User:Bulldog123/Irish Americans

Irish emigrants escaped anglicization in Ireland only to face assimilation in the New World. The latter, however, was an assimilation of a different kind, a kind where Irish culture was not snuffed out and replaced, but rather permeated into the American norm, attenuating its very distinctiveness. What was once Irish-American became simply "American" and therefore less and less Irish. The act of emigration itself paved the way for a type of intra-county intermarriage that was unlikely in Ireland, thereby creating a whole new "breed" of Irishman, adding an ancestral divide to the cultural one. During the outpouring of Irish literature in the late 19th century (Joyce, Wilde, Shaw, Yeats), Irish-Americans typically ignored this chance at cultural revivalism, furthering the divide between the mainland Irish and the diaspora. Often times, the knowledge of one's own Irish-Americanness came only by way of a surname, an unconscious paternal-descent bias, so many people of Irish heritage quickly lost their identity and therefore affiliation.

As blood ancestry faded with each generation, being "Irish American" became something more of a traditionalist temperament, one that would require constant reinforcement to maintain. Indeed, many times, to be an Irish-American relied less on the amount of Irish genes and more on a self-aware exhibition of certain "Irish"-attributed qualities. Many times, these qualities were mimicked on the stage and in the media, some being quite virtuous, such as honesty, workmanship, generosity, fondness of drink and festivity. On the other hand, the "Irish" type had also been perpetuated as very proletariat, frequently enfeebled, and subjugated by higher classes. The media-supported persona of an Irish-American immigrant would be that of an ingenuous yeoman from a simpler age, noted for toughness and plain practicality. Irish Americans carry this somewhat burdened association whenever they identify as such, and in doing so, include it as an integral part of the Irish-American ethnos, by way of a common "view of self."