November 2013 – Page 4 – Popular Politics in Early America

November 7, 2013

Now Wait Just a Minute

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Richard Jensen’s work “No Irish Need Apply: A Myth of Victimization” has me questioning my entire understanding of the struggle “my people” (three of four of my grandparents are immigrants from Ireland) went through in the U.S. Growing up all I heard about was the lack of the opportunities my grandparents had growing up and how WASP America had kept their relatives down for years (relatives in this case being aunts and uncles of my grandparents). Jensen’s work though brings to light thought about an issue I never once questioned. As Eli said in his work everything that I had been told growing up was “plausible” due to where the stories I was hearing came from as well as the number of people saying the same exact story. But now I simply have to change my understanding of the “struggle” my ancestors went through. To that I am going to have to steal the words of College Gameday Analyst Lee Corso “NOT SO FAST SWEETHEART!”

I get that some of the prejudices that the Irish claim they went through were fabricated but life was by no means a walk in the park for these individuals. Irish citizens in the United States I would argue were the slaves of the North due to the type of work that they performed. Their desire for work in whatever capacity possible made them open to anything (and I mean anything) and because of that the argument can be made that the Irish are to blame for their role in society (something that can be seen by many Irish society members to remain with their “kind”). However, just because one is willing to work at the lowest possible level does not mean that they have no dignity or sense of pride. The Irish were exploited for the willingness to work, plain and simple. I don’t think that Jensen gives the Irish enough credit in the fact that they may have recognized their role in society. I believe that the Irish community’s close bond stems from the recognition that many community members simply had no option but to do as told. There is an old expression that goes “one man is no man,” and the Irish embody this philosophy. While one or maybe even many community member may have had wealth because the majority of the community didn’t have that value there was an issue with society. I think the Irish think that if one many can’t attain the life they desired, outside forces must be working against that person because others got what they desired.

I can’t dispute the evidence that Jensen provides, it is all backed in the research that he performed (research that is very commendable as I feel that he went against popular opinion throughout his entire writing process). However, I believe that history is largely based upon the ways in which an individual wants to view history. History often plays out in a “to the victor go the spoils fashion,” and because of that everything can always be argued. Did the Irish win their and that’s why they can claim they were held down by oppressive white business owners? An Irish Catholic from Massachusetts did become President of the United States so I would say that they Irish did win their struggle and because of that they can present their history as they like. Irish community bonds where one wants to see everyone succeed before declaring a movement/cause a success and because that was never possible I truly believe that is where Irish ideology of the world against an individual emerges from.

November 7, 2013

Debunking Discrimination of Irish-Americans

Jensen’s “No Irish Need Apply” and Kenny’s “Race, Violence, and Anti-Irish Sentiment in the Nineteenth Century” provide revealing insights into race relations in America, particularly with reference to the plight of Irish immigrants to the United States. While both authors discuss the issues of anti-Irish sentiment in the nineteenth century, however, each takes a markedly different approach to their understandings of discrimination and racism against the Irish in America.

Jensen writes a bold, new interpretation of Irish–American history, and argues that the “No Irish Need Apply,” or NINA ideology said to have pervaded businesses in the United States was largely a fabrication of the Irish people. He effectively asserts that there is a surprising scarcity of evidence to support the widely-held view that the Irish were victims of workplace discrimination in the nineteenth century. In fact, Jensen writes that unskilled Irish workers were very likely welcomed into American business (409). While I agree with Jensen that there appears to be a definite lack of sufficient support to argue that the Irish were discriminated against under the NINA ideology, I believe his claim that the Irish used the NINA slogan as a protective tool falls short of his own criticism. While I found his argument about the possibility of Irish-Americans using NINA as an agent to ensure solidarity interesting, Jensen’s use of a single man’s assessment of the collective spirit of the Irish people to represent a century’s worth of political, economic, and racial struggles for Irish-Americans is audacious (417). With that being said I applaud Jensen’s effort because of this risk. As Kevin Kenny states in response to Jensen’s work, the conclusions presented are not supported by any other historians in the field (Kenny 372). In this way Jensen presents a novel method of evaluating the Irish-American solidarity of the nineteenth century, but ultimately falls short in providing a convincing argument for why it persisted.

