99 Comments

• seanomelb | Aug 04, 2012, 07:47 PM EDT

  King55 My point is why select the middle class when what you say is true of all classes and all nationalities.

• adrienrain | Aug 04, 2012, 02:09 PM EDT

  "When the poor hunt the poor/ Over mountain and moor/ The rich man can keep them in chains.." ~Battlefield Band, Bonny Yew Tree

• eiriamach | Aug 04, 2012, 01:52 PM EDT

  I'm sure it's different NOW; I've heard the church and RC schools are mostly Korean American and Latino. The era of the widely-mixed ethnicity of NYC neighborhoods ended long ago. It was a little U.N. when I was there (left in the 60s), but the 'balance of power' was Italian: there were two Italian street gangs and no more than one each for the other groups. The Irish were so few that they had no gang as far as I know. My older sister was in with the Italian girl gang. The nuns worked really hard to instill in us tolerance and a 'live and let live' ethic because they knew we'd be exposed to ethnic conflict on the streets and at home. There were many Jewish families pulling together to educate their children and move out, along with Cubans, Puerto Ricans, eastern European refugees, and a few African-American families that had come north during WW II to work in the factories. Anti-black and anti-Latino sentiment did not come from the Italians or Jews, as I distinctly recall. The Italians suffered some abuse from Irish pastors, but they also had their own Italian parish. African Americans took abuse from everyone else, and the most hated people in the neighborhood were those who sold private homes to them and moved out.

• King55 | Aug 04, 2012, 01:10 PM EDT

  eiriamach: how was that neighborhood not different? I grew up in the NE and Central Bronx when it was Irish, Italian, Jewish, Black etc. When I return, it appears mostly African American and Latino. Most Irish and Italians have moved out or moved to Riverdale if they stayed in the Bronx. Belmont is the only "Italian" section, but that is heavily disneyfied...i.e. it's becoming an ethnic theme park.

• eiriamach | Aug 04, 2012, 12:54 PM EDT

  King55, you're right also about the novelists. A classic example is Theodore Dreiser, whose anti-Irish bigotry shows on many pages and in many characters in his stories. Such literature-- if we interpret it, again, in the context of history-- does show the pressures on both sides. The novel is often an un-self-consciously ideological form of literature. We have to think critically and know the history when we read novels and short stories. Memoirs also call for critical reading, but some of their facts can be checked out. I grew up in William Melvin Kelley's Italian neighborhood, and in my experience it had not changed much since he'd left it.

• eiriamach | Aug 04, 2012, 12:37 PM EDT

  King55, Thanks for your comment, and I agree fully. I know that some of the "poor in spirit" who work for progress are insufferably paternalistic toward those who have not yet made it. They're not "poor in spirit" if they're full of themselves! But I've also found them to be the easiest to educate. At their worst, it's worth putting up with their patronizing and condescension to get their help. I also don't care much about the "country club" Irish. (We used to call them "lace curtain Irish" when I was growing up working class.) Irish-descended Americans need only ask: Whose class interests are served by Irish-American racism? NOT the interests of working-class Irish, who have only been pitted against other working- class ethnics whenever they bought into the "cult of prosperity." This was one lesson of the 1863 NYC Draft Riots-- the 'divide and conquer' strategy of politicians for pitting blacks and immigrants against each other. When the unions were strong, they taught members this incontrovertible fact about socio-economic class interests. Those who I hope will wake up are middle-class Irish-descended Americans who listen to the "do-it-yourself prosperity" politics of country club Irish and, even when it shades over into overt racism, they do not challenge it. All racism needs in order to prevail is for decent people to ignore it.

• King55 | Aug 04, 2012, 11:58 AM EDT

  One final point I'd like to make is that there is a difference between memoir and fiction. Mr. Kelley's writings are based on his own experiences and should be taken as truth (or at least as close to the truth any human being can perceive it). However, the fiction quoted by Mr. Deignan is a different story. Those are interpretations and points of view. They may well reflect the writer's own prejudices (i.e. Irish Americans are bigots). The question is whether these beliefs are based on personal experience, a la Mr. Kelley, or are only boring cliches used by lazy writers. My gut feeling is that most of what was written was based on the author's own experiences and therefore indicate a racism problem over the years in Irish America.

• King55 | Aug 04, 2012, 11:49 AM EDT

  eiriamach: Believe it or not I totally agree with you and was actually trying to make a similar point. My statement about the working class was meant as sarcasm, which isn't something that translates well in an Internet post. What I wanted to say was that (using your own words) the "cult of prosperity Irish" may often label the working classes of any ethnicity (although some more than others) as bigoted without examining their own prejudices. I'd even go further than you and say some of those "poor in spirit" Irish also look down their noses as well. Both of these groups do this to soothe their own egos and flatter themselves that they have "made it" in America. In my mind, Irish America has a fascination or obsession with social standing and it affects their behavior in numerous ways. One such way is the racism discussed in this article. The second is the sense of moral superiority and self-righteousness that pervades the Irish American mind. This class consciousness allows you to hold prejudiced beliefs while projecting those beliefs onto other groups.

• eiriamach | Aug 04, 2012, 11:41 AM EDT

  In my last posting, I used moral categories, "cult of prosperity" (Reinhold Neihbur's phrase) and "poor in spirit" from Matt:5.3, the Beatitudes. But we should always consider the historical context too. A crucial part of the historical context, not to be omitted, is the role of the Church in the lives of the immigrants and their descendants. So add to the 'moral hazard' of attributing their success to their own efforts alone their fierce loyalty to the Church that had kept them strong and united, despite their bishops' pro-slavery, anti-labor, anti-public education, misogynist and homophobic political agendas. Then we can see how we end up with present-day Irish-American arch-conservatism and bigotry. Taking full credit for their own success, the "cult of prosperity" Irish feel superior to groups rattling the gate the Irish once pushed open. Politically, they become anti-immigration, anti-women's equality, anti-LGBT rights, etc. So now we have Tea Party types vs Progressives-- "cult of prosperity" Irish and "poor in spirit" Irish. Both are heirs to the racism-burdened history of Irish immigrants in the USA. Not all "cult of prosperity" Irish are bigots, but they are all conservatives who support multi-millionaires like Romney against up-from-the-streets liberals like Obama. And they consider Irish-American liberals to be traitors to 'the Irish,' untrustworthy, because they support democratic causes not vastly different from those that once helped their ancestors (voting rights, union rights, women's health care reforms, OWS and The Dream Act, etc.). Therein lies an Irish "Irony of American History": Unite to Conquer-- and end up divided!

