Irish-Americans – Popular Politics in Early America

November 6, 2013

Cultural Consciousness

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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

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

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.