"I'm Irish American"

[MacMahon]

I've noticed that to many Americans their Irish, Scots, Italian etc. roots are a big part of their current identity. As a nation of immigrants in a New World I can see why this link to earlier generations is interesting and important.

But it's also something I find confusing.

I live in Yorkshire. I'm English. I have Irish ancestors on both side (great grandparents and great x2 grandparents). If I was in America this would quite possibly be a big deal. I'd be an Irish American and identify with the struggles and persecution that my people suffered at the hands of the English. But I wasn't born in America, I was born in Leeds, and my Irish ancestry play zero role in my identity.

I'm on an ancestry group and Americans are getting that DNA test done and finding out that, contrary to family lore that they are Cherokee or Mexican or Italian Americans, they're actually pretty much 'just' 100% British.

It makes me wonder how authentic this celebrating or identifying with their Irish/First Nations/Italian roots is, and how much is just (mistaken) tribalism and division.

No, I think that (banter, sporting rivalry and Gallipoli aside) Australians like people from the UK, leastways that's my impression. Historically, they'd have preferred Larwood to Jardine IYSWIM, but that latter sort doesn't exist now.

I know what you mean op, it is an attitude towards heritage that is jarring to British cultural sensibilities. Having said all that, I am currently slightly obsessed with identifying my own Irish ancestry, for more practical purposes. I and my siblings would love to be able to claim dual nationality and Irish passports! This may mean a bit of digging as my father died many years ago and said he had an Irish mum but we can't find a jot of evidence. Too many Mary's in Liverpool in the 1930s😂

@wallowmall

I’m not disputing the American influence on Halloween, but Halloween was definitely a thing twenty years ago*

it did exist but not like now. We didn't really do trick or treating as kids & often went to Ireland for the holiday as it's much bigger over there. I live pretty much where I grew up & my dc get a bucket load of sweets.

I definitely went trick or treating as a child in Ireland, that was over 30 years ago

@AryaStarkWolf I don't think you read my post properly

@jewel1968

Reminds me of the Irish poet who gave a talk about Christmas at an event in Leeds (I think). He talked affectionately about being a Wren Boy at Christmas time. After his talk a woman came up to him full of sadness and compassion. She thought he had said he had been a Rent Boy in his youth.

Brilliant

I don’t think there is anything wrong with trying to fit in, assimilate or belong to a community. It’s part of human nature to want acceptance. I think the issue is when it’s done for political or financial gain or when it’s culturally or racially offensive. Most people in today’s world move around much more than our ancestors ever did. We are also far more likely to be of mixed ethnicity. It’s an interesting topic of conversation for many people and it’s used to assimilate and build connections. Personally as someone with a GGM who was of Irish decent I feel very far removed to be claiming I’m Irish unlike Joe Biden. GGM emigrated to London (part of the London Irish descendants) and both my GM and DM would say they were English. I am half Scottish (DF is Scottish, both GP’s Scottish) and I do feel it’s appropriate to claim that heritage but technically I was born in England which means I’m English. DH is Scottish and tells the DC they’re more Scottish than English. They were also born in England though so I feel this makes them English even though 75% of their descendants are Scottish.

I think PPs have it right, certainly from the Irish American many generations back perspective. It would have been unusual for many of the million of Irish people who emigrated to USA in the 19th / early 20th centuries to have done so entirely willingly.

It was a last resort life-line and undertaken with huge grief that they would likely never see home or family again. That is a profound grief carried by such huge numbers of people, coupled with the fact that their language, culture and religion was outlawed in their own country for so long it is unsurprising that keeping it alive in the new world was a priority. They lived in close knit communities and married other Irish immigrants etc. These stories and histories and values were passed down through the generations and were at the heart of their family life.

I am Irish, living in Ireland now again and I really feel no animosity for any American who identifies as Irish American. I can't honesty see why I should. It could have been me...my branch of the family were lucky to survive all that befell them and I am here as a result of that.

I have also spent time in Australia which to me is a totally different and more challenging heritage situation, especially for Irish people historically (not recent immigrants). Under British law in Ireland many thousands of Irish people were banished to Australia and Tasmania (Van Diemen's Land) to work in the colonies as prisoners. Many were political prisoners who were seeking an independent Ireland and many many were desperate starving poor who stole food to feed families.

