Irish Didn't Exploit Their Persecuted Minority Status
January 21, 2016
The second largest ethnic group in the USA
had to endure terrible hardships and discrimination -
even more than African Americans or Jews. Rather
than hanging on to the past, they chose to work their way
out of the situation and assimilate.
"As for my Irishness, I never grew up thinking I was anything other than American. We were not taught anything else."
by Don
(henrymakow.com)
According to the Census, there are 34.5 million Americans who list their heritage as either primarily or partially Irish. That number is, incidentally, seven times larger than the population of Ireland itself (4.68 million). Irish is the second-most common ancestry among Americans, falling just behind German.
I am an American of Irish heritage, but have always considered myself American. I knew very little about Ireland except that my father's mother was Irish and her family were Catholic.
They came to Washington State in the 1890s from Michigan to work in the logging industry. I didn't know a lot about my grandmother. She died when I was a little over seven. She told us kids that the family was from County Sligo and were forced to leave Ireland or get killed or imprisoned. She didn't tell us what year that happened or how they ended up in America.
Early on in my working career I mentioned the story to an older coworker thinking it was unique, and he replied "Your family and everyone else." That's about all I knew of the Irish until my work took me to SE Texas and Louisiana around 1990.
There I happened to read about the Irish Channel in New Orleans. This channel is also known as the "New Basin Canal" and was dug by Irish Immigrants in the 1830s. Digging this canal was hazardous work and the swamps exposed workers to yellow fever and malaria.
As a result thousands of Irish men died. Black slaves were not used because they were valuable and a loss of a slave was an economic loss to the owner. Irish immigrants on the other hand were cheap. Not only would they would work for less than anyone else, if one died or was injured there was no loss of property. They were easy to replace to, as shiploads of Irish were arriving in New Orleans to escape the oppression and famine in their homeland.
The harsh treatment of the Irish wasn't limited to the south. In the northern states, they were resented and viewed as a colored race or subhuman.
Likewise this discrimination wasn't limited to men. Irish women were employed as servants and called "Bridgets" and were treated as slaves.
When war broke out between the states, the Irish immigrants were forced to enlist whereas the Blacks were not.
As bad as the treatment the Irish received in America, it was better than Ireland. The history of their homeland is over 1000 years of bloody and brutal conflict. They have endured invasion, religious persecution, and land confiscation.
The Irish died in greater numbers than Blacks on slave ships.
The Irish had over one million die during the "Potato Famine" while the British exported food from Ireland.
Why didn't I know about these things growing up? I attribute it to the stoic nature of the Irish people who chose the path of hard work and assimilated into society. Rather than complain about the past, my forbearers decided to forget and move forward.
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---------------- Irish Built the Union Pacific Railroad
----------------- Real Irish American History Not Taught in US Schools
New First Comment from Dan:
As you know my heritage is mostly Irish, plus what's called 'Scots Irish'. My paternal great grandfather really did come over on a 'coffin ship' in the wake of the 'Great Famine'. He was fourteen. His parents and brothers and sisters had all died from the typhoid and cholera epidemics that go with breakdown of infrastructure. He was saved by some charity that booked passage for orphans and widows with children on the 'coffin ships' bound for Boston before the American Civil War. The Irish immigration of the 1850's wasn't allowed because of Federal altruism, but for cheap factory labor and cannon fodder.
That makes me a direct descendant of Irish genocide survivors. If you don't believe the Great Famine was genocide, it's all well documented in books like 'The Famine Plot' by Tim Pat Coogan. There's a lot more to the genocide and it goes back a couple of hundred years before that, to Cromwell's invasion.
My great great grandmother Johannah O'Brien is listed in the 1851 British census as an internee at the St. Martin-of-the-Fields Workhouse in Middlesex, England. That means to old Irish people the same thing Auschwitz means to Jews. It was a British labor camp designed to work Irish widows and orphans of the famine to death in a matter of two or three months. Few got out of the 'Poorhouses' alive. It is for this history that my grandmother instilled in me an empathy for Jews, since the War still so fresh in American memory.
But I must suggest to Colm and Tony not to fall for attempts to whip up animosity toward Englishmen - or French, or Germans, or anyone for that matter. Now that we see where Masonic Multiculturalism is about, keep your focus on the fact that we have too much in common to squabble over the troubles of the past.
Remember what Benjamin Franklin said to Congress the day they signed the Declaration of Independence,
"We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."
By the way, the current destruction of Ireland through mass 'immigration' has nothing in common with the Irish diaspora of the 19th century. Don't let anyone try to con ya. The title to this article is exactly the point.
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Dan M said (January 22, 2016):
Go ro mah agat (Thank you) for posting this.
My grandmother said that on the coffin ships, people watched to keep rats from eating babies and that the English hate the Irish because the Irish were civilized before and re-Christianized them.
The West Cork Famine Museum is heartbreaking: There are remains of stone walls going nowhere up hills built by starving workers. The museum sells a DVD by Chocktaw artist Gary Greybeard whom I met at a Gaelic Immersion weekend. Gary is from Oklapihoma )the true name, “pi†meaning “root†so that “Oklahoma means “â€rootless red man.†After the Trail of Tears, the Five Nations sent almost $200 to the starving white people they heard about in Ireland. Gary was honored by Ireland for the 150th anniversary of the “famine.â€
My great-grandfather’s squad was inexplicably moved twelve blocks from guarding Ford’s Theater the night Lincoln was shot.
As an example under Cromwell (who readmitted Jewish bankers and had Paris-Communelike agitators during the English Civil War), 60,000 Irishmen were sent to St. Kitts alone to mate with blacks. These deportations created the Caribbean lilting accent. St. Kitts changed hands 64 times. “Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl†documents an Irish-black rebellion.
A movement exists in Ireland to post the British regimental numbers at many mass graves where the soldiers took food from people at gunpoint. The Chicago author writing a book about this has been threatened by the FBI. Some don’t want this history resurrected because of shame/guilt, and the Irish Masonic headquarters is in Dublin across from City Hall!
Thanks again for your link to Father Andrew O’Brien’s excellent taped lectures on the Illuminati!