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Informative Summary of “The First Alien Wave”

The Irish, while today grouped together with Caucasians, were once seen as an inferior race equated with that of African-Americans during the mid-nineteenth century. Outside of the ideology that skin color determines race, anti-Catholic discrimination was once heavily rooted in Britain and, subsequently, the United States. Beginning in Protestant England, Irish were long subjected to life in poverty because of their inability to own land as colonists, and with the great potato famine of the 1830s, their immigration to the United States led to equal oppression in reality and in the media.

Ireland’s destructive potato famine turned the Irish into a marvel of a people, and intellectuals, like Beaumont and Carlyle, flocked to witness the distress themselves. Of these surveys, an enlightened view emerged that the astonishing famine had political roots stemming from British oppression, but the more commonly held belief was that the Irish were a racially inferior people—Carlyle described Ireland as a “human dog kennel.” As millions of displaced Irishmen and women were sailing over the Atlantic and settling in American cities, even the highly educated were publishing denunciations of Catholics. Anti-Catholic hatred particularly surged with the publication of Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk: The Hidden Secrets of a Nun’s Life in a Convent Exposed in 1835, highly exaggerating scandals within the Catholic Church. Religion was a major factor in the prejudice against Irish immigrants; also in the 1840s, Germans experiencing poor harvests in their homeland were migrating to America without much controversy. As White Protestants, however, the smaller population of German immigrants were able to settle and assimilate in the Midwest.

Still, the Irish continued to be reduced to an American underclass with their stereotypical representation as “Paddy.” Mid-nineteenth century cartoons depict Irishmen as lazy, drunken criminals, often likened to freed slaves in perceived intelligence and civilization. A study of Celtic literature, at this time, even lessens the Irish to a dumb and pathetic race. Abolitionists actually took this opportunity to advocate for universal freedoms and include the Irish who were equally enslaved in urban factories, but the Irish in the United States wanted no association with African Americans. Trying to advance their position in society to that of the White Anglo-Saxons, the Catholic Irish were staunch Democrats, voting pro-slavery to stay on the right side of the color line.

The portrayal of the Irish in the media and academia in the United States truly reflected American society and the rise of nativism. With the fear that the Irish were not only an underclass of human beings but poor migrants that would lower wages and increase crime, the Order of United Americans and the Supreme Order of the Star Spangled Banner, both associated with the nativist “Know-Nothing” Party, spread along the east coast. The proclaimed American Republicans hated Catholics, opposed liquor and abhorred political corruption. Riots were the signature activity of these organizations, burning down Catholic churches and rioting at elections. Only with the rooted divisions of slavery did the “Know-Nothing” Party split, but nativism still bred strong.

Overall, the Irish from the potato famine of the 1830s up until the turn of the century were criticized and degraded on both sides of the Atlantic, and with their arrival in the United States, the racial oppression was only augmented by propaganda and violence. Despite the view of the Irish, today, as part of the Caucasian race, Anglo-Saxons monopolized the American identity of the nineteenth century.

Informative Summary of “The First Alien Wave”

For many Americans during the 1800s, religious hatred against the Irish Catholics was on par with the racist feelings towards the African Americans. Poor Irish Catholics, also known as Celts, who immigrated to America were seen as racially different from Protestant white Americans or Anglo-Saxon English enough so to be oppressed and even compared to apes.

Anti-Catholic feelings started in England during the reigns of protestants Henry VIII in the mid-sixteenth century and Oliver Cromwell during the mid-seventeenth century English Civil War against Charles I. The British believed that the Irish had been set up for failure ever since their beginnings and were unfit for self-government. The anti-Catholic rulings that had been put forth in England were transported to the American colonies making it illegal to practice the Roman Catholic religion. After America was freed from the rulings of England, states like New York still wouldn’t allow, “citizenship to Catholics unless they renounced allegiance to the pope in all matters, political or religious” (133).

During the 1830s and 1840s, Ireland’s potato famine became a “perverse tourist attraction” (133) where intellectuals like Alexis de Tocqueville, Gustave de Beaumont, and Thomas Carlyle went to see the true horrors of it all. After Beaumont’s visit, he found that, “the history of the poor is the history of Ireland” (134). Carlyle concluded that the Celts and the African Americans, “lacked the vision as well as the spunk needed to add value to the world” (135). The poor Irish were seen as so low that intermarriage between a Saxon and a Celt would be against natural law.

