More than 1.5 million mass leftIrelandfor the United States between 1845 and 1855 , the survivor of a potatofaminethat had wiped out more than1 millionpeople in their mother country . They arrived pitiable , hungry and sick , and then crowded into cramped tenements in Boston , New York and other northeast cities to start anew under difficult condition .
The struggles of Irish immigrants were compounded by the misfortunate discussion they get from the white , in the main Anglo - Saxon and Protestant establishment . America ’s live amateurish workers care they would be supplant by immigrant willing to work for less than the kick the bucket rate . And business sector owners worry that Irish immigrants and African - Americans would band together to demand increased earnings .
As a answer , locals did n’t take kindly to an influx of Irish immigrants compete for resources perceived as limited . In Boston alone , 37,000 Irish immigrants get in in 1847 — growing the metropolis ’s population by more than 30 percent , straining utilisation , rations , housing and relations between population .
Not only were Irish immigrants look at as interlopers by many white Americans ( an caustic remark , considering the historical treatment of Native Americans ) , but these immigrant were Catholics in a principally Protestant acres . It was a religious difference that widen the water parting , as did the fact that many Irish immigrants did n’t speak English . As strange as may it may sound today , Irish immigrants were not think " snowy " and were sometimes referred to " negroes turned inside out . "
" Among the Irish , the commonality take to filth - dig more course than to anything else , " Redfield wrote . " They are dirty in their persons , and let in pigs in their mud - cabin which they themselves occupy . They are good handmaiden if you deal raspingly with them , as a master does with his detent ; but the minute you are disposed to be familiar with them they are all over you , spring against you and laying their marked-up paws upon your clean apparel , as if you were no good than they . "
This case of xenophobia — the fear of people or things comprehend to be dissimilar — was pad by the geological formation of theKnow - Nothing Party , a U.S. political party that spring up in 1849 and grow during the next tenner . Members of the company opposed the Catholic faith in general and Irish Catholics in particular . They fear Irish Catholics would take over the U.S. and potentially raise up the Catholic Pope as the country ’s ruler , supplant secular law with religious dictates .
AlthoughIrish immigrants face oppressionin the United States , they also participated in it . African - Americans and Irish were moot by many northerly White to be on equal ground , but many Irish immigrants quickly espouse " snowy " identities and became part of the societal concept that oppressed African - Americans as an boulevard to better employ , interweaving issue of classism and racial discrimination .
" Once the Irish secured themselves in those jobs , they made sure blacks were kept out,“writeshistorian Art McDonald . " They realized that as long as they continued to work alongside Shirley Temple Black , they would be considered no different . later on , as Irish became prominent in the undertaking move , African Americans were excluded from participation … And so , we have the tragical narrative of how one oppressed ' airstream , ' Irish Catholics , learned how to get together in the oppression of another ' subspecies , ' Africans in America , so as to secure their place in the white republic . "
Race relationsin the United States have long been complicated , and suffering and discrimination is not a zero - totality ; for example , see thediscredited but persistent myth of Irish slaverythat still makes the round on the cyberspace . Today , it may be difficult to suppose a fourth dimension when fair - skinned hoi polloi of Irish ancestry were n’t take white . However , definitions of race have changed over time — and may be just as rooted in class , labor , economics and fear as they are in skin pigmentation .
