Talk:Irish Americans

message: The Columbia Guide to Irish American History, by Tim Meagher, discusses regional variations in immigrant experiences, although this work has been removed from the internet and will have to be retrieved (it's in the chapter on race, p. 214 I believe). The gist of it is that anti-Irish prejudice wasn't a significant thing in the South, partly because Irish numbers were small, but also because the slave threat superseded white ethnic tensions. Joe Regan's thesis echoes this argument: Most Irish immigrants were willing to uphold the social order, and by accepting slavery, they eased their assimilation into society as “hard-drinking, gambling, horse-racing, cock-fighting and tobacco-chewing Southerners.” p. 216/
Out West, too, Meagher argues that white solidarity prevailed, as Irish Catholics were among the earliest settlers who brutally displaced the natives. Malcom Campbell's study of the Irish in California agrees with this.
And back in the 1990s, Reginald Byron's study of the Irish in Albany, NY, (Irish America) turned up no evidence of anti-Irish prejudice for the period in question (this will have to be retrieved as well).
That leaves us with a predominately big-city urban phenomenon, on the Northeastern seaboard, which peaked in the 1850 -1870 period. But only a minority of Irish immigrants settled in big cities in these decades, which would also have to be taken into account when discussing discrimination.. The demographics of big cities in the antebellum and reconstruction era were statistically unrepresentative of the rest of the US.
The discrimination section could use more nuance (it is light on detail and needs context), while the currently unsourced statement (or improperly sourced) which claims the prejudice or 'sentiment' (whatever that means?) was "rampant in the US" is directly contradicted by more than one RS, including Gleeson's work on the Southern Irish (cited in article). Jonathan f1 (talk) 15:54, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Rampant" discrimination? 

message: Is there any particular reason why everyone who edits this article seems to be incapable of looking a word up in a dictionary and realizing that it is not being used properly in the lead? This article is not merely about "ethnic Irish" in the US, but is much broader and covers all Americans who have or had Irish ancestors, in some cases a trivial or distant amount of Irish ancestry. There are dozens of people cited in this article who are or were in no sense "ethnic". What's so difficult to understand about the idea that an ancestry category and an ethnicity may overlap but are not always the same thing?
Another issue I've raised here, some time ago, is the claim in the discrimination section that anti-Irish prejudice was "rampant" throughout the entire US. Please refer to Tim Meagher's Columbia Guide to Irish American History where he details variations in Irish immigrant experience in 19th C. America. He writes that bigotry against the Irish was most intense in the Northeast (and particularly in big cities) but not a significant factor in Southern culture and places out West (like California). He also differentiates immigrants by period: the Irish who arrived during the Famine years were significantly poorer, less skilled and educated than the Irish who arrived in the late 19th Century, and the earlier group was indeed overrepresented in jails and insane asylums. After the Famine, Ireland pursued massive educational reforms and Irish primary schools aggressively promoted English-language literacy (some even banned the Irish language in classrooms), so that by the end of the century the average immigrant was fluent in English and primed for middle-class assimilation. You may also want to refer to Dave Wilson's piece on Irish experience in North America here, or a more recent talk by historian Kevin Kenny (who happens to be an expert in this particular niche) where he argues that, despite encountering some nativist hostility, 19th Century America was still a pretty good place to be if you were European, even an Irish Catholic European. Contrast the arguments of these scholars with the language used in the discrimination section of this article, which essentially promotes the myth of the Irish-American perpetual ethnic victim (although it stops short of making the idiotic claim that Irish immigrants were treated like black people, one could easily walk away from that section with this impression).
And of course, in typical fashion, much article space is reserved for content about prejudice/discrimination, but nothing is said of the relatively large role the Irish themselves played in American racism. Most of Liam Hogan's work on Irish involvement in chattel slavery, colonization and anti-black (and anti-Chinese) racism in the US is freely available online so there's no excuse for not being able to access any sources. It's articles like this why the average person is unaware of this history and "shocked" to learn the Irish played any role in colonialism and American racism, despite the fact that most historians have known this for a long time.
I'd improve these sections myself, but I am still being "punished" for earlier editing behavior when I was relatively new on here, although I've corrected my conduct and should probably appeal soon. For now I would request that a more objective editor, who knows how to review scholarship and edit neutral encyclopedic content, consider my arguments and sources and improve the aforementioned sections, starting with a change in the lead description. Jonathan f1 (talk) 22:07, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Starting with a personal attack on a whole cohort of editors and ending with bemoaning the fact that you've been "punished" but will soon appeal? Yeah, let me know how that goes for you... BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 11:53, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

text: You were already active from 2018 before people had enough of your disruptive an tendentious editing. To be true, I do not get the idea that you learned anything from the (partial) block and it is clearly still necessary to protect the encyclopedia from your opinions and editing. The Banner talk 12:37, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Ethnicity" and the fantasy of the Irish-American ethnic victim