• eiriamach | Aug 04, 2012, 11:18 AM EDT

  Oh King55, you've got it wrong, dangerously wrong, greatly over-simplified! You write, "It's those working class types and other ethnics who are racist." It's a dangerous self-delusion to think that racist Irish are working-class. And since you don't see them on a day-to-day basis, you can do about their racism, right? I won't deny that racism exists in the working class. But far more dangerous, because it's combined with money and power, is the racism of the "cult of prosperity" Irish-descended Americans. These people bought into the GOP ideology that if you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and work your ar*e off, you will succeed in the USA. Against Anglo-Protestant racism, 19th century Irish succeeded with little help. Then some bought into the ideology that told them that they alone were responsible for their own success. These became the gatekeepers, who resent the help that other groups, who reached the gate after the Irish pushed it open for themselves, receive from gov't and activists for civil rights, women's rights, immigration reform, etc. On the other side from the "cult of prosperity" Irish are the "poor in spirit Irish, people like Mother Jones, union organizers, RFK and Ted, Tom Hayden, who put Irish success in its historical context and do not credit the Irish alone for their success. They credit democratic movements like Abolition, labor organizing, education reform, Chatauqua, and the Second and Third Great Awakenings too. Then they help hold open the gate for other groups, ethnic minorities, women, new immigrants, etc.

• King55 | Aug 04, 2012, 06:41 AM EDT

  Sean, my point is that middle class people know how to hide their prejudices and yet can still act on them in more subtle and passive ways.

• seanomelb | Aug 03, 2012, 11:30 PM EDT

  Socio-economic standing(or class as you refer to it) has no boundaries on bigotry or racism.

• King55 | Aug 03, 2012, 07:13 PM EDT

  Let me ask, what is left of Irish identity in the US apart from St. Patrick's Day celebrations and shamrocks on baseball caps or t-shirts? Do they have any understanding of what mid 20th century America was like? Perhaps the longer the period of time since immigration might have a profound effect on Irish Americans' connection (i.e. the great great grandchildren of immigrants) have for the "mother country." Those in the US for greater amount of time probably don't why this article engenders such anger. Their Irish America is the country club. It's those working class types and other ethnics who are racist. Again, this article is really all about class issues.

• Gearoid4 | Aug 01, 2012, 08:45 PM EDT

  Your assessment is spot on,Sean.

• seanomelb | Aug 01, 2012, 07:40 PM EDT

  You are correct Gearoid4.Dunderheads like Ciara who castigate Irish/Americans and Irish living overseas is the leader of the "Bunker class" on this site. In their ignorance they think they know it all.

• Gearoid4 | Aug 01, 2012, 07:19 PM EDT

  There seems to be an intellectual failure on the part of some to grasp the pervasive influence of the emigrant boat on the globalizaton of Irish identity. You have got to get over the bunker mentality that you have developed within the Irish Republic to appreciate this.

• jamieLM | Aug 01, 2012, 11:06 AM EDT

  Btw: just exactly how many Irish ancestors does one have to have to qualify as an "Irish-American"? How about all those people who don't have an Irish surname because the "Irish" comes from the maternal line? How do you get an accurate count on what and how "Irish-Americans" think and act when you don't even know what standard has to be met to be labeled as an "Irish-American."?

• seanomelb | Jul 31, 2012, 10:49 PM EDT

  Who cares what Dillon posts nobody is interested.

• ciaradexy | Jul 31, 2012, 01:40 PM EDT

  Heres Georges most recent post in response to a guy called Paul, calling him out on not being in Ireland-''You sound like a nut. You claim that I don't live "here". Where? Ireland. I live in Ireland, I was born in Ireland, I am Irish. And you, Paul, are a fool.''

• eiriamach | Jul 31, 2012, 11:25 AM EDT

  Although I generally agree with pilib04, I disagree in this case. "Statistical data" are not the only form of support for a statement about Irish American racism. First, it cannot yield evidence of the history of racism across the generations. The past is important to understanding the present. William Melvin Kelley's memoir, though anecdotal, is a first-person history narrative of racism in mid-20th century NYC. Second, as I mentioned earlier, historians use many sources, such as police and court records, newspaper and other witness reports of the 1863 Draft Riots in NYC. These were real; they still exist, and you can consult them in library collections. Third, analysis of literature (of novels by Amy Waldman, Saul Bellows, James T. Farrell, and others) is another form of support for statements about the history of racism. It's not the task of an essay like Deignan's to provide all the available historical details, but to connect the evidence we know about with his interpretation, and this essay/blog does that. You can question his interpretation of the historical records and literature, but simply to deny that the evidence exists and to demand a social science survey is not a rational approach. Why the denials?

• curtisjohnson | Jul 30, 2012, 09:34 PM EDT

  pilib04 is correct - it's a poorly reasoned and unsupported hatchet job. Anything to take the focus off the anglo supremacist who unleashed the racial and ethnic hierarchies.

• King55 | Jul 30, 2012, 06:31 PM EDT

  This article and discussion would be even more interesting if it was published on an African America website.

• ciaradexy | Jul 30, 2012, 04:09 PM EDT

  I just posted 3 posts from George Dillon posting on the Irish Independent website. You can see from the posts that he is pretending hes in Ireland!!! See?! What a dick!

• ciaradexy | Jul 30, 2012, 04:08 PM EDT

  ''Or how about the "skilled labour" we have to import from India or Sri Lanka, the guys who stand in the street all day holding up the Eat At Joes type clipboards on Grafton Street and elsewhere.'' ''"right wing fundamentalism". Knock off the empty slogans, and think for a change. I'm a left-winger, always have been, since my teenage years in the Socialist Labour Party in the late 1970s. As a socialist, I can see that Mass Immigration is the bosses' project, it has done no good for the Irish working class. '' ''Stephen: You are partially correct, but there's no doubt that the big business parties lied at the time of the EU Treaty. People like Dick Roche of Fianna Fail and Proinsias de Rossa of Labour were "outraged" at the suggestion that the Nice Treay would lead to unlimited Mass Immigration and threw the "racist" slur at anyone who suggested otherwise. I think it is very feasible and desirable to add a clause to the Constitution on the lines of "Ireland is the national home of the Irish people, the only such home that has ever or will ever exist. All government actions will be based on that principle".'' ''Harry--You're not the first person I've asked this of, but I've received no answer. By what weird logic do you think that those of us who oppose Mass Immigration to Ireland condone illegal emigration to the US? What a crazy proposition on your part.''

• pilib04 | Jul 30, 2012, 01:26 PM EDT

  Tom Deignan needs to provide statistical data. If he can't then he needs to write a retraction. His commentary is without any scientific method. Anyone can write a hatchet job on an American ethnic group. But there are volumes of evidence that Irish Catholics are more progressive when it comes to race than the average white population.

• eiriamach | Jul 30, 2012, 10:10 AM EDT

  Barry, some Irish Americans hid away from the 1960s-70s, pretending that women's and minorities' rights and the end of white privilege never happened. The truth of the older-generation explanation is mostly these hold-outs, aligned with RC backlash against Second Vatican Council's embrace of equality, freedom of conscience, and human rights. Resentment springs from an Irish sense of dispossession. Only recently, between Al Smith's 1928 run and JFK's 1960 election, had Irish Americans gained status for themselves, with no help from political movements such as blacks and women had later. In many IC comments, you can read their resentment, expressed as hatred for Obama, who benefited from civil rights laws that put everyone on an equal level only a generation after Al Smith's loss stunned Irish America and too quickly after JFK's breakthrough. The organization I described is a group with no future, people in their 50s, 60s, 70s. When 18-40 year olds attended for a look-see they did not join. Members return to be with other hold-outs like themselves. They help the Church trash the Kennedys for supporting abortion, civil rights, labor, and church- state separation. Other baby-boomers, however, welcomed progress; nuns whose photos you can see in some IC articles embraced Vatican II, equality, and women's rights. Ideology/church politics, not just age, made the difference.

