Talk:Black Irish/Archive 2

Take this whole page with a pinch of salt
There are so many errors in this page that it devalues Wikipeida as a whole project... the term "Black Irish", which always applied to the poor classes, generally the Catholics in times gone by, has been hijacked for so many modern purposes that having one page to describe all of the possible references to it is completely pointless. Barack Obama is now jokingly but commonly referred to as "Black Irish" as his ancestors hail from Co. Offaly, but I don't see a paragraph on that! This page is pointless, ill informed and unnecessary. --JJ was here (talk) 21:17, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, thanks for the rant. Do you have anything positive to contribute to the article's improvement? ---  RepublicanJacobite  The'FortyFive'  00:18, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I've made my point. Wikipedia would be better off without it.  It does nothing to teach anyone about anything.--JJ was here (talk) 20:30, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
 * This page provides many clues regarding the etymology of the term Black Irish and is thus a useful addition to Wikipedia. Granted it is incomplete, but that is the nature of many Wikipedia entries - especially with topics like this where knowledge is still being gathered. That is not to say it 'does not teach anyone about anything' however - a rather black and white, emotive position to adopt in response to other people's more constructive contributions. I mean where would education be if we all took this stance in relation to other areas of inquiry, where the data is just as piecemeal and conflicting? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ajwitney (talk • contribs) 17:39, 28 December 2008 (UTC)
 * This is not the first time someone has suggested that the term Black Irish originally pertained to the poorer classes of Ireland who came to America's shores subsequent the Great Famine.
 * JJ, if you have information on this subject, you would do the article a great service by contributing to it with your knowledge. Citing your references would also help, but that's a given.


 * --ArmsHeldOut (talk) 04:40, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I first like to say thanks to everyone who supported this Wikipedia page. As a person of Black Irish origin on my father's side, I can honestly say that Black Irish is a very legitimate ethic group; however, it is also a name that other ethic groups attribute themselves too. Personally, though I am one of the small percentage of Irish that traces to the Spanish Armada, specifically in my case somewhere around Northern Ireland. Both from what I have seen in both my father and grandfather and what my grandfather, my families Black Irish origins have the very unusual trait of being darker skinned like people of the Spanish community and in my dad's case even darker. Also like Spanish (at least I think the Spanish do this too), the people in my family who are Black Irish tend to get tan faster and darker to the point that we can honestly be mistaken from a distance as someone of Egyptian and even Saudi Arabian origin (its kinda sad though only the people of Middle Eastern origins can tell the difference by looking beyond skin color).  My dad spent a couple of years fighting around that area so we consider the tan is more "perminant".  Now I bring my story to you attention not only to highlight that Black Irish is an legitimate sub-ethic group; but, we are a ethic group that attributes ourselves to being Irish and Spanish.  143.215.103.134 (talk) 00:30, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Also this may be just my family, but we really don't care that other ethic groups call refer to themselves as Black Irish. To other more nationalistic groups this may seem confusing; however, you have to realize something. That something Not every person or every ethic group agrees with the necessity of modernism and concepts of modernity, especially ones that suggest that all true ethic groups have to unify under a common language, have enemy that makes them different from nearby groups, have a common origin, and have a common ideology.  143.215.103.134 (talk) 00:30, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Thus, what makes black Irish unique and confusing is that we are an example of anti-modernity sub-ethic group. We come about when the Spanish when Spanish nationalism was prominent and Irish when Irish nationalism was becoming prominent. There are Black Irish that are Protestant and Black Irish that are Catholicism; and in my family the feud between the two still would go on if it wasn't for the fact that we are unified in our independence from Great Britain and distaste at being compared England.   In fact, maybe this is just my family but we feel we are Irish first and Black Irish second, so if a clearly African Irishman, Native American Irishman, or even Scot Irishman want to call themselves Black Irish that is perfectly ok with us because they are still Irish.    143.215.103.134 (talk) 00:30, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Armenian settlement of Ireland?
It's widely thought by some ethnological historians on Ireland was a destination for other Mediterranean and Caucasus peoples about 5,000 years ago from modern-day Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The possible linguistic, cultural and theological connection between Celts of Hibernia and Caucasian Iberia was noted in academic studies on the origins of "Black Irish" myths, and how the Irish people have admitted to some form of affinity with the Armenians of Cicilia (Turkey). + —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.102.36.5 (talk) 21:52, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
 * As I mentioned above in my family traces its Black Irish origins to one of 5000 crew of Spanish Armada who went MIA off the Irish coast. Thus I not really sure that at least in my family of Black Irish, we cannot completely identify with the the Armenians in Turkey and especially the Armenians in Lebanon, because they are associated with first an invasion. I mean Black Irish have a little common similarities with Armenians, in the fact that all Black Irish have Catholic origins even the ones that later converted to Protestantism.  However, there is a big difference. The Spanish that come to Ireland merged into the Irish culture, while both the Armenian Christians in Turkey and Lebanon immigrated into the country with there own different culture and kept that culture distinct from the Muslim Religion and Ottoman Empire culture instead of trying to merge them.  I forget the exact date from Middle Eastern History class I took but I think the Turkey immigration that would create problems occurred in the stagnation and reform era of Ottoman Empire.  Even though immigration really started around 1749 and still the Ottoman Empire's late stagnation period, for the Lebanon immigration you are actually more looking at the era of the French Mandate in Lebanon because of the massive expansion during the time to the numbers it is today.143.215.103.134 (talk) 01:25, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Thus again the Black Irish are not really Armenian Christians —Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.215.103.134 (talk) 01:33, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Map: distribution of dark hair in Ireland
The map is not based on the Hooton (Harvard U.) study. It had info from every county in Ireland. What was the source for your map? Iwerddon 69.211.223.228 (talk)

