Those of us willing to watch the train wreck that is social media witness perpetual whataboutisms placing the historical despairs of some European Americans on par with that of descendants of individuals sold on a block as one would a cow.
“I mean,” commented one man to me, “What about the treatment of women? And, what about the Indians?” Etc., etc., etc.
It seems that when a group other than the American melting pot of amalgamated whiteness lurches towards the proverbial center, discomfort abounds in ways so visceral that emotions can become impossible to control.
But why riddle the USS American Greatness with the buckshot of whataboutisms? Is the argument that the ship has been taking water and staying afloat for centuries, so why not shoot it some more? Not sure.
The whataboutism de jour? Irish slavery.
For centuries, the English dehumanized and enslaved Irish men, women and children, typically for terms of years. Exodus 21:2 biblically outlines the terms. If one buys a servant, “six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.” How closely this rule — one set forth in the Bible for Jewish servants and the basis for indentured servitude laws — was followed is disputed.
Undisputed is that the English unjustly imprisoned, tortured and stole lands from and forced into servitude tens of thousands of Irish, and for centuries.
In “White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain’s White Slaves in America,” Don Jordan and Michael Walsh argued, “Tens of thousands of whites were held as chattels, marketed like cattle, punished brutally and in some cases literally worked to death.” Regardless of whether it was slavery or indentured servitude, the Irish suffered awful treatment, a fact that should bond — not divide — Irish Americans and African Americans.
Crucial is the 19th-century shift on how the Irish were racially seen in the United States. Granted, the anti-Catholicism that defined Britishness since John Foxe’s 1563 “Book of Martyrs” very much impacted how the Irish were seen ethnically by our nation, a former British colony. Thus, there were plenty of hurdles preventing them from fully realizing the American Dream too quickly.
Before the mass Irish immigration of the 1840s and beyond, Irish-born Daniel O’Connell, a member of the British Parliament, exemplifies how much American slavery affected many Irish, as he differentiated the Irish plight from that of black Africans sold as chattel. In 1830, a fellow parliamentarian in London offered to support “Irish issues” if O’Connell would remain silent on the issue of slavery in the Caribbean. To this O’Connell replied, “Gentlemen, God knows I speak for the saddest people the sun sees; but may my right hand forget its cunning, and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if to save Ireland, even Ireland, I forget the negro one single hour!”
However poorly Irish were treated notwithstanding, the key point is, as “White Cargo” clarifies, “Eventually, a racial wedge was thrust between white and black, leaving blacks officially enslaved as they were before.” In an interview, the authors elaborated, “We’re not saying the Whites ever suffered quite as much as the worst treated Blacks.” Sadly, whataboutisms and unwillingness to unite made this statement necessary.
As Noel Ignatiev put it in “How the Irish Became White,” Irish Americans and free African Americans often lived in close quarters in American cities, “and developed a culture of the lowly” largely due to the scars from societal scorn. Americans of African and Irish origin were generally considered second-class citizens, if citizens at all.
Rather than uplifting each other, most Irish saw an opportunity to escape the shackles of being nonwhite and took it. They could racially assimilate and, argues Ignatiev, “the Irish ceased to be Green;” they became white.
How was this achieved? Sometimes by moving in different circles, sometimes by violence. Irish violence toward Blacks had much to do with job competition between the two groups. The Cincinnati Riots of 1829 and the New York Draft Riot of 1863 are clear examples. This transition from oppressed compatriot to middling oppressor didn’t remain unnoticed, either.
As abolitionist Frederick Douglass plainly put it in an August 1845 speech in Limerick, Ireland: “Perhaps no class of our fellow citizens has carried this prejudice against color to a point more extreme and dangerous than have our Catholic Irish fellow citizens, and no people on the face of the earth have been more relentlessly persecuted and oppressed on account of race and religion than have this same Irish people. The Irish who, at home, readily sympathize with the oppressed everywhere, are instantly taught when they step upon our soil to hate and despise the Negro. They are taught that he eats the bread that belongs to them.”
The key difference, as Douglass said, was that, “The Irishman has not only the liberty to emigrate from his country, but he has liberty at home. He can write, and speak, and cooperate for the attainment of his rights and the redress of his wrongs.”
But, as Tacitus observed over two millennia ago, “Long, I pray, may foreign nations persist in hating one another … and fortune can bestow on us no better gift than discord among our foes.” As a corollary, let’s apply this to the seeming divide between African Americans and Irish Americans. Uniting people and neither being hyperbolic nor discounting a people’s experiences is the better goal. Both African Americans and Irish Americans should consider sharing their experiences in brotherhood and not as an exercise in hyperbolic one-upmanship.
Christopher Brooks is a professor of history at East Stroudsburg University.
