The Irish In Us

   
     For my last review I thought I would take a positive spin on the discourse around the Irish people to the otherwise poorly represented and stereotyped examples of the Irish I have given. This book called The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity and Popular Culture is a book written by Diane Negra who writes about how in today’s society, around the world but particularly in the United States, the Irish identity has become an idealized ethnicity. This thought is extremely interesting as my prior reviews show the Irish as being depicted as the Underclass, the Primitive and altogether not highly thought of in terms of the American's, the Scottish and the English and their views of the Irish. 

Diane Negra writes how “Irishness” is rapidly becoming the ethnicity of choice, and by choosing this ethnicity, one can still reap the benefits of “whiteness”;

Seeking to explain the widespread appeal of all things Irish, the contributors to this collection show that for Americans, Irishness is rapidly becoming the white ethnicity of choice, a means of claiming an ethnic identity while maintaining the benefits of whiteness.

In contrast to what North America thinks of as Irishness, the same thoughts on the topic are not entirely viewed the same way, especially for the Irish in certain parts of Europe. Irish author Mark Tuohy who was interviewed in "Proud of My Brand of Irishness" recalls being moved from Belfast to London and how his parents did not celebrate their Irishness, instead they just tried to blend in. He then went on to say that he has a theory that Catholics from the North, used to being an oppressed minority, made a point of keeping their heads down when they moved to London (Tuohy, 2005). The feelings towards the Irish in England as well as in Scotland are not always positive. Examples of this can be found in the review I did on the Scottish football team the Rangers and their sectarian hate towards Irish, as well as my analytical review on second generation Irish in England. 

Diane Negra makes a point of saying how today, Irishness is the ethnicity of choice and that it is a means of claiming an ethnic identity while maintaining the benefits of whiteness (Negra). By stating that there are benefits of “whiteness”, Negra is in keeping with Peggy McIntosh’s use of “Whiteness” which she describes in her article White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack  as protecting her from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which she was being subtly trained to visit in turn upon people of color (McIntosh, 1988). Having that protection from hostility, distress and violence that is normally directed towards people of color, benefits white people from having to endure such racist acts. However the Irish, even though they are white, have endured the same hostility from white people about their ethnicity as those of people of color. The image below is a cartoon that shows a black man and an Irish man sitting on the scale which depicts the two men of the same worth. 

Diane Negra's book on how the Irish are an idealized ethnicity today is an example of how the thoughts around Irish in America today are changing. From the discourse around Irish immigrants coming to the U.S in the 1840's during the potato famine to now when we take pride in our Irish roots and wear green on  St. Patrick's day and make it known the minute we have a chance to let others know of our Irishness.

References

McIntosh, P. (1990). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Independent School, 49(2), 31.

Negra, D. (2006). The Irish in Us: Irishness, performativity, and popular culture. Duke University Press.

Proud of My Brand of Irishness. (2005). Books Ireland, 277, 145. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org.library.smu.ca:2048/stable/pdfplus/20624144.pdf

Anti- Irish Discrimination in Cartoons

In this exhibit of cartoons, we see the Irish being stereotyped in ways to show anti-Irish discrimination. In the beginning of this article, author Lisa Wade opens with the history of American discrimination against the Irish;

In the last few hundred years, dark-skinned peoples have been likened to apes in an effort to dehumanize them and justify their oppression and exploitation.  This is familiar to most Americans as something that is done peculiarly to Black people (examples, see  here, here, and here). The history of U.S. discrimination against the Irish, however, offers an interesting comparative data point. The Irish, too, have been compared to apes, suggesting that this comparison is a generalizable tactic of oppression, not one inspired by the color of the skin of Africans (Wade, 2011)

Wade’s analysis of the Irish being compared to apes is in keeping with David Goldberg’s the “Primitive”, one of the three schemes that Goldberg believes is hegemonic in the production of contemporary production of racial knowledge. Goldberg describes the “Primitive”;

Second, this popular discourse of the Primitive has partially been sustained by the fact that the anthropological critique of the discourse is internal, so much so that it reproduces (even if it transforms) key concepts: primitive society, the primitive or savage mind, totemism, and animism (Goldberg, 1993).

As we see in the cartoon below, the Irish man depicted looks to be bounding around with his hands in the air holding dangerous objects and knocking everything around him over. This behavior describes animalistic behavior or “the primitive or savage mind” as Goldberg uses, as well as his physical traits, his big forehead, the extended mouth and hairy face also depict ape, animalistic traits and primitive imagery. Michael O’Malley at George Mason University writes;

In this cartoon, captioned “A King of -Shanty,” the comparison becomes explicit. The “Ashantee” were a well known African tribe; “shanty” was the Irish word for a shack or poor man’s house. The cartoon mocks Irish poverty, caricatures irish people as ape like and primitive, and suggests they are little different from Africans, who the cartoonists seems to see the same way. This cartoon irishman has, again, the outhrust mouth, sloping forehead, and flat wide nose of the standard Irish caricature (Mason).