• curtisjohnson | Jul 29, 2012, 11:00 PM EDT

  Wasn't it Irish Americans who spearheaded the civil rights legislation of the 1960s?

• curtisjohnson | Jul 29, 2012, 10:41 PM EDT

  harp579 is spot on regarding the situation in the US. They make it as though Irish Americans were the ones who cleansed North America of its indigenous populations, enslaved millions of Africans, and then created such noxious organizations as the Klan. Look no further than Woodrow Wilson's assessment of the infamous "Birth of a Nation" movie as accurate for a barometer of anglo racism in the US. Most Germans have similiar views to the Irish but are bought in to a "Germanic" umbrella by the racist anglos as their numbers erode.

• pilib04 | Jul 29, 2012, 09:37 PM EDT

  Father Andrew Greeley actually has statistics that refute the notion that Irish-Catholic Americans are more racist than the American public. Fact is, according to Greeley's stats from the National Opinion Research Center, Irish-Catholic Americans are in fact, less racist than the general white American population.

• pilib04 | Jul 29, 2012, 09:30 PM EDT

  Ciaradexy/Bythebay or whatever your name is, we've heard it all before. Drop your Xenophobia and just try to focus on the content. Go raibh maith agat.

• seanomelb | Jul 29, 2012, 07:35 PM EDT

  Ciaradexy is back is this another Lourdes or Fatima probably Knock(excuse the pun).

• ciaradexy | Jul 29, 2012, 02:55 PM EDT

  Lads, please remember, if youre not from Ireland then youre not Irish. Why do you feel the need to separate yourself from your people? Be glad and proud that youre American. Stop trying to pigeonhole yourselves.

• ciaradexy | Jul 29, 2012, 02:44 PM EDT

  I am SO glad you wrote this article! George Dillon is posting as Kev408 on the Irish Independent website and he posted 'We cant look after our own but we are importing workers from outside ireland'. Georgie/Kev said 'We'.! I think he forgot hes American and not irish and hes not contributing anything to Ireland! Just back from a weekend in Leitir Mor and was talking to some of the lads about tourists. They said the worst they have ever encountered are Americans who claim to be Irish and who think they can speak Irish! No one in Ireland considers them Irish and yet they disgust the natives! Hilarious! You'd think the relatives of Irish migrants would be much more open to migrants to other countries especially Ireland. We were also chatting about emigration. Leitir Mor is a very vibrant community and the number of young people is crazy! They are everywhere but they were saying that some of them will emigrate. Many will be going on to 3rd level and they know not all of them will get jobs here when they graduate as its such a small country. I suggested George Dillons solution-that they work cleaning toilets and making beds for tourists in hotels here. They replied with ' Would you f*ck off!'. Im getting an education, why would I do the sh1t jobs?! Not 1 of them had an issue with migrants to Ireland. Infact, theres a few families from eastern Europe living in their community working in the fishing and farming industries. They ALL now speak Irish as its a gaeltacht area. George, you are a dick! Seriously! Get a life you sad pr1ck!

• irismonkey48 | Jul 29, 2012, 12:16 PM EDT

  What an excellent article. I have friends who are black/Irish Americans. The blacks and the Irish were both slaves by the English and when they came to this country they both had nothing. No right to vote, no right to practice their religion, own land etc. The Irish Americans pulled themselves up and some signed the Declaration of Independence. A lot of the blacks and Irish intermarried and had children. The blacks have had it the hardest and still do to this day. They are beautiful people with a lot of strength and resilience. I was shocked recently when I read an article by a highly respected Irish historian from Belfast about a visit he made to America and his remarks about a black man in Mississippi who had approached him and tried to give him some insight into Irish black Americans. The wisdom this man gave went right over his head and this historian of Ireland made very racist remarks not only about blacks but Americans in general. When I saw the Orange men wearing KKK clothing in their yearly harassment of Catholics in Ireland it brought up such an ugliness and revulsion I could not describe. If KKK marched down the streets of black people in the US today , first of all they would probably not make it out of the neighborhood but that would also be considered a hate crime. I am proud of the Irish Americans and I am proud of the black Irish Americans. In the end we are all Americans.

• Barry | Jul 29, 2012, 09:47 AM EDT

  King55: My aunts and uncles are in their 60s and 70s. You're right, it could be a generational thing. Don't get me wrong though: I'm not claiming that Irish-Americans are KluKlux Clan racists or anything! But a lot of the ones I know are a bit prejudiced. eiriamach: You're right, education doesn't automatically eliminate a person's bigotries, as evidenced by some of the people you've encountered. I must say though, my experience has been very different. There's a world of difference in the things some older, less well educated people come out with (in Ireland or America) and what those of my own age would say, or consider acceptable.

• harp579 | Jul 29, 2012, 01:20 AM EDT

  The English like to think of themselves as Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) but in fact the latest gene based research shows that that they are near identical to the Irish (and Scots and Welsh) genetically speaking. If I remember right the distinction is 6% Germanic genetic legacy from the Germanic invasion of Britton by the Germanic tribes, and 2% genetic legacy from the Roman occupation of Britton. . . . 'Our' (Irish) role all along has been to provide a supposed genetic contrast to allow the "English" to think of themselves as special in Britain and in America and in continental European national relations too. It's been a big hoax all along............................."Saxons, Vikings and Celts: the Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland" or “Origins of the British” by Stephen Oppenheimer.

• harp579 | Jul 29, 2012, 01:00 AM EDT

  Americans with an Irish-Catholic heritage are the most discriminated against white people in America . . always have been and always will be in order to provide a contrast to the dominant true Germanic as well as the pseudo-Germanic (English ancestry) groups. The big trick to keep this going so long was to get it established, wrongly, that 'we' are the most bigoted, thereby taking away 'our' moral right to defend 'ourselves' against bigoted attacks waged against 'us'. ['us' and 'we' because 'we' are not a socially coherent group...but that doesn't seem to even put a dent in the narrative that we are this big tough gang ... allowing the the anti-'Irish American' bigots to pretend they are tough guys even though they attack a phantom 'group' which can't defend itself as a group.

• harp579 | Jul 29, 2012, 12:43 AM EDT

  If you were born and raised in America you are an American period full stop. . . . Would you call somebody English who was born and raised in America but had English-born parentage?

• EphraimKibbey | Jul 28, 2012, 06:57 PM EDT

  @redhand32 - I think you have a point - if you're near the bottom in a society but you can point to someone else who is lower down at least you are not the worst off and your pride can be soothed somewhat. You reminded me of a story and I love stories. A union worker, a non-union worker and a CEO were sitting around a table on which was placed a plate with four cookies. The CEO took three of them and said to the non-union worker "Hey, look out, that union worker is trying to take YOUR cookie."