14:29, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Racism is not the topic
Deleted paragraphs on Victorian racism and anti-Irish feeling in Britain. This is not the point or topic of this article.Parkwells (talk) 07:42, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Dupertuis' 1940s 'Physical Anthropology of Ireland'
The article relies on this 70 year old data set to generalise on contemporary characteristics. Surely the information, in so far as it was accurate then, is now completely unreliable when speaking of contemporary populations, making no allowance for migration patterns and other demographic determinants since then. In the preface to the publication (vii) in 1955, Earnest Hooton, in deflecting criticism even before publication, makes the point "one does not come back to something written a decade previously and find it satisfactory". RashersTierney (talk) 10:13, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Original research and Synthesis
Many of the observations in this article reference to primary sources and appear to make conclusions not directly attributed to reliable secondary and tertiary sources. See WP:PST RashersTierney (talk) 10:38, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

This is a terrible, misleading, ignorant article
I am Irish, from Ireland, not an Irish American. The two are very different and a great many Irish Americans are ignorant of Irish reality and rely on hopeless stereotypes and misinformation to imagine "the old country", which is actually very young and modern. The term black Irish is quite foreign to many actual Irish people who will offer a whole range of possible interpretations based on guesswork, arising ultimately from a lack of familiarity with the term, because we hardly ever use it. The Oxford English Dictionary defines black Irish (lower case b) as "Irish of Mediterranean appearance". That's it. It doesn't need a long article written by someone or some people who want to project a lot of stereotypes and race theories onto a simple definition. It's just a dark skinned or dark haired Irish person. (Dark hair is the norm in Ireland, but dark skin is unusual.) The article says, "The term 'Black Irish' is ambiguous among non-Irish people but is used frequently in everyday conversation among the Irish". The first half of the sentence is a wild, unsupported generality, and the end of the sentence is untrue: the term is not a part of everyday Irish conversation; it is a term used mostly by non-Irish observers. The whole article is full of such exasperating bollocks. --O&#39;Dea (talk) 07:08, 25 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree. From the perspective of an ACTUAL Irish person - not an Irish-American person who bases their culture on intergenerational Chinese whispers - this article is bullshit. No Irish person uses the term "black Irish". It makes no sense to us. Wow - some Irish people have dark hair and sallow skin! Can't this be accepted as a healthy mix of hair and skin colours typical of Northern Europe, the region in the world (except US) that has the most diversity in hair/skin/eye colour. A bit like corned beef & cabbage when it's actually bacon and cabbage. Keep it clear what is IRISH AMERICAN and what is actually Irish. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.110.38.167 (talk) 06:11, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

"US-centric"
I see nothing in the article which warrants the 'US-centric' banner at the top, the article mainly discusses the possible genetic links between Spain and Ireland, with a small section on the use of 'Black Irish' in the American south, in an appropraitely marked section. As such, I am removing the banner. - 188.141.61.64 (talk) 02:37, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, myth; tone on this discussion page evinces absence of historical method
Yes, it is myth. History goes by evidence. And the best is written evidence. It is a curious irony that this page has writers that are proud of their Irish heritage, but they have never considered whether Irish people would have written down accounts of soldiers and sailors staying on in Ireland after landing at the western coasts. One cannot interject with arguments of limited literacy. The Catholic Church was well placed throughout Ireland, and the monks and priests would have been able to have seen and written about such an influx. Many of the regional chieftains of the country would have been literate. There is no record from their writings on such a settlement of foreigners. Yet, when one looks at academic histories of Ireland, from within Ireland, you can see NOTHING about any influx of Iberians coming into the island from the Spanish Armada.

