Talk:Irish Americans

Irish surnames and slave ownership
Every few months or so I check up on this page to see if it's improved, and every time it's the same situation: some parts are better, others are worse, much of it is the same. In addition to several NPOV violations and the use of dated and/or non-academic and questionable sources, the biggest problem with this article is its readability: it reads as if it was edited by dozens of different people who did not even make an attempt to collaborate with other editors before making changes (which is fine, for the most part, except it's not supposed to be obvious, and the content should always be reliably sourced, especially if it's controversial).

I would recommend rewriting whole sections and maybe even the entire article, but also to reach a consensus on sourcing and what topics this article should cover before making any major changes. Before doing that however, this line right here needs to go immediately:

"Although, native Irish names and surnames are pretty common among the African American people, who are mostly Protestant, this is due to the two communities intermarrying. These intermarriages took place mostly in the 19th century, as members of both communities were treated as second class citizens in the United States."

I really don't know how to go about unwinding this disaster, but a few points I would stress:


 * Firstly and most importantly, this line is not reliably sourced. Rather than an academic scholar, whoever wrote this statement sourced it to a dilettante journalist writing for a non-academic, non-historical publication.
 * Secondly, it's a false equivalence comparing the social position of Irish immigrants to African Americans. African Americans weren't "second class citizens" when large numbers of Irish started coming to the US - they weren't even citizens at all, and had no legal rights or protections. In speaking about anti-Irish discrimination, historian Tim Meagher made the point that, "It would be ridiculous or even obscene to compare this religious tension and hostility [to Irish immigrants) to the brutal oppression endured by African or even Asian Americans." (see page 221 -222 in the first link below).
 * Thirdly, the clause "African American people, who are mostly Protestant" is an example of a reoccurring problem throughout this article. The point's been made over and over and over again that Irish Americans, at least in popular imagination, are associated with Catholicism. On the other hand, there are reliable sources which say this isn't even true anymore, as most people identifying as "Irish American" today are either Protestant or secular (this has been discussed in other editorial disputes on this page).
 * And finally, the statement is factually incorrect. While there is evidence of intermarriage between Irish Americans and African Americans and non-whites (Asians mostly) during the antebellum, there is no reliable source that says interracial marriage was ever common in the first place, or a large enough phenomenon to account for the number of Irish surnames present among contemporary African Americans (the Irish were overrepresented as African American or Asian American spouses, when you consider interracial marriages as a phenomenon of the antebellum, but the phenomenon itself was not generally common) . In fact, throughout the 19th Century, Irish-American men gained a reputation for anti-black racism, and thus most of these intermarriages would have been between African American men and Irish women (where the Irish name would not have been passed down). Meagher wrote a chapter about this in his textbook The Columbia Guide to Irish American History (read part two chapter four here, starting on page 214). On page 222 Meagher writes, "All the evidence suggests that Irish men or more often women were vastly overrepresented among white spouses and lovers of African or Asian Americans, for example."

And if that's not bad enough, the Irish historian Liam Hogan performed a relatively recent analysis of Irish surnames and slave ownership, and here's what he found:

539 unique Irish surnames are on the 1850 slave owning census, who collectively owned 99,129 slaves in 17 states. On the 1860 census, the collective ownership for these names increased to 115,894 slaves (a 16.9% increase). It'd be preposterous to suggest that anywhere approaching even half these numbers for marriages between Irish-American men and African-American women.

Liam Hogan excluded common Irish names that have ambiguous origins (and are thus not always reliably Irish), so this is surely an undercount in the number of Irish-American slaveowners for the period. On the other hand, the statement in question says nothing about ancestry or genealogy or anything of the sort - it's a statement about Irish surnames and African Americans (it may very well be true that many of the names on Liam's list belonged to people who had small amounts of distant Irish ancestry, for example, rather than immigrants or second generation Irish Americans).

In other words, the reason why some African Americans have Irish surnames is simply because a number of them are descended from slaves who were owned by white masters who had Irish names. There is no dancing around this.