• eiriamach | Jul 28, 2012, 04:33 PM EDT

  Barry, two points in response: 1) Most of the self-assured Irish American racists I've described were educated to the level of B.A. or beyond. Granted, they attended Catholic colleges that discourage critical thinking in favor of obedience to church teaching. Nonetheless, they had the history and social science courses necessary to understand Ignatiev and others, but something gets in the way of *thinking about* the issues. Less educated IAs are more circumspect about racism, homophobia, etc., perhaps out of fear of offending people they work or socialize with. Education is no guarantee of moral integrity, and lack of formal education is no impediment to it (the mid-20th century multi-racial labor unions showed democracy breaking through ethnic tribalism). 2) Like other Americans, IAs acquire ideologies that work like locked gates to block the entry of facts and critical thinking about them. I think King55 came closest with the phrase "class consciousness." Indeed, ideology is linked to socioeconomic class, and nothing shuts down the cerebral cortex as fast as an appeal to ideology. Ex: el rubio, who's obviously neither stupid nor uneducated, wrote the most classic example of ad hominem thinking I've seen: "As for Ignatiev, he is a self described Marxist who seeks to 'abolish the white race.' Need I say more?" "Marxist" threatens socioeconomic status and blocks logic.

• King55 | Jul 28, 2012, 04:01 PM EDT

  Barry - how old are your aunts and uncles? It could also be a generational issue.

• Barry | Jul 28, 2012, 03:11 PM EDT

  This is an excellent article and one that confronts an ugly truth about Irish-Americans. I have several aunts and uncles in the US and I've heard most of them (and their spouses) come out with racist remarks at some point or other. I think the main cause of their racism was their lack of education, most of them having left school very young. I don't know why less well-educated people seem to be more racist but it's something that's become pretty obvious to me over the years. (The Irish in the UK are as bad.) Yet, despite their lack of education and skills, most of them seemed to do quite well for themselves. No doubt, a black man or woman of the same level of education (we're talking here of not even attending secondary school in most cases) would not have been given the same opportunities. Some of the comments posted here suggest that, indeed, the Irish in America are still quite racist, e.g. that of irishamrep who accuses Blacks of only "taking". Change the racist record please!

• Pittsburghkid | Jul 28, 2012, 02:39 PM EDT

  Oh!! You forgot about the Racism of Affirmative Action for the past 40 years. Every American must state his Race of each job application. Under the Quota System of Affirmative Act people are hired according to the Race and Sex. Of course Irish White Males are the last to be hired.

• King55 | Jul 28, 2012, 01:04 PM EDT

  I've been reading all the comments and I appreciate everyone's points of view. However, I have an observation based on experience that puts a twist into this discussion/debate. I've encountered a tendency among some Irish Americans, mostly upper-middle class, who openly advocate on the side of African American civil rights. However, these same people love to stereotype other ethnics as being "the most prejudiced." It seems that IAs have traded one set of bigotries for another set. Further, their attitude toward blacks is patronizing, almost William F. Buckley-esque, where they believe they need to "guide" those less fortunate. Is the cause of all this really just class consciousness?

• Schon | Jul 28, 2012, 09:35 AM EDT

  The Irish have the unfortunate habit of picking the wrong side and end up loosing. This has occurred throughout their history. and I guess that this has instilled a degree of inferiority in their outlook on life with their means of over coming the inferiority based on their aggressiveness in their dealings with 'others'. This is the stereotypical character of the Irish, both protestant and Roman Catholic and is rife through out English literature, whether deserved or not. Most peoples get on well with 'other' groups in good times, but it is not only the Irish who strike out in times of hardship, especially when there is a feeling of some 'other' getting treated more favourably. The Irish are no different but, because of their unfavourable alliances in the past, they have been the underdogs many times over. Reading a groups character from novels must always be avoided as the novel is a fiction, and people don't read fiction to hear about nice things... most fiction and for that matter, auto biographies, may have ulterior motives such as to influence the readers world, or local, view.

• RthrBHistCorr | Jul 28, 2012, 08:39 AM EDT

  "And there is Amy Waldman’s recent novel The Submission, about a Muslim-American architect who is selected to design a memorial at ground zero. This is opposed by Sean Gallagher, whose brother, Patrick, was a firefighter killed that awful day. We see a not-so-subtle Islamophobia in Sean’s Irish American family" Wow, we are really steaching here. Is it not natural when your brother/son was killed by people espousing an ideology (and that is what Islam is) to be bitter? How many Jews today hate all Germans? I don't say its right, but its not racist, its a human reaction to pain and those who caused it.

• redhand32 | Jul 28, 2012, 08:05 AM EDT

  An important factor left out of the article is that because the Irish and Blacks were at the bottom rungs of the economic "food chain" they were in competition for the crumbs tossed out to them by elites, --the menial jobs. Consequently, free blacks were seen as a "threat" to their subsistence life. This factor is just as, if not more important than racial stereotypes. The same dynamic is at work today as right wing elites, like the Koch brothers, are taking a page out of this same playbook, which is also the same as the "divide and conquer" playbook historically in the 6 counties. By pitting the poor against the almost poor thru competition for crumbs, it deflects discussion from the real problem, --the rich parasites who control the rest of us.

• bogsidebunny | Jul 28, 2012, 07:39 AM EDT

  Bullying is part and parcel of the Irish Culture. It runs the gammet from ferocious, uninstigated beatings to soft verbal jibes (sometimes called "slagging"). There's no escaping it if you're surronded by Irish in Ireland or Irish immigrants in another country. I still can't figure if it's inspired by the Catholic church ethos or just a social trait, forged by a great cultural insecurity, which has weaved its way into the Irish. Forget about them just jumping on Blacks the Irish, given an opportunity will bully everyone and anyone.

• irishamrep | Jul 28, 2012, 02:00 AM EDT

  In New Orleans there is a section called the Irish Channel there is a large celtic cross monument to the Irishmen who dug the "New Basin Canal" by hand! Many died there and it seems some were buried right on the spot where they died! The older Irish and many of the younger ones who have heard these factual stories know that the Irish was dispenseable but not the blacks, they were too valuable! The Irish build that City, they were the police and fire fighters for generations. No one gave them a damn thing. But the "poor" blacks take, they only take!

• irishamrep | Jul 28, 2012, 12:45 AM EDT

  Kelly's full of chitt!

• swiftless | Jul 28, 2012, 12:08 AM EDT

  The truth be told, the first Irish to set foot in NAmerica went to Barbados. Where they toiled side by side with their Black counterparts as the first white slaves in North America. When the former tenants of Ulster marched to Dublin to complain of the infringemnts to their land holdings by the invading Scots they were promptly rounded up and became part of the Jamestown Landing at Virginia in 1609. As for their religion, unlike their new Scotch Landowners who were probably Presbeterians, Catholicism was not tolerated at this time. Part of their dislike of the blacks was because they were more trustworthy and were put in charge of the Irish, much to their humiliation.

• harp579 | Jul 27, 2012, 10:00 PM EDT

  Why bash your own group. Do other groups do this? Don't others do enough of this to 'us'.