This cartoon along with the others shown on this website, all show the Irish in these ape-like primitive caricatures which conveys a lack of social control and decency that encompasses the Irish.

References 

Goldberg, D. T. (1993). Racist culture: Philosophy and the politics of meaning. (pp. 1-328).

Wade, L. (2011). Irish apes: Tactics of de-humanization.Sociological Images, Retrieved from http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/01/28/irish-apes-tactics-of-de-humanization/

The Worst Irish Stereotypes in Film

Irish Stereotypes in Film

Gangs of New York and Goldberg's Underclass

In this clip from Gangs of New York, American “Natives” leader William Cutting approaches the Irish neighborhood the Five Points with his gang behind him. Cutting immediately plants his feet firmly into the snowy ground almost as if to already claim the land he intends on winning through battle with the Irish gang “The Dead Rabbits”. The camera then focuses in on Cuttings fake eye which has a bald eagle where his pupil should be. The image of the bald eagle, which is the National bird of the United States and is the in the central aperture of his eye, symbolizes the importance of America to him, what he stands for and what he is willing to fight for. The camera then gives us a birds eye view of the two gangs who are face on, standing erect with axes, knives and other weaponry, ready to battle. William Cutting speaks up and says to the leader of Irish gang, Priest Vallon, “Is this it, Priest? The Pope's new army? A few crusty bitches and a handful of rag tags?”, he goes on to challenge The Dead Rabbits, “At my challenge, by the ancient laws of combat, we are met at this chosen ground, to settle for good and all who holds sway over the Five Points: us Natives, born RIGHT-WISE to this fine land, or the foreign hordes defiling it!”. The language used in this quote is used to disparage the Irish immigrants in this scene. The term “rag tag” is referred to people who are of low worth, dirty, filthy, ragged and unkempt which was the discourse around the Irish immigrants in the film. Over this semester, I learned about David Goldberg and his idea of racial knowledge. Goldberg states,

What follows is a critical reading of three conceptual schemata hegemonic in the production of contemporary racialized knowledge that now define and order popular conceptions of people racially conceived: the Primitive, the Third World, and the Underclass. These terms and the conceptual schemes they mark as the most prominent and general in silently ordering formal and popular knowledge of the Other in and through the study of cultural, political, and economic relations..(Goldberg. 1993).

To refer to the Irish as “rag tags”, suggesting they are not born “right wise” and referring to them as “foreign hordes” “defiling” the Natives homeland, puts them into Goldberg’s “Underclass”. The "Underclass" according to Goldberg,

The Underclass population came to be characterized in behavioral terms, a set of pathological social attitudes, actions and activities. The outward visible sign of these pathologies was race. Thus, the notion was relinked to the nineteenth-century conceptions of the “undeserving poor”, the “rabble”, and the “lumpenproletariat” (Goldberg, 1993). 

The term “lumpenproletariat” from the German word “lumpen” which originally meant “rags” and was later used to mean “a person in rags”, was coined by Marx and defined in Marxist theory to describe those members of the proletariat, especially criminals, vagrants, and the unemployed, who lacked class consciousness (Encyclopedia of Marxism). This term used by Goldberg to describe the Underclass corresponds with the term "rag tags" used by William Cutting in Gangs of New York to describe the Irish immigrants. To the Natives, the Irish encompassed  Goldberg's meaning of the underclass as they were the poor immigrating from Ireland and who were undeserving of the American land, the "rabble" or the lowest class of people, and finally the "lumpenproletariats", the ragged unemployed.



References

Encyclopedia of Marxism. "Lumpenproletariat". http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/l/u.htm

Goldberg, D. T. (1993). Racist culture: Philosophy and the politics of meaning. (pp. 1-328).

Gangs of New York

    Gangs of New York is by far one of my favorite movies of all time. If you haven’t seen the movie I highly suggest you do, it is worth every bit of the 167 minutes. 

Gangs of New York was directed by Martin Scorsese who turned the 1928 non-fiction book “The Gangs of New York” by Herbert Asbury into a Hollywood motion picture. The film begins in the year 1846 in the period of the Great Famine of Ireland which lead to mass starvation and disease and immigration from Ireland to New York. Irish immigrants arrive in New York to settle in the neighborhood of Five Points, a slum area where the Irish would rule and over-crowed for the next two decades. A number of United States born citizens of British and Dutch decent started voicing their resentment of the new Irish immigrants. The antagonist William Cutting who is played by the incredibly talented Daniel Day Lewis, troops together his fellow native American’s into a gang to wipe out the Irish immigrants. After the killing the leader of the Irish immigrant gang “The Dead Rabbits”, Amsterdam Vallon, the son of the deceased leader played by Leonardo DiCaprio ultimately seeks revenge against his father’s murderer, Native’s leader William Cutting. The protagonist Amsterdam Vallon ultimately rallies together his late fathers gang to once again fight the Natives. 

