Irish Slavery as abused in Social Justice Discourse.

[rorychief]

I'm sure most who frequent forums like this have come across the use of 'But white people were slaves so shut up about African slaves' defense. We all know how to respond. The fact that the modern Irish american descendants of slaves have integrated themselves as successfully as those Irish who emigrated willingly is irrelevant when speaking about black issues unique to black people. As an Irishman I can move to the states tomorrow and expect to be treated better than someone who was born in the country, because I'm white, simple as. It truly irritates me then when some asshole tries to use my people's (I know how that sounds, but its relevant here) history to dismiss some other person's history. The whole 'Irish people got over slavery, so why can't black people?' is a childish derailment technique at best, and I'm glad most can recognize and dismiss it immediately.

But dismissing the argument and dismissing the history are two very different things. Depressingly, many seem to believe that Irish slaves were somehow treated more humanely than African slaves because of some race loyalty between them and the invariably white slavers, untrue. Many more believe that Irish slavery never happened, or employ the euphemism 'indentured servitude' to take the sting out. This is troubling. Hundreds and thousands of people lived and died as slaves and their existence is routinely denied by 'progressive' and 'liberal' advocates for the purpose of depriving their enemies of a rhetorical device. Genocide is minimized out of convenience, laziness and ignorance by the very same people who make it their duty to highlight uncomfortable and inconvenient truth. This is a gross hypocrisy I have yet to see acknowledged here on the escapist.

The express purpose of sending Irish slaves off to Barbados and Virginia was to 'delete' these people, remove the Irish natives of Ireland, and make way for English Protestant plantations. History was supposed to forget that they had lived, their obscurity is a success of genocide. Lucky for us then the English have done a terrible job of hiding this purpose. You too can google the endless documented correspondences referencing killing nits so they do not grow to lice and righteous judgment of God upon these barbarous wretches. And while the ethnic cleansing of Ireland is a hotly divisive topic in the UK and Northern Ireland, with many Oliver Cromwell apologists citing the few times he referred to 'inhabitant casualties' in a way that suggested they were human, I do in fact believe that these events took place, that the perpetrators through their own written admission were operating under an assumptions of racial superiority, and that something very very wrong happened and people are pretending it didn't.
To win internet fights.

The saddest part might be that here in the republic of Ireland we actually couldn't give a fuck about the Irish slaves. There's only 400 redlegs left in Barbados out of the original 50'000 slave shipment. http://www.sligoheritage.com/archBarbados.htm I can't claim to be descended from those people. I don't get angry or sad when I think about them. it was a long time ago and they're far far away. But they at least deserve to be acknowledged to exist. And not laughed at as fabrications dreamth up by some self-pitying racist.

 

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

I thought this thread was going to be about Job Bridge.

 

[Zannah]

Here's a much better reason to disregard both arguments: It was half a dozen generations ago. Constructing any form of guilt or obligation out of it is nothing short of ridiculous. And people that bring history up as arguments in todays social debates deserve to be disregarded as much as their arguments.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

I'm English and my girlfriend is Irish (actual Irish, not the American 'my great great grandfather jumped off a boat 100 years ago Irish')

With the 100 year anniversary of the uprising getting closer, and talks that the Queen wishes to attend as a sign of respect, id like to think we can finally forgive and forget what was a fucking disgusting part of history.

I'd like to think me boning an Irish lass is me doing my part XD

 

[Thaluikhain]

I'm English and my girlfriend is Irish (actual Irish, not the American 'my great great grandfather jumped off a boat 100 years ago Irish')

Out of interest, is "actual Irish" Republic of Ireland, or Northern Ireland Irish?

With the 100 year anniversary of the uprising getting closer, and talks that the Queen wishes to attend as a sign of respect, id like to think we can finally forgive and forget what was a fucking disgusting part of history.

Well...really not my field, but given all the other stuff to keep the problems alive after that, I'd not be surprised if this was not the case.

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

I'm English and my girlfriend is Irish (actual Irish, not the American 'my great great grandfather jumped off a boat 100 years ago Irish')

You know, part of WHY we do that is because, unless we're Native Americans, we ALL came from elsewhere. Nothing more, nothing less. And in a country full of mutts, it's fun to find other people whose ancestors were from the same parts of the world as ours.

So yes, I will PROUDLY say that I'm mostly Irish, and I'm not going to back down from that.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

I'm English and my girlfriend is Irish (actual Irish, not the American 'my great great grandfather jumped off a boat 100 years ago Irish')

Out of interest, is "actual Irish" Republic of Ireland, or Northern Ireland Irish?

With the 100 year anniversary of the uprising getting closer, and talks that the Queen wishes to attend as a sign of respect, id like to think we can finally forgive and forget what was a fucking disgusting part of history.