Whoever wrote that article has a comic book-level understanding of this history and should've never been used as a source anywhere in this article. Please remove it.Jonathan f1 (talk) 21:05, 2 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Very much agree - seems like complete white-washing to me, and one of the provided sources is completely inadequate and talks about wealthy Scottish colonials as if they were interchangeable with poor Irish immigrants. Staggeringly ignorant. There have always been big racial tensions between Irish immigrant and established black populations - The New York City draft riots are a testament to this.--SinoDevonian (talk) 19:44, 21 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Outside opinion; We need to be careful not to diminish the struggles of Irish immigrants when they came to America. This could turn into a more biased article. For example saying Irish were the same status as established British Americans, or diminishing the economic, ethnic, religious, or political struggles. In the mid-1800s when most Irish started immigrating to America, the only people given any type of opportunity, were white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, men who owned land, (known as WASP's), most of the Irish didn't fit into any of these categories except perhaps white (although debatable for the time period) and neither did the Italians, Chinese or Native Americans. Another point is that; Irish surnames for black people, came in a multitude of ways. One; before the 1850s mass migration of Irish to America, there was a small number of Irish people, who participated in the British Empires slave trade, these Irish were mostly protestant, and mostly from Uster where the British plantation system had the biggest effect. Second there was a good amount of intermixing as most Irish settled in eastern coastal cities such New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, where free blacks before and after the civil war settled and where slavery did not exists. Three; a large portion Irish who came over to America before the 1850s were indentured servants (similar to how most Irish arrived in Australia) and naturally mixed with blacks and people who were treated as second class citizens. So we should be careful in how we change or rephrase this article. America's history is not so black and white (pun intended)! 2603:7000:3B40:B500:A156:FF01:78FF:47CA (talk) 01:18, 15 January 2023 (UTC)


 * To the IP: Irish people, regardless of religion, were always classified as 'White' mind you - just like how today most Irish-descended people are going to be included in the "WASP" category in today's American racial politics (virtually no one save for overly proud Irish-Americans think of it any other way. It is especially ironic to me as a Catholic Englishman of Irish descent that most Irish-descended Americans are Prots these days!) . I find the claim of White Irish people intermixing with recently freed African-Americans and their descendants to be fanciful at best, and doubtless part of some ethnic mythologizing (which America is great at - see Columbus) - and unless we can find reliable sources that it was the norm or acceptable for White Irish people to intermarry with Black Americans, then I simply do not believe it to have any basis of truth, anecdotes and rare exceptions aside.
 * Just a quip - there was certainly going to be different societal attitudes between the Scots-Irish and the Indigenous Catholic Irish. Many Scots-Irish became slave owners in the Southern US. It is best not to conflate these groups at every level.--SinoDevonian (talk) 12:41, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The article defines "Irish Americans" as "Americans with full or partial ancestry from Ireland." That includes Protestants. It includes Americans who may have distant Irish ancestry (18th Century) but nevertheless still identify with it. It does not limit the scope of the article to "Catholic" or "ethnic" Irish-Americans.
 * The discrimination section needs more nuance and needs to specify which of these "Irish-Americans" suffered such prejudice. Statements like "anti-Irish prejudice was rampant in the US" is a broad sweeping statement, currently unsourced, and certainly controversial. As far as 'racialization' goes (Celts vs Saxons) - the position of the Irish was far more ambiguous than this article makes it seem. Sources are available if anyone wants to improve this section. Jonathan f1 (talk) 10:14, 6 May 2023 (UTC)


 * Are you seriously disputing that there was discrimination against Irish or Irish-Americans, in the US? Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 12:57, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
 * No, of course not. The discrimination of the Irish in the US is a historical fact and I know of no historian who's ever disputed it.
 * What is in dispute, however, is the nature and extent of this prejudice and what, if any, economic or political impact it had on the average immigrant's life. I will remind you that we are dealing with a period from roughly the 17th to 20th Century, and potentially as many as 8 million immigrants. Some chronology is in order (when did this phenomenon peak?), regional nuance (where did it occur and where were most Irish settled?), and who were the targets ('the Irish' is too broad -what we want to do is specify immigrants by period, region, class, religion etc).
 * Surely no one here actually believes that every single immigrant that's ever come from Ireland has suffered discrimination at every period of history and in every region of the US? That's as pseudo-historical as disputing it altogether. Jonathan f1 (talk) 14:29, 6 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Since this is a separate topic, I will start a new thread. Jonathan f1 (talk) 15:25, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

"Rampant" discrimination?
The Columbia Guide to Irish American History, by Tim Meagher, discusses regional variations in immigrant experiences, although this work has been removed from the internet and will have to be retrieved (it's in the chapter on race, p. 214 I believe). The gist of it is that anti-Irish prejudice wasn't a significant thing in the South, partly because Irish numbers were small, but also because the slave threat superseded white ethnic tensions. Joe Regan's thesis echoes this argument: Most Irish immigrants were willing to uphold the social order, and by accepting slavery, they eased their assimilation into society as “hard-drinking, gambling, horse-racing, cock-fighting and tobacco-chewing Southerners.” p. 216/

Out West, too, Meagher argues that white solidarity prevailed, as Irish Catholics were among the earliest settlers who brutally displaced the natives. Malcom Campbell's study of the Irish in California agrees with this.

And back in the 1990s, Reginald Byron's study of the Irish in Albany, NY, (Irish America) turned up no evidence of anti-Irish prejudice for the period in question (this will have to be retrieved as well).

