The Irish and whiteness

In North America there is a discourse regarding whether or not white people have an advantage over racialized populations, Peggy McIntosh is one voice in this discussion. In her article White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, she outlines the concept of white privilege, and how she sees white privilege in her daily experiences. In order to understand white privilege, I think we should first examine McIntosh’s concept of “whiteness”.

So what are the main components of Peggy McIntosh’s notion of whiteness? I will examine some of her ideas of whiteness in relation to the racialization of the Irish in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. First I will look at how McIntosh’s views of whiteness confer dominance and privilege and it’s relation to the Irish. Then, I will examine how McIntosh sees whiteness as being taught to be seen as morally neutral, average, ideal and what relationship this has with Irish immigration and immigrants.

One component of whiteness according to McIntosh (1989), “is white privilege and that white privilege is as set of unearned assets which we are taught to remain oblivious of but that we can count on cashing in each day” (p. 31) one of the examples she uses is, “how we have freedom to criticize the government and talk about how much we fear it’s policies without being seen as a cultural outsider” (McIntosh, 1989 p. 32). While McIntosh’s concept of whiteness mainly revolves around skin colour, which I would argue doesn’t apply directly to the racialization of the Irish, she brings up points like the one previously quoted which I do believe applies to the Irish immigrants. During the mid nineteenth century North America saw an increase in the number of Irish immigrants. One figure states, “In the period between 1 May 1847 and 31 December 1860, the Irish comprised 41.4 per cent of immigrants disembarking in New York (That is over 1 million)” (Garner, 2004. p. 94). As is widely known the Irish immigrants of this period were predominantly Catholic, “The point of difference between the Irish and Americans on which nativist discourse concentrated was religion” (Garner, 2004. p. 93). The Americans being of British decent were Protestants and “viewed the Irish Catholics as bearers of a non-modern culture and were thus a threat to the republic, with their propensity for idleness and political corruptibility and external allegiances.” (Garner, 2004. p. 93). With this example we can see that the Irish Catholics were seen as undesirable outsiders which were more at home in a “primitive” atmosphere.

Warning: From the movie "Blazing saddles" contains offensive language

 

McIntosh (1989), in her article, quotes her colleague as saying that “whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work which will allow ‘them’ to be more like ‘us.’” (p.31 ). This moral “superiority” is not directly related to skin colour like the bulk of her article, so I find it more linked to the experiences of the Irish Catholic immigrants of the mid nineteenth century. I would like to say that I think white people are taught to see themselves as physically neutral, normative, and average, also ideal, and that this too has a relationship with the Irish Catholic immigrant experience. “Morton claimed that the Celts’ ‘physical traits’, ‘moral character’ and peculiar customs” had “undergone little change since the time of Caesar’” (as cited by Garner 2004, p. 94.) Here you can see that the moral character, as well as the physical traits of the Irish is seen to set them in the role of “other” whether due to their religion or the poverty they lived in after fleeing the potato famine.

Louis C K - white privilege

I have shown how, through McIntosh’s article on white privilege, the Irish had experienced racialization at the hands of the Americans, by using her concept that whiteness confers privilege. The example I used was one of governance, where the Irish were seen as outsiders due to their religious affiliation to the Catholic Church, and how this affiliation was seen as an outside allegiance which put the Irish at odds with dominant culture stationing them as the “other.” I have also shown that the Irish were cast as the “other,” due to their lack of normalcy related mostly to religion and how they did not fit the model of an ideal American; both in religion and in the impoverished state they arrived in.

References

 

McIntosh, P. (1990). White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack. Independent School, 49(2), 31.

Garner, Steve. Racism in the Irish Experience. London; Sterling, Va.: Pluto, 2004.