Due to rising crisis in Ireland, many Irish immigrated to America. In fact, the U.S. census of 1850 deemed that 961,719 immigrants came from Ireland. Protestant Americans were so appalled by the influx of Irish Catholic immigrants to America that they accused Europeans of purposely sending the Catholics over to corrupt the Protestant virtues of American democracy. Anti-Catholic hatred soared with more than 270 books, 25 newspapers, and 13 magazines being published between the years 1830 and 1860.

Racism against the Irish was personified by the character “Paddy.” Paddy was a drunk, violent, lazy, poor, and ugly person that most Americans saw the Irish as. The Paddy stereotype was frequently drawn in political cartoons in a bad light by famous artists such as Thomas Nast. The hatred for the Irish Catholics didn’t stop there. Even though the Irish are definitely white, they were completely expelled from the Caucasian race by some and seen as being just a different from white people as the Africans were seen as at the time.

Many abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and Catholic emancipationists like Daniel O’Connell, “saw the needs of the starving Irish and enslaved blacks as analogous” (143). Both groups agreed that, “the tragedy of both peoples lay in oppression. Neither horror stemmed from weakness rooted in race” (143).  Although sympathies for black and Irish people were alike, the Irish in the United States rejected the similarity. In hopes to become a higher status on the white side, the Irish voted for the proslavery Democratic Party and even attacked African Americans during the 1863 draft riots.

Rising nativism in America spurred the nativists to start the Know-Nothing Party. They burned Catholic churches and created voter literacy tests to lower immigrant Democratic voting power. In addition to hating Catholics, they also opposed liquor consumption and political corruption. During the fall elections of 1854, many Know-Nothing members were voted into office. Soon after, a bill was introduced banning people not born in the United States from holding political office and to extend the waiting period for naturalization to twenty-one years. Luckily, this bill failed to become a law and the working class was still able to vote.

With the election of Grover Cleveland in 1884, violent anti-Catholic acts were slowly coming to an end but poor Irish Catholics still remained one of the inferior races in America. As the first alien immigrant wave to America, the Irish carved the path for change to the outdated idea that the American was the Saxon.

 

 

Lina Mohamed: Journal Entry 2- Summary of “The First Alien Wave”

Racial differentiation was established in America for a long time. This made it very difficult for non-Americans to adapt to society when they were not accepted. Problems between different religions made it even harder because Americans were extremely non accepting of Catholics and denied citizenship to Catholics. Irish immigrants were mainly white and they used their “whiteness” to an advantage by holding themselves above African Americans and Chinese people. On the other hand, the poor and ugly Irish immigrants did not have this advantage and because of this, they were compared to African Americans and apes.

Irish natives lived on potatoes and when the famine took over, many died but more of them moved to the United States for survival. Thomas Carlyle was a essayist in Victorian England and he was extremely influential in his writing. He wrote a lot about the Irish and made harsh comments about them such as describing Ireland “a human dog kennel”. Carlyle turned the Irish into animals into his writings and similarly, Charles Kingsley called them “white chimpanzees”. Stories were published to degrade Catholicism and the churches were depicted as “sexually immoral”. Soon this hatred was seen everywhere; in newspapers, books, magazines and this caused anti-Catholic hatred to increase as it became a widespread theme. This made the Irish immigrants and their situations even more desperate.

The U.S. census of 1850 declared the number of immigrants and Irish immigrants were a huge amount, 961,719. This huge amount did not mean anything because the Irish were still treated horribly and were continuously ridiculed in cartoons, jokes, and essays. Cartoons, especially, enforced certain stereotypes about Irish. These stereotypes emphasized that the Irish were often apelike, always poor, ugly, drunken, violent, superstitious, etc. Parallels continued to be formed between the Irishmen to the Negro. “In 1876, for instance, Nast pictured stereotypical southern freedmen and northern Irishmen as equally unsuited for the vote during Reconstruction after the American Civil War.” Irish soon, turned on the African Americans in rejection of this widely spread Black-Irish likeness.

Religion was more important in Britain and Ireland than the United States. Religious wars were fought in England for a long time but United States had no wars fought over religion.However, around 1844, violence was on this rise against the Irish as their residences and Catholic churches were burned down. Riots related to these fires lasted three days and killed thirteen people and wounding fifty. Most of these violent crimes against Catholics were unorganized and unplanned. Mob violence grew worse and one mob almost killed a priest in Maine. The “Know-Nothings” continued to oppose political corruption and kept Catholic immigrants their main targets.