Under the Earl Grey Scheme 4,000 Irish girls aged 14 - 18 from post-famine workhouses across Ireland were sent to Australia to provide wives for the colonies and it is estimated 20% of the current population of Australia can be traced to this event. the girls were known as 'breeders' and on average had 8 children. They were sent by the colonial government to prevent the men finding Aboriginal wives which would have been a nightmare for the colony formed only 16 years at that stage. They were sent with a bowl and a spoon and a petticoat.

Known as the Founding Grandmothers these girls were never expected to return to Ireland, most never did, through their decendents have done and still do come to trace roots.

Australia, due to the origins of it colonisation has an uneasy relationship with heritage as lots came from prisoner stock, or prison guards or 'free settlers' who were very unlawful and found this remote new colony far away from other places to settle. For many years there was a reluctance to delve too deeply into your family heritage but that's all changing now and that's also a good thing.

I think unless you come from a place where these are issues that face you or your people it's very hard to understand and easy to pass judgement.

There has been an unpleasant feel to this thread at times which is not nice to read.

@UniBallEye thank you for a very interesting and informative post

Under the Earl Grey Scheme 4,000 Irish girls aged 14 - 18 from post-famine workhouses across Ireland were sent to Australia to provide wives for the colonies and it is estimated 20% of the current population of Australia can be traced to this event. the girls were known as 'breeders' and on average had 8 children. They were sent by the colonial government to prevent the men finding Aboriginal wives which would have been a nightmare for the colony formed only 16 years at that stage. They were sent with a bowl and a spoon and a petticoat.

I'm irish and did not know this, it is absolutely abhorrent. I can't really find the right words to express how disgusted I am. Those poor girls.

[quote wallowmall]@AryaStarkWolf I don't think you read my post properly [/quote]
I did, I was agreeing with you about Halloween in Ireland.......not very clearly obviously :p

In fairness, the Earl Grey scheme was voluntary, and the conditions in the vastly overcrowded workhouses from which they were sent were also absolutely appalling as shown by the fact that many who left accounts of the voyage found conditions on board the ships considerably better than those they had left and they weren't forcibly married when they arrived. And the workhouses were places of last resort, universally feared for good reason.

Which is not to say the girls on the Earl Grey scheme didn't have an awful time, but part of that was their reception when they arrived. They were considered feckless refugees, widely attacked in the present, subject to abuse on the street and widely mistreated by employers -- most started off as domestic servants.

But I think @UniBallEye is absolutely right to point out a completely different historical attitude to emigration in England compared to Ireland -- England has never had a situation where a huge percentage of the population died of hunger and disease, and a larger number left the country to flee mass starvation and infection. The population of the island of Ireland was reduced by almost a quarter. Over two million people left Ireland 1845 and 1855. And remember too they left an unwilling colony with vastly inegalitarian property laws, absentee landlords, where most tenant smallholdings were too small to support the families who relied on them etc and where the Penal Laws and Catholic Emancipation were recent memories. Not surprisingly, this left those communities who ended up in the US with an entirely different sense of themselves, and a different sense of a homeland from which they had been driven out.

By the time the blight hit again in 1879, the Land League was organising resistance to evictions, which meant less homelessness, fewer workhouse admissions and fewer deaths.

@FlemCandango

I know what you mean op, it is an attitude towards heritage that is jarring to British cultural sensibilities. Having said all that, I am currently slightly obsessed with identifying my own Irish ancestry, for more practical purposes. I and my siblings would love to be able to claim dual nationality and Irish passports! This may mean a bit of digging as my father died many years ago and said he had an Irish mum but we can't find a jot of evidence. Too many Mary's in Liverpool in the 1930s😂

It seems to me to be an attitude only towards other heritages that is jarring to British cultural sensibilities...

@Bathtoy

In fairness, the Earl Grey scheme was voluntary, and the conditions in the vastly overcrowded workhouses from which they were sent were also absolutely appalling as shown by the fact that many who left accounts of the voyage found conditions on board the ships considerably better than those they had left and they weren't forcibly married when they arrived. And the workhouses were places of last resort, universally feared for good reason.