On the other hand, Kenny’s work is much more conservative than Jensen’s, and ultimately this works in his favor. In his essay, Kenny successfully classifies the differences between anti-Irish sentiment among British and American societies. Unlike Jensen, Kenny also focuses on the progression of racism against the Irish, beginning with the caricature of “Paddy” in the news media; Paddy “was a uniquely racialized figure” (369). Kenny is also able to use several cases of Irish labor groups – the Molly Maguires, the Whiteboys, and the Ribbonmen – to illustrate the collective violent practices used by these groups, leading to the growth of anti-Irish sentiment because of perceived potential threats towards American society (373). Kenny’s statement that labor and class were largely inseparable from race in nineteenth century America was also well supported through his discussion of racism against Asian and black people in comparison to the Irish (375). Augmenting the evidence he provides for depicting an American culture with racist attitudes towards Irish-Americans is Jensen’s organization of his essay. Through his clearly articulated arguments and thorough treatment of historiography his claims are more cogent than those presented by Jensen.

While I agree with Max’s comments in stating that Kenny could have extended his essay to elaborate upon other factors affecting Irish-American racism in the nineteenth century, in doing so I believe Kenny may have lost his central argument that Irish collective violence was the basis for anti-Irish sentiment in the United States. By adding interpretations to this work Kenny might be falling back into the historiography he is trying to distance himself from, making his argument less an original piece than an amalgamation of what other scholars have stated about Irish-American racism. While narrowing one’s focus definitely runs the risk of weakening the quality of a historical work (just see my criticism of Jensen), I ultimately think both Kenny’s and Jensen’s article make important contributions to understanding the development of the Irish-American community in the 19th century.

November 6, 2013

Cultural Consciousness

My paternal great grandfather emigrated from Ireland and I remember, as a child, hearing about the “NINA” signs in stores. As children, I think that we judge the truthfulness of a claim, not by the facts, but rather by the statement’s plausibility, and the credentials of the people making the claim. NINA signs certainly seem plausible; in my imagination, they paralleled the “Whites Only” signs of Jim Crow. As far as credibility, parents are about as credible as it gets–at least that’s the way it seems when you’re little. Only now, reading these articles, has my collective, cultural memory been challenged.

Richard Jensen marshals a compelling argument that the NINA signs were, in fact, a mostly imagined phenomenon. While they may have appeared in windows of private homes, especially in Britain, they were non-existent within the commercial world. He discusses the discrimination that the Irish perceived, contradicting it with examples of Irish economic success in America.

Kevin Kenny, though sounding a tone more sympathetic to the Irish than that of Jensen, seems to be in relative agreement. He acknowledges that “demand for unskilled male heavy labor and unskilled female domestic labor in the nineteenth century was simply too great for the Irish to have suffered much by way of anti-hiring discrimination, racial or otherwise.” In seeming agreement about labor, these two historians also write in concordance regarding political discrimination against the Irish, including nativist fears.

Essentially, I think, this discussion comes down to disagreements about what it felt like to be Irish or Irish-American during the nineteenth century. Did it feel discriminatory, or welcoming? The truth can likely be determined from evidence and thoughtful intuition: the Irish, despite being a poor and unskilled immigrant group, often succeeded in the labor market in America. Yet, cultural fears about their race, or their Catholicism persisted. They displayed economic mobility, but were discriminated against politically. The Irish likely felt unwelcome in America, even as they found employment, dominated some industries and gained political franchise. That feeling, not reality, seems to have created the NINA signs that exist in my imagination and the imaginations of millions of other Irish-Americans: sitting in shop windows, they remind us that our ancestors once felt unwelcome, even if that feeling didn’t come from a sign in the window, or a mass inability to find work.

I think that I echo Michael’s final line, where he writes “I think an effort to better connect how the discrimination in other aspects of the Irish experience contributed to the myth of economic discrimination would have added to Jenson’s work.” A focus on the experience of the Irish, and their own understanding of their cultural history, would be extremely useful in conjunction with this factual analysis of the ways the Irish were and were not discriminated against in the 19th century.

November 6, 2013

Naught but a Myth

In “No Irish Need Apply: A Myth of Victimization”, Richard Jensen presents his views, substantiated with what seems like many studies and evidence, on why the the Irish were not really disfranchised to the extent that many contemporary Irish would have told. The “No Irish Need Apply” signs which formed the symbolic nexus of such claims are debunked as nowhere near as commonplace as people would have and really sets the tone for the article’s analysis of how Irish came to feel so marginalized. As Jensen asserts, labor was one of the most concerning elements of Irish life, so he spends much of the essay explaining how the work force was truly not so discriminatory.

Jensen uses very consistent, if not excessively repetitive argumentation, that there is no record of people seeing NINA signs on public businesses nor of business literature from the given period espousing anti-Irish business beliefs to the point that the Irish should be eliminated completely from employment consideration. The feelings of victimization and “chip-on-the-shoulder” ideas that emanated from these predicaments pushed the Irish to believe that all other ethnic and religious groups like the British and Protestants solely had nothing but hostility for towards them as potential citizens. These sentiments carried over to the United States where they realized that if they were to live prosperously they would have to bond together and profit from the advantages that a group of like-minded individuals conferred.

