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I found Joyce’s essay on Irish-Americans in the South very interesting, mostly because I haven’t given the subject much thought before. People tend to associate Irish immigrants with urban working class in the North, but I hadn’t considered their presence here before. It reads fairly smoothly, and I appreciated how clearly the author laid out the points in the beginning.
It also struck me how the Irish felt the need to gain sure footing in the social world because of prior experiences in the North and previously in Ireland. Joyce said that they “took constrained actions to place themselves in positions of best advantage within existing social networks” (193). Additionally, as wirobertson said, “Irish-Americans desperately longed for inclusion and a sense of superiority,” and they found this inclustion through their support of slavery. To me, this seems like a classic part of the melting pot idea. They retained much of their Irish culture, but made a conscious, directed effort to fit smoothly into the “existing social network” of Charleston (Joyce 193).
Additionally, the role of the Catholic church was fascinating. I hadn’t previously thought of the Catholic church as a particularly influential force in the South, but it certainly had an impact on the attitude of the Irish with regard to slavery. Joyce said, “Southern Church leaders validated and gave divine sanction to the slave system and provided their constituents with an explanation of Southern social relations” (190). To this group of people, the church was a way to connect with people like them, and it also helped ease the transition into a new culture. If the church had taken a less accepting stance with regard to slavery, I doubt that the Irish-Americans would have been received as easily in the South. However, they were able to relate to other white Southerners on this cause and create a sense of cultural identification across different cultural backgrounds.