“How the Irish Became White”
by Noel Ignatiev
1995 Routledge
“It is a curious fact,” wrote John Finch, an English Owenite who traveled the United States in 1843, “that the democratic party, and particularly the poorer class of Irish immigrants in America, are greater enemies to the negro population, and greater advocates for the continuance of negro slavery, than any portion of the population in the free States.”
How did the Irish become White? By violently subjugating African Americans, according to this courageous book by Noel Ignatiev.
As a part-Irish American, learning about the injustice that some of my ancestors took part in is deeply troubling, but it’s a history that we need to explore to uncover the true legacy of mass Irish immigration to America, and more fundamentally, the meaning of “Whiteness”.
The Irish in Ireland of the early-19th Century were a revolutionary people: impoverished, agrarian, and determined to break free of the grip of England’s tyranny. But once these same freedom-lovers emigrated to the United States, a peculiar thing happened: they were faced with a society based on racial segregation and industrial capitalism. Moreover, there began a large “Nativist” movement by wealthy Protestant Anglo-Saxons who tried to restrict immigration and subdue Irish/Catholic influence in the New World.
In order to overcome these barriers, the Irish made a strategic choice: escape the bottom-rung of poverty and be accepted into mainstream US society by aggressively aligning themselves with the Democratic Party and doing everything they could to keep African Americans in slavery or otherwise out of the labor market. Thus they earned the right to be considered “White” and receive the benefits and privileges associated with that social category.
Ignatiev makes a compelling case that “When Irish workers encountered Afro-Americans, they fought with them, it is true, but they also fought with immigrants of other nationalities, with each other, and with whomever else they were thrown up against in the marketplace.” In other words, it wasn’t that the Irish were inherently more racist than any other group. Instead, the race riots when rowdy Irish attacked African Americans were largely in response to an economic condition arising in early US capitalism: Northern industrial labor markets were saturated by waves of immigrants and freed slaves competing over lower and lower wages. To secure jobs for themselves, the Irish became the hammer that pounded away at racial segregation to force African Americans out of the factories and into poverty and the ghetto.
By doing so, they also solidified the major distinction between relatively privileged sectors of the US working class and those on the bottom – “Whiteness”. Ignatiev explains: “Since ‘white’ was not a physical description but one term of a social relation which could not exist without its opposite, ‘white man’s work’ was simply, work from which Afro-Americans were excluded.”
Much of the book centers in Philadelphia, which made this book doubly relevant for me. Ignatiev explores how Irishmen found employment in Philly by systematically excluding Blacks from any workplaces they were involved in: they simply refused to work with Blacks. When this wasn’t enough, they also used terror to suppress the Black population.
The racial warfare which occurred throughout Philly was really quite drastic: Black churches, homes, and businesses were regularly attacked and burned during the 19th century. Irish-Americans formed themselves into private “fire companies” who were basically gangs who competed with other fire companies by setting fires in their territory, then attacking the firemen. These same gangs soon involved themselves in Democratic Party machine politics by stuffing ballot boxes, roughing up potential voters, and putting forth Irish candidates for offices. The extreme violence and corruption shocked me at first, but in fact explains quite a lot about the current reality of Philadelphia, which remains racially tense and divided to this day.
This is not an easy book to read. Ignatiev uses a lot of primary sources so the language can be difficult. Worse though is that he often refrains from making his points clearly and directly, instead drawing you into long stories that only tangentially explain his key thesis. Nevertheless, with a subject-matter as compelling as this, the book can be gripping, and I highly recommend it.
To overcome the racial barriers of today and tomorrow, we need to learn from the mistakes of the past. Specifically, we are forced to wonder, how can we overcome centuries of racism in America? What does the election of a Black Democrat for President explain about the arc of US politics, and what challenges does it present? Is Ignatiev right that a free society can only be achieved on this land when “Whiteness” ceases to be a social category used to privilege one group of workers over another?
In any case, studying our troubled and dark history is the only way to escape it and open a door to a different reality. As we take that intellectual journey we may also discover who we really are…
“On August 11, 1854, the Liberator [newspaper] published a letter from a Maine correspondent who wrote, ‘passage to the United States seems to produce the same effect upon the exile of Erin as the eating of the forbidden fruit did upon Adam and Eve. In the morning hey were pure, loving, and innocent; in the evening, guilty – excusing their fault with the plea of expecting advantage to follow faithfulness.'”
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November 23, 2011 at 9:45 am
Irish Left Review · It Ain’t Easy Being Blue
[…] been a neat distinction, or transition, from one idea to the other, otherwise how did the Irish become white?). Making racial arguments with reference to culture, and cultural characteristics, is the […]
June 15, 2013 at 11:57 am
Chicago City Wholesalers
Unfortunately, psychologist tell us that ” many abused become abusers themselves”. I have read this book and it was very revealing regarding the Irish. The Irish were treated horribly by the English – they (Irish) were considered the niggers of Europe. Yet they came to America and began to do the same thing to African Americans that were being done to them by the English. I am African American and it filled in the gaps for many issues that were on my mind- such as labor unions and their persistence in keeping African Americans out of the trades, firemen and their persistence in controlling who become firemen, and the Irish themselves and their strained relationship with African Americans. No people should take pride in their rise, if they have kept their boot on the neck of another people to keep them down., that is an ugly way to rise up in any society. If the people in the mud have faith in God, and God exacts his grace and mercy, those mud people in time will rise up and become a dominant people in the land.
September 22, 2013 at 7:14 pm
King2014
I will never fall for that bullshit line “I’m Irish” again, now i get it. Bunch of racists that cry wolf.