That leaves us with a predominately big-city urban phenomenon, on the Northeastern seaboard, which peaked in the 1850 -1870 period. But only a minority of Irish immigrants settled in big cities in these decades, which would also have to be taken into account when discussing discrimination.. The demographics of big cities in the antebellum and reconstruction era were statistically unrepresentative of the rest of the US.

The discrimination section could use more nuance (it is light on detail and needs context), while the currently unsourced statement (or improperly sourced) which claims the prejudice or 'sentiment' (whatever that means?) was "rampant in the US" is directly contradicted by more than one RS, including Gleeson's work on the Southern Irish (cited in article). Jonathan f1 (talk) 15:54, 6 May 2023 (UTC)

Lead is a mess
Even assuming it's true that "most Irish Americans" descend from "!9th Century" immigrants (sounds reasonable, but is it in fact what most sources say?) to describe Irish-Americans as "ethnic Irish" is total nonsense -whoever wrote this doesn't seem to have any idea what "ethnic" means. Having an ancestry doesn't imply "ethnic" -if most of these Americans have 19th Century immigrant ancestors, then they assimilated many moons ago. Having Irish ancestry and being ethnically Irish are two completely different things. Jonathan f1 (talk) 21:49, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Do you have evidence for that? The Banner  talk 23:08, 7 September 2023 (UTC)
 * Evidence that the descendants of 19th Century immigrants assimilated into American culture? Are you serious? Jonathan f1 (talk) 21:15, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
 * You are claiming something, then it is reasonable that you come with evidence of that claim. The Banner  talk 23:12, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I suppose that on the Beavis and Butt-Head side of Wikipedia it's reasonable to request evidence that people who've been in a country for 150 -200 years are assimilated, but I was truly taken aback by this strange challenge. What kind of evidence you want? We can start with a definition of "ethnicity" and then see if this sounds like what this article is covering:
 * "ethnic group, a social group or category of the population that, in a larger society, is set apart and bound together by common ties of race, language, nationality, or culture.".
 * Is this article covering people "set apart from larger [American] society" by a common 'race", language, nationality or culture? Last I checked there is no Irish-American "race", their language is American English, their nationality is American, and their culture is, for the most part, American. This article covers people who have some degree of Irish ancestry, however large or small, but not specifically any ethnic group. Jonathan f1 (talk) 17:08, 9 September 2023 (UTC)
 * So you think personal attacks are useful? The Banner  talk 00:05, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
 * More useful than describing people with an ancestry as "ethnic Irish". I'm not saying you're the buffoon who wrote this (I didn't bother checking), but you seem to find this statement reasonable and want "evidence" that it's not true. How about this -why don't you put up some evidence that an "ethnic group" is merely another name for "ancestry group" and even applies to people who belong to multiple ancestry groups. This article covers Americans who have/had full or partial ancestry from Ireland, not "ethnic Irish". Jonathan f1 (talk) 20:33, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

"Ethnicity" and the fantasy of the Irish-American ethnic victim
Is there any particular reason why everyone who edits this article seems to be incapable of looking a word up in a dictionary and realizing that it is not being used properly in the lead? This article is not merely about "ethnic Irish" in the US, but is much broader and covers all Americans who have or had Irish ancestors, in some cases a trivial or distant amount of Irish ancestry. There are dozens of people cited in this article who are or were in no sense "ethnic". What's so difficult to understand about the idea that an ancestry category and an ethnicity may overlap but are not always the same thing?

Another issue I've raised here, some time ago, is the claim in the discrimination section that anti-Irish prejudice was "rampant" throughout the entire US. Please refer to Tim Meagher's Columbia Guide to Irish American History where he details variations in Irish immigrant experience in 19th C. America. He writes that bigotry against the Irish was most intense in the Northeast (and particularly in big cities) but not a significant factor in Southern culture and places out West (like California). He also differentiates immigrants by period: the Irish who arrived during the Famine years were significantly poorer, less skilled and educated than the Irish who arrived in the late 19th Century, and the earlier group was indeed overrepresented in jails and insane asylums. After the Famine, Ireland pursued massive educational reforms and Irish primary schools aggressively promoted English-language literacy (some even banned the Irish language in classrooms), so that by the end of the century the average immigrant was fluent in English and primed for middle-class assimilation. You may also want to refer to Dave Wilson's piece on Irish experience in North America here, or a more recent talk by historian Kevin Kenny (who happens to be an expert in this particular niche) where he argues that, despite encountering some nativist hostility, 19th Century America was still a pretty good place to be if you were European, even an Irish Catholic European. Contrast the arguments of these scholars with the language used in the discrimination section of this article, which essentially promotes the myth of the Irish-American perpetual ethnic victim (although it stops short of making the idiotic claim that Irish immigrants were treated like black people, one could easily walk away from that section with this impression).