• harp579 | Jul 27, 2012, 09:57 PM EDT

  Americans of Irish-Catholic heritage the the most socially liberal gentile group in America per vol.5 page 96 of Annual Review of Sociology 1979. Don't have free link. Available at libraries in Jstor database.

• harp579 | Jul 27, 2012, 09:48 PM EDT

  test

• el rubio | Jul 27, 2012, 08:16 PM EDT

  By the way, at no point did Archbishop Hughes support the Confederacy. He was a strong Union man who even went on a diplomatic mission to Europe at the behest of the Lincoln Administration, although like most Americans at the time he was no abolitionist. He did not speak out sooner during the riots because he was sick from rheumatism and Bright's disease and would be dead within a year. It was enemies of his such as Horace Greeley, who spent the riots cowering in his offices in the Tribune, who helped spread the lie that the Catholic clergy were complicit in the violence and Irish Catholics as a whole were responsible for the war for their adherence to the Democratic party. Unfortunately, this narrow minded sectarian narrative is still with us. For an in depth biography on Archbishop Hughes, check out "Dagger John; the unquiet life and times of Archbishop John Hughes of New York" by Fr. Richard Shaw

• el rubio | Jul 27, 2012, 07:29 PM EDT

  To occassio, Archbishop Hughes was instrumental in creating a stable Irish Catholic middle class in New York through his construction of schools, hospitals and religious charities which catered to a poor immigrant community decimated by what some consider to be an act of genocide in the Famine. By the end of the century, they had by and large ascended into the ranks of the middle class and were in control politically of the major cities in the Northeast and Midwestern United States. Meanwhile, black self styled 'activists' such as Sharpton and his posse engage in race baiting and anti-white anti-Jewish rhetoric in order to gain politically and financially. They do absolutely nothing to raise blacks out of poverty or otherwise better their lives through education, self improvement etc. Legal segregation was ended during the 1950s and 60s, and most blacks today have no recollection of segregation, much less any consciousness of slavery in the antebellum South. Indeed many, particularly in New York are recent immigrants to the United States from the West Indies Haiti or from Africa itself without any connection whatsoever to the American southern slavery system. I'll guarantee you that a black immigrant to New York today from, say, Guyana is afforded much more opportunity than an Irish immigrant to New York would have been during the 1850s. Scapegoating all Irish-Americans for the black predicament and for racism in general does little except cast aspersions on an undeserving ethnic group which by and large has worked hard to earn its status in America. As for Ignatiev, he is a self described Marxist who seeks to "abolish the white race." Need I say more?

• eiriamach | Jul 27, 2012, 07:24 PM EDT

  King55, examples-- I'll try to give you a short list. The last meeting of an Irish language group I attended was a nice dinner celebration, at which I found myself seated next to a woman who railed about how disgusting the blacks were. I had listened on other occasions to similar derogatory comments about Obama and Hilary Clinton-- any Democrat was excoriated. At an Irish cultural group, one went on and on about how ugly and frightening the Muslims in her neighborhood were and another gave an anti-abortion, anti-Kennedy harangue. I was not the only woman who walked out of Irish classes in which some pr*ck was denigrating a particular woman-- one was a teacher for the same language organization-- or women in general. Nothing changed. When I asked one teacher about an Irish language group others were talking about, she explained that they have nothing to do with the group because it's mostly homosexuals. When I spoke out at a general meeting once, 3-4 thanked me afterward for what I'd said, but when I asked them to speak out with me, they said they would never do so. I've endured years of email harassment, cyber stalking and bullying (the emails boast of how they follow my postings and hold laugh fests about them), social network censorship/ blocking from these people, most of whom are educated professionals (in Catholic colleges)....

• occassio | Jul 27, 2012, 06:24 PM EDT

  el rubio. I don’t know what Mr. Deignan is at, but Mr. Kelley is attempting to explore ‘the complex ways skin color, language and bigotry have influenced his own life, as well as recent American history.’ Your comment that, ‘if the black community in this country has more Archbishop Hughes and fewer Al Sharptons, they would not be in the predicament they are in today.’ is indicative of one who is grossly uninformed of African-American history. Your mention of the Crown Heights Riot and Freddy’s Fashion Mart does nothing to put these events in the context of a 400 year struggle against repression and bigotry. Al Sharpton and his ilk are not the cause of ‘the predicament’ but, quite frankly, the result of it. While it is true that down through the decades the Irish have opened their doors and their hearts to blacks (and vice versa), it is also true that in cities, including Boston, many Irish have been, to put it mildly, less than hospitable. Noel Ignatiev’s book, ‘How the Irish Became White (i.e., access to social privilege)’, does gives reasonable historic context to this issue vis-à-vis race as a social construct. Beginning in Colonial America, Africans were put "out of bounds" of regular society because their place was racially defined and therefore, incurable. Thus, Ignatiev’s social construct has merit. Mr. Deignan should have written his article within this context rather than without a jot of critical thinking.

• King55 | Jul 27, 2012, 06:16 PM EDT

  Eiramach - Thank you for your reply. Since I don't have much contact with those IA groups, I don't know what goes on behind closed doors. I have to ask: can you give an example?

• eiriamach | Jul 27, 2012, 05:48 PM EDT

  Answer to King55: I don't know about Tom Deignan, but for me, it's the persistence of a very ugly and overt racism, as well as misogyny and homophobia, in Irish American groups, primarily East coast. It's NOT their sentimentality.

• eiriamach | Jul 27, 2012, 05:38 PM EDT

  El Rubio, check it out: the historian Bernstein writes, "As the [Civil] war progressed, [NY Archbishop] Hughes' attacks on emancipation and the Vatican's willingness to entertain Confederate diplomats at the papal court made the issue of Catholic loyalty to the Union even more worrisome" (page 197). Many, not all, RC priests "attacked Protestant abolitionists as revolutionary sowers of chaos, 'the American manifestation of the lawless liberalism' of Europe, and as infidels." This public image of Catholicism led to stereotypes of Irish Catholics generated by the likes of Thomas Nast in 19th century NY. I fear that Cardinal Dolan's politicking has followed a similar route and will have the effect of excluding Catholic Irish-descended citizens from public office, as NYC excluded them during most of the 19th century. Those are realistic concerns, despite El Rubio's labeling me "anti-Catholic" for mentioning that history. You can attack people for telling the part of the truth you don't want to hear, or you can deal with the whole truth. Your choice. (I don't know what TisEyerish is talking about; the Draft Riots happened in mid-July -- 1863 -- during the US Civil War. Nothing to do with Vietnam protests more than a century later.)

• King55 | Jul 27, 2012, 05:35 PM EDT

  Although I have no Irish blood, I like to visit this website out of curiosity. Today, the headline Mr. Deignan's blog post got my attention immediately (and why wouldn't it??!!). I know from first hand experience that no group should be called inherently racist, but I have noticed something. There seems to be a growing focus by Irish-American academics (you can call them liberals if you like)on the sometimes unsavory history of the Irish. One reason for this I think, is the heavy sentimentality that pervades Irish Americans' view of their history and themselves. Archbishop Martin even noted this in an interview published on Irish Central. From my limited perspective, it seems like a segment of Irish Americans (most either recent immigrants from Ireland or those four generations removed) have grown annoyed with this sentimentality and it's core value of conceit. My question to Mr. Deignan is this: what has prompted this column? Is it really because of what was written in Harper's magazine or is there some other "raison d'arte" for what was written? I'd love to hear from other commentators about this as well.