Gangs of New York is filled with anti-Irish sentiment through the hate violence displayed against the Irish in the film, as well as the discourse used to depict Irish as lazy, dirty, disease ridden, drunks etc. What we know about discourse according to Michel Foucault from our Race, Racism and Colonialism class is that discourses create new knowledge and ways of thinking about a certain group or idea. Discourse also effects how we approach conversation about a certain topic and how our ideas are put into practice. 

This clip is from the beginning of the movie when the Irish immigrants arrived at the docks in New York after their journey from Ireland. The discourse around anti-Irish sentiment in this video is displayed by the Natives of New York and the newspaper clipping at the beginning referring to the Irish arriving as “an Irish invasion” as well as referring to them as “locusts”. To speak of the Irish immigrants as “locusts” dehumanizes them which strips them from having any moral consideration . We see this when a Native man throws a a rock at a little girl who has just arrived with her parents while heckling the Irish "Go back to Ireland you dumb mick" and another "Get back in the boat Paddy!". The term "Mick" and "Paddy" are both derogatory names for the Irish and are both considered ethnic slurs, which are offensive terms for people of Irish decent, these terms have the same negative connotations as the word "nigger".

References

Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge 

Racial Slurr Database. "Irish"

Scottish Rangers Sectarian Report

This video clip captures a news report on fans of Scotland’s football team the “Rangers” displaying acts of sectarianism at a football match. Sectarianism is bigotry, discrimination or hatred arising from attaching importance to perceived differences between subdivisions within a group, such as between different denominations of a religion, class, regional or factions of a political movement (Wiki-Sectarian). Examples of this hatred towards groups from other denominations, classes and religion are indecencies such as name-calling, jokes, racist chants and songs, verbal abuse, physical violence and even murder. Fans of the “Rangers” Scottish football team are being urged by their assistant manager to stop their sectarianism chanting at football matches, claiming it could ruin their chances at winning the Scottish Premiere League title. The Rangers fans have been heard at football matches against their rival Irish football team “The Celtics” singing the “The Billy Boy’s”, an Ulster Loyalist song that became the signature tune which was sung by the Protestant street gang of Glasgow, the Brigton Boys which often clashed with Catholic gangs (cite).  The lyrics to the song have since been changed to display the sectarian hate;

The original:

Hullo, Hullo

We are the Rangers Boys

Hullo, Hullo

You'll know us by our noise

We're down to our knees to see our team

At Ibrox or away

For we are

The Glasgow Rangers Boys

The recent version:

Hullo, Hullo

We are the Billy Boys

Hullo, Hullo

You'll know us by our noise

We're up to our knees in fenian blood

Surrender or you'll die

For we are

The Brigton Derry Boys

The lyrics “We’re up to our knees in fenian blood” conveys the hatred of the Irish exhibited at footballs matches between the two rivals. The word “fenian” comes from  members of a movement initiated in 1857 by Irish-Americans to secure Irish independence from Britain (Hereward Senior). The word nowadays is used as a racial slur and is used by Protestants to demean Catholics in Northern Ireland. 

This type of hatred displayed at football matches is a an absolute disaster. With a stadium full of fans on opposite sides, heavy into the football match, emotions flaring over who’s winning and who isn’t, most likely drinking and possibly in the company of their children, the opportunity for a fight(s) to escalate over sectarian chants would be at an all time high and incredibly dangerous in a stadium full of people. Realizing the hazards of these displays of hatred, Scotland has now passed The Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Bill which was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 14th December 2011 and will be enacted on 1st March 2012. The Act criminalizes behavior which is threatening, hateful or otherwise offensive at a regulated football match including offensive singing or chanting. It also criminalizes the communication of threats of serious violence and threats intended to incite religious hatred, whether sent through the post or posted on the internet. The Act will only criminalize behavior likely to lead to public disorder which expresses or incites hatred, is threatening or is otherwise offensive to a reasonable person.

Here is a video of Scotland's First Prime Minister Alex Salmond, speaking on behalf of Scotland and The Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Bill of Scotland 

"We will not tolerate sectarianism as a parasite in our National game of football or any where else in this Society" - First Prime Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond 

Irish marching in the Anti- Irish Racism Parade. Notice the first banner says "One Scotland, many cultures, unless your Irish" with a figure of a person pushing the Irish Flag away. I have watched other videos of this Parade with protesters brutally heckling at the Irish in the parade. The more research I do on Anti Irish discrimination, the more I realize how deep this racism goes. Being an individual of Irish decent, this is pretty upsetting.