Well...really not my field, but given all the other stuff to keep the problems alive after that, I'd not be surprised if this was not the case.

Republic.

The whole situation is still fresh in a lot of people's minds, especially the older generations. With the exemption of the RA wannabes who aren't quite sure why they're supposed to be so angry and just want an excuse to hate something, the people are generally really friendly and I get the impression that nobody really blames us for the atrocities that a load of dead fuckwits committed.

 

[Thaluikhain]

The whole situation is still fresh in a lot of people's minds, especially the older generations. With the exemption of the RA wannabes who aren't quite sure why they're supposed to be so angry and just want an excuse to hate something, the people are generally really friendly and I get the impression that nobody really blames us for the atrocities that a load of dead fuckwits committed.

Eh, again, not really my field, but I expect that's mostly because things are looking up in other ways. When all you've got is a grudge, it seems much more important. Get something else to play with, and it's not the same.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

I'm English and my girlfriend is Irish (actual Irish, not the American 'my great great grandfather jumped off a boat 100 years ago Irish')

You know, part of WHY we do that is because, unless we're Native Americans, we ALL came from elsewhere. Nothing more, nothing less. And in a country full of mutts, it's fun to find other people whose ancestors were from the same parts of the world as ours.

So yes, I will PROUDLY say that I'm mostly Irish, and I'm not going to back down from that.

You're America, that's a culture all in itself, you guys don't need to latch onto something like that. Especially if the only Irish thing you guys do is drink Guinness one day out of the year XD

It's good to acknowledge where you come from, but there's a certain point where you stop being Irish, Italian, whatever, and you're simply an American. And there's nothing wrong with that.

 

[Barbas]

I'm English and my girlfriend is Irish (actual Irish, not the American 'my great great grandfather jumped off a boat 100 years ago Irish')

You know, part of WHY we do that is because, unless we're Native Americans, we ALL came from elsewhere. Nothing more, nothing less. And in a country full of mutts, it's fun to find other people whose ancestors were from the same parts of the world as ours.

So yes, I will PROUDLY say that I'm mostly Irish, and I'm not going to back down from that.

You go, girl.

Ultimately, if your ancestors came from all over the place, which most probably did, whichever group of them you prefer to identify with is really up to you to decide. It certainly shouldn't matter to people who have no contact with or knowledge of your family tree. This has become one of those things that's just raised as a point of contention by the bored now.

It's good that your family knowledge goes back far enough to trace your origins like that.

 

[Here Comes Tomorrow]

I'm English and my girlfriend is Irish (actual Irish, not the American 'my great great grandfather jumped off a boat 100 years ago Irish')

With the 100 year anniversary of the uprising getting closer, and talks that the Queen wishes to attend as a sign of respect, id like to think we can finally forgive and forget what was a fucking disgusting part of history.

I'd like to think me boning an Irish lass is me doing my part XD

Ireland (both Republic and Northern) have enough problems without needing to worry about what the Queen does. EDIT: I just mentioned this to my girlfriend (RoI lass) and she just laughed and said "To gloat?"

Belfast still has a lot of Catholic/Protestant problems and the Republic is a fucking mess right now.

 

[Ten Foot Bunny]

You're America, that's a culture all in itself, you guys don't need to latch onto something like that. Especially if the only Irish thing you guys do is drink Guinness one day out of the year XD

It's good to acknowledge where you come from, but there's a certain point where you stop being Irish, Italian, whatever, and you're simply an American. And there's nothing wrong with that.

While I understand that sentiment, the international stereotype of The Ugly American mirrors what many of us here IN America think of fellow Americans who stand up and proclaim that they're American, ONLY American, and everyone who doesn't think likewise can "go back home." They're obnoxiously vocal and, more often than not, borderline aggressive in their stance.

Fact is, we're a nation of immigrants, and immigrant politics has been a staple of our existence since day one. The OP is just one of many examples of why we here in America, to this day, consciously or unconsciously, identify with our ancestry just as much as we identify ourselves as a collective of people with a common nationality.

"Oh, you're Irish? Did your ancestors settle in New York or did they move through to Chicago?"

"Oh, you're German? How much of your family still lives around Milwaukee?"

Hell, the existence of the Norsk Høstfest in Minot, North Dakota speaks volumes to the kinship we Americans still feel to people who come from our ancestral homes.

Saying that we Americans should all just "be American" is as insulting as the suggestion that everyone from the UK should identify as UK citizens. "Just ditch the English/Northern Irish/Scottish/Welsh nonsense and come together, ffs. Aren't you all the UK?" Not gonna happen? Well, it's not going to happen in America either. Consider the size of our country too... it takes 40+ hours to drive from one side to the other. We're as unicultural as the EU. In other words, not at all. And many of those cultural differences have their roots in the clusters of immigrants from a single country who settled together in a single region (refer back to the Norsk Høstfest I linked to above).