A bill was soon put out to ban people who were not born in the United States to hold political office and to extend the naturalization period. These preventions prevented many working class men to vote which was the goal of the Know-Nothings. Ulysses S. Grant intended to control all Jews in Tennessee no matter who they were. However, President Lincoln quickly overruled this order but not before families had already been dislocated.

Eventually, the “political tensions” destroyed the Know-nothingism as slavery. Slavery issues split this groups’s movement but they later rejoined the Democrats. This split did not mean much because they intended to continue their mission and nativism. Eventually, the worst part of this violence and hatred associated with the Catholics in the United States ended but ended slowly. However, Irish Catholics did remain “a race apart- Celts”. The Celt and African remained two inferior races for a long time but “at least the Celts had their whiteness”.

Y Boodhan: Blog 2 – Informative Summary of “The First Alien Wave”

The following is an informative summary of chapter 9 from Nell Irvin Painter’s The History of White People:

The 19th century was was a period filled with religious tension between the Irish Catholics and Protestant Americans. Despite their “whiteness,” the Irish Catholics who migrated in large numbers after 1830, faced social and political antagonism from Americans, largely due to their religion. In fact, anti-Catholic legislation was prevalent — forcing Catholics to renounce allegiance to the pope and pay taxes to support Protestant churches.

The large influx of Irish immigrants into the United States during the potato famine created social hostility. The prevailing assumption was that the Irish were racially inferior and had unmatched degradation. At the time, influential and educated people like Thomas Carlyle, Charles Kingsley and Robert Knox all termed the Irish as animals — bred to be controlled and lacking historical agency.

The large Irish Catholic presence in the United States even sparked anti-Catholic literature, journals, newspapers and organizations. The circulating idea in these journals and organizations was that the Irish Catholics were a threat to Protestantism. Among the many anti-Catholic works was Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk which was intended to taint Irish Catholic disposition and portray the Catholic Church as inherently sexually immoral.

Most Americans thought that the objective of the Irish Catholics was to subvert the Protestant virtues of American democracy. Therefore, people like Lyman Beecher, Yale-educated Presbyterian minister, thought that the poor Irish Catholics should not have a political role in either the form of holding office or voting. The Irish were seen as unfit for such roles.

In fact, the Catholic Irish were stereotyped to be brawling, lazy, crime-ridden drunks and were eventually termed “Paddies.” This resulted in the condemnation of the Irish Catholics by people like renowned author Ralph Waldo Emerson, who “excluded” the Irish from the Caucasian race and viewed the Irish population as miserable and poor. Emerson was not alone. Authors and cartoonists at the time used the Irish as a laughing stock for demeaning jokes and exaggerated cartoons which reinforced the Paddy stereotype.

Although some abolitionists explored and recognized the oppression of the Irish and the similarity in the oppression of Negroes, the Irish immigrants in the United States refuted this comparison due to the differences in the skin colors between them and the Negroes. In an effort to distinguish themselves from the Negroes and seek “white” fortune, Irish voters supported the pro-slavery Democratic Party and lashed out against Negroes in the form of riots.

The Irish even seeked further distinction through Celtic Irish culture and literature. In the mid-nineteenth century, works and poetry of Celtic history, literature and race appeared. Although these works were not necessarily purely objective and in favor of the Celtic Irish, they received acceptance among the Irish because they were less patronizing than earlier works, like those of Thomas Carlyle. Through these works, the Irish Celts sought to find qualities for greatness.

Despite their efforts, the opposition of Irish Catholics was still common due to rising nativism in the United States. Soon, antagonism toward the Irish Catholic turned violent.  Irish Catholic churches and residents were attacked. In addition, the violent anti-Catholic political party known as the Know-Nothings began to rise. In a series of violent acts, the Know-Nothings raged a religious war on the Irish Catholics.

Eventually the collapse of the Know-Nothings and the 1884 election of Grover Cleveland lessened the violent anti-Catholic movements in the United States. However, the white, Irish Catholics were still recognized as a different and inferior race.