The group of the “Other”, which the Irish perceived as anyone outside their ethnic group or not wholly akin to them, was the enemy. They could not be trusted or reasoned with. This misunderstanding only led to outbursts of violence on the part of the Irish in attempts to maintain a solid status without being infringed upon by the “discriminatory” Americans. Assertions in this vein often seemed to have little sound basis. This facilitated a portrayal of the Irish as having a sort of irrational and groupthink mentality that all “other Americans were prejudiced against them, and were deliberately holding back their economic progress.” Jensen counters this notion by citing numerous statistics concerning the upward social mobility of the Irish as a collective group which was usually average or above average, showing no signs of discrimination. Thus it proved difficult to reconcile Irish anxieties with labor with the statistics that were disseminated in the period.

I agree with AJ’s post that “likely, the strong group ethos that encouraged Irish to always work together, and resist individualistic attempts to break away attributed to the popular myth.” It is very evident that the Irish were so caught up in maintaining a strong core of Irish support, they were hard-pressed to make significant progress in assimilating into other segments of American society. I enjoyed reading this article as it presented compelling arguments as a result of debunking previous myths and arguments perpetuated by historians without significant evidence. Jensen cites studies and methodically, step-by-step, undermines assertions that previous historians had made in order to present the most compelling argument.

November 6, 2013

The Irish were More than Just Violent

In “Race, Violence, and Anti-Irish Sentiment in the Nineteenth Century,” Kevin Kenny contends that racism towards the Irish in America stems from a concern for their tendency to violence, which originated from a complex background. He supports this notion well, however I feel that he hints at other factors of Irish racism that have the potential to be just as significant as their tendency towards violence. Based on Kenny’s evidence, there is no doubt that skin color and the simple fact that they were foreign was not the stem of the attitude towards them, as there were many other “white” immigrants from other countries who were not portrayed in such a negative fashion. He did hint at other factors that I feel should have been given more importance such as their sheer numbers in immigration and their lack of skill, among others.

Kenny noted that the Irish made up somewhere between one-third and one-half of the immigrant population, and that they became the face of any negative attitudes towards immigrants. This fact and claim are simply too significant to only mention in Kenny’s article. If this was the case, how were the Irish similar to other immigrants? After all, if the Germans deserved similar discrimination, as he alluded to on page 367, the German immigrant population should have had similar qualities as the Irish immigrant population. Kenny’s inclusion of the Irish being used as a scapegoat for the immigrant population as a whole left me wanting more support, with more questions than answers.

Kenny also noted that the Irish population, in large, arrived with a lack of skill. They therefore came to work in unskilled, low pay jobs. They could then have been used as strike breakers, as they were willing to work for low wages. This also allowed them to easily find work, discrediting the notion that they were discriminated against in the workplace. Although Kenny did not make claims that left me wanting more, I found myself wondering about other skill-related factors. For example, could the more well-to-do members of American society looked down upon the Irish because they felt they had no real ability? If so, this idea of the Irish as unable to do skilled work could have contributed to racism toward the Irish while having no factor towards workplace discrimination, as these unskilled jobs were still needed.

I feel that other factors could have been elaborated upon, such as CT’s mention of the direction of racially based stereotypes towards men rather than women. Perhaps this similarity with the African American population contributed to the negative attitude toward the Irish. I feel that this could be interesting if elaborated. One factor I believe he did provide enough evidence for was the anti-Catholic sentiment, as many nativists were concerned with Catholic loyalty to the Pope.

In general, Kelly should have extended his essay. He has good arguments and evidence, but he just needs more of it. This way, he could leave the reader more satisfied.

November 6, 2013

Historical Memory and Reality

Historical memory continues to be one of my favorite things to study and learn about in history, and Jenson’s work on the myth of victimization in the Irish community showed how a group’s historical memory does not necessarily correlate to actual historical events. Moreover, I found it interesting that Jenson sought to disprove the existence of Irish economic victimization, and offer possible explanations as to why the social mobility of the Irish was lower than other immigrant groups and proves an interesting contrast to the more traditional historical studies. As AJ and David have already mentioned, Jenson does a superb job of pointing out the fact that the actual existence of documentation suggesting an organized effort of discrimination against the Irish is non-existent.
What I think is missing in this piece was a more detailed observation on how other forms of discrimination, such as dehumanizing images that are plentiful in Kenny’s descriptions in Race, Violence, and Anti-Irish Sentiment in the Nineteenth Century, helped facilitate the perpetuation or creation of this myth of economic discrimination. Jenson alludes to this by saying, “The question is not whether or not the Irish were admired. (They were not)” (9). He continues by offering a quick dismissal of the pervasiveness of all forms of discrimination against the Irish, there is no evidence that more than one in a thousand Americans considered the Irish as racially inferior.” However, Jenson also acknowledges what Kelly’s work shows, namely that the contemporary literature at the time contained and promoted a negative portrayal of the Irish (9). I think an effort to better connect how the discrimination in other aspects of the Irish experience contributed to the myth of economic discrimination would have added to Jenson’s work.