And of course, in typical fashion, much article space is reserved for content about prejudice/discrimination, but nothing is said of the relatively large role the Irish themselves played in American racism. Most of Liam Hogan's work on Irish involvement in chattel slavery, colonization and anti-black (and anti-Chinese) racism in the US is freely available online so there's no excuse for not being able to access any sources. It's articles like this why the average person is unaware of this history and "shocked" to learn the Irish played any role in colonialism and American racism, despite the fact that most historians have known this for a long time.

I'd improve these sections myself, but I am still being "punished" for earlier editing behavior when I was relatively new on here, although I've corrected my conduct and should probably appeal soon. For now I would request that a more objective editor, who knows how to review scholarship and edit neutral encyclopedic content, consider my arguments and sources and improve the aforementioned sections, starting with a change in the lead description. Jonathan f1 (talk) 22:07, 23 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Starting with a personal attack on a whole cohort of editors and ending with bemoaning the fact that you've been "punished" but will soon appeal? Yeah, let me know how that goes for you... Bastun Ėġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 11:53, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
 * You were already active from 2018 before people had enough of your disruptive an tendentious editing. To be true, I do not get the idea that you learned anything from the (partial) block and it is clearly still necessary to protect the encyclopedia from your opinions and editing. The Banner  talk 12:37, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

stereotypes vs racial discrimination
I tried to open a DRN discussion for more constructive dialogue, but the moderator decided these issues have not yet been properly discussed in talk, since there've been "no real exchanges" (he is, of course, correct). Rather than pile on 3 criticisms in one section, I will (try to) briefly raise them one-by-one (assuming we get anywhere on the first go), starting with some content in the "stereotype" section.

"There were also Social Darwinian-inspired excuses for the discrimination of the Irish in America. Many Americans believed that since the Irish were Celts and not Anglo-Saxons, they were racially inferior and deserved second-class citizenship. The Irish being of inferior intelligence was a belief held by many Americans.. The racial supremacy belief that many Americans had at the time contributed significantly to Irish discrimination." (sourced to a chapter by Kevin Kenny that starts on p. 364 here )

This is quite an embellishment, even by the standards of the strange little world of Irish race-porn. It also grossly distorts the arguments and views of the author.

On p. 376, Kenny writes: "In this essay I have been concerned only with the first task, discerning why some Americans disliked the Irish and expressed their contempt racially." At no point in this chapter does he use the phrase "many Americans". On p. 375 he narrows the culprits down to "urban, middle-class" publishers and consumers of the literature in question (at a time when most Americans were rural, I would add).

The author doesn't even believe the American Irish suffered racial discrimination. On p. 375 he draws a distinction between "prejudice" (which the Irish encountered) and "racial discrimination" (which they did not), and warns against the dangers of conflating the two. Kenny's view is that there was a "disparity" between "rhetoric" (verbal- and image-based racialization) and "impact" (the actual effect it had on Irish immigrants).

Elsewhere in this chapter he writes that "The forms of racial representation under consideration had a relatively brief heyday" (p. 366); that the attempts to racialize the Irish "did not do them much harm" (p. 376); and that the American Irish "did very well, very quickly" (also p. 376)

Does anyone really believe the quoted text accurately reflects the source? Jonathan f1 (talk) 23:06, 26 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Can you me more exact in where to find the quotes? Like the exact page number? The Banner  talk 23:46, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Which quote do you want?
 * On p. 375 he writes: But in neither Britain nor America did prejudice translate into a system of racial discrimination or subordination enshrined in law. Invoking the ambiguities of Irish "whiteness" tends to obscure this distinction between prejudice and discrimination, with sometimes unfortunate results in the classroom, where Irish-American students, newly empowered with a sense of past victimhood, too often embrace a single lesson: "If we pulled ourselves up through hard work, then why can't they?"
 * I don't know where the statement came from that "The racial supremacy belief that many Americans had at the time contributed significantly to Irish discrimination," but the source comes nowhere close to making this point, and explicitly argues against it.
 * Of course the Irish did encounter prejudice in 19th Century America, and denying that would be equally absurd. But there is no evidence of any link between racialized stereotypes of the Irish and full-blown racial discrimination. Jonathan f1 (talk) 01:34, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * IMHO the use of negative stereotypes is a form of discrimination but often not recognized as that. The Banner  talk 11:55, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The author distinguishes between "attitudes" (prejudice) and "actions" (discrimination). He specifically cites the ability of 19th Century Irish immigrants to obtain citizenship, vote, own property, testify in court and move freely between the states, and contrasts this with Asian immigrants and African Americans who could do none of these things. He writes that Irish immigrants were unlikely to read the publications in which these stereotypes appeared (p. 375), and argues against the idea that racialized images, caricatures and satirical representations of the Irish had any real effect on them. The text I quoted simply doesn't represent the source. Jonathan f1 (talk) 19:24, 27 January 2024 (UTC)