• TisEyerish | Jul 27, 2012, 05:00 PM EDT

  I'm not sure why the Draft Board protests are being brought into this article. They had absolutely nothing to do with race. I know this for a fact because I was there. It was filthy hippies protesting the Vietnam War. I counter-demonstrated for an hour each morning before work, for two hours at lunchtime (my boss gave me an extra hour to do so) and for several hours after work each day. My office was on Whitehall Street, directly across the street from the building where the boys boarded buses to be brought to boot camp. There were US flags and draft cards burned by the unwashed cowards who refused to serve, but there was never a moment that racism came into play. I was not in favor of the war, but I sure as hell was in favor of the boys who were sent to fight it and, along with several hundred others, demonstrated to show that support. "Our" side of the street was never shown on the news, so many people were never aware of our side of the story.

• kelto67 | Jul 27, 2012, 04:59 PM EDT

  Wasn't an Irish girl just assaulted and almost killed by a black criminal in The Bronx last week? Yet, we're treated to more hand wringing and liberal histrionics over 'the legacy of Irish-American Racism.' What utter garbage!

• eiriamach | Jul 27, 2012, 04:55 PM EDT

  Given the ethnic composition of the rioters, NYC officials counted on a Catholic church official having some effect where they had failed. So they prevailed upon Hughes to address the mob. He did help calm people down, but surely he had an obligation to do so considering that his public opposition to Lincoln and the Abolition movement, his support for the South in the Civil War, and his diatribes against NYC Protestants, had contributed to the uprising. If, as you say, el rubio, we "must tell all the facts," we must not overlook Hughes' culpability and notice only his later cooperation with City officials. Archbishop Hughes was no friend of the blacks. And Jefferson Davis had the pope's support during the Civil War; the pope's letter, along with records of Confederate visits to the Vatican, is part of the historical record. You're getting your history from revisionists. Irish history in 19th century America includes the building of great cities and political movements, but it is not all pure light.

• el rubio | Jul 27, 2012, 03:16 PM EDT

  Finally, eriamach, the last thing I have to say regarding your not too subtle anti-Catholicism is that if the black community in this country has more Archbishop Hughes and fewer Al Sharptons, they would not be in the predicament they are in today.

• el rubio | Jul 27, 2012, 02:53 PM EDT

  Eriamach, I have never denied nor offered excuses for the dozen or so lynchings that occured throughout the course of the riots, the unfortunate truth about human nature is that desparate frenzied mobs of any kind seldom behave in a rational manner. This includes the nativist riots in Philadelphia during the 1840s, the New York City Draft Riots, the Crown Heights Riots (instigated by Sharpton and Herbert Daughtry), or the Rodney King Riots of 1992. My point was that the Irish cop and the Irish soldier did his job during the height of the riots and, despite the propoganda promulgated by the leading newspapers of the era and re-promulgated by the likes of yourself, ordinary heroic Irish-Americans such as Father Treanor and Paddy McCafferty saved black lives from the period of July 12 through July 16, 1863. The question that remains, and that is key to Mr. Deignan's article is why is the stereotype of the violent Irish bigot resonates with the same impact as the Irish drunkard. I think the answer lies in the largely Protestant Republican controlled press, who spread conspiracies about a slave-power backed by the Catholic Church, much as you yourself have sought to implicate Archbishop Hughes in the riots, although the archbishop in fact forcefully denounced the rioters and was on generally good terms with the Lincoln Administration. I will say again that any account of the Draft Riots that seeks to portray the Irish New Yorker at the time as a frothing at the mouth bigot without mention of ALL historical data is, like Sharpton, a disingenuous charlatan who would probably make for a good copyboy for Thomas Nast.

• eiriamach | Jul 27, 2012, 02:37 PM EDT

  Deignan asks, "if Irish Americans need to more forcefully confront a dark chapter of their past?" No question about this, given the denial evident in IC blog comments! The Irish-descended in America certainly need to get realistic about their sometimes-racist past-- and their present racism! We need to look at Roman Catholicism's campaign against gay civil rights, which has nurtured homophobia in the Irish US population. We need to examine ways in which RC paranoia has kept Islamophobia and anti-Semitism alive in the Irish US population. We need to end the misogynist opposition to equal treatment of women that goes on in so many Irish cultural and language groups and infects Irish-American politics. Now, about Deignan's other suggestion, "if writers and movie makers need to get a little more creative when it comes to creating their villains?" Sticks and stones will hurt my bones, but celluloid stereotypes do me no harm unless the stereotype of the Irish American bigot is true. Unfortunately, my observations tell me that there's more truth to it than Irish America is willing to acknowledge.

• eiriamach | Jul 27, 2012, 02:07 PM EDT

  My reply did not go through, so I'll try again more briefly. El Rubio, only a fool would infer from what I wrote that I think the Irish are "inherently racist." By the third day of rioting in 1863, the rioters were almost exclusively Irish, they had been stirred up by Bishop Hughes and parish priests, they had lost employment to blacks, they were incensed at the discriminatory draft, and they were irrational enough to kill some of their own as well as blacks, just as the Metropolitan police (90% Irish), bludgeoned some of their friends and relatives among the rioters to stop them. I am under no obligation to tell the other side of the story to "balance" the Draft Riot atrocities. Anyone who thinks that there are excuses for lynching in city streets and burning down orphanages is already hopelessly racist and beyond the reach of reason. I wrote below simply to correct your wild revisionist approach to NYC Irish history.

• el rubio | Jul 27, 2012, 01:28 PM EDT

  By the way, Al Sharpton neither knows or cares a tinkers da mn about Irish Americans or their history

• el rubio | Jul 27, 2012, 01:26 PM EDT

  eriamach, it is libel if the actions of some Irish immigrants in the 1860s are used to color the actions of all Irish-Americans throughout history. Should I declare all black Americans to be anti-Semites because Al Sharpton (I will not refer to that disingenuous charlatan as a Reverend) was instrumental in the Crown Heights Riot or because his actions lead to the inferno at Freddys Fashion Mart which lead to the deaths of seven people? You make a number of statements seeking to implicate the Irish as being inherently racist. In actuality the bulk of the police force who restored law and order was Irish. as were the superintendent John A. Kennedy and Colonel O'Brien, who was killed by rioters. It was an Irish boy named Paddy McCafferty who lead the black children out of the Colored orphan asylum when it was under attack by rioters, and it was Father Treanor of Transfiguration parish who intervened to stop the lynching of a black man. Archbishop Hughes remarks were hardly conspiracy theories, Protestant nativists would regularly use blacks as strikebreakers. Hughes himself was hardly a copperhead, as the Lincoln Administration even sent him to Europe to gain support for the Union cause, although he did not have much success (anti-Americanism in Europe being hardly a new development). Thus the modern depictions of Irish-Americans as racists is not that far removed from their depiction by the likes of diarist, George Templeton Strong, who referred to the Irish as being "Celtic brutes" and said "I would like war to be made om Irish sc um as in 1688." If you insist on telling the facts of history, you must tell all the facts.