Sure things that we can draw from are genetic studies and geological studies. As to the former, it has been established through DNA studies that a large percentage of the people of Ireland and Britannia share genetic heritage with people from northern Iberia. During a major prehistoric Ice Age Ireland and Britannia were connected with continental Europe; there were no Irish Sea or English Channel. And people settled the "islands" as far back as 16,000. Read from the New York Times, "English and Irish may be closer than they think," http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/world/europe/05iht-web.0305BRITS.full.4803645.html?sq=dna%20ireland%20spain%20england&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=all, also read: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/10/science/gene-study-shows-ties-long-veiled-in-europe.html And read on Doggerland, the name for the land between England and continental Europe.Dogru144 (talk) 04:44, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Black '47?
I'm surprised there's no mention of Black '47 in the article. Isn't that where the term "Black Irish" came from? The article does point out that the term is used mostly outside of Ireland; seems likely it's an American phrase that was coined when wave upon wave of Irish immigrants hit US shores during the famine. No, I can't back that up...someone (not me, heh) needs to do some research to find the earliest uses of the phrase. Were people saying "Black Irish" before 1847?

Another thought, "Red Hugh O'Donnell" wasn't called that because he had red skin, he was called that because he had red hair. Categorizing people by the color of their hair used to be more common. It wouldn't have been confusing in the old days, for the simple reason that most everyone in Ireland was white. Rosekelleher (talk) 04:08, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

black as in the blight of the potato famine the worst year was 1847 Connoc123 (talk) 20:38, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

So What?
There are a lot of new discoveries going on right now with the genographic project, we should just wait, Ethnicity it's important for a lot of people for the wrong reasons. As a Spaniard, and as an Historian specialiced in ancient history and archaeology I must say there are a lot of wrong statements going on in this conversation. First of all, all modern europeans share the same ancestors, the tribes that settled europe in different waves from central europe. The previous inhabitants of non "indoeuropean ancestry" were asimilated,  some times like in greece the Achaean newcomers got acculturated, some others extended their own culture (Hallstat,etc...). By the time of agricola ireland was probably settled by a mix of different tribes like the rest of western europe that were acculturated by the stronger one, probably the celtic culture that was present in almost all europe outside of the mediterranean area. The mistake in this conversation is that people is talking about ethnicity based in race and not in culture. All irish people are irish, and of course not all of them can be fair skinned or redheaded, there are dark haired swedish and norwegian. The myth about spaniards beign from dark complexion is a lie too,so that's not the reason behind the dark complexion irish (sometimes and that's a hollywood fail people think that we are like the south-american latinos that have their black hair and golden skins heritage by the mixing of spanish, native american and african origins), I myself have fair skin dark hair and reddish beard. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.61.210.119 (talk) 10:35, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Yet Another Usage of the Term
The way I understand it, "Black Irish" was a slur that Irish Catholics used against Irish Protestants, or Irish Catholics who sympathized with the Protestants and/or Britain. 96.41.169.67 (talk) 17:58, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Land bridge and Iberian heritage
Very instructive is the research in the last decade suggesting the patterns of migration the people of Ireland and Britain from continental Europe. As in this reference, Dr. Stephen Oppenheimer has uncovered the past of these people as coming from Iberia. There had been great glaciers across northern Europe, driving people out. Oppenheimer argued that after the receding of the glaciers, about 16,000 years ago, people came out of a Basque region of Spain and went to the Irish and English islands. [Nicholas Wade, "The New York Times," "English, Irish, Scots: They’re All One, Genes Suggest" http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/science/05cnd-brits.html?pagewanted=all ]. The expanse of land in the area from the Netherlands to England has been called Doggerland. The thinking is that wit the melting of the glaciers, submerging the land bridge, the English and Irish became living on distinct lands.Dogru144 (talk) 06:57, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
 * What does this have to do with the term 'Black Irish'? RashersTierney (talk) 09:22, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
 * In an attempt to answer to above question, and provide a measure of support the original post, Tok Freeland Thompson, in Ireland's Pre-Celtic Archaeological and Anthropological Heritage, citing the same evidence suggesting the original inhabitants of the British and Irish isles were of Iberian origin, suggests that where some regions such as the east coast of Britain were subsequently marked by further waves of migration (or at least human intercourse due to frequent trade), more remote regions like the west and south west of Ireland (excluding the Norman enclaves of Galway and Cork) do not evidence same 'palimpsest of human activity' whether through colonization, settlement or trade. Following this premise, Tok suggests such areas may thus have retained greater concentrations of those original inhabitants of Iberian derivation. Whether these people/s from Iberia exhibited the phenotype commonly associated with the term Black Irish is a matter of conjecture. It provides one explanation however, linking similar characterizations across disparate sources ranging from The Book of Invasions, genealogical pseudo-histories, the Myth of the Spanish Armada, or Bob Quinn's more rigorous research regarding The Atlanteans.Ajwitney 14:33, 12 May 2013 (UTC)