Bunk knows this is some shhhhhhiit
Yeah but as someone from southern new england I can assure you the irish immigrants still aren’t accepted there totally either. Day to day interactions no one targets you for being Irish descent but structurally being Irish American is considered to be barely white, more like poor white which is barely white among elite circles (ughh Boston is full of the descendents of the original immigrant european religious fanatics and it shows sometimes).
Doesn’t make any of this right but notice the way oppression must metabolize and neutralize solidarity in a fractal process of targetting vulnerable groups along whatever axis they are exploitable along. Irish Americans must be both the oppressed and the oppressor for the system to work, and it is the same thing just more dogpiled the further you go down the ladder of real privilege.
There was no damn potato famine, there was just England prototyping modern colonialism and capitalism on Ireland.
Potato genocide. All of Europe was suffering from crop failures, but only Ireland was having the usable potatoes stolen.
Reminds me of all the famines the British caused in India. If there ever was a #1 of all time in stealing food it has to be them.
but structurally being Irish American is considered to be barely white, more like poor white which is barely white among elite circles
I’m not trying to pick a fight, but interested in more info. What practical ways does this manifest for these folks? Are they subject to additional law enforcement scrutiny, denied job opportunities, or historically discriminated against in mortgage lending? Or are there other ways I’m not thinking of?
I mean, the thing with Irish Americans is that they have been shit on for most of their experience in the US but then in the last 40 years or so ceremonially brought into the “white” club, but this club has no real rules other than it only temporarily brings minorities in, however the club wants to define minorities.
You won’t see structural discrimination against Irish Americans as easily perhaps as other more obvious examples of US racism but it is there, mostly in terms of classism. Irish Americans are the stupid hardworking drunks you do all the manual labor and leave the WASPs to run everything.
Things are changing, but I think to begin a conversation about why Irish Americans can have such disappointing politics compared to Irish people proper you have to understand the way the white elite in the U.S. has been playing poor-person-in-the-middle with groups like the Irish for decades.
I read a story in the paper about a middle-class white family that knew a big storm was coming and got out, and didn’t bother to warn their neighbors, poor whites living in a trailer park, who all died. And I was like, yeah that tracks.
I’ve lived in tornado alley for much of my life. During tornado season everyone watches the weather, and has a plan on what they are going to do. I would find it VERY strange if my neighbor suddenly started banging on my door telling me a storm was coming. I would absolutely already know from the same sources they know. Most of us are hyperaware of our dangerous weather. I imagine that point is the same for those that live in hurricane areas.
Because you said the “got out” then it sounds like it was a hurricane. If a tornado is closing in, the worst thing you could do would be try and “get out”. So what’s even more confusing if this was a hurricane, those have days worth of notice. Everyone in that trailer park would have known a hurricane was coming days before and could either choose to leave, go to a hurricane shelter, or decide to stay put. The reality is that trailers are the worst form of protection during bad weather, tornadoes or hurricanes.
What exact action you would expect from the middle-class family that wouldn’t make them racist/elitists from you post? Physically knocking on doors of dozens of trailers saying “a storm is coming” days before they leave?
I’ve been surprised by hurricanes before, it’s not impossible that it goes from a category 3 to a hurricane in the span of twelve hours to a day, and it’s relatively easy not to see news about it. I’m not in Florida, so it could be different there, but I’ve never heard of a hurricane siren, for example.
it’s not impossible that it goes from a category 3 to a hurricane in the span of twelve hours to a day
Cat 3 is already a hurricane isn’t it? Cat 1 is too. Below that would be “Tropical Storm” and below that “Tropical Depression”, right?
But you knew about the Cat 3. Would you still have expected the middle class guy from the house down the street to come and knock on your door (and that of dozens of your neighbors in trailers) telling them that the Cat 3 had upgraded to something worse while he’s trying to drive his family out of town?
My one experience with hurricane evacuation was when I was visiting Florida. Notices of danger are literally all over the place. Businesses close, grocery stores empty out, and THE TRAFFIC! Something like 12 hours before the expected arrival the government even authorizes all interstate highways to be unidirectional. What this means is that both sides of the highway are traffic flow away from the storm. Yes, half the drivers are driving “the wrong direction” down at highway speeds away from the storm. It was kind of fun actually legally driving the wrong way down an Exit ramp onto the highway going the wrong direction. Fun fact I never knew, there are a whole bunch of “WRONG WAY” signs on the back of the regular interstate highway signs. We never see them because we’re going the right way. Also, the road reflectors in the separating the lanes are ALL RED. Again, you only see them if you’re driving the “wrong” direction, which we legally could during the evacuation.
Can confirm. My town is full of immigrants, both legal and otherwise, and the recent ICE raids magically didn’t see any of the Russian or Irish illegals, but Jah help you if you were born with more melanin.
If blacks and latinos didn’t wanna get deported, they should have been born white. Simple, no? /s
There was that whole media cycle about the Irish woman who was detained. That first wave was likely testing to see which groups resonated in the media before moving onto raids.