Aug 17, 2022·edited Aug 17, 2022Liked by First Toil, then the Grave
A fascinating observation that seems quite conspicuously absent in this “Americanized assessment” of Irish racial politics is the fact that being ethnically Irish, for a time in America’s history, was tantamount to being black anyway. I wonder if there’s ever any mention of international anti-colonial solidarity or how the terms “smoked Irish” and “white negros” were practically interchangeable from these folks…
I'm not Irish but spent a summer there in '89 and I was mystified at Sally Rooney's "unearned cultural privilege of whiteness" quote in Conversations with Friends and immediately looked up the demographics to see what had changed in 20 years...
America is an infectious disease that others are lining up to catch.
> Demanding that every office hire at least one black person is not a completely ridiculous demand in a country in which black people make up roughly 13% of the population.
Depends on where you are. It's not like the black people here are evenly distributed geographically. You've got a business in Atlanta with a reasonable number of employees and none of them are black? Ok, that's suspicious. You're in Las Cruces and have no black employees... Well, that might be an Ireland situation. On the other hand, if they have no Hispanic employees, well...
The "three-fifths compromise" is usually a terrible example. Most people go "how horrible, those evil racists only counted slaves as three-fifths of a person!" not realizing it was *the slave owners* who wanted them counted at five-fifths for congressional representation purposes.
As for the dollar not being universal... I'm guessing the Euro? The Pound in the north? Though maybe the Euro there as well, I dunno, never been. 😁
A fascinating observation that seems quite conspicuously absent in this “Americanized assessment” of Irish racial politics is the fact that being ethnically Irish, for a time in America’s history, was tantamount to being black anyway. I wonder if there’s ever any mention of international anti-colonial solidarity or how the terms “smoked Irish” and “white negros” were practically interchangeable from these folks…
I'm not Irish but spent a summer there in '89 and I was mystified at Sally Rooney's "unearned cultural privilege of whiteness" quote in Conversations with Friends and immediately looked up the demographics to see what had changed in 20 years...
America is an infectious disease that others are lining up to catch.
> Demanding that every office hire at least one black person is not a completely ridiculous demand in a country in which black people make up roughly 13% of the population.
Depends on where you are. It's not like the black people here are evenly distributed geographically. You've got a business in Atlanta with a reasonable number of employees and none of them are black? Ok, that's suspicious. You're in Las Cruces and have no black employees... Well, that might be an Ireland situation. On the other hand, if they have no Hispanic employees, well...
The "three-fifths compromise" is usually a terrible example. Most people go "how horrible, those evil racists only counted slaves as three-fifths of a person!" not realizing it was *the slave owners* who wanted them counted at five-fifths for congressional representation purposes.
As for the dollar not being universal... I'm guessing the Euro? The Pound in the north? Though maybe the Euro there as well, I dunno, never been. 😁