What discrimination did the Irish face?

The month of March isn’t just home to St. Patrick’s Day but also to Irish American Heritage Month, which acknowledges the discrimination the Irish faced in America and their contributions to society. In honor of the annual event, the U.S. Census Bureau releases a variety of facts and figures about Irish Americans and the White House issues a proclamation about the Irish experience in the United States.

In March 2012, President Barack Obama ushered in Irish American Heritage Month by discussing the “indomitable spirit” of the Irish. He referred to the Irish as a group “whose strength helped build countless miles of canals and railroads; whose brogues echoed in mills, police stations, and fire halls across our country; and whose blood spilled to defend a nation and a way of life they helped define.

"Defying famine, poverty, and discrimination, these sons and daughters of Erin demonstrated extraordinary strength and unshakable faith as they gave their all to help build an America worthy of the journey they and so many others have taken.”

Notice that the president used the word “discrimination” to discuss the Irish American experience. In the 21st century, Irish Americans are widely considered to be “white” and reap the benefits of white privilege. However, this was not always the case in previous centuries.

As Jessie Daniels explained in a piece on the Racism Review website called “St. Patrick’s Day, Irish-Americans and the Changing Boundaries of Whiteness,” the Irish faced marginalization as newcomers to the United States in the 19th century. This was largely because of how the English treated them. She explains:

“The Irish had suffered profound injustice in the U.K. at the hands of the British, widely seen as ‘white negroes.’ The potato famine that created starvation conditions that cost the lives of millions of Irish and forced the out-migration of millions of surviving ones, was less a natural disaster and more a complex set of social conditions created by British landowners (much like Hurricane Katrina). Forced to flee from their native Ireland and the oppressive British landowners, many Irish came to the U.S.”

But immigrating to the U.S. didn’t end the hardships the Irish experienced across the pond. Americans stereotyped the Irish as lazy, unintelligent, carefree criminals and alcoholics. Daniels points out that the term “paddy wagon” comes from the derogatory “paddy,” a nickname for “Patrick” widely used to describe Irish men. Given this, the term “paddy wagon” basically equates being Irish to criminality.

Once the U.S. ceased to enslave its African American population, the Irish competed with them for low-wage employment. The two groups did not join together in solidarity, however. Instead, the Irish worked to enjoy the same privileges as white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, a feat they accomplished partly at the expense of Black people, according to Noel Ignatiev, author of How the Irish Became White (1995).

While the Irish abroad opposed enslavement, for example, Irish Americans supported the peculiar institution because subjugating Black Americans allowed them to move up the U.S. socioeconomic ladder. After enslavement ended, the Irish refused to work alongside Black people and terrorized them to eliminate them as competition on multiple occasions. Due to these tactics, the Irish eventually enjoyed the same privileges as other whites while Black people remained second-class citizens in America.

Richard Jenson, a former University of Chicago history professor, wrote an essay about these issues in the Journal of Social History called “‘No Irish Need Apply’: A Myth of Victimization.” He states:​

“We know from the experience of African Americans and Chinese that the most powerful form of job discrimination came from workers who vowed to boycott or shut down any employer who hired the excluded class. Employers who were personally willing to hire Chinese or Blacks were forced to submit to the threats. There were no reports of mobs attacking Irish employment. On the other hand, the Irish repeatedly attacked employers who hired African Americans or Chinese.”

White Americans often express incredulity that their ancestors managed to succeed in the United States while people of color continue to struggle. If their penniless, immigrant grandfather could make it in the U.S. why can’t Black Americans, Latinos, or Native Americans? Examining the experiences of European immigrants in the U.S. reveals that some of the advantages they used to get ahead—white skin and intimidation of minority laborers—were off-limits to people of color.

In the 19th-century United States, racism was rampant. Chinese immigrants were openly mocked, often in unfavorable newspaper caricatures. Germans were stereotyped as loitering in beer halls. African-Americans were portrayed in demeaning advertisements. And Irish people — who were not considered "white" by the existing majority at the time — were mistreated, too.

