I’m in the bottom half of Appalachia, if it’s a regional thing.
I think prob a regional thing. Lotta irish catholics up in new england
Appalachia
That’s going to give you a big selection bias. A lot of Appalachians are “Scotch-Irish” (also called “Scots-Irish”) who came from Northern Ireland, which is more heavily Protestant than the rest of Ireland.
Before that, their ancestors were from Scotland and northern England before immigrating to Ireland. In the UK and Ireland I believe people with similar ancestry are usually called Ulster Scots (for the Ulster region of Ireland, if that wasn’t obvious)
And in addition to that, there were probably a lot of Catholic people/families who converted along the way after arriving here since the US is overall mostly protestant of one flavor or another, and they just sort of assimilated into that or wanted to avoid anti-catholic discrimination (which has been a thing at different times and places around the US, the KKK for example has historically been very anti-catholic, and even as recently as JFK there was a decent amount of people concerned that since he was a Catholic that he’d be taking orders from the Pope or something)
In other parts of the country you’ll probably find more Catholics of Irish ancestry. Anecdotally, growing up in the Philly suburbs, myself being partially of Irish Catholic descent, I only remember one protestant Irish family being in school with me, but plenty of Irish Catholics (there may have been others, but I only remember them, we didn’t exactly go around discussing religion all that often)
To fit in mainly. After all we were not considered white until the twentieth century.
we were not considered white until the twentieth century.
That’s a myth. While the Irish were certainly looked down upon by other Europeans, they were still European Christians and therefore white.
The Irish are set apart in Western Europe due to her anti-colonial struggles. And they were absolutely subjected to ethnic abuse at home and as immigrants. But the Irish colonial project wasn’t underpinned by race-science the way African and American projects were. It was just regular imperialism: original recipe.
This is similar to people in Eastern Europe. The word Slav sounds like slave and that’s not a coincidence.
It isn’t any kind of myth. My grandfather was born in 1901 and he remembered when he started to be approached by banks for business loans. It was in the late thirties. He was smart enough to know that he only started being treated white by some and only some as a result of the increased population of black folk around here. Up until then he was regularly called and treated like he was black. It didn’t prevent him from hating black folks though. After all he may have been poor and his kids may have had trouble with hunger but at least he wasn’t a n*****r. A quote by more than one of his generation by the way. We are talking about the deep south. I remember the rude old money biddy next door to us when I was growing up called me a tater tot until her dying day. In case you don’t know tater tot is a racist thing to call someone. So tell yourself its a myth but don’t expect anyone with family that remembers their treatment to agree.
With or without the word, it was the same mentality elsewhere, too. Many Irish diasporas align with Italians. They clashed with each other because they arrived at the same time at the same place. They put each other down to try to climb up.
Then as they clowly rose neck and neck, dispersing into better neighborhoods, they freed space for the next bottom rung to move in. So naturally, the bitter rivals became best friends and, together, shit on the next diaspora.
The cycle repeats.
Race science? There is no more science in race than there is in the English language. It’s a social construct and whoever the whites determine to be white enough are allowed to be “white”.
deleted by creator
My great grandmother was from Ireland, she was Catholic.