 

[Thaluikhain]

Saying that we Americans should all just "be American" is as insulting as the suggestion that everyone from the UK should identify as UK citizens. "Just ditch the English/Northern Irish/Scottish/Welsh nonsense and come together, ffs. Aren't you all the UK?"

Oh...bit of an apples and oranges comparison there, one that is likely to see people reaching for the popcorn.

 

[Saetha]

In the interest of fairness, the only reason a white Irishman can move to America and not have to worry about discrimination is because there... probably aren't that many doing it. You could bet that, if we had mass immigration comparable to the early 20th century, people would go straight back to discriminating against the Irish. Just like how a lot of people now fear "them damn Mexicans" flooding the country, even though a lot of Latino people look very white. It's the fear of something foreign overtaking "the true Americans." (Whoever they are) It'd happen to any Non-American ethnicity, no matter their race.

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

People who use one kind of discrimination to dismiss another one as not a problem are really silly. Irish people suffered racism, so did black people, both are bad. Also you don't need to bring up Ireland in mentioning white slavery, you could talk about Greece or Rome. Once again, doesn't matter who was enslaved, it was bad.

I've noticed that non-Irish people only ever seem to bring up nationalist extremists and not unionist extremists. I wonder how many people know unionist terrorists are a thing. Dublin and Monaghan bombings were the deadliest attack of the Troubles and that happened in the Republic and was done by unionists. I'm not supporting nationalist extremists, I think they're both dicks, but it isn't like unionists didn't do bad things too. Hell the British Government interned and tortured Northern Irish citizens.

 

[Recusant]

Bear in mind, in all this, the difference between the two... regions, let's call them. The Europeans who laugh at Americans for thinking a hundred years is a long time rarely take the time to laugh at themselves for thinking a hundred miles a long way (and vice versa). The United States is big. Really, really big. Yes, Canada and Russia have more land; yes, China and India have more people. It's still bigger, and younger, than any comparable entity in Europe- if you draw the border at the Ural mountains, it's very nearly larger than Europe, and has a substantial chunk of the population. That much land, that many people, and that little time are bound to combine in way that's going to lead some sizable- if subtle- differences. While I don't think I'm seeing that in this discussion, I have seen it before, in many times and many places; it can be an inflammatory issue. This has been civil so far; to help keep it that way, let's all be sure to remember that a different perspective is not necessarily a wrong one.

The US is not culturally homogenous. There certainly exists what can reasonably be called "American culture", but what that mostly consists of is a series of cultural elements that are, by and large, present across the greater panorama of the nation. This is hardly unique to the US; I'm sure you encounter similar things, in say, eastern and western Poland (or perhaps northern and southern, or inland and coastal; you see what I mean). But nothing occurs in a vacuum, and even there, you're talking about a smaller group of people, spread over a smaller area, bringing things together (almost always) a much longer time frame. Putting the Indians aside for a moment, you've only had a relative handful of generations- just over 500 years' worth- to establish a presence in what would become the US; a sizable chunk (at the very least) of the culture you were raised in- and are thus bringing to the table- is going to be coming from somewhere else. Similar things can (and I'm sure do) occur with immigrants to Europe, but there they're coming in to generally far more established culture. Thus, in the US, it's often more a question of cultural background than of national origin. As bizarre as it may seem to an outside perspective, it actually is both reasonable and sensible- in this context, at least.

As to the enslavement of the Irish, and its use as an argumentative tool- often, you'll hear that coming from people of Irish extraction who're sick of being told to feel guilty for something that neither they nor their ancestors had anything to do with; it may be intended to say "You're not the only ones who suffered". Race relations have never been this country's strong point; the gross demonizations and one-sided examinations of events both historical and recent show that off... well, I can't bring myself to say 'well', but 'thoroughly' will do. There is, perhaps for the best, perhaps not, no limit on human suffering; that thousands of Ethiopians are starving to death doesn't diminish the fact my stubbed toe hurts. It does, however, suggest that finding (an enacting) resolutions to some problems is a lot more urgent than others.

 

[SNCommand]

Only time I have seen Irish slaves brought up is when someone has the gall to state that there haven't been white people who have experienced slavery

 

[theNater]

You're America, that's a culture all in itself, you guys don't need to latch onto something like that.

Latching onto that is part of American culture, so , y'know...

 

[The Bucket]

I thought this thread was going to be about Job Bridge.

This post will not get nearly as much appreciation as it deserves

 

[Brown_Coat117]

Here's a much better reason to disregard both arguments: It was half a dozen generations ago. Constructing any form of guilt or obligation out of it is nothing short of ridiculous. And people that bring history up as arguments in todays social debates deserve to be disregarded as much as their arguments.

Amen to this.