northern cities containing the combination of a dominant minority of English Protestant stock and a large Irish immigrant population. But again we see that it is religion, and religion as a threat to the founding American religion that creates hostilities in the American public. (Glazier, 1999: 654)

[9] See for instance The American Irish where Kevin Kenny writes that “Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century, as is well-known, were depicted both textually and visually in racial inferior terms. The images are stark and at first sight shocking: swarthy, low-browed, simian Irishmen, standing only a level or two above the animal kingdom, and apparently sharing the same degree of racial degradation attributed by contemporaries to African Americans.” (2000: 67)

[10] One can of course then make an argument that many Americans had economical interests in keeping the Irish as a subgroup.

[11] The Italics are mine.