• eiriamach | Jul 27, 2012, 11:47 AM EDT

  What an amazing capacity some people have for delusion and denial--denying the facts of history as recorded in NYC police records and court testimony. Rev. Sharpton knows his history. There is simply no denying that the immigrant Irish of New York City were the Draft Rioters. Bishop Hughes of the NY Archdiocese incited them with conspiracy theories about Protestant nativist employers (Page 112 Iver Bernstein's "The NYC Draft Riots"). The rioters' early targets were factories, which they emptied and burned. Belmont was a "leader" of Democrat merchants. He did not stir up the riots. He preached white supremacy against Republican paternalism toward free black working families in NYC. When the Republican govt imposed a discriminatory draft on immigrant white poor of NYC, after a decade of Irish dockworkers and iron workers trying to drive black strikebreakers out of their neighborhoods and worried by the abolition movement (Emancipation would push them further down the Irish employment scale), the outbreak of rioting in July 1863 was "both mob action and strike" (5). Bernstein attributes the Riots to explosive Irish-black conflict, Irish and other groups' conflict with exploitative employers, and intrusive Republican govt, both federal and local. Just like today, Republicans found ways of transferring the financial and human burden of war onto the backs of the poor, and the Irish of NYC, along with some Germans and others, rebelled. The Famine was no excuse for lynching blacks, and it's no "libel" to tell the facts of history.

• el rubio | Jul 27, 2012, 10:02 AM EDT

  One last point about the draft riots. On WLIB, an all-black radio station in New York, Al Sharpton once remarked about the riots that, and I quote "the Irish became perturbed" and began lynching blacks (by the way, Mr. Deignan, if you wish to prove your mettle as a journalist and unearth the transcript of that exchange, I will personally send you a bottle of Jamison). Unfortunately, that is the narrative that has been told conserning the draft riots, not the fact that the Irish population had just undergone a devastating famine that was (arguably) genocide, were mired in poverty in some of the worst slums imaginable, were undergoing discrimination at the hands of still largely Anglo Protestant population, and were now at the mercy of a draft system which openly exempted the rich from service. Yet the only thing that ever emerges from discussion of the Draft Riots is that the "racist Irish lynched blacks." Given the frequency of this libel of the Irish American community at the hands of people like Sharpton or the Marxist Noel Ignatiev, who makes similar assertions, it isn't surprising that popular culture, never friendly to white Catholic ethnic groups in the first place, reflects such an egregious lie.

• citizen69 | Jul 27, 2012, 09:59 AM EDT

  @WoundedKnee: there were 'No Irish Need Apply' signs and classifieds in England but you are correct in saying there is very little evidence of such phenomena in America even though many today try to claim there was.

• el rubio | Jul 27, 2012, 09:42 AM EDT

  Mr. Deignan, while I generally consider your articles to be one of the more thought provoking additions to this site, I must take issue here with your insinuations about Irish-Americans being racists. For the most part you cite literature to back up this assetions and the portrayal of fictional Irish-Americns as being racists, holds about as much creedence in real life as does Spike Lee's buffoonish depictions of Italian New Yorkers in his films does. Among the Irish-Catholic religious orders in New York, many served in African American communities administering to their otherwise ignored (by society as a whole) youths, such as in Rice High School in Harlem. As for the draft riots, while a large portion of the rioters were Irish immigrants, many were not, while a greater percentage of the police and national guardsman who responded to the violence were of Irish blood. Among the victims of the rioters was a colonel in the army named O'Brien who was beaten to death outside his home, while the police chief at the time John Alexander Kennedy, was severely injured during the violence. Lastly, it is telling that you cite the story of Mr. Kelley as being indicative of Irish bigotry against blacks when the story was published in Harpers magazine. Harpers, you may recall, was one of the principal forums of anti-Catholic nativism in this country, and one of the main carriers of Thomas Nast's anti-Irish venom. Perhaps instead of engaging in self-flagellation, Irish American liberals should instead have some pride in their own heritage they so often seek to denigrate.

• dingle999 | Jul 27, 2012, 08:17 AM EDT

  "No Irish Need Apply" is an urban legend? Then again where did the popular/racist view of Irish people as leprechauns in America come from ?

• IrelandNorth | Jul 27, 2012, 07:47 AM EDT

  "As with redneck whites [ie hicks/sod busters?] (usually Scots-Irish, incidentally) ..." Is this a ball hop/wind up or just a not very subtle contextual Freudian sli[de]. Reading ex-Irish Army officer Sean O Callaghan's (2001) book: "To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland", (Brandon Press, 2006 ed) exposes the shameful export of racism to the Americas. Not surprisingly, it emanates from modern imperialism. To economically exploit fellow human beings, it was necessary to socially dehumanise them to ethically justify so doing, as also confiscating their homeland, as native Irish or -Americans will readily attest to!

• WoundedKnee | Jul 27, 2012, 02:58 AM EDT

  "No Irish Need Apply". I believe this is an urban legend or myth. There is actually no documented study which establishes that this kind of sign was ever commonly seen in the US or England. It's a creation of Irish self-pity.

• slainte9 | Jul 27, 2012, 01:22 AM EDT

  New York City Draft Riots? The draft riots weren't an Irish riot. -- Adrian Cook, Armies of the Streets Nativists blame the Irish for the riots, then an ignoramous at Irish Central repeats the canard. If this subject is worthy of treatment -- didn't collective guilt go out of style with Hitler -- then Irish Central should at least hire an author who isn't an ignoramous to cover it.

• Pazuzu | Jul 26, 2012, 11:11 PM EDT

  How ridiculous. You cite works of fiction (WTF?!?!)by Jews and Anglo-Saxon Protestants (of all people!) as evidence of Irish or Irish-American racism. It's common knowledge to anybody with at least one eye and half a brain that these two groups regularly look down upon and defame traditionally Catholic ethnic groups. They do their damnedest to portray the Irish, Italians, and Slavic groups as negatively as possible. Remember just who sold the Africans into slavery at a massive profit(Jews) and who worked them like dogs and raped their women (WASPS). Irish Catholics had absolutely nothing to do with it.

• JBRAFTREE | Jul 26, 2012, 09:13 PM EDT

  I'll also note: I was born on the south side of Chicago, I was playing with a bunch of kids, and I had this black kid playing with me asking me for a drink of water, I asked him to come back to my apt. Dad was home and asked why I brought this black kid back to the apt, and I said " because he was my friend". Things have changed!!

• JBRAFTREE | Jul 26, 2012, 08:39 PM EDT

  Deignan: Racism is rampant within our souls! We need to step back and ask ourselves, :is this called for?

• modemo | Jul 26, 2012, 08:23 PM EDT

  My father asked why anyone who had been through the prejudice of the "No Irish Need Apply" signs would ever treat anyone else that way.