November 6, 2013

What Do You Mean, "You People"?

In ““No Irish Need Apply”: A Myth of Victimization,” Richard Jensen examines the myth of Irish-Catholic exclusion from mainstream American jobs and activities and its origins as a protective tool for the Irish community. He argues that Irish claims of its (NINA) existence were a political statement that enhanced and perpetuated non-individualistic work culture.

In order to fully understand the myth of discrimination in the Irish pathos, Jensen needed to show the full extent of evidence there was that supported it. He seemed to have boiled it down to a single piece of sheet music with the refrain “No Irish Need Apply!” in 1862(409). It is important to note that this was based off a song from London about discrimination against Irish maids, because of the fact that the American version is about Irish working men. I think this is significant because of the association of labor and masculine activities mentioned in Wilentz such as day drinking and putting out fires. In Kenny’s chapter on racial perceptions of Irish in American culture, he writes that racially-based stereotypes were mainly directed at men rather than women. In a paper I wrote for a different class about the rise of white supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina, masculinity and race were also closely related because African Americans and women in the antebellum South were dependents. White supremacy in this case was a reaction to the eclipsed dominance of the white man.

Both Jensen and Kenny return to the 19^th century Irish phenomenon of collective violence. Jensen views mob violence as one of the instances where Irish acted out in a way that demonstrated solidarity against what was perceived as hostility and “othering”. Kenny points out that these massive bursts of social and political violence provided the strongest evidence for nativists making racial claims about Irish. By comparing these two statements, it is easy to see how the solidarity could have been viewed instead as self-segregation based on racial standards.

November 6, 2013

Self-inflicted prejudice

“No Irish Need Apply”: A Myth of Victimization by Richard Jensen may be the first work I have read this semester that I completely agree with. Jensen’s explains his thesis claiming, “This paper will explain how the myth originated and will explore its long-lasting value to the Irish community as a protective device” (406). Jensen’s work does a nice job explaining the background behind the slogan as well as giving multiple possible explanations for the significance of the myth without factual historical evidence. His work delves into the Irish myth of victimization using the popular slogan “No Irish Need Apply.” He explains that 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” (405). Without historical evidence many historians viewed this slogan as a metaphor for Irish troubles; however, the Irish insist that the signs did exist and seem to prove their discrimination.

The “NINA” slogan seemingly originated out of England after the 1798 Irish rebellion and came over to America with the migration. The myth in America seemed to focus on the public “NINA” signs hanging up in shops and restaurants that deliberately marginalized and humiliated Irish male job applicants. However, with that being said, “No historian, archivist, or museum curator has ever located one; no photograph or drawing exists” (405). Along with no historical evidence of the signs, no other ethnic group complained about being singled out by comparable signs as well as there was no known employment discrimination ever documented. I found this is to be very strange especially after Jensen noted some very famous Americans that said they had heard about the signs growing up. Something had to be going on and Jensen offers some rather valid options. The one I was most interested in was the one he mentions last.

With no physical evidence or documentation of the myth Jensen offers the explanation that myth fostered among the Irish a misconception that other Americans were prejudiced against them, and were deliberately holding back their economic progress. This perceived prejudice gave the Irish a “chip on the shoulder” mentality and directly added to their encouragement of the myth. No other European Catholic group shared this chip on their shoulder; likely the strong group ethos that encouraged Irish to always work together, and resist individualistic attempts to break away attributed to the popular myth. The Irish must have been held back by something because they had a statistically lower rate of upward social mobility than average in the 1850-1880 period; but was it internal or external (412)? Jensen argues that there is something else going on that is fostering this self-proclaimed discrimination by the Irish stating, “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 occupational experience of the Irish” (411). Records show that many Irish worked together in large groups such as labor gangs and construction crews adding to the theory of group solidarity driving the myth. Touching on CT’s previous post, it is important to note the atmosphere of the region at the time and realize that many different cultures and backgrounds could have easily lead to the congregation of Irish immigrants in the some workplaces and communities and held them back from political and social mobility.