March 2, 2014 at 8:04 pm
Muhamma
And what country’s race is not racist? Or has some elements of such? King2014… name one? Didn’t think so… He without sin and all that… http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-irish-slave-trade-the-forgotten-white-slaves/31076
May 28, 2017 at 5:51 am
esme outwaithe (@EOutwaithe)
which Irish were they. the Irish who helped the Brits discriminate against the real irish or catholic Irish. Its funny how in britain the ”real” Irish and the blacks lived and married into each other as equals when neither werre excepted by anyone else. i suspect the Irish they are talking about are the Ulster scots who still to this day are anti immigration anti muslim totally racist whereas the nationalist catholic irish are predominantly accepting of all races and creeds as equal. in America you dont seem to realise there are two total different sets of irish and they have to total different mindsets . the pro british are white supremacist based people
May 16, 2014 at 1:15 am
Mary Anne Lisney
You must know that the Irish were sent to be sold as slaves by the English who transported any, and all political prisoners that were Irish, to the colonies and the Indies in vast numbers. Children and women included. They were of lesser value than their African counterparts as they were Papists and regarded as mere human livestock. They were not indentured servants as some would have you believe and they numbered in the hundreds of thousands. The price on their heads was about 5 pounds sterling while the African slave was worth about 50 pounds.
January 12, 2015 at 5:12 am
Laurie O'Shea
Yes we were indentered servants coming off the ships. And the women were raped and beaten. Every new group that came here were treated poorly. Benjamin Franklin was a indentured servant . By his uncle whike he was learning his trade in Boston. He escaped and went to Philadelphia and never looked back. Our first President Johnson was Dutch I believe he was indentured and shackled while an apprentice. He to managed to run away with ankle shackels. When he got ro Ohio thankfully, the peopke remived his shackles and set him free they could have been hung for that.
April 30, 2016 at 1:38 am
Brandon Jerome
I’m curious to why such a price difference. Was it easier to wrangle up some irish or Africans?
This is all speculation
Africa is slot bigger, alot more room to hide, jungles, other non slave tribes and what not. Ireland, small and in the shadow of other, bigger European countries, closer to the ducth shipping ports.
This sound like economics, perhaps the price difference reflected the overall cost for the individual.
January 12, 2015 at 5:03 am
Laurie O'Shea
So not true, 10,000 Irishmen died freeing the slaves. The first people to stand up against slavery in the south were the Irish. The whole clan was wiped out.I believe you are confusing the first Irish immigrants. The Ulster Irish the protestants. They were rich and owned slaves. Then there are tge downtrodden Irish Catholics that rode in the bottom of the Coffin Ships. The very same ships that brought the slaves that were given or trader by their own African King. The latter Irish had everything seized from them by the Britsh and left to starve. Many died from starvation on their 2 week journey to America or from dysentary. The rich Britush lavished in luxury on tge upper floors. The Irish corpes were thrown overboard and fed to the sharks that would follow these ships waiting for their feeding. After freeing the slaves they were upset, because the negros and Irish were compeeting for tge same lousy jobs.being a fireman or a cop wasnt a job that was looked upon highly at that time. Dont buy all this its not true history. Theres alot more to it.
January 17, 2014 at 11:56 am
Being a Bastard | The Lefthander's Path
[…] How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev […]
November 16, 2014 at 11:25 pm
bgp
It’s always human nature that the abused become the abused….From being slaves themselves to becoming some of the abusers of another themselves even though though WASPs looked down at them even up to the first third of the 20th Century….We have a similar situation with the Gaza Strip today.
May 19, 2015 at 11:00 am
Jim
Many here get high marks for gullibility. Generally speaking, the mistreatment of the Irish in the US is exaggerated and misrepresented. Nativism was predominantly anti-Catholic. Indeed its primary leader Lyman Beecher said so and his most popular work, “A Plea for the West”, primarily objected to German-Catholic immigration. In fact the Irish Catholic immigrant and black populations barely overlapped geographically in the 19th century. Moreover, the principal villains in stirring up anti-black sentiment were Anglo-Saxon Protestants and some other German ethnics connected to commercial interests profiting from slavery. Their Democratic leader in the Civil War era, opposing Lincoln, was August Belmont a German immigrant who was a relative and business agent of the Rothschild family. His partner in crime was Fernando Wood a Lehman scion, who was also neither Irish nor Catholic.
http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-society-for-diffusion-of-political.html
http://hidden-civil-war.blogspot.com/2014/05/ivy-league-confederates-harvard-and.html
In fact all of the North’s leading generals were Irish by birth, adoption or marriage: Grant, Sheridan, Meade, Reynolds, and Sherman (adoption and marriage). And of course Irishman Edward Doherty led the troops who hunted down John Wilkes Booth.
October 12, 2019 at 3:21 pm
Cracker
During the 1600s, Irish prisoners were, indeed, sent to the West Indies and to North America. In the West Indies, there are still island settlements that trace their roots to the Irish. In some communities, the modern people are (mostly) poor whites. In some places, there has been a lot of racial mixing… The Ulster Protestant Irish arrived in North America in large numbers during the 1700s. Although they were Protestants, they were poor and unpopular and they were pushed into frontier areas. They became known as “Scots-Irish” and they settled Appalachia and much of the South. Eventually, they became identified with “redneck culture.” Still prominent from Nashville to Austin to Bakersfield… In America, the Irish fought with everybody, including their fellow Irish…. In the West, the Catholic Irish developed some alliances with the Catholic Mexicans. However, the Irish directed a lot of racist violence against the Chinese. Employers knew how to keep the races in competition. When European workers refused to work for low wages, the employers threatened to import Asian workers…. Nowadays, American corporations send their factories to distant places, to take advantage of cheap labor. The search for cheap labor is an old story that helps to explain America.