More than 1.5 million people left Ireland for the United States between 1845 and 1855, the survivors of a potato famine that had wiped out more than 1 million people in their homeland. They arrived poor, hungry and sick, and then crowded into cramped tenements in Boston, New York and other Northeastern cities to start anew under difficult conditions.

The struggles of Irish immigrants were compounded by the poor treatment they received from the white, primarily Anglo-Saxon and Protestant establishment. America's existing unskilled workers worried they would be replaced by immigrants willing to work for less than the going rate. And business owners worried that Irish immigrants and African-Americans would band together to demand increased wages.

As a result, locals didn't take kindly to an influx of Irish immigrants competing for resources perceived as limited. In Boston alone, 37,000 Irish immigrants arrived in 1847 — growing the city's population by more than 30 percent, straining employment, rations, housing and relations between populations.

Not only were Irish immigrants viewed as interlopers by many white Americans (an irony, considering the historical treatment of Native Americans), but these immigrants were Catholics in a primarily Protestant land. It was a religious difference that widened the divide, as did the fact that many Irish immigrants didn't speak English. As strange as may it may sound today, Irish immigrants were not considered "white" and were sometimes referred to "negroes turned inside out."

There's proof of this discrimination in cartoons and advertisements that were published during the mid- to late-1800s. Irish often were portrayed as racially different from the wider population of Caucasians and those of Anglo-Saxon heritage, writes historian Noel Ignatiev in his 1995 book "How the Irish Became White." Irish immigrants, both male and female, were drawn with brutish, ape-like features. Even pseudoscience got in on the act. "Comparative Physiognomy," a book by James Redfield published in 1852, made comparisons between the facial structure of Irish people and dogs. Redfield went on to claim that, because of their appearance, the Irish had an animalistic character that made them cruel and cowardly.

"Among the Irish, the commonality take to dirt-digging more naturally than to anything else," Redfield wrote. "They are dirty in their persons, and admit pigs in their mud-cabins which they themselves occupy. They are good servants if you deal harshly with them, as a master does with his dog; but the moment you are disposed to be familiar with them they are all over you, jumping against you and laying their dirty paws upon your clean clothes, as if you were no better than they."

The Print Collector/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

This type of xenophobia — the fear of people or things perceived to be different — was bolstered by the formation of the Know-Nothing Party, a U.S. political party that originated in 1849 and grew during the following decade. Members of the party opposed the Catholic religion in general and Irish Catholics in particular. They feared Irish Catholics would take over the U.S. and potentially raise up the pope as the country's ruler, replacing secular law with religious dictates.

Although Irish immigrants faced oppression in the United States, they also participated in it. African-Americans and Irish were considered by many Northern whites to be on equal footing, but many Irish immigrants quickly embraced "white" identities and became part of the social construct that oppressed African-Americans as an avenue to better employment, interweaving issues of classism and racism.

"Once the Irish secured themselves in those jobs, they made sure blacks were kept out," writes historian Art McDonald. "They realized that as long as they continued to work alongside blacks, they would be considered no different. Later, as Irish became prominent in the labor movement, African Americans were excluded from participation ... And so, we have the tragic story of how one oppressed 'race,' Irish Catholics, learned how to collaborate in the oppression of another 'race,' Africans in America, in order to secure their place in the white republic."

Race relations in the United States have long been complicated, and suffering and discrimination is not a zero-sum; for instance, see the discredited but persistent myth of Irish slavery that still makes the rounds on the internet. Today, it may be difficult to imagine a time when fair-skinned people of Irish descent weren't considered white. However, definitions of race have changed over time — and may be just as rooted in class, labor, economics and fear as they are in skin pigmentation.

Now That's Inspiring

An estimated population of 50,000 undocumented Irish immigrants currently live illegally in the United States. "It is easier being illegal here when you're white," an undocumented Irish immigrant named Shauna recently told CNN, underscoring how racial perception has changed. "It's not easy, of course, you have that paranoia, but there isn't the racial element. It's a bit easier to stay under the radar."