Analysis of In Search of the Banished Children

In his first sentence of “In Search of the Banished Children, Peter Quinn defines “memory” as he has learned it in pursuing his personal history. Quinn’s search for the facts of his family story led him to conclude that these memories transcend his surname and belong to a larger picture of the Irish spirit. His family history is “tribal, communal.”

Quinn connects his first sentence to the body of the essay by concluding with the story of the old man. Stating that the old man had “the face of Robert Manning”, his great-great uncle, Quinn likens his story, whose legs seem as if they were never broken when he dances, to his life growing up; his parents never often spoke of their struggles to achieve success in America, but rather simply enjoyed it. Thus, the essay’s definition of memory as tribal and communal relates his family history to paint the picture of Irish pride; that although each of the Irish families endured a great and unique story of suffering to be where they are, today they stand without scars. Similar to the old man’s image of health while dancing, Quinn never heard family lore about his ancestors’ struggles, but rather was taught by example to live each moment purely in the present. The first sentence of Quinn’s essay and the story of the old man emphasize that memory of the Irish is not a story told, a set of dates, or an item of sentimental value. Quinn goes to great lengths to demonstrate that of all the Irish families he knows, not one possesses an artifact or object from the Famine migration. Rather, their memory is imbued in their blood, and displays itself in the fighting spirit and resiliency of the Irish today.

(Posted late due to issue with website)

When Comparing Historical Atrocities

Quinn draws a comparison between the Irish famine to the Holocaust and the slave trade to illustrate how horrific that time in history was. “Given the sheer volume of this passage as well as its nature… bearing more resemblance to the slave trade or the boxcars of the Holocaust than to the routine crossings of a later age” (page 48). He does not further analyze or explain this comparison. However, later on in his writing on page 53, he recounts the comparison of the famine to the Holocaust saying they are “very different events” not to be “confused or equated”.

I believe the initial comparison, written not by him but by historian Robert James Scally, served to illustrate the sheer monstrosity of the famine to those unfamiliar to that part of history. Supposedly, the reader would be well aware of how awful both the African Slave Trade and the Holocaust were, and making that comparison would open their eyes to another horror of history that was the famine. So he included the comparison so that throughout the reading, the reader would open their mind to the severity of the famine. However, Quinn obviously doesn’t agree that the famine and the Holocaust are comparable and simply used the comparison as a tool in the text.

What interests me here is that Quinn takes back the comparison between the Holocaust and the famine, but says nothing about the comparison to the slave trade. Was it that he believed there were somehow more similarities between the slave trade and the famine? Or that he thought of the Holocaust as the more severe historical event and so the more insensitive one to compare? In my opinion, the events are all drastically different. The famine was a terrible situation of pain and turmoil, but at least the starved and desperate Irish migrants had autonomy over themselves and their thoughts. Both Africans and Jews in their respective events were forced into travel and had violent physical and psychological trauma inflicted on them as an “inferior” people. And if either of these two events would be deemed more severe, it could easily be the slave trade because of how long it lasted, how many people were killed, and its devastating lasting effects on the people of the African Diaspora all over the world. If Quinn did not believe the Holocaust and the famine were comparable, surely he would feel the same about the slave trade?

In Search of the Banished Children

In the short story, In Search of the Banished Children, the author Peter Quinn compares the Irish famine emigration into America to the slave trade and the boxcars of the Holocaust early in the essay. The author uses a quote by Robert James Scally to describe that the shear volume of the passage as well as its nature being similar to the tragedies of the Holocaust and the slave trade in that the, “spectacles of civilian suffering in nineteenth-century Europe…drove most of them to leave” (48). Shortly after, he rejects that comparison. Unlike the survivors of the Holocaust and the slave trade, the Irish famine emigration survivors rarely talked about their past history or the events that they endured. In fact, many descendants of the Irish famine emigration at that time were unable to trace back to their ancestors to understand the hardships they went through, for, “They had been swallowed by the anti-romance of history, immigrant ships, cholera sheds, [and] tenement houses” (55). Going beyond the fact that the survivors of the Holocaust had more memoirs written, Quinn makes a point that they, “are very different events and should not be confused or equated” (53). He does this because even though the Irish Famine was a disastrous event, the Holocaust was a death sentence against every Jewish person under German rule. The Famine was not such a targeted event in that sense. This short story is all about the lack of remembrance of the Irish famine emigration and Quinn compares it to other disastrous events in history to detail the tragedy of the lost memories of the Irish.