• seanomelb | Jul 26, 2012, 07:48 PM EDT

  WE read Irish and Irish/American posts daily on this site denigrating Africans of Irish descent Africans of mixed Irish descent living in Ireland. There will always be racists bigots from all colours and nationalities and shaming them is the way forward.

• oaklongan | Jul 26, 2012, 05:37 PM EDT

  Manhattan has it right, even bearing in mind Tom Denigan's description of rednecks in the U.S. as often being Scots-Irish (whether in the South, or not). I've heard prejudiced comments from a Chinese American, Jewish Americans, and from every ethnicity in between. That THEIR race of our human species is superior in intellect, skill, etc., etc., etc. Also, people misjudge even a blue-eyed, blonde, white-skinned person as AUTOMATICALLY being prejudiced, when in fact that person I know, a now-grown woman and man, was treated terribly by her german-american and french-indian-etc. husband and one daughter for 11 years in a foster home in the 1950s. This woman came out mangled on the inside, beautiful on the outside..Takes a Lifetime to Heal,privately within herself as she told me...She's done relatively well in Life, her brother is a Harvard PhD, Fulbright scholar and has struggled with serious depression, even so. The Inhuman condition on planet earth...

• aloistmartin | Jul 26, 2012, 05:34 PM EDT

  Racism <> or Nationalism @!

• Pgk86 | Jul 26, 2012, 04:42 PM EDT

  I have not read the book, so this is based on this jacka**'s article. First of all, if Mr. Kelley grew up in an Irish American neighborhood, who would you expect his experiences be with? It is like saying most auto accidents occur near home, of course they do, that is where you drive the most. Next, was the assault after the verbal remark committed on an Irish kid, as the article says, or on an Irish American who this guy is trashing? Next, what the heck does a "Euro and predominately Jewish progressive private school" have to do with anything? Is that some kind of shot at us non-Euro (whatever that means), non-Jewish? That remark is a bit elitist but we'll let that go because I'm sure you know how diverse that school. Next, how many people (back, white, green or blue) can walk into a Park Ave apt. building? Pick a random one with a non Irish American doorman and try, you clown. "As for fiction", go look up the word. Need I go on?

• kilgara | Jul 26, 2012, 02:30 PM EDT

  Deignan, just what planet have you been living on? More than 90% of the people on Rikers Island are non-white! That's all you need to know about "Irish racism",or go ask Ms. Eilish Jordan recently over here from Louth about her encounter with racism.Where does Irish Central find these clowns masquerading as journalists?

• manhattan | Jul 26, 2012, 01:05 PM EDT

  I'm reading Barrett's book and I admit I get annoyed that he dwells on the Irish as the only racists. When the Irish,Italians, Jews etc. all were thrown together in the melting pot of New York City they ALL WERE prejudiced against each other. I heard more racists remarks from jews who always claimed equality but when blacks moved into there neighborhoods they were the first to run. Relatives of mine that were printers were trreated badly by Italians they worked with if they were in the minority. Sorry, Mr. Kelley was treated so badly but many of us were to. .

• Searlit | Jul 26, 2012, 12:59 PM EDT

  It's just like the drinking stereo-type. All ethnicities have their drunken, loose cannon types. Political correctness isn't extended to include discrimination against the Irish. It's okay to blame the Irish for anything, it seems. Nice posts Slainte9!

• Tom Mo | Jul 26, 2012, 12:49 PM EDT

  Much adu about nothing. This is a non story. Deignan is a novice, but a racist.

• MichaelMcGrath | Jul 26, 2012, 12:31 PM EDT

  The Irish Dole has proved to be a great uniter of peoples, it has brought hundreds of thousands to our shores wanting to unite and be one with us. America should try it:-)

• jamieLM | Jul 26, 2012, 12:30 PM EDT

  Every country has their fair share of racists and people who are full of prejudice against one group or another. Some people are silent racists and others are more prone to act upon their racist attitudes. The important thing is to confront racism wherever it's found. It's usually a mistake to infer "all" when talking about anything.

• Bhrighde | Jul 26, 2012, 12:20 PM EDT

  This is what happens when journalism, news, becomes a comodity. And it is just like Irish Central to fan the flames of a non-existent fire in order to "sell" news.

• IrishRyan | Jul 26, 2012, 12:10 PM EDT

  This article are using Irish and Irish Americans as scapegoats. Racism isnt more common in one ethic group than another, its an attitude and a idealogy. If you compare racism in Ireland with that of Italys, you'll find that theres far more racism occuring in Italy than Ireland. Shall we accuse all Italians of being racists? Of course not.

• slainte9 | Jul 26, 2012, 11:30 AM EDT

  Also that's a very cute story about the parents from Fieldston, "a Euro and predominately Jewish progressive private school," who had to tell the "Irish" doorman to let Kelley in when he visited. However, the huge housing development on Long Island, Levittown, where blacks weren't allowed to buy homes was built by Abraham Levit, who do the best of my knowledge, wasn't Irish.

• Springfield9 | Jul 26, 2012, 11:29 AM EDT

  The Irish are not, by nature, racist. The conditions of their oppression for 900 years created a very strong tendency toward Ethno-Centrism. It was "band together boys, or we die! WWe, the current members of the Irish "race" are currently watching Ireland commit Ethnic suicide. This is a unique and sad occurence which may take that ethnic banding to a new level. In the old days you were asked to take the King's shilling - and ended up dead. The modern version is take the "Euro" and kill your entire country. As for Afro-Americans, let them enjoy the life they have undisturbed.

• slainte9 | Jul 26, 2012, 11:10 AM EDT

  Yes, let's honestly confront the past. Take the so-called draft riots, for example. Most of the dead were white, gunned down by the police and army (there's a dirty little secret no one wants to investigate). The majority of the 400 arrested didn't have Irish names. The cabal that instigated the rioting and opposition to Lincoln and emancipation were August Belmont, financier and relative of the Rothschilds, and Samuel Morse, a Puritan, one of Yale's most honored graduates. The Irish were awarded more Civil War Medals of Honor than any other immigrant group. More than the English, Scots and Canadians combined, never mind that many of the English, Scots and Canadians had Irish names. The Irish appear nowhere in Erics Foner's award-winning Fiery Trial, the story of Lincoln that examines the racist America Lincoln grew up in. The Ku Klux Klan wasn't an Irish organization, in fact it was anti-Irish and anti-Catholic. The Irish have been and are convenient scapegoats for America's problems. Shame on the Fresh Irish of Irish Central for defaming the old Irish. Where are Gavagan and Wagner and Jim Farley.

• TheNetherlands | Jul 26, 2012, 09:51 AM EDT

  This article touches on the truth of Irish Americans. As a woman growing up in Dorchester/Quincy/South Boston in the 60s/70s I experienced quite a bit of racism because I had dark brown hair/eyes and slightly tanned. It was awful because my peers were so vicious with their racism and all I knew was that the Irish were racist, I was totally shocked when I met my first Ireland Irish person and they were kind and had a heart, it was strange how they were fun loving and non judgmental. Honestly my father was of Irish descent and never knew him as I have a very Irish name.