In my opinion, self-denial was the king and self-infliction was what led the Irish to popularize this myth. Pete Hamill provides Jensen with a tremendous example of this collective Irish spirit, “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” (417). Their own slogan only pushed them down into lesser jobs. The slogan was in the mind’s eye, and gained steam and significance from the popular song from 1862. With no evidence, the Irish, in my view, become self-proclaimed victims. Discrimination by others may have been relatively irrelevant compared to the effect the Irish slogan had on reinforcing political, social and religious solidarity amongst its own people. It was more of a warning to stick to the neighborhood than it was a prejudice act by Others. I agree with Jensen’s final analysis and believe the slogan identified an enemy to blame for the Irish inability to move socially upward besides their own faults and community ideals.

November 5, 2013

Colby's Reasoning for the Gap Between Rich and Poor

In his post, Lamoureux describes how “understanding the history of the temperance movement and more government spending in high risk areas it becomes obvious that the issues that the upper class thought they fixed only made matters worse as they created new problems.” I agree with his statement, that because of the existing detachment between the elite and the working class led to an exaggerated representation of the poor’s interests. In my post, I will pinpoint the central issue as while their the poor’s views were somewhat represented, they were also greatly ignored and at times, not payed attention to altogether.

Wilentz agrees with his statement as he claims, “a feeling of prejudices does exist between the wealthy and the laboring classes. But while Lamoureux did not necessarily cite a reasons for the existent gap between the poor and the rich, H.G.O Colby, on page 304, points directly at the cause, “”he blamed this sourness of spirit on demagogues who declaim in bar-rooms and grog shops, with surpassing eloquence, upon equal rights, when the only species of equality they desire is that the loafer shall share the wages of the laborer” In other words, Colby is directly attacking the good intentions of the Church as in his view, “there were was no reason for hostility between the rich and laboring classes.” As for Colby, both the rich and the poor, “had the strongest reason, for mutual friendship and the most cordial unions.” But instead, the church created factions within this group, that while was in the name of quality, only created a greater divide.

November 5, 2013

'Merica

These two chapters in Wilentz’s book, Chants Democratic, discuss nativism in length. This topic is particularly interesting to me as I’m writing my thesis on a similar topic (The effect of the Great Depression on European Immigration 1933-1939) and I saw many similarities in the 1830s and 1930s. One contrast between the two periods, however, was the mutual respect among native and immigrant journeymen. Wilentz attributes this respect to the same level of training the immigrants had as the native artisans (266). Furthermore, due to internal strife within the movement, the political nativism in the 1830s did not achieve the unity and popularity that nativism would reach later in America’s history. (Fun Fact of the day: Unemployment was higher for craft workers between 1836 and 1842 than during the Great Depression).

Wilentz details the shift from an agrarian dominated economy to the rise of the manufacturing economy. Farmers had always been viewed as the most important laborers (274), but the mechanical labor was gaining ground and the unions saw it as the most important form of labor. Farmers clung to the doctrine of rural moral supremacy, yet the mechanics knew that this rural moral supremacy would continue the United States dependence on Britain for manufactured goods, much like when we were a colony. When the drought came in 1836, farmers standing dropped even further as they were not able to provide the products and goods that they relied on selling.

To speak to Marie Hemann’s points, I agree with his conclusions. To add to his astute observations, I think it’s important to note the atmosphere of New York during this time. Wilentz hits the nail on the head when he describes the demographic of New York and its undesirable situation for a revival. “New York, with its immigrants, its Bowery, its traditions of popular anticlericalism, and its sheer size, lacked almost all the prerequisites for a successful revival.” (280) In my humble opinion, New York’s size was the greatest factor in this failure for a revival. With many people come many different beliefs and views on issues. This leads to a lower percentage of influence for those in the revival. What I mean by that statement can be further explained by this hypothetical example: if the revival movement in a small town of 100 people converts 10 of these people, their influence is much greater because these 10 people know everyone in the town and can work to encourage them to come to Jesus. Now, in a city, such as New York, let’s say 1,000 people of 100,000 people join the revival. Granted, more total people joined the movement, however these 1,000 people don’t know the other 99,000 people of New York and have a much more difficult time to influence them. Furthermore, the breakdown of those who partook in the revival, specifically the Brainerd Presbyterian Church, emphasize the setup for a failed revival. Many of those participants in the congregation were women, and of those women, nearly half were unmarried. So, the revival wanted to change the drinking habits of men, yet few men (in comparison to women) joined the church. And many of these women were not in constant relation to men by being unmarried, so their influence on men was very limited. (280)