Which is not to say the girls on the Earl Grey scheme didn't have an awful time, but part of that was their reception when they arrived. They were considered feckless refugees, widely attacked in the present, subject to abuse on the street and widely mistreated by employers -- most started off as domestic servants.

But I think @UniBallEye is absolutely right to point out a completely different historical attitude to emigration in England compared to Ireland -- England has never had a situation where a huge percentage of the population died of hunger and disease, and a larger number left the country to flee mass starvation and infection. The population of the island of Ireland was reduced by almost a quarter. Over two million people left Ireland 1845 and 1855. And remember too they left an unwilling colony with vastly inegalitarian property laws, absentee landlords, where most tenant smallholdings were too small to support the families who relied on them etc and where the Penal Laws and Catholic Emancipation were recent memories. Not surprisingly, this left those communities who ended up in the US with an entirely different sense of themselves, and a different sense of a homeland from which they had been driven out.

By the time the blight hit again in 1879, the Land League was organising resistance to evictions, which meant less homelessness, fewer workhouse admissions and fewer deaths.

where most tenant smallholdings were too small to support the families who relied on them

And the reason those smallholdings were too small was due to the law in Ireland that required land held by catholics to be divided equally between all sons when the tenant or owner died. Part of the policy to impoverish catholics and a direct cause of the reliance on the potato as a food crop.

@PrincessNutella

Youdial--When I lived in the UK, I found people loved to talk about their "real" American experiences of riding on Greyhound buses and talking to folks in diners. But had no interest in talking to complicated, intellectual Americans who were around them and who didn't fit their simplistic image of what real Americans are like. They didn't want to be educated about the U.S., either. But so fucking what?

Well, those people were not claiming to be "American Brits" just because they had ridden on a Greyhound bus. That's what.

I wonder if there is also a significant element in the US of those heritages that people developed strong communities and affinities with being those that were seen as ‘lesser’ by the ruling classes, particularly given strong anti-Catholic sentiment and activity in much of the eastern and midwestern US and particularly in the South until at least WW2.

The idea of the US as an open and egalitarian society welcoming its immigrants with open arms in the 19th and 20th centuries has been pretty widely debunked. If you have a sense that your community and identity is being oppressed or is openly under attack, it’s going to cement that identity a lot more strongly than if true assimilation of (white) immigrants had taken place.

I read somewhere that WW2 - with the forced mixing of different communities and ethnicities in the military - resulted one of the greatest steps forward in religious and ethnic tolerance (though obv with serious limitations when it came to race).

Though even into the 60s, JFK’s Catholicism was a massive issue in the election, which would again have reinforced the sense of ‘otherness’ particularly in those who identified as part of the Irish community. The idea that a Catholic candidate of Irish descent had to fight harder than a WASP candidate for public office was pretty clear.

Identities are such complicated things.

I'm Scottish and whenever I've been in America we always get Americans telling us they're Scottish. I feel bad because they aren't doing any harm and genuinley think that scottish people take this seriously but I aways want to tell them that it's a bit of a joke amongst us.

Also find it annoying when Americans refer to themselves as Italian. Not Italian-American... just Italian. When they've clearly never been and neither have their parents. I suppose it's just identity/tribalism as other posters have mentioned.

@UniBallEye I think you explain the history very well. People are complex. History continues to influence people today.

And to the poster that said the issue is a reinforcing of harmful stereotypes. I don't quite see the connection between a continuous sense of identity through the generations and a reinforcing stereotypes. I mean it can do but not necessarily. It depends on how their identity is communicated.

It's just part of the USian consumerism attitude of wanting more more more really isn't it! I am 3rd generation Irish and I've met Americans who are agog that I don't identify as Irish.

I'm on a Derry Girls Facebook group and it's just full of Americans pretending they're Irish like the characters because their great great grandma was

@Bathtoy yes, the it was voluntary for these girls to opt to leave but really, at the ages they were, with the lives they'd already lead and the future they faced in the workhouse, they were between a rock and a hard place weren't they?

Little or no education, mostly no families, so not much ability to really discern the far reaching implications of their decisions, their will to live triumphed.

