imo more Irish Americans should know their history and how Irish people completely assimilated into white America and how the way people identified their Irish ethnicity changed dramatically after 9/11
White americans have decreased in the American population but there was an increase in 2000-2002 of people identifying as Irish. Which doesn’t really Speak to my experience bc my family and community would’ve ID’d as Irish irregardless but my new York town has an incredibly high percentage of Irish cops and fireman who vote almost entirely republican when most of their parents were Irish Catholic Democrats speaks to how irishness in america has changed since the 1990s when it begun to be an attractive self-identification. Also bc Irish Catholics as a whole are no longer seen as being from lower, uneducated classes and seen as influenced by a foreign religion (Catholicism) that keeps them dependent, childish and primitive. Instead of identifying with people of color or lower class people or marginalized religions Irish Americans will absolve themselves of racism saying stuff like “my ancestors never owned slaves” or “we were oppressed too and we overcame it they need to do the same and stop complaining” which just kills any intelligent thought of how the reason Irish Americans were included in the white mainstream and enjoy all the social capitals of whiteness is bc there were SOO many of us like ¼th of the NYC population was Irish at one point + trying to distinguish us from other white people was too much work after a certain point. And 9/11 accelerated this even more bc the Irish dominated NYPD + NYFD were fetishly celebrated so hard post 9/11 so white male irishness was embraced and identified with as means of identifying with America as a whole. So now I understand more why the Irish Americans I know are so fucking american nationalist and crazy. Like learning Irish american history just shows how fake race is as a construct and especially how white supremacy is not real.
it really is next to impossible to write realistic sibling dialogue, I just passed my brother on the stairs and instead of greeting each other like human beings I said ‘born survivor’ and he said ‘youtube rewind. let’s set it to rewind.’ like you ain’t gonna find that shit in a novel
