Summary of “The First Alien Wave”
Throughout the last century, racial injustices were pressured on humans based on their skin color. However, the bigotry our history has succumbed itself to goes far past just skin color and hair texture. A key example of this was demonstrated by the racism Irish immigrants faced in the United States, based on characteristics ranging from their religion to the shape of their faces.
Most of the struggle Irish people were confronted with surrounded the years of the potato famine, where roughly 1 million people died of starvation and almost double that number crowded into North America. It led acclaimed writers to see the disaster for themselves, in which they in turn wrote about and published. Even Frederick Douglas saw Ireland at the time and compared it to his time as a slave on a plantation. The only differences he noted was their skin color and hair texture. But while many saw their pain and did not mind them migrating to the States, other people hated them because they followed the Pope and didn’t meet the Anglo-Saxton standards already set up.
Soon after the Irish began to move to America, larger publications were written about them as a form of propaganda, ensuring more people turned against them. One of the writers was Ralph Waldo Emerson who expelled the Irish as being White in his writings. He even coined the term “paddy,” which became a familiar way to discriminate against Irish natives.
Later, magazines were published to promote Anti-Catholicism and hatred towards Irish immigrants. They revealed harsh cartoons that compared them to Africans and portrayed them as Ape-like. These enhanced the “Paddy” stereotype that Emerson created. Others, like The Protestant, focused on tearing apart the Catholic religion as a whole.
A book following this pattern comes second only to Uncle Tom’s Cabin as America’s most popular book. Maria Monk: The Hidden Secrets of a Nun’s Life told the supposed true story of author Maria Monk who claimed a priest was raping her and her colleagues. It acted as evidence to those who were Anti-Catholic to publically turn against the church more, although the story was dispelled soon after by further investigation. Following this, Catholic churches were burnt down all over the country by hate groups. One was known as the Know-Nothings.
A group named by the fact that they pretended to “know nothing” if asked if they are associated with the group, they specifically targeted their hatred upon Catholics, alcohol, and political corruption. At their peak, they managed to get their members office as governors of seven different states, roughly 75-100 congressmen, and many other state and local positions. They attempted to put in place several laws surrounding their prejudice ways, but rarely succeeded. The most notable accomplishment of a Know-Nothing in office was Massachusetts enacting a law to inspect Catholic convents and schools.
As time passed, the legacy of the Know-Nothings began to dissipate as their ideals became less followed. When the issue of slavery became the more prominent issue at the time, the politicians who were part of the Know-Nothing party each chose sides and those in the North joined the Democratic party, while Southerners became Republican. Although time passed, the racism against Irish continued to the end of the 19th century. Many African Americans remained enslaved during this time, but one thing was for certain, the picturesque figure embodied as a Saxon remained the ideal American, while Celts and Africans remained in the shadows, although Irish had one thing over their counterparts – and that was their whiteness.