I often think of those girls and what life threw at them. I spoke at length to an Australian woman whose great grandmother had been deported from Ireland to Australia for stealing a lamb. She served a harsh prison sentence of hard labour and was released to her fate with no contacts, no family, no money and no prospects. She married an another ex convict and they moved further inland and after a number of years they purchased land and started a business and had a large family. They were instrumental in the running of the town that grew up around the settlement they joined and they never, ever wanted to talk about their past (both ex convicts) as they didn't want that following them around. They were fiercely proud of what they had achieved and the life they'd built and they never wanted sympathy or viewed themselves as victims. It was very interesting to hear that families perspective as they strongly identified as Irish.

Her great great grand-daughter came to Ireland on the anniversary of the deportation and traced not only the birthplace but also the court sentence which set her GG Grandmother to Australia at the age of 15. Alone. Tough people who endured a lot.

There are millions of similar stories, mostly forgotten, apart from by their descendents who carry it with them in the stories and histories passed down from one generation to the next.

To hear it reduced to such scorn on here is sad.

@UniBallEye I don't think much (or any) of the scorn is coming from actual Irish people though. As an Irish person it doesn't bother me at all, it's quite nice. The only thing I think about it really is that a lot of times the view of what "Irish-ness" is, can be outdated and stereotypical but it's not a big deal

@AryaStarkWolf I don't think I said that the scorn was coming from Irish people? Though I have come across it a once or twice in real life, laughing at 'the yanks' coming to look for their roots etc.

I think there are reasons why the view of 'Irish-ness' is skewed, particularly from people of Irish American heritage who have not visited modern day Ireland but are reliant on their 'knowledge' of the culture / history from their families.

Anyway, how they identify doesn't bother me in the slightest and I am always fascinated to speak to anyone I come across who calls themselves Irish and find out about their story. It interests me. I find history fascinating.

@UniBallEye I know you didn't, it was just an observation is all

@AryaStarkWolf aha...I hear you!

I think there are reasons why the view of 'Irish-ness' is skewed, particularly from people of Irish American heritage who have not visited modern day Ireland but are reliant on their 'knowledge' of the culture / history from their families.

Ireland and the culture there evolved, the Irish people who emigrated to the US did not pick up on or participate in that evolution. How could they, in an era when communication was slow and infrequent? Irish-based heritage culture in the US is a bit of a time capsule to an Ireland that stopped existing for the Irish but was kept alive by immigrants who clung to their culture. Irish-influenced music from the US is a place where this is very visible.

When Irish immigrants moved to more established nations, like the UK, there was a culture present and ready, which demanded assimilation. The US didn't have that, and to an extent still isn't like that, and I think that plays a large part in modern (19th century and onwards) immigrants clinging to their culture with a fierce tenacity. That culture was cherished and passed down; it's distorted in some places but still recognisable as what it was in the beginning. The US didn't ask so much in the "fitting in" department, frankly.

The Americans claiming Irish descent seem to annoy the UK (or maybe just MN) far more than any other culture that does this, despite there being many other nationalities that have a celebrated heritage in the US. In the US I lived near several "enclaves" of various nationalities I'm friends with women of German and Hungarian descent, for whom German and Hungarian and not English were their first languages, yet neither holds that nationality. There are entire neighbourhoods with signs and businesses still primarily using Russian, Polish, German, and Hungarian language (these are the ones visible to me I'm certain there are others) even though immigration may have occurred generations ago. I've been to Swedish festivals, attended weddings at the local Ukrainian church and celebrations at the local Ukrainian Culture Centre. The Greek festival (celebrate being Greek! is on all of their banners even though I highly doubt many of them hold a passport) was one we always tried to go to because the food was terrific, and the Iranian-American association also has a large presence.

So why is it Americans of Irish descent that get the scrutiny? Or is this just another one of those threads so MNers can enjoy scoffing at Americans while simultaneously demonstrating that they don't understand them in the first place?

It isnt only Irish Americans. They're just more high profile. For me it's like some sort of cultural appropriation. They are mostly ignorant, come from wealth and democracy often lovely comfort but want to appropriate a bit of the poverty and hardship that they romanticize and are entirely sheltered from. A suburban American can joke about being trashy or a slut "because they're Russian" ha ha ha. They're not the ones being trafficked into sex slavery though are they?
Maybe it's different as Ireland is a modern wealthy country and Irishness is seen positively.